Civilizing science: The joint construction of science and citizenship in modern democracy

This dissertation examines several conceptual and institutional modes of relating science, technology, and politics in light of their implications for democracy. It aims to identify a place for science and technology that is intellectually credible, instrumentally effective, and politically legitimate. The dissertation begins with a case study on the California electric vehicle program that illustrates the effects of technocratic policymaking on both technological development and democratic citizenship. The case study serves as a concrete reference point for the more abstract analyses that follow. The next section develops a historical perspective on technocracy, locating its modern origins in the coevolution of natural science and liberal-democratic ideology in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This section shows that the power of technocracy derives not simply from the instrumental use of technical knowledge, as its critics often assume, but from its adoption of the modern scientific notion that truth emerges from rational deliberation among qualified individuals subject to public scrutiny. The dissertation then explores several prominent critiques of technocracy and other forms of instrumentalism, arguing that their embrace of deterministic conceptions of technical development hinders the democratization of science and technology. The next part of the work offers an alternative critique of technocracy that is epistemologically and ontologically moderate but politically progressive. It argues that because science and technology continually reshape the political world, technical artifacts should in some respects represent the public. This is followed by a look at the notion of publicly representative science and technology, showing that political and technical representation are conceptually distinct but practically intertwined social practices. The dissertation closes with an assessment of recent attempts to integrate political and technical representation by creating institutions that facilitate lay participation in the construction of science and technology. These efforts show that, within practically determined limits, lay citizens can help shape the technical artifacts that increasingly shape their lives.