Varieties of Democracy in Science Policy

Abstract

In Science, Truth and Democracy, Philip Kitcher distinguishes four forms of science policy: internal elitism, external elitism, vulgar democracy and enlightened democracy. In this chapter, I argue that Kitcher’s arguments against elitism fail to show that elitism must be eliminated completely (i.e., they do not entail that all decisions about science policy should be taken democratically) and that his argument against vulgar democracy is unsound. I show that Kitcher has two characterisations of vulgar democracy, and that his argument against vulgar democracy is invalid under both characterisations. Then I argue that Kitcher’s argument against vulgar democracy is in fact an argument against direct democracy and in favour of representative democracy. But that leaves open many options, especially with respect to the main topic (viz., the degree to which scientists should be involved in the democratic decision processes concerning science policy) for which Kitcher introduced the distinction between vulgar and enlightened democracy. Finally, the last section of this chapter is a constructive rather than critical one: based on my analysis of Kitcher’s work, I formulate some proposals for implementing a democratic science policy.