GOVERNING THE GLOBAL RISKS

Casa de la paz y los derechos humanosDonostia-San Sebastián, 6 - 7 / Octubre / October / Octobre 2010

1

Introduction

ULRICH BECK, University of Munich (Germany)

Living in and coping with world risk society

The narrative of global risk is a narrative of irony. This narrative deals with the involuntary satire, the optimistic futility, with which the highly developed institutions of modern society - science, state, business and military - attempt to anticipate what cannot be anticipated. Socrates has left us to make sense of the puzzling sentence: I know that I know nothing. The fatal irony, into which scientific-technical society plunges us, is, as a consequence of its perfection, much more radical: We don’t know, what it is we don’t know - but from these dangers arise, which threaten mankind! The perfect example here is provided by the debate about the cooling agent CFC. In 1974, about 45 years after the discovery of the CFC, the chemists Rowland and Molina put forward the hypothesis, that CFCs destroy the ozone layer of the stratosphere and as a result increased ultraviolet radiation would reach the earth. The chain of unforeseen secondary effects would lead to a significant increase of cancer all over the world. When coolants were invented no one could know or even suspect, that they would create such a danger.

The irony of risk is that rationality, that is, the experience of the past, encourages anticipation of the wrong kind of risk, the one we believe we can calculate and control, whereas the disaster arises from what we don’t know and cannot calculate. The bitter varieties of this risk irony are virtually endless: mad cow decease, 9/11 terror attacks, global financial crises, swine flue virus and latest but not last, volcano ash clouds disrupting air traffic in Europe and elsewhere.

To the extent that risk is experienced as omnipresent, there are only three possible reactions: Denial, apathy, or transformation. The first is largely inscribed in modern culture, the second resembles post-modern nihilism, and the third is the ‘cosmopolitan moment’ of world risk society1

• Old dangers - new risks: What is new about world risk society?

. First, I would like to demonstrate that here in three steps (drawing on empirical research findings of the Munich Research Centre “Reflexive Modernisation”):

• Ruse of history: To what extent are global risks a global force in present and future world history, controllable by no one, but which also open up new opportunities of action for states, civil society actors etc.?

1 See U. Beck: Risk Society (1986, 1992), World at Risk (2007; 2009), Polity Press.

2

• Consequences and perspectives: In order to understand the manufactured uncertainty, lack of safety and insecurity of world risk society is there a need for a paradigm shift in the social sciences?2

1. Old dangers - new risks: What is new about world risk society?

Modern society has become a risk society in the sense that it is increasingly occupied with debating, preventing and managing risks that it itself has produced. That may well be, many will object, but it is indicative rather of a hysteria and politics of fear instigated and aggravated by the mass media. On the contrary, would not someone, looking at European societies from outside have to acknowledge that the risks which get us worked up, are luxury risks, more than anything else? After all, our world appears a lot safer than that, say, of the war-torn regions of Africa, Afghanistan or the Middle East. Are modern societies not distinguished precisely by the fact that to a large extent they have succeeded in bringing under control contingencies and uncertainties, for example with respect to accidents, violence and sickness?

As true as all such observations may be, they miss the most obvious point about risk: that is, the key distinction between risk and catastrophe. Risk does not mean catastrophe. Risk means the anticipation of catastrophe. Risks exist in a permanent state of virtuality, and only become ‘topical’ to the extent that they are anticipated. Without techniques of visualisation, without symbolic forms, without mass media etc. risks are nothing at all. In other words, it is irrelevant, whether we live in a world which is in fact or in some sense ‘objectively’ safer than all other worlds; if destruction and disasters are anticipated, then that produces a compulsion to act.

The theory of world risk society maintains that modern societies are shaped by new kinds of risks, that their foundations are shaken by the global anticipation of global catastrophes. Such perceptions of global risk are characterised by three features:

1 De-localisation: Its causes and consequences are not limited to one geographical location or space, they are in principle omnipresent.

2 Incalculableness: Its consequences are in principle incalculable; at bottom it’s a matter of “hypothetical” risks, which, not least, are based on science-induced not-knowing and normative dissent.

3 Non-compensatibility: The security dream of first modernity was based on the scientific utopia of making the unsafe consequences and dangers of decisions ever more controllable; accidents could occur, as long and because they were considered compensatible. If the climate has changed irreversibly, if progress in human genetics makes irreversible interventions in human existence possible, if terrorist groups already have weapons of mass destruction available to them, then it’s too late. Given this new quality of “threats to humanity” - argues Francois Ewald - the logic of compensation breaks down and is replaced by the principle of precaution through prevention. Not

2 See U. Beck: Risk Society (1986, 1992), World at Risk (2007; 2009), Polity Press.

3

only is prevention taking precedence over compensation, we are also trying to anticipate and prevent risks whose existence has not been proven. Let me explain these points - de-localisation, incalculableness, non-compensatibility - in greater detail.

The de-localisation of incalculable interdependency risks takes place at three levels:

• 1 spatial: The new risks (e.g. climate change) do not respect nation state or any other borders;

• 2 temporal: The new risks have a long latency period (e.g. nuclear waste), so that their effect over time cannot be reliably determined and limited.

• 3 Social: Thanks to the complexity of the problems and the length of chains of effect, assignment of causes and consequences is no longer possible with any degree of reliability (e.g. financial crises).

The discovery of the incalculability of risk is closely connected to the discovery of the importance of not-knowing to risk calculation, and it’s part of another kind of irony, that surprisingly this discovery of not-knowing occurred in a scholarly discipline, which today no longer wants to have anything to do with it: economics. It was Knight and Keynes, who early on insisted on a distinction between predictable and non-predictable or calculable and non-calculable forms of contingency. In a famous article in The Quarterly Journal of Economics (February 1937: 213-14) Keynes writes: “...by ‘uncertain knowledge’, let me explain, I do not mean merely to distinguish what is known from what is merely probable. The sense in which I am using the term is that in which the price of copper and the rate of interest twenty years hence, all the obsolescence of a new invention are uncertain. About these matters there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know...” However, Keynes’ admonition to open up the field of economic decision-making to the unknown unknowns was entirely neglected in the subsequent development of mainstream economics (including mainstream Keynesian economics); and this denial of non-knowing has become a causal condition for the emergence of the global financial crisis in 2009.

The crucial point, however, is not only the discovery of the importance of non-knowing, but that simultaneously the knowledge, control and security claim of state and society was, indeed had to be, renewed, deepened, and expanded. The irony lies in the institutionalised security claim, to have to control something, even if one does not know, whether it exists! It are precisely unknown unknowns which provoke far-reaching conflicts over the definition and construction of political rules and responsibilities with the aim of preventing the worst. For the time being the last and most striking example of that are the volcano ash clouds in spring 2010: flights are back – ash is too!

If catastrophes are anticipated whose potential for destruction ultimately threatens everyone, then a risk calculation based on experience and rationality breaks down. Now all possible, more or less improbable scenarios have to be taken into consideration; to knowledge, therefore, drawn from experience and science there now also has to be added imagination, suspicion, fiction, fear2. The boundary between rationality and hysteria becomes blurred. Given the right invested in them to avert dangers politicians, in particular, may easily be forced to proclaim a security, which they cannot

4

honour. Because the political costs of omission are much higher than the political costs of overreaction. In future, therefore, it is not going to be easy, in the context of state promises of security and a mass media hungry for catastrophes, to actively limit and prevent a diabolical power game with the hysteria of not-knowing. I don’t even dare think about deliberate attempts to instrumentalise this situation.

2. The ruse of risk: Global risk is an unpredictable and impersonal force in the contemporary world

There is no better way than to start with an example: in 2004 Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans. This was a horrifying act of nature, but one which simultaneously, as a global media event, involuntarily and unexpectedly developed an enlightenment function which broke all resistance. What no social movement, no political party, and certainly no sociological analysis (no matter how well grounded and brilliantly written) would have been able to achieve, happened within a few days: America and the world were confronted by global media pictures of the repressed other America, the largely racialised face of poverty. How can this relationship between risk and the creation of a global public be understood? In his 1927 book The Public and its Problems, John Dewey explained that not actions but consequences lie at the heart of politics. Although Dewey was certainly not thinking of global warming, BSE or terrorist attacks, his idea is perfectly applicable to world risk society. A global public discourse does not grow out of a consensus on decisions, but out of dissent over the consequences of decisions. Modern risk crises are constituted by just such controversies over consequences. Where some may see an overreaction to risk, it is also possible to see grounds for hope. Because such risk conflicts do indeed have an enlightenment function. They destabilise the existing order, but the same events can also look like a vital step towards the building of new institutions. Global risk has the power to tear away the facades of organised irresponsibility.

Egoism, autonomy, autopoesis, self-isolation, improbability of translation - these are key terms which, in sociological theory, but also in public and political debates, distinguish modern society. The communicative logic of global risk can be understood as the exact opposite principle. Risk is the involuntary, unintended compulsory medium of communication in a world of irreconcilable differences, in which everyone revolves around themselves. Hence a publicly perceived risk compels communication between those, who do not want to have anything to do with one another. It assigns obligations and costs to those who refuse them - and who often even have current law on their side. In other words: Risks cut through the self-absorption of cultures, languages, religions and systems as well as the national and international agenda of politics, they overturn their priorities and create contexts for action between camps, parties and quarrelling nations, which ignore and oppose one another.

I propose that a clear distinction be made between the philosophical and normative ideas of cosmopolitanism on the one hand and the “impure” actual cosmopolitanisation in the sociological sense on the other. The crucial point about this distinction is that cosmopolitanism cannot, for example, only become real deductively in a translation of the sublime principles of philosophy, but also and above all through the back doors of global risks, unseen, unintended, enforced. Down through history cosmopolitanism bore the taint of being elitist, idealistic, imperialist, capitalist; today, however, we see, that reality itself has become cosmopolitan. Cosmopolitanism does not mean - as it did for

5

Immanuel Kant - an asset, a task, that is to order the world. Cosmopolitanism in world risk society opens our eyes to the uncontrollable liabilities, to something that happens to us, befalls us, but at the same time stimulates us to make border-transcending new beginnings. The insight, that in the dynamic of world risk society we are dealing with a cosmopolitanisation under duress, robs “impure” cosmopolitanism of much of its ethical attractiveness. If the cosmopolitan moment of world risk society is both at once: deformed and inevitable, then seemingly it is not an appropriate object for sociological and political reflections. But precisely that would be a serious mistake.

As important as all these arguments are, the decisive question is a different one: To what extent does the threat and shock of world risk society open up the horizon to historic alternatives of political action? For an answer see my book Power in the Global Age (2005). Here I can only outline the basic idea.

Two premises: (1) World risk society brings a new, historic key logic to the fore: No nation can cope with its problems alone. (2) A realistic political alternative in the global age is possible, which counteracts the loss to globalised capital of the commanding power of state politics. The condition is, that globalisation must be decoded not as economic fate, but as a strategic game for world power. A new global domestic politics that is already at work here and now, beyond the national-international distinction, has become a meta-power game, whose outcome is completely open-ended. It is a game in which boundaries, basic rules and basic distinctions are renegotiated - not only those between the national and the international spheres, but also those between global business and the state, transnational civil society movements, supra-national organisations and national governments and societies.

The strategies of action, which global risks open up, overthrow the order of power, which has formed in the neo-liberal capital-state coalition: global risks empower states and civil society movements, because they reveal new sources of legitimation and options for action for these groups of actors; they disempower globalised capital on the other hand, because the consequences of investment decisions and externalizing risks in financial markets contribute to creating global risks, destabilising markets, globally operating banks, and activating the power of the state as well as of that sleeping giant the consumer. Conversely, the goal of global civil society and its actors is to achieve a connection between civil society and the state, that is, to bring about a cosmopolitan form of statehood. The forms of alliances entered into by the neo-liberal state instrumentalise the state (and state-theory) in order to optimise and legitimise the interests of capital worldwide. Conversely the idea of a cosmopolitan state in civil society form aims at imagining and realising a robust diversity and a post-national order. The neo-liberal agenda surrounds itself with an aura of self-regulation and self-legitimation. Civil society’s agenda, on the other hand, surrounds itself with the aura of human rights, global justice and struggles for a new grand narrative of radical-democratic globalisation.

Why is this not wishful thinking, why is it an expression of a cosmopolitan realpolitik? The cosmopolitan perspective suggests that there is a hidden link between global risk and Immanuel Kant. It is precisely the stark realism of the cosmopolitan imperative: either Kant or catastrophe! either cooperate or fail! which is also cause for hope.

6

3. Consequences and perspectives

It is evident, that the taken-for-granted nation-state frame of reference - what I call ‘methodological nationalism’ - prevents the social and political science from understanding and analysing the dynamics and conflicts, ambivalences and ironies of world risk society. This is also true - at least in part - of the two major theoretical approaches and empirical schools of research, which deal with risk, on the one hand in the tradition of Mary Douglas, on the other in that of Michel Foucault. These traditions of thought and research have undoubtedly raised key questions and produced extremely interesting detailed results as far as understanding definitions of risk and risk policies is concerned, work which no one can dispense with and which will always remain an essential component of social science risk research. Their achievement and their evidence is to open up risk as a battle for the redefinition of state and scientific power.

An initial defect lies in regarding risk more or less or even exclusively as an ally, but failing to perceive it as an unreliable ally and not at all as a potential antagonist, as a force hostile both to nation state power as well as to global capital. Surprisingly the research traditions of Douglas and Foucault define their problem in such a way, that the battle over risk always comes down to the reproduction of the social and state order of power. Because the nation state, which attempts to deal with global risks in isolation, resembles a drunk man, who on a dark night is trying to find his lost wallet in the cone of light of a street lamp. To the question: Did you actually lose your wallet here, he replies, no, but in the light of the street lamp I can at least look for it.

In other words, global risks are producing ‘failed or bankrupt states’ - even in the West (last example Greece, but maybe in the near future also Italy or Great Britain or even USA). The state-structure evolving under the conditions of world risk society could be characterised in terms of both inefficiency and post-democratic authority. A clear distinction, therefore, has to be made between rule and inefficiency. It is quite possible, that the end-result could be the gloomy perspective, that we have totally ineffective and authoritarian state-regimes (even in the context of the Western democracies). The irony here is this: manufactured uncertainty (knowledge), insecurity (welfare state) and lack of safety (violence) undermine and reaffirm state power beyond democratic legitimacy. Given the maddening conditions of world risk society, the older critical theory of Foucault is in danger of becoming simultaneously affirmative and antiquated, along with large areas of sociology, which have concentrated on class dynamics in the welfare state. It underestimates and castrates the communicative cosmopolitan logic and irony of global risks; consequently the historic question, where politics has lost its wallet, that is, the question of an alternative modernity, is analytically excluded by the vain searching in the cone of light of the nation state street light.

Cosmopolitan social sciences, which face up to the challenges of global risks, must also, however, shed its political quietism: Society and its institutions are incapable of adequately conceptualising risks, because they are caught up in the concepts of first nation state modernity, believing in scientific certainty and linear progress, which by now have become inappropriate. And it has to face the question: How can non-Western risk societies be understood by a sociology, which so far has taken it for granted, that its object - Western modernity - is at once both historically unique and universally

7

valid? 3

3 See British Journal of Sociology (BJS), special issue on ‚Varieties of Second Modernity: Extra-European and European Perspectives, September 2010 (in print).

How is it possible to decipher the internal link between risk and race, risk and enemy image, risk and exclusion?

8

6th of October 2010

SESSION 1: 9.00-11.15

Daniel Innerarity, Institute of Democratic Governance- Governing the Global Risks

Biography:

Daniel Innerarity is professor of political and social philosophy, "Ikerbasque" researcher in the University of the Basque Country / Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea and director of the Institute for Democratic Governance. A former fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, his latest books are: Ética de la hospitalidad (Ethics of Hospitality); La transformación de la política (The transformation of politics) (III Miguel de Unamuno Essay Prize and National Prize for Literature in the Essay module, 2003); La sociedad invisible (The invisible society) (XXI Espasa Essay Prize); El nuevo espacio público (The new public realm) and El futuro y sus enemigos (The future and its enemies). He has also received the Prize for Humanities, Culture, Art and Social Sciences from the Basque Studies Society/Eusko Ikaskuntza in 2008. He is a regular contributor to the opinion sections of the newspapers El País and El Correo /Diario Vasco, as well as the magazine Claves de Razón Práctica. He is also member of the Academy of Sciences and Arts with seat in Salzburg.

Abstract:

The subject of global risk has erupted onto political agendas. Climate change, new threats to security, health and food risks, the financial crisis, all of these present, from the offset, a challenge to our conceptualisation of those uncertain futures. How can we know the possible risks? How can we act in relation to those risks, when they are not verifiable facts but latent possibilities of controversial identification? How can we take the improbable into account? Every uncertain future places dilemmas of particular difficulty before us: what precaution is reasonable, to what extent can we anticipate catastrophic causal chains, what type of planned action corresponds to the global treatment of our problems, how do we manage our inevitable ignorance of future events...Given that we are talking about complex societies, where everything is closely interrelated, the big question is how can we protect ourselves against our own irrationality? The catastrophic chain of events we must protect ourselves against is a result of our own irresponsibility, through fearing too much, or not enough. In the economic crisis, for example, those who managed financial innovation were less fearful than they should have been; now, the mistrust of economic agents is explained because they perhaps fear too much. Talking in general terms, we should surely encourage an ex ante regulation that allows us to prevent that which it is not possible to repair, anticipate rather than react, hinder rather than correct.

9

And, given that fears cannot be completely abated, we need new strategies to manage them. To that end we have the institutions and that is one of the functions of good governance: generating confidence and foresight, preventing fear from becoming panic or audacity from favouring irresponsibility. Contemporary societies face up to the crucial question of how to once again define the relationship between risk and safety. The search for procedures to manage risk in an effective and socially acceptable manner has become a task of special interest both for political reflection as for the praxis of governance. What function can politics have in this context? Specifically, what political innovation does a society that depends enormously on technological innovation but that also knows the unwanted consequences, in ecological, economic and social terms, or in accordance with the values of freedom and justice, require?

Edgar Grande, University of Munich (Germany)- Global Risks and Preventive Governance

Biography:

Edgar Grande is Professor for Political Science at the University of Munich. His research interests are focused on problems of globalization, European integration and the future of the nation-state. From 1996-2004 he was Professor for Political Science an the Technical University of Munich and in 2001/02 he held the DAAD Chair in German and European Politics at the University of Toronto. From 2006 until 2008, he was director of the research centre (‘Sonderforschungsbereich’) on Reflexive Modernization at the University of Munich; and from 2007 until 2009 he was director of the Munich Center on Governance, Communication, Public Policy and Law. His recent publications include Varieties of Second Modernity: extra-European and European experiences and perspectives; Special Issue of British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 61, No. 3 (co-edited with Ulrich Beck); West European Politics in the Age of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 (co-authored with h. Kriesi, R. Lachat, M. Dolezal, S. Bornschier and T. Frey); Cosmopolitan Europe. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007 (co-authored with Ulrich Beck); and Complex Sovereignty. Reconstituting Political Authority in the 21st Century, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005 (co-edited with Louis W. Pauly).

Abstract:

This paper is based on the assumption that world politics is increasingly confronted with a new form of self-generated risks. Examples are modern risk technologies such as nuclear power and genetic engineering, new kinds of environmental and health problems (“global warming”, global pandemics), new forms of transnational terrorism but also new systemic risks of global economics and finance. At first sight, these phenomena have hardly anything in common – apart from the fact that they increasingly occupied the agendas of national governments, international organizations, global summits and public debates in the last three decades. At closer inspection, however, we can identify essential common features and it is these common features, which allow including them into the category of “new global risks”.

10

The fact that modern societies are increasingly shaped by the existence of a new type of risk which is clearly distinct from the dangers, threats and risks of industrial society was recognized by sociologists already in the 1980s. In the studies by Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, Scott Lash and others, new civilisation risks, individualisation, and globalization, each in their own way, undermine the foundations of industrial society (Beck 1992, 1994, 1997; Giddens 1990, 1994; Beck/ Giddens/ Lash 1994; Adam/ Beck/ van Loon 2000; van Loon 2002). Ulrich Beck’s theory of “risk society” is most pronounced in this regard. “Risk society” means “that in the course of the exponentially growing productive forces in the modernisation process, hazards and potential threats have been unleashed to an extent previously unknown” (Beck 1992: 19). Scientific-technical “progress” threatens the very existence of modern societies, and, more generally, the process of social modernisation turns against its own foundations. In recent years, it was in particular Beck, who developed the theory of “late” or “second” modernity into a comprehensive sociological theory of “world risk society” (Beck 1999, 2005, 2009). He argues that the border-transcending character of economic transactions and civilisation risks (as in the exemplary case of climate change) devalues the instruments of nation-states and the basic institutions of industrial society – “risk society”’ necessarily mutates into “world risk society”’ (Beck 2009). In this latest version, sociological theories of risk society can and should be connected to IR research. What is more, as I will show in this paper, they have become an indispensable source of inspiration for post-Cold War studies of world politics. Climate change, international terrorism and international financial crisis, to mention only some of the most obvious examples, are confronting international relations with a new quality of global problems (see Daase 2002; Beck 2005; Kessler 2008; Pauly 2009). And the political responses considered necessary to cope with these problems are not only too much for ordinary nation-states, they also overstrain the capacities of great powers and established international organizations. Hence, the transition from “Cold War” to “world risk society” fundamentally challenges the basic institutions, principles, procedures and agendas of global politics. As I will argue in this paper, global risks require new forms of preventive governance which transcend the functional limitations and territorial boundaries of the nation state. These new forms of preventive governance must neither be equated nor confused with existing forms of the “prevention state” nor with concepts of “global governance”. This argument will be developed in four steps. First, I will introduce several conceptual distinctions which allow identifying global risks and distinguishing them from other forms of risks, catastrophes and uncertainties. Second, I will analyze the political implications of risk society more generally. I will show that the concept of “risk society” corresponds with a new type of preventive governance which is clearly distinct from well-known concepts of risk regulation and prevention. Third, I will apply the concept of preventive governance to global politics and discuss similarities and differences to existing concepts of global and transnational governance. Finally, I will identify some topics for future research on global risk governance.

11

Zaki Laïdi, Sciences Po (France)- Decoding Development in the XXI Century.

Biography:

Zaki Laïdi is Researcher Director and lecturer at the Institute of Political Sciences (Sciences Po, France). He is member of Universities Responsibility and Freedom Law Control Committee. Between 2007 and 2008 he was member of the White Book commission about foreign and European politics at France. Additionally, between 2000 and 2004 he was special advisor of Pascal Lamy, the commerce commissioner in France (2000-2004). Over his professional career he has worked as invited professor at many Universities such as: Johns Hopkins-Bolonia (1992-1995), Montreal (2001&2004), Geneva (2003&2004), la University of Brugges (2004-2008) and the University of Luiss (Rome) (2010-2011). Over his main research projects it can be highlighted: The thinking of 1989, a thought of the vicinity; Europe and the International System, Energetic Competence EU/Russia.

Abstract:

Is it possible to define the identity and strategy of an actor in the international system by referring to its aversion to risk? Can one speak of a Risk Averse Power? These are the questions we will set out to answer here in suggesting that the European Union is a political actor whose identity and strategy on the international field are based on a strong aversion toward risk. In order to make this hypothesis, we will (I) define the meaning of Risk Averse Power, (II) propose criteria for measuring the risk aversion, (III) attempt to explain why Europe is risk averse and (IV) determine the implications of risk aversion Europe as a global actor.

12

SESSION 2: 11.30-13.45 MODERATOR: José Luis Curbelo, Orkestra-Basque Institute of Competitiveness.

Michael Zürn, Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB) (Germany)- Politisation of World

Politics and its Consequences.

Biography:

Michael Zürn (born in 1959) is Director of the research unit Transnational Conflicts and International Institutions (TKI) at the Social Science Research Center Berlin (WZB), Professor of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin, and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities.

Zürn was a founding member and Dean of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin from 2004 to 2009. Prior to this engagement he was Professor of International Relations for ten years at the University of Bremen where he led the Institute for Intercultural and International Studies (INIIS) and the Collaborative Research Center “Transformations of the State”.

Michael Zürn serves on a number of scientific and editorial boards among which are the Senate of the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Board of Directors of the Development and Peace Foundation, the Presidium of the German Protestant Church Congress, and the Scientific Board of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP).

Michael Zürn’s research focuses on international institutions and organizations, and their repercussions for the foundations of political order. He is concerned especially with questions of the emergence of international regimes, as well as with issues related to the effectiveness of those regimes and compliance with the regulatory systems which they establish. Early on he took up the theme and conceptualized the notion of the legitimacy of international institutions by placing this analysis in the broader context of the establishment of international orders and the impacts of international institutions on the nation state. He has engaged in various cooperative projects (in part with legal scholars) to deal with matters related to the legalization and constitutionality of international institutions.

Among his most important book publications are Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates [governance beyond the nation state] (1998/2004) and Krieg und Frieden in der postnationalen Konstellation [war and peace in the postnational constellation] (2003, with Bernhard Zangl), Suhrkamp Verlag; Governance in einer sich wandelnden Welt [governance in a changing world], Politische Vierteljahresschrift Sonderheft 41, Wiesbaden, VS Verlag (2008, co-edited with Gunnar Folke Schuppert); Analyzing International Environmental Regimes: From Case Study to Database, Cambridge, MA and London, UK, MIT Press (2006, with Helmut Breitmeier, Oran R. Young); Transformations of the

13

State? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2005, with Stephan Leibfried); and Law and Governance in Postnational Europe, Cambridge University Press (2004, with Christian Joerges).

Abstract:

The thesis underlying this paper is that, that the governance of global risks creates problems of legitimation. As a result, international affairs have been unprecedentedly politicized over the past two decades or so, especially by societal actors. This has a number of far-reaching implications.

First, the traditional separation between politics within nation states following principles of democratic contest and international politics being an executive matter largely withdrawn from democratic processes does not longer hold.

Moreover, this thesis implies a contradiction of the widely lamented hollowing-out of democracy and the depoliticization of our societies. The alleged degeneration of national democracies owing to globalizing capitalism, evidenced by, for instance, growing disaffection with politics, is only one side of the coin; the growing willingness to engage in transnational organizations in pursuit of specific goals is the other. As the exercise of power escapes the frame of the territorial state, the potential for politicization appears to follow.

This newly emerging cleavage cannot be seen as merely a consequence of passing traditionalist reaction to modernization. The new cleavages are concretely and lastingly grounded in interest politics and encompassing political ideologies. This is all the more serious precisely because the new political discourses do not take place in the established institutions of representative democracy and thus intensify existing selectivity and inequalities.

Javier Solana, ESADE-Power Transferences in the Global World.

Biography:

Dr. Javier Solana is currently the President of the Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics at ESADE (Barcelona - Madrid), Honorary President of the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (Geneva), Distinguished Senior Fellow in Foreign Policy at Brookings Institution (Washington), Vice President of the Global Health Institute of Barcelona, Senior Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, Board member of the International Crisis Group, and President of the Madariaga-College of Europe Foundation (Brussels). From 1999 to 2009, Dr. Solana was Secretary General of the Council of the European Union (EU). From 1995 to 1999, Dr. Javier Solana was Secretary General of NATO. Dr. Javier Solana is the former High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the European Union. Prior to this, he has held several ministerial positions in the Spanish government, including Minister for Foreign Affairs. Dr. Solana is Professor of Physics at the Complutense University in Madrid.

14

Abstract: Today's world aids enormous power transformations. When the economic crisis sees its end, the scenario we contemplate will be significantly different from today's. There will be new relationships between the market and the State and there will primarily be two transfers of power. The first transfer corresponds to the movement of the centre of gravity from the classic western world towards the Pacific. The second transfer of power will be produced within the states, from the classic State towards international institutions and organisations. We have entered a phase with different focuses of power. The new challenges of the 21st century (economic crisis, climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation) increase our interdependence. At the same time, its transnational character erodes the State's capactity to provide solutions to the problems on a global scale. In this geopolitical scenario, it is essential to adapt our mentality to this new and complex reality. The driving force should be in favour of the transfer of power to supranational authorities, in favour of exercises in rationality and responsiblity. Political capacity and willingness is needed to generate the tools that will allow an effective multilateralism and the construction of solid institutions, something which is absolutely fundamental to achieve a world at peace.

Gurutz Jauregui, Basque Country University- The coming of a new juridical-institutional

order: the state and constitution in the era of globalization.

Biography:

Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Gurutz Jauregui has been Vice-Rector of the UPV/EHU, Dean of his Faculty of Law and Director of the Administrative and Constitutional Law Department.

He has also been a visiting professor at various foreign universities throughout Europe: Oxford, Consiglio Nazionale delle Recerche of Rome, USA (Reno, Puerto Rico) and Latino America (the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Brazil and Mexico). He has also been a scientific consultant to the UN (UNRISD).

The author of thirteen books:

- Ideología y estrategia política de ETA. Análisis de su evolución entre 1959 y 1968. Siglo XXI. Madrid, 1981. (2nd. edition 1986) - Contra el Estado-nación. En torno al hecho y la cuestión nacional. Siglo XXI. 1986. (2nd. edition 1988) - Las Comunidades Autónomas y las relaciones internacionales. Instituto Vasco de Administración Pública-IVAP. 1986. - La Comunidad Autónoma del País Vasco y las relaciones internacionales. IVAP. 1989. - Nación y estado nacional en el umbral del nuevo siglo. Madrid: Centro de Estudios Constitucionales. Madrid. 1991. - La democracia en la encrucijada. Anagrama. Barcelona. 1994. (2nd. edition 1995)

15

- Decline of the nation-state. Nevada University Press. London-Reno-Las Vegas. 1994. - Entre la tragedia y la esperanza. Vasconia ante el nuevo milenio. Ariel. Barcelona. 1996, (2nd. edition 1997). - Los nacionalismos minoritarios y la Unión Europea. ¿Utopía o ucronía? Ariel.1997 - La institucionalización jurídica y política de Vasconia (co-author). Sociedad de Estudios Vascos. 1997 - La Historia de ETA (co-author). Temas de Hoy. Madrid. 2000 - La democracia planetaria. Ediciones Nóbel. Oviedo. 2000 - La democracia en el siglo XXI: un nuevo mundo, unos nuevos valores. IVAP. 2004 Moreover, he has directed or participated in the joint-publication of more than fifty books, and published more than thirty scientific articles both in Spanish and the Basque language Euskera, as well as in Catalan, English, French, Italian and German.

He has been awarded, among others, the following accolades:

The 2003 Eusko Ikaskuntza / Caja Laboral Popular Social Sciences and Humanities Prize for the best career in Social Sciences and Humanities in the Basque Country.

The Euskadi Prize for Social and Human Science Research 2004, awarded by the Basque government to the best career in Social Sciences and Humanities of the Basque Country.

The 1995 "Anne Frank" Prize for the defense of human rights and the culture of peace.

The 1998 "El Correo" Prize for Journalism. He has also been a finalist for the 1994 Anagrama Essay Prize, of the National Essay Prize of the Ministry of Culture in 1995 and 1997, and of the 2000 International Jovellanos essay Prize.

Abstract:

Until now, all political and legal systems have concentrated on the immediate present and have structured themselves within a territorial space determined by the frontiers of the nation-state. This double limitation – temporal and spatial – has begun to break up alarmingly in the face of globalization, a phenomenon that is bringing about a radical transformation of space and time. The time and space of the world markets and of technology have come into conflict with the political time and space of democracies and of law. Today, it is morally unacceptable to determine, through present actions, the future of the forthcoming generations. Moreover, it is no longer even possible to resolve current problems – problems that affect the global space of the earth and of humanity – by means of political or legal actions of a state-territorial dimension. From this problem is born the necessity to establish a new social contract that recognises the realities and needs of the new spatial and temporal order. A new contract that must bear the future in mind and, at the same time, must have a universal character. Leaving aside the exploration of such issues related to time and more specifically to the future, this paper will focus on some of the “spatial” or territorial consequences that globalisation has on the present juridical-political structure. To do this, the challenges facing certain classical structures or concepts such as the state, sovereignty and the constitution will be analysed. For that purpose, first the need to superimpose over the traditional concept of state-national “government” a new, still emergent concept of global or world “governance” will be discussed. Next,

16

we will talk about the future of the states in the emerging new world order, paying special attention to the European Union as a paradigm of this new emerging model. After, the consequences brought about by this new situation on the fundamental corner-stone that current juridical-political systems base themselves on – the concept of sovereignty - will be analysed. To finish, the future of the state-national constitutions will be debated, under the backdrop of a complex juridical order in which it proves increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic law, comminatory law, international law, trans-national law, etc.

17

SESSION 3: 15.15-16.45

MODERATOR: Susana del Rio, Experts Committee of the European Commission.

Elena Pulcini, University of Florence (Italy)- Re-learning to fear: The Perception of Risks in

the Global Age.

Biography:

Elena Pulcini is Full Professor of Social Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Florence.

Her research revolves around the subjects of philosophical anthropology and social and political philosophy. Her central interest is the topic of passions in the sphere of a theory of modernity and modern individualism, also paying attention to the problem of female subjectivity in the field of “Gender Studies”.

Among her recent works: L’individuo senza passioni. Individualismo moderno e perdita del legame sociale, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2001 (reprint 2005; which was awarded a “special mention” at the Salvatore Valitutti International Philosophy Prize as well as the Viaggio a Siracusa International Philosophy Prize). German transalation c/o Diaphanes publishers, Berlin 2004; Il potere di unire. Femminile, desiderio, cura, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino 2003; and (as coeditor): Umano postumano. Potere, sapere, etica nell’età globale, Editori Riuniti Roma 2004; Common Passions, Different Voices. Reflections on Citizenship and Intersubjectivity, Raw Nerve Books, York 2006. Her current research revolves around the transformation of identity and social bonds in the global age. Between her works on these subjects: Filosofie della globalizzazione (coeditor), ETS, Pisa 2001/2003; The Responsible Subject in the Global Age, in "Science and Engineering Ethics", Springer Netherlands, 3rd Nov. 2009 (http://www.springerlink.com/content/vu1243782731461w); Pathologies de la reconnaissance, in Alain Caillé, Christian Lazzeri (eds), La reconnaissance aujourd'hui, Presses du CNRS, Paris 2009; Rethinking Community in the Global Age, in “Iris”, Florence University Press, II, 3 april 2010. Her recent book on these topics La cura del mondo. Paura e responsabilità in età globale, Bollati Boringhieri, Torino, 2009, has been awarded the first Prize at the national philosophy Prize “Viaggio a Siracusa”. She is a member of the editorial board of many reviews -Iride (Il Mulino), La società degli individui (Angeli), Politica e società (Carocci), “Iris” (FUP) etc.- She was a member (2001-2007) of the scientific committee of the Italian Society of Political Philosophy (SIFP).

18

Abstract:

The paper moves from a sociological definition of global risks (Beck, Giddens, etc), and the differentiation between “danger” and “risk”, to concentrate on the perception of risks. More specifically, the paper will focus on the perception of global warming and of nuclear threat. The first thesis presented by my paper concerns the distortion taking place in today’s perception of risks. Such a distortion is due to the defense mechanisms enacted by the subject. More specifically, the paper will work on the hypothesis that the global Self, characterized by a specific set of pathologies, responds to nuclear threats with denial mechanism and to global warming with self-deception strategies. Such strategies produce a repression of fear. Fear thus loses its productive and mobilizing function and transforms itself into mere anxiety, a widespread feeling of powerlessness in front of unknown and undetermined threats. The second thesis proposed by the paper concerns the need to re-learn to fear. Fear as a passion must be revitalized, as it allows regaining the perception of one’s own vulnerability. Vulnerability is a constitutive dimension of the subject, which has been undermined and removed by the hegemonic model of the modern sovereign subject; and which becomes, in the global age, a planet-scale condition. We are all made vulnerable by the global interdependence of risks as well as the global interdependence of lives. Vulnerability therefore may become an important resource to rekindle a fear for the world and to reactivate responsibility for and care for the world.

Dimitri D’Andrea, University of Florence (Italy)– Global Warming as Globalised Risks and

Potential Global Threat.

Biography: PhD in Political Philosophy at the Department of Sciences of Politics, University of Pisa, Dimitri D’Andrea is the author of a monograph on the relationship between anthropology and politics in Th. Hobbes. In recent years he has worked on the political aspects of the globalisation in the framework of a modernity theory. In particular he has been interested in the transformation of categories of the modern politics as sovereignty, nation-State, political identity, political conflicts. In 2005 he concluded a second monograph on ethics and politics in M. Weber, interpreting the “Last Men” as the symbol of a future humanity completely adapted to the world and lacking in ethical and political capacity. His main research fields are: anthropology and politics, modernity theory, globalisation, political identity and conflicts, global environmental risks.

19

Abstract: The paper will try to illustrate four different but related theses:

a. The need to distinguish Global Risks, Globalised Risks and Global Threaths. According to this typology, Global warming is the cause of a series of globalised risks in the near future and a potential global threat to the very survival of human civilization in a more distant future. The Depletion of the ozon layer has been a global threat, and only the presence of nuclear weapons is a global risk. The basis of this distinction is the different nature and location of the uncertainty.

b. The second thesis of the paper is that the global warming is the most serious and demanding challenge for humanity in the present time. To argue this point the paper will recontruct the main features ethically and politically relevant of the global warming: ambiguity (uncertainty as to the “how” and “when” of not necessarily or universally harmful events in the “short term” associated with the certainty - if no opportune limits are introduced - of the final disaster for the human civilization), inertial nature and non-linear evolution of the phenomenon, inability to identify the point of no return.

c. Moving from this recontruction the paper will try to illustrate that it is not possible to rely on the fear of imminent physical death of the individual (the fear of the political realism) for the collective assumption of responsibility for the future, because the self-preservation of the present individuals is not in question.

d. Finally, the paper will try to illustrate the reasons which make it so generally difficult for us to adopt a responsible attitude towards future generations despite the good arguments in its favour. The reasons for these difficulties do not arise from the uncertain and novel nature – indirect/innocent, far off in time/space, cumulative/collective and systemic/holistic – of our imputability for climate change, but mainly from the costs of responsibility in terms of relinquishing goods and consumption. I will try to map out the phenomenon of the lack of responsibility for future generations, suggesting a threefold typology: the cognitive ineptitude, the invention of possibility and the unlikelihood of a planetary consensus on limitation of consumption and mobility.

20

SESSION 4: 17.00-18.30 MODERATOR: Cristina Monge, ECODES.

Andreas Metzner-Szigeth, University of Münster (Germany)- The Governance of Science and

Technology and the Uncertainties of Progress, Vulnerability & Sustainable Development.

Biography:

Andreas Metzner-Szigeth is Doctor in Sociology at the University of Münster (Germany). He currently works as Consultant and Executive Director of the Episteme Consulting at Münster. Since 2007 he is visiting professor at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU). His main working fields are: Theory of Sciences and Epistemic Communities; Studies of Science, Technology and Society (STS); Human Ecology & Sustainable Development; Risk-Research, Technology-Assessment & Future-Studies; Cultural Diversity & New Media; Political Sociology & Governance; Economic Sociology & Management. Over his professional career he has also been Philosophy visiting professor at numerous institutions like the University of Viena or the University of Silesia in Polonia. Additionally, he has published several articles and book such as: Kultur&Technik als Medien menschlicher Selbstverwirklichung (2010); Contradictory approaches?-On Ralism and Constructivism in the Social Sciences Research on Risk, Technology and the Environment (2009) o “El Movimiento y la matriz”- Internet y Transformación socio-cultural (2006).

Abstract:

In the sequence of part 1-4 this contribution will present a series of four concise main theses, each pursued by a more complex explication, that might be helpful in order to enhance the discussion about better science-governance by inter- and trans-disciplinary experts-cooperation and citizens-participation. Part 1 will discuss some features of progress, i.e., progress & enlightenment, progress & (in)security, progress, domination & reflexivity, progress & industrial innovation cycles, in order to make accessible either its promises as also its problematic nature. Regarding the challenges of vulnerability there will be considered in part 2 three levels (micro, meso, macro) and two components (exposure, coping) of this concept. The following overview analyzes the relations between vulnerability, risk, hazards and the strategies of prevention and resilience. After contrasting the limitations of the conventional model of growing prosperity with the two essentials of the alternative model of Sustainable Development (SD) (environmental integrity, economic performance) part 3 will tackle the critical point of the latter: How to combine its two opposed elements? This needs to be investigated in contexts of win/win-constellations as well as targeting-conflicts in order to identify robust pathways for innovations.

21

Part 4 outlines a framework entitled Integrative Technology Assessment (ITA). On the background of some guidelines referring to the four (environmental, socio-cultural, economic, political-institutional) dimensions of SD, and with respect to the problems of knowledge-dependency, multiple vulnerability, and the attainment of SD in practice, there will be introduced an approach for shaping the scientific-technological progress, especially related to the opportunities and challenges of the converging (info-bio-nano) technologies.

Ignacio Aymerich, University Jaume I- Global Risks and Popular Sovereignties.

Biography:

Ignacio Aymerich is tenured lecturer in philosophy of law of the University Jaume I. He specialises in Philosophy of Law, Sociology of law and Human Rights. He has numerous academic qualifications; he holds a Degree in Philosophy from the University of Seville, a Doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Seville with the thesis "The subjective freedom in Hegel and Adorno", with the qualification Cum Laude. Doctor of Law from the University Jaume I of Castellon and holder of the Teaching Aptitude Certificate. He has teaching experience dating back to 1985. He has taken part in numerous research projects, and has published books such as: Sociología de los derechos humanos. Un modelo weberiano contrastado con investigaciones empíricas (Sociology of human rights. A Weber model compared with empirical research). Tirant lo Blanch., “¿Puede el derecho reflejar valores morales? Reflexiones sobre la teoría dualista” (Can law reflect moral values? Reflections on the dualist theory). In collaboration: Estudios en homenaje al prof. Gregorio Peces-Barba (Studies in homage to Prof. Gregorio Peces Barba). Ed. Dykinson. Madrid, 2008. He has participated in and organised congresses, scientific events, courses and conferences. Worthy of mention, among other merits, is that he was Consultant in the field of human rights indicators for the United Nations Development Program, July-August 1999. Abstract:

The discussion on the legitimation of power has always linked the need to govern with the capacity to face up to collective risk, whatever its nature: certain and imminent, or hypothetical and even imaginary, religious or mundane, military, economic, etc. Government and risk go hand in hand like bees and honey. In this general scheme of things, the processes of contemporary social change would modify the kind of risk to be faced, modifying with it the type of governance needed for this task. The equation in which governance and risk act would work as a stable structure and the historic evolution of the forms of risk and government would be variable elements of the equation. Evolution towards democratic political systems, the development of modern forms of public and private administration or the secularisation process would become part of these historical variations. Things can appear to be quite different if we set aside the classical concept of sovereignty that is here implied. The normal remission of the origins of this concept to Bodino links it to legislative power. In effect, sovereignty is defined as the absolute and perpetual power of a republic, and its absolute character is linked to the power to dictate and abolish laws. There is a pyramidal political structure

22

upon whose apex legislative power sits. On this stable structure there is the historical variable of democratisation as a change in the legitimation manner of the person occupying the supreme legislative position of power. But in any case the sovereign occupies a position in which he/she does not have to answer to a higher power: the absolute monarch had no need to justify his/her legislative decisions nor does the sovereign people have to justify its vote. But we pass from a unitary concept of sovereignty to a plural concept when we ask what kind of decisions are not legally subject to the obligation of justification and are, in that sense, sovereign. Nobody is obliged to justify their emotional choices, their preferences as a consumer, their choice of profession nor their religious beliefs. Therefore, the types of stable social relations that derive from the direction in which individuals resolve their sovereign decisions are subject to uncertainty. And this uncertainty generates its own risks. It is no longer about the governing power justifying itself to its people in its capacity to face up to external risk, because part of the risk is now within the political community: with the effective development of the fundamental rights system it has become constitutive.

23

7th October 2010

SESSION 5: 9.30-11.00 MODERATOR: Francisco Longo, ESADE.

Michel Wieviorka, School of High Studies in Social Sciences (France)- Between individual

subjects and the “global”: what mediation?

Biography:

Michel Wieviorka is a French sociologist, noted for his work on violence, terrorism, racism, social movements and the theory of social change. A former student of Alain Touraine, he is now one of the most renowned sociologists and public intellectuals in France and abroad. A number of his books are translated in different languages. Wieviorka received some international media attention as an expert following the 2005 civil unrest in France, and has been elected in Durban as the 2006-2010 President of the International Sociological Association. Together with Touraine and François Dubet, Wieviorka developed the method of intervention sociologique and employed it to the study of militant social movements, in particular French anti-nuclear activism and student leagues, but also the famous trade unions Solidarnosc in Poland. Following Max Weber's classic concept of interpretative sociology (verstehende Soziologie), intervention sociologique aims at understanding the subjective rationale of actors in the context of larger social conflicts. This concept was opposed to, e.g., Raymond Boudon's failed attempt to establish a strict rational choice approach in French sociology. Wieviorka is the director of the Centre d'Analyses et d'Interventions Sociologique (CADIS) at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, established by Alain Touraine in 1981 and administrator in the Foundation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme since 2009. He is also the president of the Price Michel Seurat and Director of the International Papers on Sociology with Georges Balandier) as well as a member of the committee of diverse scientific journals on sociology, ethics and politics. Abstract:

The social sciences are facing major upheaval, which requires a change in paradigm, as suggested by Alain Touraine. In particular, they need to “think global” and take into account, in addition to this notion of "global", the individual subjectivity of persons. Therefore, to govern is to need to bridge the

24

wide gap between individual subjects and the world, in the political, legal, social, cultural and economic arenas which otherwise are still to be reinvented or, at least often rethought.

Christophe Bouton, University Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3 (France)- The chasm

between knowledge and power: several contemporary categories of the future.

Biography:

Student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris from 1989 to 1995. Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Poitiers (1995-98), High School teacher (1998-2000), post-doctoral lecturer at the University of Poitiers (2000-2001), Associate Professor at the University of Bordeaux 3 (2001-2005), Full Professor at the University of Bordeaux 3 (since 2005) ; Visiting Professor at the University of Hamburg (Sommersemester, avril-juillet 2010)

Publications

Books

1) — Temps et esprit dans la philosophie de Hegel. De Francfort à Iéna. Paris, Vrin, 2000, 320 pp., « Bibliothèque d’histoire de la philosophie ».

2) — Le Procès de l’histoire. Fondements et postérité de l’idéalisme historique de Hegel. Paris, Vrin, 2004, 320 pp., « Bibliothèque d’histoire de la philosophie ».

3) — Temps et liberté, Toulouse, Presses Universitaires du Mirail, collection « Philosophica », 396 pp., 2008.

Collective publications

— La Physiognomonie. Problèmes philosophiques d’une pseudo-science, sous la direction de C.Bouton, L.Raïd, V.Laurand, Paris, Kimé, 2005.

— Dieu et la nature. La question du panthéisme dans l’Idéalisme allemand, C. Bouton (éd.), Hildesheim / New York / Zürich, Olms, collection : « EUROPAE MEMORIA », Studien und Texte zur Geschichte der europäischen Ideen, Reihe I, Band 40, 2005.

— L’Année 1790. Kant, Critique de la faculté de juger. Beauté, vie , liberté, sous la direction de C.Bouton, F.Brugère, C.Lavaud, Paris, Vrin, 2008.

— Hegel et la philosophie de la nature, sous la direction de C.Bouton et J.-L. Vieillard-Baron, N°4 des « Recherches sur le romantisme et l’idéalisme allemands », Paris, Vrin, 2009.

Abstract:

With the invention of increasingly efficient technologies, an abyss has opened up between man’s capacity to transform the world and his capacity to anticipate the effects of this transformation. The power to predict is being overtaken by technological power. I will work on the basis of this idea by

25

Hans Jonas to question the main categories of our current representation of the future: opacity, indecision, acceleration, disaster and its avoidance, risk and urgency. The issue is finding out to what extent this new complexity of the future, at the dawn of the XXI century, rends man’s claim to “make history”, as declared throughout the XIX and XX centuries, invalid.

SESSION 6: 11.15- 12.45 MODERATOR: Juanjo Álvarez, Institute of Democratic Governance.

Daniel Weinstock, University of Montreal (Canada)– Risk, Uncertainty and Catastrophe.

Biography: Daniel M. Weinstock holds a PH.D.in Philosophy at Saint Antony’s College, Oxford University. Since 2007 he works on the Canadian Research Chair in Etihcs and Political Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy of the University of Montreal. He is also Director of the Centre of Research in Ethics at the University of Montreal (Canada). Over his career he has written several books on politics and ethics such as: Deliberative Democracy in Theory and Practice (Vancouver, 2009), Profession: éthicien (Montréal, 2006), Republicanism in Theory and Practice (London, 2004) and La démocratie deliberative en philosophie et en droit: enjeux et perspectives (Montréal, 2001). He has also participated in many books and published several articles. In 2007 he received the Price André-Laurendeau, Assocation Canadienne-Francaise pour l’Avancement des Acienes. Abstract: Cass Sunstein has argued in a number of influential recent books and articles that the precautionary principle should be set aside in deliberating about policy in the context of risk in favour of cost/benefit analysis. My intention in this paper is not so much to disagree with Sunstein as to point out just how limited his conclusion is, even if true. The core distinction at work in the paper will be between risk, which is quantifiable and thus amenable to cost/benefit analysis techniques, and uncertainty, which can only be brought under the purview of such techniques at the cost of simplifying assumptions aimed at making the uncertain quantifiable.. First, I will suggest that many policy areas that are perceived as presenting risks are actually shot through with uncertainty as to the values that are at work in assigning numerical values to different possible outcomes, where these outcomes can with some degree of precision be assigned probabilities. Second, I will argue that cost-benefit analyses are of little value to us when uncertainty -- that is the inability to assign probabilities to outcomes -- is in play. As Sunstein himself acknowledges, it is of even less value where catastrophe is a possible outcome. While not a defence of the principle of precaution, the presentation will suggest that the principle is not defeated by arguments that only pertain to what is in effect only a very small subset of the policy challenges in the era that has perhaps misleadingly been labeled the era of risk.

26

Dominic Desroches, Ahuntsic College, Montreal (Canada)- Risk management confronted

with the acceleration of time – From the unexpected to a climate of urgency and time of

panic.

Biography:

Dominic Desroches is PHD in Philosophy at the University of Montreal. He works as professor at the department of Philosophy of the University of Ahuntsic (Montreal) since 2005. Additionally he works as Correspondent and Member of the Reading Committee at Sens Public (France), Correspondent and Member of the Reading Committee at Transverse (France) and as member of the Reading Committee at Horizons Philosophiques, Collège Ed.-Montpetit Quebec (Canadá). Over his professional career he has collaborated in several research projects at the Public Law Research Center of the University of Montreal (2003), he has worked on the research project about “Genetics, Ethics, Law and Society” (2002-2003) and the project MSSS of Quebec, IIREB at the University of Montreal (2002). Over his most recent publications it can be highlighted: Expressions éthiques de l’intériorité. Éthique et distance chez Kierkegaard (2008). He has also written several journal articles regarding his field of expertise : continental philosophy, ethics, rethorics and politics.

Abstract: The acceleration of time is a major source of technological risk for advanced societies. The concept of risk is linked to the complexity of organisations, which makes predictions, the sense of priorities and finding errors difficult, above all if these involve a network of players. Acceleration and dematerialisation of the technical and of risk lead to uncertainty; although man is not at ease with the unpredictable, unexpected and strange, he must however predict disaster, the effects of which can be irreversible and last for generations. This creates a tension illustrating the discrepancy between the human and technical decision-making periods – between a past (too late) and a future (too early) with no possible synchrony – creating waiting, anguish and stress. Stress is found in compressed human time, which is the only time through which a solution will be found. Urgency thus forms the trap of time, but also its discourse: the higher the technological risk and the disaster announced, the more it is covered in the media, which increases the feeling of fear and the climate of insecurity. This climate of urgency, this poisonous environment, can even, through institutions and the media, be designed and then maintained. The occurrence of a time of panic, fuel to its own rhetoric, then harms collective decision-making.

San Sebastian HeadquartersDeusto University CampusMundaiz, 5020012 Donostia/San Sebastián

Paseo de Aiete20009 Donostia/San Sebastián

Orkestra - IVCDeusto Foundation

GlobernanceInstituto de Gobernanza Democrática

Bilbao HeadquartersLibrary-CRAI, Deusto UniversityRamón Rubial, 1, 8th floor, room 7 48009 Bilbao

www.orkestra.deusto.essecretaria@orkestra.deusto.es