Robertus Hoppe

Rethinking the science-policy nexus: from knowledge utilization and science technology studies to types of boundary arrangements

The relationship between political judgment and science-based expertise is a troubled one. In the media three cliché images compete. The business-as-usual political story is that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, politics is safely ‘on top’ and experts are still ‘on tap’. The story told by scientists is that power-less but inventive scholars only ‘speak truth to power’. But there is plenty of room for a more cynical interpretation. It sees scientific advisers as following their own interests, unless better paid by other interests, and politicians as asking for advice only to support and legitimize their pre-formed political decisions. To the extent this cynical perspective gains ascendancy, politics and science lose credibility. If we think the three clichés cloak a more complex reality, we should embark upon a quest for other, possibly better models of the science/politics nexus. That is exactly the purpose of this article. Its claim is that a mutual transgression of the knowledge utilization strand of research in policy studies and the study of science, technology and society will provide us with more sophisticated images of science/politics boundary arrangements. Building upon Habermas’ well-known distinctions and Wittrock’s historical-institutional approach in the construction of a property space, eight models are presented. We should try to discover the conditions under which some of these models may claim greater verisimilitude. This may allow us to rethink the role of scientific expertise in policymaking and generate a model that guides experts and policymakers (and perhaps other stakeholders as well) in their day-to-day boundary work.ZusammenfassungDie Beziehung zwischen politischem Urteil und wissenschaftlicher Expertise ist problematisch. In den Medien wetteifern heute drei Klischees dazu. Allem gegenteiligen Anschein zum Trotz ist die Sichtweise der Politik gewöhnlich, dass sie sicher alle Fäden in der Hand hält und die Experten auf Abruf bereitstehen. Wissenschaftler vertreten dagegen die Auffassung, sie seien machtlose, wenngleich erfindungsreiche Gelehrte, die lediglich „den Mächtigen die Wahrheit sagen“. Daneben ist jedoch reichlich Raum für eine zynischere Betrachtungsweise, nach der wissenschaftliche Berater ihre eigenen Interessen verfolgen, sofern andere Interessen sie nicht besser bezahlen, und Politiker nur solchen Rat suchen, der ihre vorgefassten politischen Entscheidungen stützt und legitimiert. In dem Maße, wie diese zynische Sicht die Oberhand gewinnt, verlieren Politik und Wissenschaft an Glaubwürdigkeit. Wenn wir jedoch meinen, dass diese drei Klischees eine komplexere Realität verhüllen, dann sollten wir nach anderen, möglicherweise besseren Modellen für den Nexus zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik suchen. Genau darauf zielt dieser Artikel ab. Wir behaupten, dass ein beidseitiges Überschreiten des Forschungsansatzes zur Wissensanwendung in den Politikwissenschaften und in der wissenschaftlichen Betrachtung von Naturwissenschaft, Technologie und Gesellschaft hochauflösendere Bilder von den Verhältnissen an der Grenze zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik liefert. Wir präsentieren acht Modelle, aufbauend auf Habermas’ bekannten Unterscheidungen und Wittrocks historisch-instutionellem Ansatz zur Konstruktion eines Eigenschaftsraums. Wir sollten nach den Bedingungen suchen, unter denen manche dieser Modelle eine größere Wahrheitsnähe für sich beanspruchen können. Dies könnte uns ermöglichen, die Rolle wissenschaftlicher Expertise bei politischen Entscheidungsprozessen neu zu überdenken und ein Modell zu schaffen, an dem sich Experten und politische Entscheidungsträger (und vielleicht auch andere Beteiligte) in ihrer täglichen Arbeit im fraglichen Grenzbereich orientieren können.RésuméLa relation entre le jugement politique et l’expertise à fondement scientifique est problématique. Dans les médias, trois clichés se disputent la première place. Même si les apparences indiquent le contraire, le langage du monde politique montre que ce dernier tient les rênes et que les experts doivent répondre à l’appel. Le message diffusé par les scientifiques consiste à dire qu’ils sont des érudits certes sans pouvoir mais ingénieux, qui se contentent de «dire la vérité aux puissants». Mais ceci laisse assez de place à une interprétation plus cynique, suivant laquelle les conseillers scientifiques poursuivent leurs propres intérêts, à moins que d’autres intérêts ne les rémunèrent mieux; et les hommes politiques ne leur demandent leur avis que pour étayer et légitimer les décisions politiques qu’ils ont déjà prises. La politique et la science perdent de leur crédibilité à mesure que cette vision cynique gagne du terrain. Si nous pensons que ces trois clichés cachent une réalité plus complexe, il nous faudra chercher d’autres modèles, meilleurs si possible, pour la connexion entre science et politique. Tel est exactement l’objectif de cet article. Il affirme qu’une transgression mutuelle des filières d’utilisation du savoir dans la recherche en sciences politiques et l’étude de la science, de la technologie et de la socièté nous fournira un tableau plus complexe des rapports en présence sur les lignes de démarcation entre science et politique. Il présente huit modèles sur la base des distinctions bien connues d’Habermas et de l’approche historico-institutionnelle de Wittrock sur la construction d’un espace de propriété. Nous devrions rechercher les conditions dans lesquelles certains de ces modèles peuvent se targuer d’être très vraisemblables. Ceci nous permettrait de repenser le rôle de l’expertise scientifique dans la production politique et de créer un modèle capable de guider les experts et les politiques (et peut-être aussi d’autres intéressés) dans leur travail quotidien aux frontières de ces deux domaines.

Scientific advice and public policy: expert advisers’ and policymakers’ discourses on boundary work

This article reports on considerable variety and diversity among discourses on their own jobs of boundary workers of several major Dutch institutes for science-based policy advice. Except for enlightenment, all types of boundary arrangements/work in the Wittrock-typology (Social knowledge and public policy: eight models of interaction. In: Wagner P (ed) Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991) do occur. ‘Divergers’ experience a gap between science and politics/policymaking; and it is their self-evident task to act as a bridge. They spread over four discourses: ‘rational facilitators’, ‘knowledge brokers’, ‘megapolicy strategists’, and ‘policy analysts’. Others aspire to ‘convergence’; they believe science and politics ought to be natural allies in preparing collective decisions. But ‘policy advisors’ excepted, ‘postnormalists’ and ‘deliberative proceduralists’ find this very hard to achieve.ZusammenfassungDer niederländische Diskurs über die interdisziplinäre Perspektive von Beschäftigten in der wissenschaftlichen Politikberatung zeigt eine erhebliche Variationsbreite auf, die im Folgenden erörtert werden soll. Ausgehend von der „Wittrock-Typologie” (1991) sind—mit Ausnahme der erkenntnisbildenden Typen—alle Querschnittsansätze vertreten. Diejenigen, die eine grundsätzliche Divergenz zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik postulieren, sehen sich als Bindeglied zwischen diesen Polen. In entsprechenden Diskursen nehmen diese entweder die Position von „rationalen Unterstützern”, „Informationsvermittlern”, „Megapolitik-Strategen” oder „Politik-Analysten” ein. Andere wiederum postulieren eine Konvergenz zwischen Wissenschaft und Politik, die beide als natürliche Verbündete im Interesse kollektiver Entscheidungen sehen. Diese Konvergenz scheint aber aus Sicht der „postnormalen” Politikberatung bzw. der „deliberativen Prozeduralisten” kaum jemals erreichbar zu sein.RésuméCet article témoigne de la variété et diversité considérables de discours concernant leurs propres métiers, par les spécialistes du travail frontière de plusieurs instituts hollandais importants, spécialisés dans le conseil des règles scientifiques. Tous les types de l’agencement/travail frontière que l’on retrouve dans la typologie de Wittrock (1991) se produisent, sauf l’éclaircissement. Les “divergents” constatent un décalage entre les sciences et la législation et évidement, leur tâche est de combler cet écart. Ils développent quatre voies: “facilitateurs rationnels”, “courtiers en connaissances”, “méga stratège politique” et “analyste politique”. Par ailleurs, ceux qui prétendent à la “convergence”, croient que les sciences et la politique sont des alliés naturels et doivent prendre des décisions en commun. Cependant, à l’exception des “conseillers politiques”, les “post-normalistes” et les “procéduriers délibérateurs” trouvent qu’il est très difficile d’y parvenir.

Public Policy Systems Dealing with Ethically Contested Medical Technological Innovations

The questions tackled in this paper are: How do we deal with ethically contested medical innovations?, and Can we do better? First, I analyse how we deal with these problems by a division of labour and competitive boundary work between the medical R&D systems research and technological imperative, the medical professions claim to self-regulation and health policy-makers claim to political primacy and an incrementalist style of policy making. Second, turning to the normative question, I propose that policy-makers shift to a primacy of problems. Different types of problems demand different types of policy-making systems and styles. Thus, policy-makers could commence designing a health policy-making system robust enough to adequately deal with non-incremental but ethically contested medical innovations. I argue for medical innovation which also takes ethical, social and legal issues into account. This may be achieved by turning political competition through venue shopping into meta-governance through deliberate venue choice. This requires deliberative and participatory design elements in procedures and spaces for health technology assessment.

Birth of a Failure : Consequences of Framing ICT Projects for the Centralization of Inter-Departmental Relations

Government information system failures are filling not only newspapers but also parliamentary and administrative reports. This article deals with a case in which information and communication technologies (ICT)–related failure claimed by the media influenced the parliamentary agenda, and intra-governmental relations. Drawing on a narrative analysis of a Dutch parliamentary commission’s hearings, it argues that the way the issue was initially framed by the media and then adopted, un-problematized, by Parliament steered the direction of action toward specific administrative solutions, thus shaping the landscape of possible organizational alliances. The article recommends a proactive role of parliaments in framing ICT projects.

Towards the Comparative Study of Policy Work. A Rejoinder to Radin’s Views on Policy Analysis as “Advice to a Client”

Whoever invokes Machiavelli in their book title clouds their work in mist. This is also true for Radin’s Beyond Machiavelli sequels: Policy Analysis Comes of Age (Radin 2000); and Policy Analysis Reaches Midlife (Radin 2013). Since Machiavelli has as many interpretations as interpreters, “beyond Machiavelli” also means very different things, compounded by the multi-interpretability of “beyond”. My guess is that beyond teleology, idealism and ideology, beyond what rulers and administrators actually do, and beyond policy analysis as just “art and craft” (Wildavsky 1980) approximate Radin’s intentions. True to Lerner and Lasswell’s (1951) beginnings, she views policy analysis as a continuous professionalization and scientization project. The 1950s–1960s are its infancy, puberty and early adulthood; it “came of age” in the 1990s; and now it has reached midlife. In this drive for professionalization, policy analysis “goes beyond” politics as inter-group conflict; it adds rationality, prudence and considered experience or evidence to the conflictual or agonistic nature of everyday politics. Radin admits that “the policy analysis profession has not achieved the expectations that were embedded in its formation and, instead, decisionmakers revert [emphasis added] to ideological and political processes of the past”. If the ominous lifecycle or “womb to tomb” analogy in the subtitles is a foreboding, Radin’s next book may well be called: “Machiavelli Redux: Old Age and Death of Policy Analysis”! Yet this is not the path followed in her article in this issue. Here Radin does not go beyond Machiavelli. In a way that could have been predicted by institutionalist theorists of the policymaking process, Radin analyzes how policy analysis, originally created to break bureaupolitics and politics as party-political and interest group conflict, was “gobbled up” by the structure and culture of American democracy. And hence fragmented from one, clearly defined policy analytic unit at the top of federal government (agencies), to a “field of many voices, approaches and interests”. Paradoxically, she shows how policy analysis as an activity that attempted to maximize focus on policy substance and minimize attention to organizational survival, self-maintenance and control, gradually became subservient to exactly those self-serving goals. Ironically, in The Prince, Machiavelli advises an aristocratic or monarchical “topcat” how to grab, maintain and hold on to power over a region. Foucault showed that, in later times, monarchs and other governing authorities started to care about the well-being of the population itself, i.e. shift from “power politics” to “policy”, under the label of different modes of “governmentality” Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, 2016 Vol. 18, No. 3, 302–306, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13876988.2016.1175192

Mark B. Brown, Science in Democracy. Expertise, Institutions, and Representation

In January 2011, German science policy advisers at federal level, the 2008 appointed German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, produced a cautious but positive review of pre-implantation genetic screening (http://www.leopoldina.org/en/policy-advice/recommendations-and-statements/national-recommendations/praeimplantationsdiagnostik-pid.html - accessed 21 April, 2011). Immediately, the advice was attacked as an example of politics-contaminated, instead of value-free science. But simultaneously, many seasoned science policy advisers came to the rescue and defended an advice that clearly spoke to the present political debate; and thus also addressed normative and pragmatic issues. The response to keep science ‘value-free’ is the typical tradition of science politics under high modernity in a political system of representative democracy. Scientific experts are seen as ‘delegates’ of citizens’ best judgment on the issue; and the delegation occurs under public accountability of elected legislative bodies or an executive accountable to such bodies. But at present, democratization of expertise, public engagement or direct public participation in science is the more popular and dominant response. This is partly rooted in social and political theories arguing a shift from government to governance. If the state is unable to represent all public concerns and questions involving the uses of science and technology of a fragmented and inchoate ‘protopublic’ (Dewey), more directly participatory and deliberative routes for (individual) citizen influence become attractive. Therefore, an unlikely alliance of egalitarian STS scholars, radical analysts of science, democratic theorists, and promoters of science-driven industrial innovation and some state bureaucrats have come to effectively promote more public engagement and participation in science (Caswill 2010; Wesselink and Hoppe 2011). In a sentence: science is to become more democratic, and democracy more scientific (In ‘t Veld 2010).