1 Scientific and/or technical quality, relevant to the topics addressed by the call
1.1 Concept and objectives
The following two pages provide an overview of our research project by summarizing background, main research questions, objectives, criteria for case selection, theoretical as well as the methodological approach.
1.1.1 Project Summary
The perceived democratic deficit at national and EU levels is a much discussed and lamented policy problem of our times. Citizens, policy makers and social scientists often call for citizen participation for reasons of democratic legitimacy and effectiveness.
One important field in which – because of partly dramatic technological controversies (e.g. nuclear energy, BSE, genetically modified organisms, human embryonic stem cells) – citizen participation has been vigorously claimed in the last 20 years is science and technology policy. In many countries but also in the European Commission this area witnessed the introduction of Participatory Technology Assessment (PTA) procedures.
The “litmus test” of Participatory Technology Assessment (PTA) procedures, and of citizen participation more generally, is their impact on actual policy-making. But can PTA really keep its promises and increase the influence of citizen voices on policy-making? What in actual fact is the impact of PTA procedures on political decision-making? And: How, concluding from the example of PTA, can we increase the impact of citizen participation on national and European levels and thus enhance citizens’ democratic ownership?
So far PTA has been evaluated mainly with regards to the question whether its procedures have been managed according to certain normative process criteria and efficiency, but little on their impact on policymaking. This project sets out to fill this research gap and to study comparatively the impact of PTA processes on policy-making in seven member countries, one non-member country, the European Commission, the OECD and the Holy See representing the Catholic Church.
The project “Impact of Citizen Participation on Decision-Making in a Knowledge Intensive Policy Field” (CIT-PART) wants to gain comprehensive knowledge about the factors that further and hamper the effect of citizen participation on actual policy-making. From that we want to draw conclusions about the potential impact of institutionalised citizen participation on the EU level. In this way we would like to make a contribution to remedy the perceived democratic deficit of EU policy-making.
In order to answer this question we will analyse how various political systems – including civil servants and elected politicians – in the late 1990s and early 2000s dealt with the policy problem of xenotransplantation (XTP).
XTP stands for the transplantation of animal organs, tissues or cells into humans. Its advocates perceive XTP as a very promising research field since it could possibly help to remedy the serious shortage of transplants from human donors. Yet the technology is highly controversial, since its opponents insist that it involves too many risks – most prominently infection and potential pandemics – and ethical questions.
XTP provides a good example to study comparatively the impact on citizen participation on policy-making. Firstly – as many contested modern innovations in science and technology, and in biotechnology in particular – XTP research involves complex questions of risk, uncertainty and ethics. Secondly, political systems in the late 1990s and early 2000s worldwide had to deal at the same time and under time pressure with the problems raised by XTP research. However, different political systems applied different institutional answers to tackle this policy problem. These institutional answers to address the problem involved citizen participation and expert based policy advice and resulted in different XTP policies.
We use a number of criteria to select our cases for comparison. Firstly, the sample had to provide sufficient variety regarding citizen participation in XTP policy. It therefore includes countries applying Participatory Technology Assessment (PTA) processes and countries in which XTP policies were supported by standard expert advice. Secondly, we wanted a sample with different XTP policies including permissive and restrictive XTP policies, but also countries that chose no XTP policy at all. Thirdly, we aimed at a sample with a variety of political systems. Following these criteria we selected seven EU member states (Austria, Denmark, Italy, Latvia, Netherlands, Sweden, UK) and the non-member state Canada. Moreover, we also selected international organisations: the OECD, since it was critically involved in setting standards for XTP regulation and is an example for an administration in an international organisation facing the problem to deal with a variety of differing member states’ policies in this area. Similar to this the EU faces the additional challenge of having to coordinate member states’ policies. Therefore we will study XTP policies of the EU, enabling us to draw conclusions from our cases for EU policy-making. Finally we also included in our sample the Holy See as international organisation, since it addressed the issue of XTP actively and opted for a permissive policy.
Adopting a theoretical position of “social practices” we assume that the impact of citizen participation on decision-making is in not only dependent on the quality of the PTA process itself – a factor that has been frequently researched but also on practices of policy makers – including civil servants and elected politicians as well – in which PTA is embedded in. We assume that PTA has to fit distinct routinized everyday practices of policymaking. Such practices are, e.g., practices of inclusion and negotiation (gaining support from other policy makers, stakeholders, “the” public), of exclusion and confidentiality, of gaining knowledge, expertise or constructing policy models, of working with texts (files, records, reports, bills, laws), and – in particular – of following formal legal and informal procedures. In our research we will therefore ask: What are – given decision-making under uncertainty, information overload, as well as time and cost pressure – everyday routine practices of XTP policy making in a particular political system? What is the role and the impact of PTA on policy-making in such a contested policy field? In other words: Who is involved in XTP policy making, with what kind of practices, at which stage? And in particular, how are citizens involved?
After having addressed these questions we will systematically compare our cases and identify similarities and differences of practices in XTP policy. The outcome of our research will be a policy analysis and recommendations for research policy, technology policy and health policy, including a directory and typology of social practices of policy-making that can guide participatory policy-making because they are empirically derived from a cross-comparative analysis of empirical material of actual social practices of policy-making. Thus, we will be able to draw conclusions about promises and pitfalls of citizen participation in policy-making at national and European levels.
Following from our theoretical approach CIT-PART will apply qualitative methods of empirical research including an analysis of published and grey literature, in particular on existing results, documentation and evaluations of PTA and expert based technology assessment (TA) processes. Moreover we will carry out document analysis of relevant XTP policy documents. Other important methods are semi structured, face to face interviews and focus group discussions with participants in PTA and TA processes, XTP experts and policy makers. Interviews and focus group discussions will be recorded, transcribed and analysed utilizing computer-assisted qualitative analysis (ATLAS-ti).
CIT-PART involves an interdisciplinary team of researchers from political science, sociology, communication studies, public law, social psychology and European ethnology, with wide research experience in the field of policy analysis, European studies, PTA, and ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) of biotechnology in general and XTP in particular.