CFP: Mancept Workshop - Epistemic Democracy and the Lure of Epistocracy: Questions in Metaethics and Political Normativity

Abstract submission deadline: 10th May 2026

Expressing the political anxieties of our moment, the term 'technocracy' has become increasingly popular in political discourse. Largely orthogonal to the debate on technocracy, the connate term 'epistocracy' (i.e., rule of the knowers) has made its fortune in normative democratic theory due to the rise in popularity of epistemic theories of democracy (Gauss 1996; Anderson 2007; Estlund 2008; Landemore 2013; Peter 2023). These theories have developed increasingly sophisticated normative political epistemologies, arguing that ""epistemic success"" (i.e. the extent to which political decisions, procedures, or institutions realize, or are reliably oriented towards the achievement of some epistemic good that is relevant to political decision-making) is either a necessary or even a sufficient condition to ground political legitimacy and/or authority. Epistemic democrats thus go against the grain of traditional approaches which ground political legitimacy solely upon fairness, equality, or self-authorship.

Epistemic theories suffer from unresolved questions. First, except for Jason Brennan (2016), the literature lacks a systematic conceptualization of epistocracy. While epistocracy is frequently invoked by epistemic democrats as a negative contrast, it often functions implicitly rather than as a fully theorized position (Estlund 2008; Landemore, 2022). Epistocracy plays a crucial boundary-setting role: it marks the point at which epistemic considerations are taken to unduly override equality or fairness, thereby rendering a theory of legitimacy incompatible with democratic norms. Second, the metaethical dimension of epistemic democratic theories remains underdeveloped. What constitutes epistemic success is often underspecified, even though it does significant work. Epistemic democrats frequently argue that one cannot have an “epistemically abstinent” normative theory since non-epistemic values such as fairness or equality presuppose epistemic claims (Talisse 2009). However, the precise sense in which non-epistemic considerations have an epistemic character, and how this affects their normative significance, is rarely made explicit. Thirdly, clarifying these metaethical commitments is crucial because they determine the boundary between epistemic democracy and epistocracy. How demanding one’s notion of truth or epistemic success is, and how it relates to other democratic values, will shape how epistemic considerations ground legitimacy.

In this workshop, we seek to delve deeper into the meta-normative commitments of epistemic democracy and explore the relation between knowledge and political normativity. This should provide a venue for epistemic democrats to clarify these commitments and an opportunity for its critics to sharpen their criticism. This workshop will tackle the following questions:

1. Can knowledge ground political legitimacy? Should it?
2. What is the relation between epistemic considerations and non-epistemic democratic considerations at the level of normative justification? Can there be a strict demarcation between epistemic and non-epistemic considerations? Are democratic values simply a species of epistemic value or distinct from the latter? If so, when do epistemic and democratic values diverge or conflict and what should we do when they conflict?
3. What counts as "epistemic success" and how demanding should it be? What are the different ways in which truth enters political justification? Are there more benign and less benign ways from a democratic standpoint?
4. What is epistocracy and why might it be dangerous? What core normative and metaethical commitments constitute an epistocratic theory?

If you are interested, please send a 500-word abstract to Roger Ventura Cossin ([email protected]) by end of day on the 10th of May, 2026. Selected speakers will be notified by the 18th of May, in time for eligible participants to apply for a bursary that covers the workshop fees.

The MANCEPT Workshops is an annual conference in political theory, organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory. The conference offers academics an opportunity to come together in a series of workshops to develop specialised work and engage in lively philosophical discussion. Attracting scholars throughout the world, the conference is now established as a leading international forum dedicated to the development of research in all subfields of political theory. You can find more information here: https://research.manchester.ac.uk/en/activities/mancept-workshops-2026/