I use Science and Technology Studies and political ecology lenses to unpack democratization in three main parts. In this paper, I draw on semi-structured interviews with gene editors, policy analysts, and communications experts as well as with critical academic and civil society experts. But the high-profile, explicit, and assertive discourse of democratization with gene editing - especially CRISPR-Cas9 - is something new. Many trends in agricultural biotechnology have extended fluidly from the first era of genetic modification using recombinant DNA techniques to the era of gene editing.
