Nico Stehr

The gap between certified scientific knowledge claims and good policy causes growing disenchantment with democracy. The idea emerges that the state, run by experts, ought to be the source of security in the face of risk. The gap between climate change knowledge and action results, on one hand, in the pessimistic notion of “inconvenient modern democracy” and, on the other, in an optimistic view of the efficacy of social planning. My research argues that such positions are mistaken.