Darrin Durant

Models of democracy in social studies of science

Science and Technology Studies (STS) offers contrasting normative visions of how to democratically manage the relations between experts and larger publics in contemporary liberal democracies. This lack of uniformity has not stopped advocates of participatory politics from implying that to be anything other than staunch defenders of ‘the public’ is to be illiberal and undemocratic. But if we turn to political philosophy, part of liberal democratic theory is the attempt to theorize how deliberation might include limits to public discourse. This paper treats the debate between Sheila Jasanoff and Brian Wynne, on one side, and Harry Collins and Robert Evans, on the other, as representative of opposing normative sensibilities within STS. Jasanoff and Wynne claim that widespread deliberation is the democratic means for protecting publics from experts who colonize public meanings. Collins and Evans caution that a failure to draw distinctions between publics and experts, or politics and expertise, undermines expertise and is impractical for democracy. By relating both of these approaches to prominent positions and traditions within political philosophy, I aim to illuminate different senses of democracy. Jasanoff and Wynne appear to have the normative upper hand, but only because their approach dovetails with a politics of identity, which is widespread in contemporary political discourse. However, it is an unsatisfactory view of the grounds of public discourse. I argue that Collins and Evans work within a different tradition, that of John Rawls and liberal egalitarianism. Explicating these links helps to disrobe the implication that Collins and Evans are anti-democratic in their effort to impose restrictions on public engagement with expertise.

Public Participation in the Making of Science Policy

This paper argues that, because Science and Technology Studies (STS) lost contact with political philosophy, its defense of public participation in policy-making involving technical claims is normatively unsatisfactory. Current penchants for political under-laboring and normative individualism are critiqued, and the connections between STS and theorists of deliberative democracy are explored. A conservative normativity is proposed, and STS positions on public participation are discussed in relation to current questions about individual and group rights in a liberal democracy. The result is avenues to normatively defend public participation, by analogy with identity politics and Habermas, while also theorizing its limits.

Burying globally, acting locally: Control and co-option in nuclear waste management

Is nuclear waste disposal the Achilles heel of the global nuclear industry or its best opportunity for reinvention? The ‘industry in retreat’ thesis depicts nuclear elites and supporting policy institutions as limited by problems of local autonomy and public consultation. This paper outlines an alternative thesis, showing how nuclear boundary organizations seek to control the public, maximize their organizational discretion, and discursively manage the accountability and legitimacy deficits common to contemporary forms of governance. To illustrate the thesis I review the national programs for nuclear waste disposal in the USA, UK, Sweden, and Canada. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Managing expertise: performers, principals, and problems in Canadian nuclear waste management

In discussions of science policy, an ever-present task is that of mapping the ways policy actors construct competing boundaries between science and politics. This paper proposes a novel combination of two approaches, which, when combined, offer a mutually reinforcing window into science policy. The two approaches are David Gustons principal-agent theory, which conceptualizes science policy as the problem of delegation, and Stephen Hilgartners dramaturgical perspective on science advice, wherein science advice is treated as performance. An analysis of Canadas Nuclear Waste Management Organization displays the promise of combining the two perspectives. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Radwaste in Canada: a political economy of uncertainty

Canada’s Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) proposed Adaptive Phased Management (APM) as an approach for managing used nuclear fuel in November 2005, and this approach was approved by government in June 2007. APM involves either disposing of or storing used nuclear fuel in geological formations, but leaves decisions about options and timing to political contest. Site assessment processes are now underway, with site selection expected within 30 years. This paper shows how APM developed out of repeated public policy failures and decreasing political support for nuclear projects, including at early site assessments (1978–1981), when the mandate for a public inquiry was set (1989), and at a public inquiry into a waste disposal concept (in 1996–1997). I argue that the current NWMO approach was shaped by these failures, but in an ambiguous fashion. APM both incorporates critics’ demands and thus limits the institutional discretion of elites, but also converts those demands into less challenging kinds of questions. Concerns about the origins of options are being translated into concerns about the management of consequences. The extent to which one accepts the scope of assumptions embedded in APM is the extent to which the expansion of nuclear power itself is reinforced.

Simulative politics: the case of nuclear waste disposal

According to Ingolfur Blühdorn’s theory of post-ecologist politics, attempts to promote ecological sustainability and enact an authentic democratic politics are highly unlikely to succeed and are more a performance of seriousness than a set of authentic demands. Affluent post-industrial consumer societies can now only produce ‘simulations’ of sustainability and democracy, aiming only at reassurance. Using the case of policymaking about high-level nuclear waste disposal, it is argued that while Blühdorn’s description of democratic politics is accurate, critics are right when they argue that his theory is problematic as an explanation because it rejects any appeal to the intentions and interests of strategising actors. It is shown how the deficiency can be rectified by using Zygmunt Bauman’s account of how power can flow from being fluid and in control of uncertainty. When the conditions giving rise to simulative democracy are expanded to include such power relations, simulative politics becomes a more firmly grounded concept and maybe an even more portable concept than Blühdorn supposes.