In this article, I focus on arguments which suggest that disenfranchising persons on the grounds of incompetence is likely to produce epistemically sub-optimal decisions. I suggest three ways in which such arguments can be strengthened. First, I argue that they can be untethered from the controversial ‘best judge’ principle, according to which each person is the best judge of his or her own interests. Second, I suggest that epistemic arguments against epistocracy are currently insensitive to the nature of the groups that would be excluded on the grounds of incompetence.

Abstract:

Centre Research Associate Geoff Goodell, together with Tomaso Aste, discusses why blockchain technology is for the public good in Open Access Government.

On March 16th, 2018, Oxford University’s Centre for Technology and Global Affairs held a workshop on Applied Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. In attendance were academic and industry experts, business managers, and government representatives from the U.S. and Europe. r4 Technologies and Palantir – two industry leaders in the deployment of AI technology and data analytics respectively – co-organized the event with the Centre.

The main goals of the workshop were to: 

This article explores the deliberative costs incurred when political parties rely on strict discipline to attain unity. I begin with a brief discussion aimed at clarifying the notion of strict party discipline. The second section explores how such discipline affects the formation, expression and reception of dissenting views. In the third section, I go on to outline two approaches towards deliberation in Parliament: the epistemic approach and the political justification approach.

The study of identities struggles to capture the moments and dynamics of identity change. A crisis moment provides a rare insight into such processes. This paper traces the political identities of the inhabitants of a region at war – the Donbas – on the basis of original survey data that cover the four parts of the population that once made up this region: the population of the Kyiv-controlled Donbas, the population of the self-declared “Donetsk People’s Republic” and “Luhansk People’s Republic,” the internally displaced, and those who fled to the Russian Federation.

Newly available archival sources in China illuminate how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) used transnational initiatives to advance its aims. This article explores Chinese interaction with the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs from 1957 to 1964 and discusses how the People's Republic of China (PRC) made deliberate use of transnational initiatives to further its own Cold War strategy and foreign policy.

Working Paper No. 8 (May 2018)

This paper presents a comparative case study between the technological healthcare systems of Estonia and Britain. It describes these two nations’ digital infrastructures: socio-technical collections of information communication technologies and networks along with standards, institutions, data practices, policymakers, professionals, support staff, and patients.