ABSTRACT
This chapter presents that Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) could generate a general alternative to neo-liberal governance. It should be intuitively clear that the two models are incompatible from the fact that, for someone like Hayek, for instance, the unpredictability of an agency process is in itself good. So contingency and the homo CE&conomicus model will appear as the conceptual core of what opposes RRI and neo-liberal governance. The contingency concept will first be considered as implied in Sen's powerful calling into question of the homo CE&conomicus model. Contingency can also be a closure, a brutal closure of possibilities. As Sen notices, democratic institutions do not, by themselves, guarantee a free exchange of reasons and an open scrutiny. The concept of contingency allows for the efficient broadening of the spectrum of relevant motives. But it does so against the background of "closed contingency", which means concrete violence.
