TY - JOUR

T1 - Partisan science and the democratic legitimacy ideal

AU - Hilligardt, Hannah

N1 - Funding Information: The research leading to these results received funding from the DFG Research Training Group 2073 “Integrating Ethics and Epistemology of Scientific Research” (Project 254954344).

PY - 2023/11

Y1 - 2023/11

N2 - The democratic legitimacy ideal requires value judgments in science to be legitimised by democratic procedures in order for them to reflect the public interest or democratic aims. Such a view has been explicitly defended by Intemann (2015) and Schroeder (2021), amongst others, and reflects a more widely shared commitment to a democratisation of science and integration of public participation procedures. This paper suggests that the democratic legitimacy ideal in its current form does not leave space for partisan science – science that is politically or societally engaged. This is problematic because partisan research can contribute substantially to science and society, a point that I will illustrate with a recent case study from the Netherlands. To resolve this problem, I scrutinise the notion of democratic legitimacy and consider its use in the values in science discourse. Current discussions focus on democratic decision-making procedures to legitimise specific value judgements. I show that this focus does not adequately represent sound procedures of legitimisation at the hand of political theories of representation. Consequently, I develop a different approach: I propose to consider scientists as a special case of representatives who are authorised to make independent value judgements while nevertheless being constrained by the demands of their constituencies. Based on this approach, I argue that values in science do not need to be based on democratically agreed upon aims or the public interest in every instance. Instead, I advocate for a pluralist system of scientific mandates, which differs from both value pluralism and the democratic legitimacy ideal.

AB - The democratic legitimacy ideal requires value judgments in science to be legitimised by democratic procedures in order for them to reflect the public interest or democratic aims. Such a view has been explicitly defended by Intemann (2015) and Schroeder (2021), amongst others, and reflects a more widely shared commitment to a democratisation of science and integration of public participation procedures. This paper suggests that the democratic legitimacy ideal in its current form does not leave space for partisan science – science that is politically or societally engaged. This is problematic because partisan research can contribute substantially to science and society, a point that I will illustrate with a recent case study from the Netherlands. To resolve this problem, I scrutinise the notion of democratic legitimacy and consider its use in the values in science discourse. Current discussions focus on democratic decision-making procedures to legitimise specific value judgements. I show that this focus does not adequately represent sound procedures of legitimisation at the hand of political theories of representation. Consequently, I develop a different approach: I propose to consider scientists as a special case of representatives who are authorised to make independent value judgements while nevertheless being constrained by the demands of their constituencies. Based on this approach, I argue that values in science do not need to be based on democratically agreed upon aims or the public interest in every instance. Instead, I advocate for a pluralist system of scientific mandates, which differs from both value pluralism and the democratic legitimacy ideal.

KW - Activist science

KW - Democratic aims approach

KW - Democratic legitimacy

KW - Impartiality

KW - Values in science

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85174917509&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s11229-023-04370-5

DO - 10.1007/s11229-023-04370-5

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85174917509

VL - 202

JO - SYNTHESE

JF - SYNTHESE

SN - 0039-7857

IS - 5

M1 - 135

ER -