Technology assessment and democratic theories: a critical review

This chapter aims to explore the roots of TA in relation to democracy. What kind of democracy are TA practitioners committed to, and how has this shaped the approaches they have developed? What is the potential of these visions for the ongoing understanding and revitalization of TA practices and democratic orders? We propose to review four theories of democracy that we find relevant and useful for understanding the role and work of TA today: the theories of discursive and deliberative democracy developed by Barber and Habermas, which are often considered to be the core of TA’s rationales and methodologies, and the agonistic theories of democracy developed by Marres and Mouffe, which have been most often neglected by scholarly work on TA. We identify what we call ‘disturbance zones’ at the intersection of these theories of democracy, and conclude by formulating bold proposals for thinking about the politics of technology assessment.