Democratic transitions need to take into account the fact that there are competing modes of rationality in play in political maneuvering and policy deliberations. In a world of social meanings, and the “multiple realities” to which they give rise, political actors and policy experts have to recognize that the facts do not speak for themselves. A point of special relevance to culturally diverse and heterogeneous societies such as Nepal, the talk demonstrates the way competing social realities are an essential part of the policymaking process, as well as how expertise can help to unravel illegitimate distortions in political communications.
Democratic transitions need to take into account the fact that there are competing modes of rationality in play in political maneuvering and policy deliberations. In a world of social meanings, and the “multiple realities” to which they give rise, political actors and policy experts have to recognize that the facts do not speak for themselves. A point of special relevance to culturally diverse and heterogeneous societies such as Nepal, the talk demonstrates the way competing social realities are an essential part of the policymaking process, as well as how expertise can help to unravel illegitimate distortions in political communications.
Employing examples from environmental policy and resource management, the presentation shows how technical policy knowledge relates to the ordinary language reason of the citizen. Whereas citizens are often thought to lack the capacity to understand their implications for rational policymaking, we can see from the perspective of practical reason that they are only using a different mode of reason. By comparing the formal logic of technical/empirical inquiry and the practical logic of socio-cultural reason, the discussion reverses this contention and interrogates the rationality of the policy scientist in judgments pertaining to public decisions. In the process, the explication shows the ways that ordinary citizens rationally apply their everyday socio-cultural logics to practical situations, a perspective typically ignored or neglected by scientific policy analysis. Geared to local knowledge and cultural norms, the citizen’s socio-cultural reason is seen to be more attuned to normative realities inherent to policymaking than is the scientific understanding of the process. Demonstrating that policy analysts need to take this situational logic into account, the lecture offers an approach for bringing together these different modes of reasons, both in policy deliberation and the institutions that influence, make and implement public policy.
Frank Fischer is a distinguished professor of politics and global affairs at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey in the United States. He teaches U.S. politics, foreign policy, and environmental politics and policy and public policy and planning. He is also a senior faculty fellow at the University of Kassel in Germany, where he teaches global public policy, U.S. foreign policy, and comparative and global environmental politics. He has authored numerous books and articles, some of which are Democracy and Expertise: Reorienting Policy Inquiry, Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices, Citizens, Experts, and the Environment: The Politics of Local Knowledge, Evaluating Public Policy, Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise, Politics, Values, and Public Policy: The Problem of Methodology.
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The Lecture was delivered in Kathmandu on 26 September 2011 in coordination with Forest Action Nepal.
