Knowing Democracy through Performing Scientific Self-Governance

• In Event: Knowing Democracy

Abstract

Historically, the institutionalization of modern science is tied to politically sanctioned practices of quality control and censorship within science (Biagoli 2002). In the present, we think of these practices as peer review and see them as a mechanism of scientific self-governance. The premise of our paper is, thus, to address the relationship between science and democracy through an analysis of peer review and, especially, through the criticism frequently raised against it (as being conservative, intransparent, or biased). Peer review works as a boundary organization between science and politics by simultaneously distributing public resources and evaluating scientific work. It mediates between political expectations for democratic processes and scientific expectations for meritocratic decisions.
In peer review the political is negotiated in science (and the scientific is negotiated in politics). As a process of co-construction, peer review and its criticism is as much about how democracy can be known scientifically as it is about how science can be governed politically. By drawing on recent work from Pierre Rosanvallon (2018), we focus on forms of participation and representation that respond simultaneously to political and scientific criticism. We discuss how the production of knowledge in a democratic society is related to principles of democratic legitimacy. The principles of impartiality, proximity, and reflexivity (Rosanvallon 2018) address expected standards of legibility, responsibility, and responsiveness in democracy as well as in science. By conceputalizing scientific peer review as primarily political, we open up the question of how democracy is known through the performance of scientific self-governance.

Authors

• Cornelia Schendzielorz, Deutsches Insitut für Wissenschafts und Hochschulforschung/Humboldt Universität zu Berlin

• Martin Reinhart, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin