A Seed editorial this week, which is incidentally an endorsement of Barack Obama, offers a dubious idea about the relation between science and politics.

Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Science is a lens through which we can and should visualize and solve complex problems, organize government and multilateral bodies, establish international alliances, inspire national pride, restore positive feelings about America around the globe, embolden democracy, and ultimately, lead the world. More than anything, what this lens offers the next administration is a limitless capacity to handle all that comes its way, no matter how complex or unanticipated.

Letting this paragraph slide without criticizing it would be easier if it celebrated something more vague, like the Enlightenment. But the Seed editors leave little doubt here: They see the scientific method as a way of organizing human communities. Part of their purpose is ostensibly to discourage abuses of science. But stretching science into epistemic territory where it doesn’t belong does little to help the situation.

The paragraph sounds great, but it really doesn’t make much sense.

Let’s say your problem is to reorganize the United Nations Security Council. What do you do? Do you get the five permanent member states to volunteer their best scientists to jointly develop a solution? You probably could do that, but even then, the result would be a political process, not a scientific one. One can imagine how a power-grab by one of the member states could be justified on the grounds of “scientific research”.

The distribution of power is a political problem, not a scientific one. Policymaking requires political feelings, thoughts, and acts more than it requires scientific research results, though science can certainly help. Political disputes most often have nothing to do with scientific disputes. Ultimately, the criteria of scientific belief are different from those of political belief. This is a crucial distinction to remember as we go about the important work of re-imagining how science can help us to govern ourselves. It begins by making sure that everyone can influence the public decisions that affect them. Start with civic engagement, and let science follow.

(Hat tip to 3quarksdaily.)

Why have the United States been unable to foster quality civic engagement in Iraq? The US government never adequately earned its authority in the country. Despite the advice of General David Petraeus and others, commitments to the basic welfare of Iraqis went undemonstrated. Schools and roads were left in disrepair or unbuilt. By the time the 2005 elections happened, Iraqi voters had little trust in US-led institutions for improving their own lives and prosperity, which led to the joint disaster in which Iraqis and Americans presently find themselves. Had the United States been able to establish legitimacy early, US diplomats would have been able to help stop Iraq’s internal conflicts.

So say Nancy Soderberg and Brian Katulis. For them, Iraq provides the most conspicuous example of a frequent problem for the United States. Their book, The Prosperity Agenda, presents a way of reorganizing the role of the United States in the world. US-led projects that raise global prosperity, they suggest, would be reciprocated with greater willingness to cooperate with other US political, social, and economic interests.

How can we reduce this thesis into something more measurable? Here’s one suggestion.

1. Use the Human Development Index as a proxy for prosperity.
2. Use voter participation rates as a proxy for willingness to cooperate globally.
3. Hope that increases in the former will support increases in the latter.
4. Be cautiously happy to see results which suggest precisely such a positive correlation. (See Figure 29.)

To my estimation, equating HDI to prosperity should not be terribly controversial. The second assumption, though, is admittedly more problematic. Our right to equate a society’s overall willingness to vote to its overall willingness to cooperate globally depends, in turn, on a host of other assumptions. Voting is the most common, and probably most effective, mechanism for making collaborative decisions on a large scale. In a healthy society, people vote in order to influence decisions that affect them. If people become healthier, more literate, more educated, and more financially comfortable, and if they vote in large numbers, then hopefully they will vote in such a way that is, in aggregate, at least slightly more favorable to addressing common human concerns — even if those concerns are not as common as we sometimes assume they are, and even if those concerns don’t always overlap with US foreign policy concerns.