![]() The point of putting societies under his scientific magnifying glass was to mold them. ![]() Petty saw Political Arithmetick as a transformative project – science not only with a mission but with a concrete goal. Much like Michel Foucault three centuries later, Petty saw both the restraining and productive dimensions of the power that political arithmetic would bestow upon its practitioners. At worst, top-down rule was a necessary evil for stable societies, and Political Arithmetick could make it more effective, rational and less bloody. He had studied with Thomas Hobbes in France, who extolled the necessity of a Leviathan – a ruler perched on top of a society to enforce order, without which people could not live in peace. Effective rule and governance - the line between the two was never quite clear - should shun superstitions, abstract musings, religious fervor and gut feelings and instead be approached with the same rational and empirical mindset as budding modern science.Ĭonsonant with mainstream thinking at the time, Petty saw mostly the positive force of such rule. In the years that followed, Petty synthesized his lessons under the label Political Arithmetick, what we today would call evidence-based policy. However imperfectly, Petty had made the island amendable to bureaucratic rule. ![]() Petty got his way, and in the 1650s was charged him with the infamous Down Survey: a census cum cartography of Ireland to bolster England’s grip. It required a population that was counted and categorized, just as the land itself needed to be gauged and plotted. Effective domination, Petty realized, required a colony that was charted and legible. His hour came when the English rulers once more faced trouble in their Irish colony. In spite of his forays into musicology, medicine, shipbuilding and natural science experiments, he achieved lasting fame as the inventor of what he called Political Arithmetick.Ī practical and ambitious man, Petty sought to rub shoulders with the rich and powerful early on. Born to a family of modest means, he absorbed what knowledge his age had to offer with insatiable verve and improbable speed. The 17th century virtuoso William Petty was about as colorful as they come. What is Political Arithmetic, and why study it? ![]() In 2022, Daniel was local organizer of the annual convention of the Society for the Advancement in Socio-Economics (SASE). Until March 2016 Daniel was lead-editor of the Review of International Political Economy. For the 2020/21 academic year, Daniel returned to his alma mater - the Otto-Suhr-Institut of the Freie Universität Berlin - as an Alexander von Humboldt-fellow. He spent the first half of 2012 as a visiting scholar at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University he returned to spend the whole academic year 2014/15 there, as well. In 2009, Daniel's dissertation on European financial markets had been honoured with the ECPR Jean Blondel prize as best European political science dissertation of the year. You can find the work of the whole research team on the FickleFormulas project website. That line of work had been supported by an NWO Vidi grant and an ERC Starting grant. Daniel's inaugural lecture summarizes the essence of this research agenda, arguing for a Numeracy 2.0. His previous work had focused on the political economy of macroeconomic indicators. Daniel is also co-initiator of the Citizens, Society and AI (CiSAI) research platform at the UvA and one of the leaders of the Research Priority Area "AI & Politics". That work concentrates on "AI diplomacy", the EU's external relations in the AI field - both with other countries such as China and the USA, as well as its role in multilateral efforts to regulate AI. At the UvA, he leads the RegulAite project team, which is funded by a 2022 NWO Vici grant. (If you're wondering what political arithmetic is, you can find my own take on it under the Political Arithmetic tab below and, in proper paper form, here.)ĭaniel's current research investigates the European governance of artificial intelligence (AI). Daniel Mügge is Professor of Political Arithmetic at the political science department of the UvA.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |