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A central feature of democratic systems of government wherever they have emerged–in a polis of ancient Greece, the parliamentary democracies of the eighteenth century or the cosmopolitan systems of governance that characterize late modernity–is the often partial accommodation of competing forms of moral, political and scientific authority. At least since the seventeenth century and the stuttering emergence of a modern scientific and technological enterprise, a central problematic for democratic politics has been the potential conflagration between scientific expertise, on the one hand, and popular representation on the other. In theory (and we must stress the word ‘theory’here) democracies function not as a system of rule, or indeed government, but as a procedural solution to the problem of authority, with elaborately designed systems of delegation, accountability and oversight. Of course, in practice, democracy …