Social Science Information

This article is an attempt to show the political consequences of the forms of collective action introduced by social movements and their contribution to the formulation of a new conception of democratic practice. It is our contention that the current crisis faced by democracy is linked to the lack of a space capable of dealing with both social complexity and cultural pluralism. We argue that a public space for face-to-face interaction among citizens differentiated from the state allows us to consider this issue in a different light. Publicity allows the incorporation into democratic politics of demands for cultural integration by preserving a space for their direct presentation. Publicity also avoids a reductionist conception of political claims in which, in order for representation to take place, there is the need to reduce the plurality of the cultural demands through the aggregation of political majorities. In this article we show the tension between the public space and political representation, and argue that the definition of democracy in complex societies should include two further freedoms: the freedom not to belong as the right to withdraw from one's constituted identity in order to form a new one, and the freedom not to be represented. Such acts, which are non-aggregative par excellence, cannot be managed by the system of representation, but only through mechanisms of public presentation and acknowledgement of difference. In our view the tension between the political and the public should become part of the definition of democracy.

Carl Menger's theory of invisible-hand explanations is rooted in his methodology of the social sciences. Contrary to his 18th-century Scottish forerunners he explains both the emergence and the persistence of unplanned social institutions exclusively by the individual pursuit of perceived self-interest. Contrary to Hayek's evolutionary functionalism, Menger's theory is not confined to the explanation of efficient or beneficial institutions. And contrary to Buchanan and Vanberg's constitutional contractualism, it does not require that people form stable preferences over rules.

A theory of sympathy is advanced, based on the insights of theorists such as Hume, Smith, Cooley, Mead, and Heider, and drawing on modern findings in sociology and social psychology. The process of identifying with another person is determined by the perception of distance from the other, may involve non-conscious imitation, and leads to an enlarged self-interest. The core of the theory is a model balancing physical distance, psychological similarity and familiarity, affection, and evaluation. Great emphasis is placed on the incarnation of social actors, the importance of their bodies and sentiments, and the effects of the interaction order. This theoretical structure is applied to the Prisoners' Dilemma in order to derive a large set of predictions that are tested successfully against the wealth of experimental results.

How is quality control organized in the new “Mode-2” production of scientific knowledge? When institutional boundaries are increasingly blurred in a triple helix of university-industry-government relations, criteria for quality control in the production of scientific knowledge can be expected to change at the interfaces. The categorization in terms of two modes of knowledge production was introduced by Gibbons et al. (1994) to describe changes in the networks of scientific communications (funding patterns, research configurations, styles of knowledge management, etc.). These changes were specified mainly as institutional parameters in order to deal with the subjects of R&D management and S&T policies, that is, ex ante (Spiegel-Rösing, 1973; Van den Daele et al., 1979). We focus on the “validation boundaries” emerging from the differences between Mode 1 and Mode 2; that is, on the criteria for quality control that can analytically and reflexively be brought to the fore ex post. The shift from an institutional frame of reference to the dynamics of communications enables us to clarify several problems in the discussion of the future of university research.

Presents come out of the past. They are both continuity for the most part and change for something which does not continue or for something new which appears. They change the unknown future into a signifying past. Since there are many emergents there are many presents. All of them are constructed, either objectively or mentally, before they possibly come to reality. In fact they are constructed by the conjunction of several involved times and they cease to be when at least one of these times comes to an end. Philosophers strongly disagree on some points presented in this article. Instead of speculative discourses, we could arrive at a closer observation of the facts, rejecting the old implicit hypothesis of single time. This better knowledge would benefit the quality of our constructed presents.