Bridging the Divide

Overall, I have to say I liked the general premise of Brown’s book as I understood it: to ‘bring science into representative democracy’ and, although he admits it’s only partially achieved by his framework, reconcile the historically elitist practice of science with the non-elitism of democracy. He finds that the pseudo-elitism of representative government can serve as a go-between with these two worlds, and I believe that he fairly effectively argues his point.

Brown hopes to achieve with his framework a sort of scientific balance of interests somewhat akin to the balance of political interests achieved through representative government. To fulfill this, he seeks to make those interests transparent and adopt a deliberative atmosphere where a consensus or at least a broader understanding between the diverse represented interests can be achieved. On paper. this looks to be a great idea; in practice, I’m not sure that this can be reliably duplicated among the many government science advisory panels. As Brown indicates, power dynamics are still present when these panels meet to trade ideas and form policy recommendations. In any human endeavor that exhibits power dynamics, there is the danger of one interest gaining disproportionate power over the others and subverting the rules that all the participants are obliged to operate by. I’m not sure that Brown adequately proved (at least to me) that his framework can keep these power dynamics in check and prevent an interest that is determined to undermine the process from doing so.

In particular, Brown’s argument for a deliberative atmosphere may be hard to put into practice. When these panels are more directly politicized, their power dynamics begin to more directly take on the character of the general political atmosphere; when there is an agreeable zeitgeist, the proceedings are likely to be smooth and closer to what Brown imagines. However, when the tone of the political debate is more contentious, this general feeling can leak into the proceedings of the panel and disrupt the deliberative atmosphere. Brown’s inclusion of the representative concept may dampen this a little, but, as we see with our current representatives, it may be just as likely to lead to gridlock as anything else.

With that said, this is a very difficult problem, and I think Brown makes a good attempt at conceptually bridging the divide. Testing his ideas by designing science advisory panels according to his framework would allow us to see what they look like in practice, and would allow us to make the corrections that would get us closer to achieving the vision of a science complex that incorporates more democratic, and deliberative, elements.