The political leeway in policymaking: from Neurathian underdetermination to the precautionary principle

In this paper, I propose and develop the Auxiliary Principle (AP), which states that given the endemic uncertainty in policymaking, decision-makers always have political leeway in their choices, and that they should a cknowled geit as such. First, I explain the ideas of Otto Neurath, whose writings on decision-making in conditions of epistemic uncertainty and whose proposal of an ‘auxiliary motive’ inspired my AP. Next, I explain the AP in-depth, including what its assumptions are and what its purpose is in decision-making under uncertainty: making the responsibility of political decision-making explicit in democratic discourse. Finally, I argue that the AP can be a useful substitution for the popular Precautionary Principle at the meta-level while preserving its risk-averse intuitions. I use the controversy around the regulation of the AstraZeneca vaccine for Covid-19 to illustrate my arguments.