Questions of Design

There are many tensions, contradictions and trade-offs in the design of participatory process. Questions over ‘who?’, ‘when?’, ‘where?’ and ‘how?’ come especially to the fore [E]. In particular, there is the matter of who initiates, frames, designs, organises and interprets processes of engagement in science governance [M]?

The reconciliation of these factors will to some extent be a matter of perspective and context. However, some general points relating to detailed issues of design arising in discussion at the Seminar, can be organized around the following specific questions: Who to include? What to prioritise? How much resource to assign?

At what scale to engage? When to engage? What is independence? Who does the framing? How to convey outcomes?

Each of these questions will be here taken in turn – with specific attention to the concrete, positive and practical responses that began to emerge in discussion at the Seminar. Interestingly, these responses often involve attention to the neglected prior question over ‘why’ engagement is of interest in the first place.

Who to include? The appropriate number of participants to include is a classic example of context dependency. Numbers may range from half a dozen people in a focus group, to the thousands of citizens involved in some exercises organized by the ‘America Speaks’ initiative [G].

Large numbers may ease questions over representativeness, whilst posing problems of cost and the raising issues concerning the quality of the associated deliberations. There is no final answer to the problem of inclusion [G].

A particularly intractable issue in this regard concerns the appropriate means by which to represent the interests of future generations [G]. In the end, there is no final definitively legitimate answer to the challenge of partitioning and recruiting the relevant perspectives to represent.

Perhaps the best way to handle this involves being clear and realistic right from the outset about the goals for the process and by adopting a pattern of inclusion that is appropriate to this [F].

Particular care should be taken to avoid overblown claims or aspirations – or simplistic criticisms – concerning representativeness. Participants themselves may have a role in this aspect of design.

In the end, the demands on the type and degree of representativeness and the quality of deliberation will vary with the nature, complexity and intractability of an issue, the availability of time and resources and the institutional context. What to Prioritise?

Is there a prior role for participation in the framing of questions for science, or is there a prior role for science in providing the evidence base for participation [E]? This raises issues concerning the relationships between ‘sound science’, precaution and participation [G]. It also invites questions over whether participation is about the effective communication of science to the public, or about communication of public interests and values to science [E].

This is the subject of much continuing dispute in the risk community [J]. Here, there are particularly important practical implications for the sequencing of expert and participatory inputs [E].

Another dimension of this challenge concerns the relative treatment afforded to different forms of knowledge: systematic, experiential and anecdotal (concerning the ‘life world’ of participants) [G].

One way to address this, is to be as clear as possible about the primary purpose of the participatory exercise: normative (eg: to enhance democracy), substantive (eg: to enhance knowledge) or instrumental (eg: to enhance trust) [I]. Focusing on principles like equity, inclusion, openness, legitimacy and representativeness, a normative democratic aim highlights the prior role of participatory process with respect to scientific procedure.

An instrumental aim, by contrast, is preoccupied with asserting prior framing in terms of the particular pre-ordained aims, reputations or scientific bodies of knowledge in which it is desired to foster trust.

Finally, a substantive aim concentrates on eliciting salient knowledges of all kinds, such as to illuminate uncertainties and so inform more robust decisions (like more sustainable, precautionary or protective outcomes in the field of risk governance).

In each case, there are clear implications for the framing of the process itself, as well as the relevant ‘evidence base’.

How much resources to spend?

The broad tension between the Lisbon agenda on competitiveness and the Governance White Paper agenda on participation noted at the outset of this report [I] underscores the important problem of proportionality over the time and resources consumed in the science governance process.

This applies in relation both to the time and resources expended in supporting the process itself, and in terms of the scale and distribution of burdens for different social actors arising from the recommended policy outcomes, compared with other possible courses of action.

For instance, the degree of stringency under which to regulate hazardous chemicals raises questions over the proportionality between the effects on the productivity and competitiveness in certain areas of the chemicals industry on the one hand, and the impacts on human health and the environment on the other.

An outcome of the Seminar in this regard, is that a ‘principle of responsibility’ can help in striking the appropriate balance [J].

Here, it is recognised that judgements over proportionality are an intrinsic part of the responsibility of all those involved – including those involved in research and innovation. It involves the assertion of more rigorous procedures for social accountability, applying both to the scientific community and to other actors in the governance process.

In this sense, participatory process and responsible science are not substitutes, but mutually reinforcing elements. Beyond this, a final arbiter of proportionality lies in general political discourse itself.

Here, it is part of the communication process to be open about the key institutional drivers in any given area of science governance – including exercises in public engagement.

Accordingly contrasting balances of proportionality may be associated with the framing of initiatives driven by the science community, governance institutions or science-society researchers [R].

At what scale?

What is the appropriate governance level [E] and geographical scale at which to engage in participation: supranational, national, regional, local [G]? Whilst participation is widely regarded as unproblematic at a local level, the ‘scaling up’ of such processes raises successively more challenging issues of organizational logistics and institutional design.

For instance, as the number and diversity of interested parties rises, so it becomes less easy to resolve questions of representativeness and inclusion. Likewise, the typically increasing stakes and complexity and the entrenching of vested interests at higher levels of governance, also serve to compound the challenge.

These dilemmas are particularly acute at the supranational level at which the European Commission’s governance role is situated. At a practical level – and depending on the country – engaging at a pan-European level can be either an aid or an obstacle to securing motivation by participants (in Italy a European dimension or association is an asset, in the UK less so) [G].

One response to this dilemma of ‘scaling up’ is to aim for provision for long term continuity in nested multi-scale processes of engagement, rather than one-off individual exercises [F].

The role of the Internet is likely to be especially important in this regard [I]. There should be explicit interlinkage of different processes at different levels of governance and measures to ensure deliberation and reflection over these links as part of the processes themselves.

When to engage?

When is the appropriate stage in the policy cycle to prioritise public engagement? Is it early on in the governance process, when institutional commitments are open to framing but when implications remain unclear?

Or is it later on, when the implications are less uncertain, but the potential for real influence is more limited [G]? This is partly resolved by the injunction above concerning the ‘multi-level’ nature of engagement – applying at all stages in the governance process [F].

Where participation is addressed at the earliest stages of science governance, and if the implications are thus regarded as prohibitively uncertain, then this can be resolved by framing participation in terms of the driving purposes and visions behind the research or innovation activities in question, rather in terms of some particular or ambiguous viewpoint on uncertain implications [J].

What is independence?

Further issues are raised around the notion of ‘independence’ as a means to legitimacy and trust in public engagement. Is this best achieved through claims to some kind of institutional neutrality or transcendent objectivity (in which case the emphasis may be on mainstream views)?

Or is independence more a matter of pluralistic inclusion of a full range of perspectives? In this latter case, it is clear that the autonomy of participatory exercises to influence their own framing (discussed in Section 3.2.2), becomes an especially important feature.

Where notions of independence embody recognition of the need to counterbalance prevailing patterns of privilege and power, then it may be perfectly legitimate deliberately disproportionately to attend to some of the more marginal or ‘excluded’ (rather than conventional mainstream) viewpoints [M].

The logic and spirit of public engagement requires that the response here must inevitably involve some shift away from notions of independence and legitimacy embodied in transcendent notions of authority, expertise or objectivity and towards forms of independence and legitimacy conceived in more grounded and plural terms – arising from the engaging of a diversity of real world interests and perspectives.

But (as discussed in Section 2.2.3 above) this is qualified by recognizing that structured  participatory processes are not usually effective at resolving fundamental conflicts of ideology – hese are most appropriately (and effectively) resolved by broader political engagement [G].

However, since some element of value-based difference is inevitable in science governance, public engagement is best structured around explicit deliberation over the salient differences and commonalities, rather than in haggling over contending knowledge claims [K].

Where participation does involve strong prior commitments on the part of certain participating interests, it is important to ensure that representatives are allowed sufficient space to deliberate and negotiate with as much freedom as possible from any prior sectoral commitments.

However, this also needs to be balanced with care for the maintaining of sufficiently high quality communication with the constituencies represented, such that these are able to be brought along with the process [G].

Who does the framing?

What are the relative functions of structured design and spontaneous emergent order in participation? In particular, what is the appropriate role of stakeholders in the design of the engagement process itself?

Perhaps most pertinently, what is the appropriate role of sponsoring governance agencies, such as the European Commission? The more highly structured the process, the more open it is to undue influence by (and strategic behaviour on the part of) vested interests like sponsors, practitioners and researchers.

The more spontaneous and open the structure, the less accountable it is to wider political processes and the more open to interests (and strategic behaviour) of those particular participating groups who happen to have been included [M].

This underscores the difficulties associated with injunctions to provide for strong stakeholder [F] – and even policy maker [K] – involvement in the design and framing of participatory process. With too little, the process risks irrelevance or illegitimacy, with too much, it risks capture [K].

It is important to remember here that, in the end, the outcomes of public engagement will always be open to challenge. So even the most perfect design will provide no final defense of legitimacy [K].

This further diminishes any pressures for the overly rigid or complex structuring of processes of engagement [N][O]. As discussed earlier (Section 3.2.2) and above concerning ‘independence’, one way to address the intrinsically recursive relationship between framing and participation in public engagement is by ensuring a high degree of autonomy from initiating or sponsoring bodies.

Within this, there are likely to be benefits from an explicit separation between distinct but interlinked functions of broad stakeholder oversight of design and wider inclusion in the participatory exercise itself [R].

How to convey outcomes?

What should be the form of the outputs from public engagement to the wider policy making process? Should results be presented in a fashion that ‘opens up’ or ‘closes down’ subsequent discussion [G]? In other words, is closure around particular policy recommendations best achieved inside – and as part of – a participatory process?

Or is the forming of final commitments – the taking of decisions – best conducted in the wider governance discourse, in a fashion that is separately accountable (but informed by) the participatory process [G]? In other words, under what conditions is it preferable for public engagement to ‘open up’ or ‘close down’ political discussion?

The answer here must lie – at least in part – in observing that public engagement can properly play a role in both respects. This requires more attention to the explicit distinguishing and sequencing of different engagement processes oriented respectively towards opening up and closing down [G].

This said, it must be observed (following discussion in Section 3.1.3) that there tends in existing science governance to be a rather disproportionate instrumental preoccupation with processes for ‘closing down’ – for ‘taking’ rather than informing the ‘making’ of decisions and policies [O][I].

Here, the From ‘Science and Society’ to ‘Science in Society’ 3: imperative to provide clear links between participation and representative democracy might suggest rather greater attention to the ‘opening up’ function than has hitherto been the case [P].

Ends