The Role of Experts in Deliberative Epistemic Democracy

In this paper I discuss some problems for epistemic democracy as it is presented and defended by Ivan Cerovac in his book Epistemic Democracy and Political Legitimacy (2020). I discuss three problems I think are present in his discussion about the role of experts in democratic deliberation. The first problem is concerned with what the proper design for the educative role of technical experts is in deliberative democracy. The second problem deals with the question if there is a certain moral duty of justification towards other citizens of our choice of normative experts. This implies that, in the first place, we have a duty to consult opinions of those who know better than us when we are in the process of enacting decisions that have an influence on the lives of other citizens. Finally, I briefly mention the problem of Constitutional or Supreme Court ; namely, are they normative experts or technical experts because this group of experts is not present in Cerovac’s discussion of the role of experts.