DERISK: Systemic Risk and the Transformation of Democracy

从金融危机到气候变化和流行病，过去几十年来，社会日益面临系统性风险。系统性风险是在复杂的社会系统层面上，通过个别低风险或中等风险行为的不可预测的相互作用而产生的风险。这些系统性风险具有变革性的政治影响。由于其规模和不可预测性，系统性风险促使人们越来越多地使用超民主的应急治理机制。该项目认为，系统性风险的上升是当代欧洲和北美民主转型和危机背后的主要驱动力。这种新形式的风险挑战了福利国家特有的民主风险分担制度，指出了以暴露于系统性风险为中心的新形式的政治冲突。DERISK认为，解决系统性风险的影响需要从根本上修改规范民主理论中的核心概念。该项目汇集了政治哲学、风险哲学以及政治学、社会学、经济学、风险研究和复杂性理论中对系统性风险的实证研究，提出了这样一个问题：当系统性风险成为政治的核心问题时，民主会发生什么？民主制度应该如何管理这些新形式的风险？为了回答这些问题，该项目将开发一种新的风险民主理论。当前的政治哲学模型关注的是个人层面的道德容许性，而风险民主理论则强调系统性风险的不平等脆弱性如何破坏政治平等。作为一种基于政治学的理论，这一模型将提供一个诊断性的解释，说明不断变化的风险结构如何挑战民主风险分担的福利国家模式，以及民主制度如何更好地应对系统性风险的规范模型。

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.