There are increasing calls internationally for the development of regulation and policies related to the rapidly growing nanotechnologies sector. As part of the process of policy formation, it is widely accepted that deliberative community engagement processes should be included, enabling publics to have a say about nanotechnologies, expressing their hopes and fears, issues and concerns, and that these will be considered as part of the policy process. The Australian Federal and State governments have demonstrated a commitment to these ideals, undertaking (...) a number of public engagement activities in recent years. However, despite promises that these community engagement activities will enable policy makers to identify complex and contested community attitudes, and that these will be included as part of the policy making process, a closer look at Australia’s engagement activities reveals something quite different. Through an analysis of a number of Australia’s nano-engagement activities, this paper demonstrates the limits of public engagement related to the development of nanotechnology related policies and regulation in Australia. Our analysis reveals the extent to which industry interests have captured policy makers and regulators, dissenting voices have been excluded from engagement processes, and engagement processes have not connected with actual policy making activities. Reflecting on these limits, this paper concludes with recommendations for improving public engagement processes related to nanotechnologies in Australia. (shrink)

Misunderstanding Science? offers a challenging new perspective on the public understanding of science. In so doing, it also challenges existing ideas of the nature of science and its relationships with society. Its analysis and case presentation are highly relevant to current concerns over the uptake, authority, and effectiveness of science as expressed, for example, in areas such as education, medical/health practice, risk and the environment, technological innovation. Based on several in-depth case-studies, and informed theoretically by the sociology of scientific knowledge, (...) the book shows how the public understanding of science questions raises issues of the epistemic commitments and institutional structures which constitute modern science. It suggests that many of the inadequacies in the social integration and uptake of science might be overcome if modern scientific institutions were more reflexive and open about the implicit normative commitments embedded in scientific cultures. (shrink)

An ongoing trend in technology policy has been to advocate participation. However, the author claims that lay citizens’ participation typically materializes in the form of a laboratory experiment at present. That is, lay participation as currently organized by professional participation experts under controlled conditions rarely is linked to public controversies, to the pursuit of political participation or to individual concerns. Derived from qualitative research on two citizen conferences, the author shows empirically that in practice, this laboratory participation leads to paradoxical (...) effects: successfully carrying out the experiment results in a systematic disappointment of the hope for gains in rationality typically attached to lay participation. Finally, the author relates this result to sociological debates about new modes of knowledge production. Under such a perspective, the author sees a paradoxical development: while society at large is becoming a laboratory in which knowledge is produced, participation practice is retreating from society into the lab. (shrink)

Despite the amount of public investment in nanotechnology ventures in the developed world, research shows that there is little public awareness about nanotechnology, and public knowledge is very limited. This is concerning given that nanotechnology has been heralded as ‘revolutionising’ the way we live. In this paper, we articulate why public engagement in debates about nanotechnology is important, drawing on literature on public engagement and science policy debate and deliberation about public policy development. We also explore the significance of timing (...) in engaging the public, and we make some suggestions concerning how to effectively engage publics. Our conclusions indicate the significance of scientific researchers, policy makers and representative consumer groupings in public reasoning towards a better public policy framework for debate about technological development. (shrink)

Over the past ten years there has been an increased awareness of the importance of stakeholder involvement and public participation in policy making. However, despite the general consensus that stakeholder participation is important within decision-making, the debate as to how that participation should be undertaken and how the various methods for participation should be evaluated continues. This paper presents a number of possible evaluation criteria, suggesting that the appraisal of both procedures and outcomes needs to include consideration of the legitimacy (...) of the procedure, in addition to the more common efficiency evaluation of procedures and outcomes. Together with experience from case studies, these criteria are then used to highlight the main promises and pitfalls of the various participation procedures. (shrink)

The contributions in this anthology address tensions that arise between reason and politics in a democracy inspired by the ideal of achieving reasoned agreement among free and equal citizens.

This article examines nanotechnology within the context of the public interest. It notes that though nanotechnology research and development investment totalled US$9.6 billion in 2005, the public presently understands neither the implications nor how it might be best governed. The article maps a range of nanotechnology dialogue activities under way within the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, and Australia. It explores the various approaches to articulating public interest matters and notes a shift in the way in which these governments, (...) on the whole, appear to be attempting to manage nanotechnology “risks.” It argues that open and transparent policy deliberations and extensive public discourse will be pivotal to protecting the public interest, gaining public trust and acceptance of nanotechnologies. The article concludes that though governing emerging technologies in the public interest is not a new concept, nanotechnology does present additional challenges that must be addressed by the guardians of the public interest. (shrink)

Whilst public engagement in decisions concerning science and technology is widely extolled, research shows that the application of deliberative democratic theory remains – at least in Europe – highly constrained. Science and technology policy requires closer attention to the wider context of governance and the compatibility of public deliberation with established modes of policy-making.

The significance of political-economic context for scientific citizenship is argued through an analysis of New Zealand’s Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. My intention is not to provide an account of why the commission came to the decisions it did but to illustrate how the political-economic context and the culture of regulatory science both exacerbate public concerns about unacknowledged uncertainty and commercial influence and make it difficult for those concerns to influence the outcomes of public dialogues. The discursive flexibility of science (...) as alternately predictive and provisional silences concerns about uncertainty, while a further interpretive choice of science as the autonomous activities of individuals unconstrained by political-economic context occludes the nature of concerns about commercial influence. Rather than the increasingly prevalent focus on processes of engagement, I argue that it is essential that researchers in this area attend to how public dialogue is placed in relation to the cultures and structures of regulatory science and neoliberalism. (shrink)

There is a growing call for greater public involvement in establishing science and technology policy, in line with democratic ideals. A variety of public participation procedures exist that aim to consult and involve the public, ranging from the public hearing to the consensus conference. Unfortunately, a general lack of empirical consideration of the quality of these methods arises from confusion as to the appropriate benchmarks for evaluation. Given that the quality of the output of any participation exercise is difficult to (...) determine, the authors suggest the need to consider which aspects of the process are desirable and then to measure the presence or quality of these process aspects. To this end, a number of theoretical evaluation criteria that are essential for effective public participation are specified. These comprise two types: acceptance criteria, which concern features of a method that make it acceptable to the wider public, and process criteria, which concern features of the process that are liable to ensure that it takes place in an effective manner. Future research needs to develop instruments to measure these criteria more precisely and identify the contextual and environmental factors that will mediate the effectiveness of the different participation methods. (shrink)

Imprecise definition of key terms in the “public participation” domain have hindered the conduct of good research and militated against the development and implementation of effective participation practices. In this article, we define key concepts in the domain: public communication, public consultation, and public participation. These concepts are differentiated according to the nature and flow of information between exercise sponsors and participants. According to such an information flow perspective, an exercise’s effectiveness may be ascertained by the efficiency with which full, (...) relevant information is elicited from all appropriate sources, transferred to all appropriate recipients, and combined to give an aggregate/consensual response. Key variables that may theoretically affect effectiveness—and on which engagement mechanisms differ—are identified and used to develop a typology of mechanisms. The resultant typology reveals four communication, six consultation, and four participation mechanism classes. Limitations to the typology are discussed, and future research needs identified. (shrink)

The article describes the founding principles, work program, and accomplishments of a Reference Group with both expert and layperson stakeholders for the corrosion of copper canisters in a proposed deep repository in Sweden for spent nuclear fuel. The article sets the Reference Group as a participatory effort within a broader context of stakeholder and public participation. It is argued that for the future it will be necessary to more precisely define the roles of different approaches to public participation in relation (...) to the actual societal decision-making procedures, and the issue is raised whether an increasing level of their institutionalization is required. In particular, the focus is set on the safe-space approach to stakeholder participation designed to suit situations where independence and autonomy are crucial elements for the participants. To illustrate this we compare experiences from Sweden and the Czech Republic. (shrink)

This volume brings together a group of distinguished thinkers who rearticulate and reconsider the foundations of democratic theory and practice in the light of the politics of identity/difference.