Democratic Capital

The dynamic interaction between political and economic change concerns economic effects of democracy. Democracies influence economic performances, largely via investment decisions, and hence through expectations for further stability. The prospect of future democracy then becomes a crucial determinant of current economic performance. This means that, to correctly assess the economic consequences of democracy, we must look beyond the current regime, to expectations about its stability. When expectations of regime stability are taken into account, democracies — on average — grow faster than autocracies. The idea suggests rich dynamic interactions between economic and political change, including a positive feedback loop between democracy and economic development. As democracy consolidates and becomes more stable, income grows more rapidly. This feeds into more democratic stability, and yet more economic growth. At the same time, accumulation of democratic capital brings about yet more stability and further growth. Countries ruled by autocrats, instead, are more likely to stagnate because they do not have any chance of initiating this virtuous circle of consolidation and growth. If they happen to become democracies, they remain vulnerable and unstable until they have accumulated enough democratic capital. As instability hurts economic development, it feeds into itself.





Techno science, democracy and public life

Scientific knowledges and technological objects have become increasingly controversial in public life. Science, technology and politics appear to be ever more tightly intertwined in the everyday experience and social governance of processes as varied as bio-technologies, digital communications and intelligent environments. Yet, while 'citizenship', 'democracy', 'representation' and 'politics' are constantly invoked in this literature it is not always clear to what these terms refer, which traditions in political theory inform them, or where these traditions might need revision.

Among the issues that are foregrounded are questions concerning the possibilities for responsible collective political engagements among humans and nonhumans, including concerns raised by queer theorists regarding the limits of a politics of inclusion.

The idea of matter as inert makes a political difference: Inert matter, the other to life, will not be able to provoke attentive respect for nonhuman nature and it will impede the emergence of a more ecological way for humans to think, eat, and endure.

Politics should take experimental science as its model in the practice of representation. Once we understand that scientists, like politicians, are spokespersons, then we can see that they actually do a better job of communicating with their constituents.

Representative government both fosters and depends on a critical public sphere that should be understood as part of, rather than existing prior to, political representation. Because constituent interests and opinions are usually inchoate or in conflict, representation is not usefully understood as the "faithful translation" or "making present" of constituents.

Political representatives, not unlike scientists, engage in various practices of mediation. They elicit, educate, anticipate, and aggregate constituent perspectives and opinions in the process of representing them. Such practices of mediation, moreover, are themselves mediated by technological devices, material structures, scientific claims, and social institutions. Democratic societies are institutionally differentiated, and different kinds of institutions (e.g., legislatures, courts, bureaucracies, NGOs, laboratories, universities, etc.) represent humans and nonhumans in different ways.

Source:
http://www.ouce.ox.ac.uk/news/politics/info.php#jbennett