States of uncertainty: governing the empire of biotechnology

The biotechnological revolution presents states and governments with a set of challenges that they have difficulty meeting. Part of the problem is associated with common perceptions of the speed, volume and the radical uncertainty of the new developments. Globalisation is also implicated, especially in relation to the development of the knowledge economy and the role of multinational actors. This in turn contributes to the apparent decline in the confidence of the public that national governments will be effective in addressing mounting concern about the dangers inherent in new techniques and products. Under these circumstances, 'normal' governance begins to look more like 'failure' governance. This article asks whether the effects of the biotechnological revolution on governance can adequately be explained by the critique of imperialism proposed by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, and whether the state is in danger of becoming implicated in sponsorship of modernist schemes to improve the human condition of the kind analysed by James E Scott. Biotechnology does appear to have imperial qualities, while there are strong reasons for states to see biotechnology as a feasible and desirable set of developments. For some critics of biotechnology, like Francis Fukuyama, this is a lethal combination, and the powers of the state should be used to stop biotechnological development. Others, by contrast and more pragmatically, propose a check on what the state will support by the application of precautionary principles. The article concludes that the association between the biotechnology empire and the state, combined with the inescapable duty of the state to be the risk manager of last resort, alerts us to the complexities of uncertainty at the same time as it renders a merely restrictive precautionary approach impracticable.