“The need to base politics on science has kept it out of democratic control.”

runway. The political presentation and debate surrounding the presidential campaign, for the time being, seem to have been reduced to political marketing pushing candidates to craft proposals specifically targeting every segment of the population.

However, the sum of individual interests is not the collective interest. Making society transcend individual and individual scales. In society, individual freedom is also based on collective rules and institutions that regulate the rights and duties of citizens. Society building at the national level is based on trust in institutions and on the use of accepted collective rules.

Today’s debate over institutions is dominated, at best, by the demand for greater democratic participation, and at worst by the devaluation of elected representatives and representative democracy itself. The rebellion and confrontation of the “regime” mobilizes the electorate against the extremist parties.

The German economist and sociologist Max Weber (1864-1920), a century earlier, distinguished three sources of legitimacy: two ancient models, traditional and charismatic forces, historically replaced by the legal rational model, which supports the development of right over social and political rights. institutions.

However, the two old models are back. Today’s traditional authority takes the form of entrenched religious claims in religious states. Charismatic power takes the form of Tribune leaders in direct contact with people, particularly via social networks. ‘Democracies’ act as alternative models, at the global level.

tarnish the reputation of institutions

The “legal rational” model embodied in bureaucracy and technocracy did not deliver on its promises. By distancing himself from the people, he lost his legitimacy. It is no longer the state that owns and controls all information. Information and knowledge are being shared. Digital and social networks contribute to discrediting institutions, and even reality, in favor of alternative realities.

It is therefore necessary today to update and go beyond the rational legal model, if we are to save democracy. Environmental and digital transformations present new challenges to institutions and social norms, because they are profoundly transforming them. In fact, these rules do not directly affect the rules themselves, but rather the knowledge on which these rules are based, and those that guide the behavior of actors and institutions.

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