I agree that, to mitigate the problem of policymaker ignorance, one way is to improve the exchange of knowledge between constituents and policymakers, but your comments are otherwise not relevant. I'm not assuming full or "optimum" knowledge. I'm not even assuming a democratic context. The issue concerns how recognition or non-recognition of policymakers' limited knowledge in some decision context affects their incentives. You might look at some of my published work on the topic or, indeed, at some of my Substack posts, like this one:
… The challenge then, as I see it, is to improve the epistemic quality troughout the whole democratic value-chain; from deliberation to voting, dynamism, new deliberation, to party policy, parlamentary practise, to the implementing state bodies.
If you mean know as an optimum, the answer is definetly no. But politices is about acting on basis of sufficient information, and then continousely upgrade the knowledge base and probability for hit-proof policy. I do not find it very fruitful to discuss whether or not policymakers have full information or full knowledge. Nobody has. Cfr e.g. Sunstein for the argument On action based on sufficient knowlede.
I think the challenge of epistemic democracy often stands in opposition to the goal of politics, which is to win or keep power. Politics are essentially not epistemic and truth-seeking, but about delivering policy for their constituency. The challenge will not necessarily be, as I see it, what politicians have in terms of knowledge about their electorate's preferences, but is driven by winning the electorate's favor (and thus re-election) regardless of the epistemic quality for the society as such.
I agree that, to mitigate the problem of policymaker ignorance, one way is to improve the exchange of knowledge between constituents and policymakers, but your comments are otherwise not relevant. I'm not assuming full or "optimum" knowledge. I'm not even assuming a democratic context. The issue concerns how recognition or non-recognition of policymakers' limited knowledge in some decision context affects their incentives. You might look at some of my published work on the topic or, indeed, at some of my Substack posts, like this one:
https://policymakerignorance.substack.com/p/what-is-the-problem-of-policymaker
"Politics are essentially not epistemic and truth-seeking, but about delivering policy for their constituency"
Do policymakers know how to "deliver policy for their constituency"? What are the consequences if not?
That's what my work is about. What do policymakers do when they don't know what they're doing?
… The challenge then, as I see it, is to improve the epistemic quality troughout the whole democratic value-chain; from deliberation to voting, dynamism, new deliberation, to party policy, parlamentary practise, to the implementing state bodies.
If you mean know as an optimum, the answer is definetly no. But politices is about acting on basis of sufficient information, and then continousely upgrade the knowledge base and probability for hit-proof policy. I do not find it very fruitful to discuss whether or not policymakers have full information or full knowledge. Nobody has. Cfr e.g. Sunstein for the argument On action based on sufficient knowlede.
I think the challenge of epistemic democracy often stands in opposition to the goal of politics, which is to win or keep power. Politics are essentially not epistemic and truth-seeking, but about delivering policy for their constituency. The challenge will not necessarily be, as I see it, what politicians have in terms of knowledge about their electorate's preferences, but is driven by winning the electorate's favor (and thus re-election) regardless of the epistemic quality for the society as such.