The old question about the relationship between knowledge and power, which goes back to the Platonic theory of the philosopher-king, has been translated in contemporary times into two figures that would represent the type of knowledge that should guide politics. The right-wing version is that of the expert; the left-wing version is that of the intellectual. The expert embodies the so-called superiority of science, and would be the advocate of objectivity. The intellectual claims moral superiority and, rather than objectivity, offers critical, committed knowledge. These two figures are two versions of the same model, and in this coincidence lies its profound anachronism: the model of " speaking truth to power " (Wildavsky), as if experts and intellectuals were beyond the uncertainty of mortals, a genre to which even politicians belong. I admit that this is a bit of a simplification, but it may help us to understand why the model of knowledge that politics should only obey is a thing of the past, and no longer corresponds to the complex relations between knowledge and power that exist in our societies. Today, we need to think differently about the conditions under which political ideas can be brought to bear on the political process.
In the knowledge society, knowledge has become not only an element of economic productivity, but also of growing importance for the social legitimization of political decisions. Scientific reports, studies and expert commissions are part of our daily political and social landscape. It is also certain that knowledge transfer is a task that needs to be developed. But if we are to understand how knowledge and power are currently articulated, we need to realize that knowledge has changed status, and that it is no longer surrounded by its traditional signs of authority, but that 1) it is less and less the exclusive product of experts and more and more the result of a social construction, and that 2) it has a greater awareness of its own limitations and of the fact that it is inevitably accompanied by a growing non-knowledge. The knowledge required for democratic governance is now part of this new context.
