Democracy’s attention problem

Abstract This paper presents a diagnosis of current concerns about democratic performance and fragility: the civic attention monopoly. We argue that the concentration of civic attention on a narrow set of highly salient issues and sites of policymaking could limit democratic performance and contributes to democratic fragility. We develop a novel framework that explains how this civic attention problem arises from both demand and supply dynamics related to political information and communication, and demonstrates its concerning epistemic and political consequences. The potential rise of asymmetric distribution of collective civic attention could limit the epistemic and political performance of democracies and promote conflict escalation and a bellicose view of politics, thereby undermining democratic resilience and affecting both the ceiling and the floor of democratic performance. The paper offers an alternative interpretation of the epistemic crisis of democracy, illuminating a relevant yet underexplored dynamic, while also having broader implications for democratic theory and political epistemology.