Against Democracy

By: Jason Brennan

Narrated by: Christopher Ragland

Length: 10 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

A classic book now available on audio

With narration by Christopher Ragland, who presents a bracingly provocative critique of one of our most cherished ideas and institutions

Most people believe democracy is a uniquely just form of government. They believe people have the right to an equal share of political power. And they believe that political participation is good for us—it empowers us, helps us get what we want, and tends to make us smarter, more virtuous, and more caring for one another. These are some of our most cherished ideas about democracy. But Jason Brennan says they are all wrong.

In this trenchant book, Brennan argues that democracy should be judged by its results—and the results are not good enough. Just as defendants have a right to a fair trial, citizens have a right to competent government. But democracy is the rule of the ignorant and the irrational, and it all too often falls short. Furthermore, no one has a fundamental right to any share of political power, and exercising political power does most of us little good. On the contrary, a wide range of social science research shows that political participation and democratic deliberation actually tend to make people worse—more irrational, biased, and mean. Given this grim picture, Brennan argues that a new system of government—epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable—may be better than democracy, and that it's time to experiment and find out.

A challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable, Against Democracy is essential listening for scholars and students of politics across the disciplines.

Featuring a new preface that situates the book within the current political climate and discusses other alternatives beyond epistocracy, Against Democracy is a challenging critique of democracy and the first sustained defense of the rule of the knowledgeable.

©2016 Jason Brennan (P)2023 Princeton University Press

Critic reviews

"One of Zócalo’s 10 Favorite Books of 2016"

"Brennan has a bright, pugilistic style, and he takes a sportsman's pleasure in upsetting pieties and demolishing weak logic. Voting rights may happen to signify human dignity to us, he writes, but corpse-eating once signified respect for the dead among the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. To him, our faith in the ennobling power of political debate is no more well grounded than the supposition that college fraternities build character."—Caleb Crain, New Yorker

"Against Democracy challenges a basic precept that most people take for granted: the morality of democracy. . . . Brennan presents a variety of strategies by which the quality of the electorate could be improved, while still keeping it large, and demographically representative. . . . [A] powerful challenge to the conventional wisdom about democracy. . . . [W]orth serious consideration."—Ilya Somin, Washington Post

"The book makes compelling reading for what is typically a dry area of discourse. This is theory that skips, rather than plods."—Molly Sauter, Los Angeles Times

overall very good, ends too soon, a summary at the end would be nice.

overall very good, ends too soon, a summary at the end would be nice to help review what the main points of the argument were.

What is the Alternative?

The book makes a great case against the effectiveness of voters in democratic countries. This should not be news to people who read books on political theory. Then again, as the author would point out, people who bother to read political theory are a distinct minority. The ending of the book was a bit of a disappointment as the author fails to lay out a particular vision of epistocracy and why it might be reasonable to imagine that a real-world version of it might do better than a conventional democracy. Of particular interest is the fact that the author does not make a case against those who would agree with his opinion about voters but respond that the solution is essentially what we have now, mainly a constitution backed by an activist Supreme Court, a bureaucracy, and politicians who are perfectly willing to ignore their voters.