Science and Public Policy, volume 26, number 5, October 1999, pages 290–293, Beech Tree Publishing, 10 Watford Close, Guildford, Surrey GU1 2EP, England.
Introduction Public participation in science and technology policy- and decision- making — ephemeral phenomenon or lasting change? Simon Joss
Public participation has become something of a phenomenon in science and technology public policy- and decision-making. The issue is at present characterised by a rich conceptual, methodological and practical diversity, the expansion into new thematic, institutional and socio-cultural areas, and an increasing recognition amongst relevant public institutions. Far from being static and saturated, it is driven by continuing development. This special issue was put together with a view to offering an introduction into, and a broad overview of, both different theoretical and practical perspectives on public participation.
Simon Joss is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy (University of Westminster), 100 Park Village East, London NW1 3SR, UK; E-mail:
[email protected]. Financial support of the Swiss National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged.
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HE LAST DECADE or so has seen something of a phenomenon in science and technology public policy- and decision-making — that of public participation. What is meant here by ‘public participation’ is, in a broad sense, the engagement in the processes of policy- and decision- making not just of the usual professional experts, policy analysts and decision-makers, but also a wider spectrum of social actors. The latter may include representatives of non-governmental organisations, local communities, interest groups and grassroots movements, as well as individual lay people in their capacity as citizens and/or consumers. This phenomenon has been manifest, at a practical level, in an increasing number of programmes, experiments and initiatives that have sought to broaden the scope of policy deliberation and decision-making through the involvement of different social actors in a variety of structural and procedural ways. Take the Netherlands as an example. There, the aim of the concept of ‘constructive technology assessment’ has been to bring technology developers (within academia and industry) and (potential) technology users, such as consumers and patients, together with a view to integrating the contextual perspectives of users into the technology research and development phase, thus rendering technological innovation more directly and proactively responsive to social needs and expectations (Hamstra, 1995; Eijndhoven, 1997). While this particular kind of public participation aims to improve development within the scientific–technological sector (and therefore it usually
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Public participation in S&T policy-making Simon Joss is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Democracy, London. He studied biological science at Berne University (Switzerland) before gaining a PhD in policy science from Imperial College (University of London) for his research on public participation in institutionalised technology assessment. His publications include (with John Durant) Public Participation in Science: The Role of Consensus Conferences in Europe (Science Museum, London, 1995); Danish Consensus Conferences as a Model of Participatory Technology Assessment: an Impact Study of Consensus Conferences on Danish Parliament and Danish Public Debate (Science and Public Policy, 25(1), pages 2-22); and a chapter in Parliaments and Technology: the Development of Technology Assessment in Europe (State of New York University Press, New York, forthcoming). He has been involved in European Commission-funded research projects on: the development of public debate and decision-making in biotechnology (‘ADAPTA’); participatory technology assessment initiatives in different European cultural and institutional settings (‘EUROPTA’). He has been a member of several advisory committees, such as the UK National Consensus Conference on Radioactive Waste Management Advisory Committee. Together with Professor John Keane, he launched a new programme in autumn 1999 on public accountability of science and technology.
takes place behind closed doors and participants mainly act as information sources) other kinds are aimed at wider socio-political debate. In Denmark, for example, several methods, including that of ‘voting conference’, ‘scenario workshop’, ‘future search conference’ and ‘consensus conference’, have been developed and adapted throughout the 1980s and 1990s with a view to facilitating social assessment, stimulating public debate and contributing to public policy- and decision-making (Klüver, 1995). Here, participants, who may be citizens, interest groups and/or community representatives (alongside scientists, technical experts and decision-makers), are not just meant to act as information sources, but as citizens/members of the public with a right (and duty) to co- determine public policy- and decision-making on science and technology. Public participation, then, takes place within the sphere defined by the triangular relationship among science and politics, science and public debate and politics and public debate and, hence, is usually held in public. The Netherlands and Denmark are mentioned here as examples not least because they have been at the forefront of the development of a participatory agenda in science and technology policy- and decisionmaking. They have inspired the debate well beyond their own countries. The model of consensus conference, for example, has been used in a good dozen countries since the early 1990s, including several in Europe (Austria, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland), North America (Canada, USA) and South-East Asia (Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea) (URL: http://www. loka.org/pages/worldpanels.html). The scenario workshop model was chosen as a standard method to initiate community-based assessments and public Science and Public Policy October 1999
debate on the issue of urban sustainability in the European Union, where it has thus far been used in around half a dozen countries (see Andersen and Jæger in this issue). Similar methods have been developed elsewhere. In Britain, Germany and the USA, for example, the model of citizens’ jury, used as a tool of policy analysis and policy-making in a variety of thematic fields, has been adapted for use in science and technology policy. This has resulted, for instance, in the German version of ‘citizens forum’ and ‘co-operative discourse’ (Beckmann and Keck, 1999; see also Hörning in this issue). Sometimes, public participatory methods are used mainly to carry out policy analysis (understood here as an assessment activity in preparation of policy- and decision-making). At other times, they are more directly linked to decision-making, as when a parliamentary committee or a government office calls for public input into decision-making. On other occasions, they are directed predominantly at public debate. While in many cases these methods may be said to be based on a ‘top- down’ approach, whereby institutions charged with policy- and decision-making invite social actors to become involved as and when is suitable to these institutions, in a number of instances they have been based on a ‘bottom-up’ approach. This attempts to enable social actors to shape their own agenda, carry out assessments as they see relevant and thus seek to influence scientific and technological innovation. The Dutch scenic shops and the recent ‘Community Research Network’ initiative of the US Loka Institute are examples (Loka, 1999). In Denmark, the Danish Board of Technology has tried to combine the two, for example, by supporting bottom-up initiatives complementary to its top-down methods (as in the consensus conference) and by designing methods combining the two approaches (as in the scenario workshop). This intensified practical activity in recent years has been matched by a lively debate at theoretical level. For a while now, policy analysis, science and technology studies (STS) and related fields of study have turned their attention to the issue of public participation, borrowing from a variety of theoretical– conceptual sources in political theory, sociology, communication theory and (social) psychology (see, for example, Cronberg, 1995; Finney, 1998; Fischer, 1993; Irwin, 1995; Joss, 1998; Mayer, 1997, Renn et al, 1995; and Sclove, 1995). Increasingly, the practical and theoretical perspectives have developed in tandem, each inspiring the other. It should be noted that the phenomenon of public participation is not entirely new. The issue of public participation has a long, if varied, tradition in the history of democracy (see, for example, Pateman, 1970; Dahl, 1998). Its consideration in relation to science and technology arguably goes back well beyond the last couple of decades (see, for example, MacLoed, 1997). Most of the aforementioned forms of public 291
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participation, too, can be traced back over several decades (Joss, 1998). Some originated in the 1960s when there was what may be called a ‘first wave’ of post-war participatory innovation in relation to a broad range of issues of public interest in the social services, environmental planning, community development and so on. What, however, may be said to be ‘new’ is the thriving methodological innovation, the wide practical application and the apparently increasing interest in, and commitment to, public participation on the part of officialdom and the scientific community. In summary, then, the issue of public participation in science and technology policy- and decisionmaking is at present characterised by a rich conceptual, methodological and practical diversity, the expansion into new thematic, institutional and socio-cultural areas, and an increasing recognition amongst relevant public institutions. Furthermore, far from being static and saturated, it is driven by continuing development.
Overview of articles This special issue of Science and Public Policy bears witness to this diversity and evolutionary change. It was put together with a view to offering an introduction to, and a broad overview of, both different theoretical and practical perspectives on the subject. The opening is made by Frank Fischer’s article on participatory inquiry, which, on the basis of a critique of ‘technocratic’ policy- and decision-making, discusses public participation as a means of enabling citizens to co-determine technological development by proactively becoming engaged, in collaboration with experts, in the processes of research, analysis and policy-making. To achieve this, Fischer proposes, on the one hand, to further the self-mobilising, ‘bottom-up’ processes of public participatory inquiry and, on the other, to tie this in with the more formal, ‘top-down’ processes of policy deliberation and decision-making. The second article, by Leonhard Hennen, looks at the issue of public participation from the sociological perspective of ‘uncertainty’ and ‘reflexive modernity’. Using the example of institutionalised technology assessment, Hennen explains the challenges facing officialdom when confronted with socially complex scientific-technical issues with environmental risks and social uncertainty attached to them, for which traditional tools of policy analysis and decision-making increasingly fail to offer effective solutions. This is followed by a discussion of how participatory forms of technology assessment may provide viable alternatives. John Durant’s paper considers public participation in relation to the ‘public understanding of science’ movement, which has been the (British) scientific community’s response to an increasingly critical public debate on science and technology. Durant proposes that developing a participatory agenda could be 292
the key to overcoming the much criticised ‘deficit model’ of the public understanding of science (which emphasises the need to educate and inform the public, so as to make it more appreciative of science and technology) and thus moving towards a ‘democratic model’. The last of the four theoretical perspectives, by Simon Joss and Arthur Brownlea, discusses the concept of ‘procedural justice’ as a possible way of developing science and technology policy- and decision-making processes that give due consideration to the normative basis, and the social environment, of public decision-making. The nature and requirements of public participation are important aspects within this perspective, as shown by the set of procedural criteria that Joss and Brownlea propose as an input into the development of public participation. Following these theoretical perspectives, five different methodological approaches to putting the idea of public participation into practice are described, and their experiences to date in various institutional and socio-political contexts are analysed. The authors of the four practical papers have all been involved in the practical implementation of these methods, either as project managers at public technology assessment institutions or as university researchers. Thus they give valuable insights into the (institutional) thinking that has driven innovation in the field. The Danish models of consensus conference and scenario workshops are described in the article by Ida-Elisabeth Andersen and Birgit Jæger, who use several practical examples to illustrate what role these methods have come to play in Denmark. Andersen and Jæger explain that one of the reasons why participatory forms of technology assessment and policymaking seem to have established themselves rather well in Denmark is that they have evolved organically within the Danish socio-political culture and thus reflect the country’s understanding of democratic governance, civil society and public debate. This, then, seems to suggest that the kind of interrelationship between a participatory method and its institutional and wider socio-cultural setting has an important bearing on the actual role of public participation. In their paper, Gregor Dürrenberger, Hans Kastenholz and Jeannette Behringer review the evolution of ‘focus groups’ and their recent application to science and technology policy and decision. This paper is of interest not least for two reasons. First, it sheds some light on how the wider social debate about public participation has influenced research in (environmental) impact assessment, which traditionally has relied on scientific methods but has recently started taking up a more participatory agenda. Secondly, the focus group method illustrates the arguably relative ambiguity surrounding the issue of public participation in science and technology policy- and decision-making, whether participatory methods should be understood primarily as tools of, and for, researchers, policy analysts and decision-makers essentially to gauge ‘public opinion’, or as tools of, and for, Science and Public Policy October 1999
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the public to engage actively in democratic deliberation and decision-making. Georg Hörning’s article gives insight into how ‘deliberative technology assessment’ is conceptually understood and practically implemented by the Centre of Technology Assessment in Baden-Württemberg (Germany). At the centre of the article is an analysis of a ‘citizens forum’ (Bürgerforum) initiative on sustainable energy policy. Hörning concludes that the contribution so far of public participation has been mainly in relation to public debate and the assessment of public acceptance of complex issues, but he sees potential for integrating participatory processes more directly into decision-making processes. The last paper in this special issue, by Colin Finney, presents yet another, novel form of public participation, which centred on the World Wide Web as locus and method of participation. Finney’s account is important for the wider discussion of public participation because of both the innovative methodological design and the institutional embedding of the initiative analysed. It points to the relative limitations of public participation in policy- and decision-making systems that are predicated on expert input.
Future perspectives As public participation in science and technology policy- and decision- making continues to evolve and attract interest, it may rightly be asked what its wider significance is. At a general level, it seems to be the result of what may be referred to as ‘growing public ambivalence’ towards science, technology and related politics. This appears to stem from the pervasiveness of science and technology in modern society, which presents itself to society concurrently as both promise (of a more prosperous, easy life with more choices and greater individual and social freedoms) and peril (of increased environmental damage, risks, social discrimination and ethical dilemmas). Related to that, at a more specific level, it seems to represent a strategic response on the part of public institutions (in charge of governing scientific-technological developments) to the practical manifestations of this public ambivalence in the form of critical public debate, sociotechnological controversies and public resistance. We may then further ask what public participation actually amounts to. Is it no more than an ephemeral phenomenon that, not unlike a fashion, may grab the public’s attention for a while before disappearing again as quickly as it emerged? Or does it, in contrast, represent a profound, paradigmatic transformation of science and technology public policy- and decisionmaking? As of now, the jury is still out on this. While there are some indications that public participation has gained a certain momentum which could lead to change, it has as yet not moved centre-stage. It will be
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for future generations to judge the significance of the emergence of a participatory agenda in science and technology towards the end of this century. In the meantime, critics and supporters alike should be encouraged to discuss the issue further with a view to gaining a more in-depth understanding of both normative-theoretical and practical aspects of public participation. Such discussion, however, should not be expected to converge on one vision or model. Arguably, this would be unrealistic, given the richness of the meanings of ‘the public’, ‘participation’ and ‘democracy’ stemming from the diversity of intellectual, cultural, political and institutional traditions. Rather, what might be expected to emerge is a more thorough, context-specific understanding of the normative and pragmatic role of public participation vis-à-vis science and technology policy- and decision-making. It is hoped that this issue of Science and Public Policy will make a useful contribution to this discussion.
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