Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Shoemaker's research is in the area of Political Philosophy. He is interested in theories of the justification for democracy and various democratic institutions. In particular, much of his research concerns an emerging alternative to conventional electoral democracy called lottocratic democracy, where politicians would be replaced by many large assemblies of ordinary citizens, selected by lottery for relatively short terms of service. Building on the work of a growing empirical literature describing the many epistemic advantages that such bodies have in making decisions over elected politicians, Shoemaker argues that these bodies do a better job of living up to the ideal of democracy than do elections. This is because lottocratic democracy treats citizens as equally worthy of power over the law, and ensures that no small and elite subset of the people can dominate politics.
For more information, please visit his personal website here: https://www.ericshoemaker.ca