DERISK: Systemic Risk and the Transformation of Democracy

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From financial crises to climate change and pandemics, over the past several decades societies have increasingly faced systemic risks. Systemic risks are risks that arise at the level of complex societal systems through the unpredictable interaction of individually low- or moderate- risk actions. These systemic risks have transformative political implications. Due to their scale and unpredictability, systemic risks drive the increasing use of extra-democratic, emergency governance mechanisms. This project argues that the rise of systemic risk is a major driving force behind the contemporary transformation and crisis of democracy in Europe and North America. Such new forms of risk challenge the democratic risk-sharing institutions characteristic of the welfare state, pointing to novel forms of political conflict centred on exposure to systemic risk. DERISK contends that addressing the implications of systemic risk requires a fundamental revision of core concepts within normative democratic theory. Drawing together political philosophy, the philosophy of risk, and empirical research on systemic risk in political science, sociology, economics, risk studies, and complexity theory, the project asks: what happens to democracy when systemic risks become a central problem of politics? And how should democratic institutions govern these new forms of risk? To answer these questions, the project will develop a new theory of risk democracy. While current models in political philosophy focus on the individual-level moral permissibility of risk imposition, the theory of risk democracy will emphasize how the unequal vulnerability to systemic risk undermines political equality. As empirically-grounded political theory, this model will provide both a diagnostic account of how the changing structure of risk is challenging welfare-state modes of democratic risk-sharing as well as a normative model of how democratic institutions could better respond to systemic risks.