| dc.description.abstract | In 2016, the Jamaican General Election witnessed the lowest voter turnout rate since independence. A popular media narrative suggests that this is an example of Jamaicans’ hopelessness or political apathy. However, an examination of Letters to the Editor in two major Jamaican newspapers revealed a different story- people chose not to participate in a political system that disappointed them. Applying theories of epistemic injustice to political participation, this work introduces a counter-narrative, the concept of epistemic promise. Epistemic promise refers to the possibility that a person's input in a participatory process will meaningfully affect process outcomes. I propose that persons estimate the epistemic promise of a process before deciding whether to participate. Critically, unlike some related concepts, epistemic promise focuses on the inadequacies of political processes, rather than those of the participants. The first paper explores the theoretical basis for this new concept. Additionally, it introduces a method for evaluating the actual epistemic promise of a political process. In the second paper, two studies test the relationship between a proxy for perceived epistemic promise and political participation. Perceived epistemic promise predicts more formal forms of participation, such as voting, and has a more complicated relationship with protesting, an informal form of protest. The final paper presents an instrumental case study of the Tell Your MP project (TYM), a re-design of a participatory budgeting process. TYM represents the increase of actual epistemic promise in practice. Overall, epistemic promise is presented as a new and important concept in the study of political participation. | |
