Politikai szofisztikáltság a demokráciaelméletben. Állampolgári kogníciók az episztemikus–schumpeteri skála tükrében
Political sophistication in the field of democratic theory Citizens' cognitions in light of the epistemic Schumpeterian scale

Summary/Abstract: The article explores the role of political sophistication in deliberative-participatory, aggregative-pluralist, and leader democracies. The study intends to surpass the assumption that citizen incompetence is an immanent feature of democracy. Instead, it argues that the failure of democracy justifies the diversification of the democratic modes of operation in addition to fostering citizens’ scientific thinking on politics, rather than the exclusion of the uninformed strata of the electorate (Brennan, 2016; Caplan, 2009). The approach prevalent in the study is the inductive and the holistic interpretation of democratic theories. The inductive approach assumes that democratic theories can be constructed on the basis of citizens’ cognitive capacities. The holistic approach maintains that the various elements of democracy are mutually interrelated. One of the innovations of the study is that it contrasts Schumpeterian democracy with epistemic democracy and by means of this contrast it creates a scale on which citizens’ political knowledge can be placed. Thus, the epistemicSchumpeterian scale simultaneously depicts cognitively distinct citizens and democratic theories based on these cognitive premises. After the placement of the three major democratic theories on the scale, the article elaborates the different levels and features of sophistication as regards all three democratic theories.

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