Jonathan Benson

I’m a political theorist and Hallsworth Research Fellow at the University of Manchester. From January 2025, I will be a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) at Manchester and I have previously taught at King’s College London and Utrecht University.

My research focuses on democratic theory with a strong connection to the interdisciplinary tradition of politics, philosophy, and economics (PPE). I am particularly interested in contemporary challenges to democracy, including the rise of anti-democratic thought, the relationship to the market economy, and issues of voter knowledge, misinformation, and political polarisation.

My first book ‘Intelligent Democracy: Answering the new democratic scepticism’ is forthcoming with Oxford University Press, and my work has appeared in such places as American Political Science Review, Political Studies, Politics, Philosophy & Economics, Synthese, and Economics & Philosophy.

Research Interests

Democratic Theory: Deliberative democracy, epistemic justifications of democracy, systems approaches, sortition and lotteries, democracy’s critics.

Political Economy: Democracy and the market, the limits of markets, polycentricity, exit and voice, public goods.

Political Epistemology: Voter knowledge, political polarisation, misinformation and fake news, informational theories of markets.