Knowledge and Politics

1. Front Matter

   Pages I-XI

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2. Truth, Science, and Politics: An Analysis of Social Epistemology

   • Riccardo Viale

   Pages 1-61

3. A “Satisfying” Theory of Social Knowledge

   • Raymond Boudon

   Pages 63-87

4. Knowledge and the Politics of Transition

   • Jon Elster

   Pages 89-105

5. Bringing Power to Knowledge. Choosing Policies to Use Decentralized Knowledge

   • William A. Niskanen

   Pages 107-118

6. Knowledge, Power and Self as Distinct Spheres

   • Alain Touraine

   Pages 119-136

7. Two Conceptions of Democracy

   • Ronald Dworkin

   Pages 137-146

8. The Crisis of Complexity

   • Michel Crozier

   Pages 147-152

9. Back Matter

   Pages 153-154

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"Does knowledge matter to politics?" is the main question the book tries to answer. The analysis is interdisciplinary and covers a wide range of topics: a social epistemology assessment of the efficacy of political institutions in promoting the generation and the diffusion of science and technology; the proposal of the alternative concept of satisfying rationality to found the theory of social knowledge; the roles of social knowledge in the constitution making and the transitional justice; the arguments in favor of decentralized knowledge in social problem solving and its empowerment through devolution, de-bureaucratization and deregulation; the means to ensure the independency of knowledge from power and at the same time its social utility; the knowledge justified to inform the voters in political campaigns; the critique to technocracy as the wrong solution to deal with the crisis of complexity in contemporary society.

• Altern
• Cognition
• Democracy
• Politics
• Rationality
• Social Knowledge
• technology

• Rosselli Foundation, Torino, Italy

  Riccardo Viale

Policies and ethics