Crippling epistemologies and governance failures: a plea for experimentalism

In: Governance series

Abstract

In Crippling Epistemologies and Governance Failures Gilles Paquet attacks the dominant practices of the social sciences and their reliance on inadequate concepts of knowledge, evidence, and inquiry, which have become methodological and ideological "mental prisons". He argues that governance and social arrangements based on these platforms result in weak information infrastructure, poor accountability, and inadequate organizational design, and that these arrangements ultimately fail. He rejects borrowing approaches from the physical sciences and suggests that a richer perspective less