There is, as usual, much that is wrong with the world. Economic crisis, environmental crisis, energy crisis, debt crisis, legitimation crisis, international crisis, crisis of the welfare state succeed one another. Overloaded governments grapple with ungovernable societies. Few think governments can succeed, given widespread pessimism about the possibilities for effective public policy or planning. On the other hand» there is limited faith in the market, and increasing numbers of individuals reject material rewards, be it in favor of postindustrial lifestyles or the revelation of fundamentalist religion. Ex-Marxist societies now look only to what is already in trouble elsewhere.

My intent here is to explore a diagnosis for at least some of the world's present political ills and to think about a cure. The diagnosis is that many of these ills have much to do with the decline of once-confident and still pervasive forms of rationality. The cure involves large doses of what I shall call discursive democracy for the individual actions, political institutions, policy practices, and social sciences that lay claim to rationality.

Diagnosis

Individual political behavior, the policies of governments, the structure of political systems, and the assumptions and strategies of political scientists who study these phenomena are all more or less rational. Over the centuries since the Enlightenment, rationality has come to demand two things. The first is effective instrumental action; instrumental rationality may be defined in terms of the capacity to devise, select, and effect good means to clarified ends. The second is the idea that rational choices concerning theories and beliefs about matters of fact, and even about values and morals, should be made through reference to a set of objective standards that are equally applicable - and accessible - to all individuals. This second aspect of post-Enlightenment rationality is generally referred to as objectivism.

Instrumental rationality and objectivism go hand in hand. The former governs rational behavior, the latter rational belief and morality. Thus they provide a complete guide for the would-be rational individual. In social life, objectivism provides glue for the coordination of the actions of large numbers of instrumental rationalists in a fashion that is itself instrumentally rational (in terms of any goals of the social system at hand). Together, instrumental rationality and objectivism conjure up a clean and orderly world where modern science, technology, and economics flourish.