Democracy, Epistocracy and Hybrid decision-making: Information specificity and costs of political governance

Alexandre Chirat () and Cyril Hédoin ()
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Alexandre Chirat: CRESE - Centre de REcherches sur les Stratégies Economiques (UR 3190) - UFC - Université de Franche-Comté - UBFC - Université Bourgogne Franche-Comté [COMUE]
Cyril Hédoin: REGARDS - Recherches en Économie Gestion AgroRessources Durabilité Santé- EA 6292 - URCA - Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne - MSH-URCA - Maison des Sciences Humaines de Champagne-Ardenne - URCA - Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, CRIEG - Centre de Recherche Interdisciplinaire Economie Gestion - MSH-URCA - Maison des Sciences Humaines de Champagne-Ardenne - URCA - Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne

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Abstract: This paper provides a new theoretical framework and a criterion to model the choice between democratic, hybrid, and epistocratic modes of political governance. From a normative perspective, we claim that the specificity of information should guide the choice between these modes of political governance because of its impact on costs of political governance. Any issue has a degree of information specificity that determines costs of political governance, which are combined in a Social Costs Function. Therefore, the model helps to assess the relative efficiency between democratic, hybrid, and epistocratic decision-making procedures to reach collective choices. The last section proposes extensions of the model.

Keywords: Democracy; -Epistocracy; -Social; Choice; -Information; -Costs; of; governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-04
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-05605024v1
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Published in Journal of Institutional Economics, In press, 22, pp.e17. ⟨10.1017/S1744137426100551⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-05605024

DOI: 10.1017/S1744137426100551

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