The meaning of the 2024 elections : biometric governance and the trust problem

[ This is an on-line seminar; please register on Zoom and read the paper in advance of the event.]

This essay is a close study of the politics of the election and especially of the operations of trust and biometric identification in shaping them. The story of the South African election draws out some familiar elements of the global distress about trust in institutions, not least because, for the first time in the country’s history, political parties attacked the integrity of the well-respected national election commission. But it will also highlight some unusual features of trust, and especially the interweaving of the country’s tribal trusts and trust in biometric government. Perhaps more importantly, it also suggests a theoretical explanation for the very wide commitment to coercive biometric identification technologies on the African continent.