Adam Smith on Political Judgment: Revisiting the Political Theory of the Wealth of Nations

Abstract

How should the ordinary citizens of commercial societies navigate increasingly complex political landscapes characterized by global markets, specialization, and manipulation by special interests? In this article, I refer to the gap between the demands of political judgment and the capacities of ordinary citizens as the “political judgment problem,” and I argue, drawing on Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, that versions of this problem have existed since the early days of commercial society. By reconstructing Smith’s account of collective action by ordinary citizens, we can better understand the importance of political judgment to Smith’s political theory. Attending to it uncovers both classical solutions to the political judgment problem and a series of underappreciated modern answers focused on lowering the cognitive burdens of political judgment such as creating alternatives to partisan cues in public deliberation, reforming ideological shortcuts, and simplifying the multidimensional political space.