ABSTRACT
The study of politics has long wrestled with attempts to combine knowledge and democracy. This chapter argues that it is helpful to distinguish what knowledge can do for democracy from what democracy can do for knowledge. The former includes ways in which democratic political systems can be organised so that they draw on the expertise of the few whilst remaining responsible to all citizens, no matter what the differences in their knowledge. The latter includes ways in which knowledge, no less than democracy, depends on free enquiry in open, inclusive and public debate between equals.
