Knowledge, Power, and Participation in Environmental Policy Analysis

Rob Hoppe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138511446
• eBook ISBN: 9781351325707
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This volume probes practical dilemmas and competing re- search perspectives in environmental policy analysis. Scholars working in different fields, research traditions, societies, and policy domains offer significant insights into the processes and consequences of environmental policy making.

Part 1, "Coping with Boundaries, " describes present-day conflict between experts and greater public participation in environmental policy. It shows that the institutionalization of increasingly complex environmental problems has led to a conflict between technocracy and democracy. Part 2, "The Transnational Challenge, " examines modes of cooperation between grassroots movements, scientists, and regional authorities in the United States and Canada. These and other modes of cooperation laid the foundations for the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, increased the effectiveness of air pollution treaties, and increased climate change. Part 3, "Bio-Hazards: Policies and Paralysis, " deals with environmental prob-lems closest to the everyday concerns of the public at large because they have immediate implications for food safety and other values. Part 4, "The Citizens' Perspective, " focuses on citizen vis-a-vis environmental policy, noting that in order to make policies work citizens must be willing and able to participate in policy-making and cooperate in implementing environmental choices. Part 5, "Confronting Ordinary and Expert Knowledge, " explores opportunities and constraints affecting public participation in evaluation of science. Part 6, "Developments in Research Programming, " addresses such questions as whether scientists still have opportunities to do the research they want without being interrupted or disturbed by policy makers and other stakeholders. Part 7, "Policy Sciences' Aspirations, " explores different avenues for improving environmental policy.

Volume twelve in the PSRA series should inspire further investigations of the relations among knowledge, power, and participation in environmental policy. It will be of timely interest to environmentalists, policy-makers, scholars, and the general public.

1

Knowledge, Power, and Participation in Environmental Policy Analysis: An Introduction

M. Hisschemöller, R. Hoppe, W. N. Dunn and J. R. Ravetz

Introduction

We live in a world that at once expects much of science, but comprehends little of its actual role in solving problems that lie at the intersection of scientific and technical knowledge, political power, and participation in public policy. Although many still cling to the naive assumption that the cognitive achievements of the natural and social sciences assure their social utility, the practical effects of scientific and technical knowledge are less direct than is commonly supposed. As Jevons suggests in his preface to Wealth from Knowledge (1972: xii), the sciences and professions are perhaps less the parents of technology and other vehicles for practical problem solving than anonymous well-wishers who send their gifts through the mail.

Knowledge, power, and participation are absolutely central to the understanding of any policy. But it is the area of environmental policy issues where, from the 1970s onwards, an impressive knowledge base has become available across various disciplines and research traditions. The process of rethinking scientific and political rationality is evident in developments within converging fields such as political science, including international relations, public administration and implementation studies; the utilization of knowledge tradition in the policy sciences; the sociology of science and technology; technology and integrated environmental assessment; and philosophy of science.

Rethinking Scientific and Political Rationality

The rethinking of scientific and political rationality is an unavoidable consequence of contradictions manifesting themselves fully in this stage of late capitalism and liberal democracy.

The first contradiction relates to the internal and external functioning of science. Internally, science is about the systematic and methodical suspension of belief, the falsification and corroboration of hypotheses, and progress toward the regulatory ideal of a changing and ever fallible truth. Externally, in the world of political and social practice, science shows its face as the authoritative, infallible, and incorrigible expert. In this image, science is Baumann’s“legislator of truth” who, in Aaron Wildavsky’sapt words, “speaks truth to power.”

The internal/external contradiction translates into a second, political one. As scientific expertise is more and more frequently called upon by politicians and policymakers to solve complex, sometimes highly controversial, technical and social problems, politics and policymaking appear to be more science-driven and expert-dominated. Although a democratic façade can be upheld by formally ascribing to scientific experts an advisory status, the more successful these “advisors” are, the less democratic and more technocratic the system of governance becomes. Some observers, therefore, argue that the policy sciences project was fatally flawed from the beginning. One cannot advocate the professionalization of the policy sciences, while, at the same time, argue the case for a democracy in which the policy sciences have a leading role. The successful introduction of the policy sciences and policy analysis into politics and policymaking is in effect a means for fostering technocracy.

Others resist such a pessimistic conclusion and draw support for a more optimistic view from a third contradiction. The more politicians and policymakers call upon scientists to contribute authoritatively-perfected scientific truths, the more these same politicians and policymakers hear different truths that are fallible, contested, and imperfect. Expertise not only speaks in many tongues; it also makes frequently contradictory truth claims. Add to this that lay people are, after all, perspicacious enough to be aware of the prominent roles played by scientists in several twentieth-century catastrophes including the Holocaust, the nuclear and post-nuclear arms races, the global ecological crisis, and the totalitarian horrors of scientific socialism. The practical consequence is a loss of public and political credibility induced by a manifest gulf between the traditional image of scientific expertise (the “legislator of truth”) and the fact that well-meaning but differently trained experts regularly offer a panoply of conflicting knowledge claims. The resulting crisis, in both the ideological and political domains, is perhaps the main reason why so many politicians, policymakers, and policy scientists are rethinking scientific and political rationality and the role of expert knowledge in solving the pressing social problems of our time.

Diverging Perspectives in Environmental Policy Analysis

The contradictions articulated in the process of rethinking scientific and political rationality are addressed differently by colleagues working from various disciplinary perspectives and research traditions. What can be witnessed is a huge diversity of research problems, concepts, and approaches—even conflicting episte-mologies. But what they have in common is their struggle with at least that part of the contradictions which is related to the rethinking of scientific and political rationality. This is what makes them valuable for exploring the nexus of knowledge, power, and participation.

Political Science

In political science we are observing a shift from (neo)positivist and critical rationalist notions, the “fact-value dichotomy” in particular, to an emphasis on usable and ordinary knowledge, a revival of the (Lasswellian) notion of “policy sciences of democracy,” efforts to reformulate the idea of “policy expertise,” and a recognition that participation has “epistemic” functions (creating new knowledge) as well as a “political” one (distributing political power). The study of environmental policy has inspired policy scientists to address the contradiction between democratic theory and technocratic practice (in this volume the contributions by Fischer, by Hisschemöller and Hoppe, and by Woodhouse and Nieusma). The study of environmental policy issues tends to bring about a convergence between research areas in political science that have stood apart for most of the twentieth century. The implications for political theory have drawn attention especially since the nuclear power issue provoked a flow of publications in the 1980s (for example, Dahl, 1985; Fischer, 1990).

International Relations Studies

More recently, the study of international environmental regimes shows a convergence with policy studies, especially because of the difficulties in “implementing” treaties related to global environmental problems such as the depletion of the ozone layer and climate change (Young and Underdal, 1997; Hisschemöller and Gupta, 1999). Here, the topic is not so much the contradiction between democracy and technocracy but how to improve the diffusion and utilization of scientific knowledge as to facilitate the formation and development of international environmental regimes. The merger with policy studies is reflected in concepts such as “social learning” by Clark and others (Social Learning Group, forthcoming in 2001) and “epistemic communities,” a concept introduced in international relations studies by Haas (e.g., 1992). This concept goes back to Holzner (1968:60-71) and has been cited in a number of articles on science policy, including Holzner, Dunn, and Shahidullah (1987). Regime studies also link issues related to knowledge and participation by stakeholder groups (in this volume Botts, Muldoon, Botts and Moltke, and Liberatore) or participants from developing countries (Gupta, this volume).

Knowledge Utilization Studies

The topics addressed in political science build on a tradition among policy scientists and sociologists that can be referred to as knowledge utilization studies. The main questions for scholars working in this field are how to understand and explain knowledge use in public policy.

In many publications, the underlying assumption is that knowledge from the sciences (natural and social) is underused or not used at all. The Two Cultures theory (Snow, 1959; Caplan, 1979) explains this phenomenon by pointing out that science and policy represent different cultures that are hard to relate. From this perspective, knowledge and power do not easily merge. As to whether this is considered unfortunate, that depends on how one thinks of the social function of science. The enlightenment model boils down to a trickle-down theory of knowledge use, or “knowledge creep” (Weiss 1981). In their universities and R&D labs scientists think and experiment; mature results are published in learned journals and books. Mediated by popularizing scientists or scientific journalists, they enter the world of administrators, public officials, and politicians. What they do with the scientific information is up to them. Hopefully it is enlightening; at worst it is ignored (perhaps at their peril). But neither situation is the concern of science.

Others have argued that knowledge is being used to the extent that the information provided fits in with the interests and values of the user. Rich (1991) asserts that policymakers have a limited interest in searching for information, as they are unable to handle new and often contradictory knowledge claims. The explanation for this phenomenon is provided by the concept of bounded rationality (Simon, 1957). Decision makers tend to ask for and use information from knowledge providers immediately linked to their own agency. Only if they sense that the knowledge they need is not available in their immediate network, or if they are uncertain, will they ask for knowledge from university and other research institutions outside their own agency. According to this view, the primary social and political function of knowledge is to confirm and strengthen already established positions and views.

This perspective, when taken to a macro level of analysis, fits in very well with a research-and-analysis-as-intellectual ammunition conception of knowledge use (Lindblom, 1968; Coleman, 1979), which has been labeled as the adversarial model (Wittrock, 1991). The core assumption of this model is that politics is a pluralist interest group struggle involving partisan mutual adjustment (Lindblom, 1965). Processes of partisan mutual adjustment work like a selection machine of scientific arguments for already fixed political stands. Each and every interest will mobilize its own science-based expertise to bolster its case. Policy analysts are like lawyers, and their business is advocacy. Policy analysis may enrich the quality of political debate, provided that all interests have their own expert. To the extent that controversies maximize the mobilization of expertise, they may be conducive to the utilization of knowledge. In the adversarial model, separate actors defend or strengthen their respective positions in the short run, while in the long run policy-oriented learning may result (Sabätier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993). The concept of policy-oriented learning is based on the idea that—beyond political strife—the political community eventually learns how to best solve its problems.

Whereas Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith build upon the American pluralist model of policymaking based on advocacy coalitions between policymaking agencies and interest groups, other approaches to learning recast partisan mutual adjustment along social and culturally determined institutional lines, as a struggle for cultural (Douglas and Wildavsky, 1983; Rayner, 1991) or discursive hegemony. Political scientists and sociologists who work from a discourse perspective do not take an a priori position with respect to the kind of cleavages (based on interest, culture, or other) between competing policy and knowledge claims. They are more interested to empirically observe and understand the dynamics that shape knowledge for policy and policy for knowledge (Hajer, 1995; Wynne, 1994; Shove and Redclift, this volume). Therefore, these authors do not endorse general expectations or theories with respect to systems’ (in)abilities for policy-oriented learning. Worth mentioning are those who, instead of focusing on policy learning, point attention to the phenomenon of social and political unlearning, especially Lindblom (1997) in his discussion of cognitive impairment. In the same direction, Ravetz (1993) discusses “socially constructed ignorance” as an inevitable consequence of the structuring of debate and inquiry.

It should be noticed that adversarial, policy-learning, and discursive approaches might reflect a specific view on the merger of knowledge and power. This is in so far as they share the methodological observation that policies can be treated as hypotheses (Hoogerwerf, 1990), policy implementation as social experiments (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1971), and policy belief systems as Lakatosian research programs being progressive or degenerative in spawning solutions to policy problems (Majone, 1989). Furthermore, these research perspectives tend to broaden the concept of knowledge, which comes to include both scientific and practical knowledge.

There is broad agreement that scientific and practical knowledge may be improved by employing rationally defensible (and hence nonarbitrary) standards of assessment to evaluate the evidential merit of competing knowledge claims. Apart from this general commitment, there is little agreement on the character of standards of assessment that ought to be employed. Proponents of a view according to which the sciences and professions are seen as vehicles for simultaneously acquiring intellectual and practical knowledge (e.g., Campbell, 1988) tend to consider the serving of practical interests as something which may compromise and even corrupt the quality or validity of science. Here, validity is defined according to standards for making plausible causal inferences in the face of rival hypotheses. By contrast, proponents of a view according to which the sciences and professions are seen chiefly as instruments for acquiring practical knowledge (e.g., Schön, 1983) tend to view the process of serving practical interests as an opportunity for improving both the quality of the sciences and professions, and their capacity to solve practical problems. Here, quality is likewise defined in terms of standards for making plausible causal inferences; but reflective practitioners are generally seen to be more reliable sources of such inferences than persons nominally designated as “scientists.” Whereas many policy scientists appear to turn away from this problem of supremacy by stating that next to scientific knowledge, practical knowledge is also or equally important, some search for an episte-mologically and methodologically sound way of articulating the functions of both kinds of knowledge (Dunn, this volume).

So far, we have addressed some of the multitude of theories which explain the use and nonuse of scientific knowledge in terms of social, cultural, or political cleavages (for other models see Wittrock, 1991; Hoppe, 1999). There are also theories that tend to explain the relations of knowledge and power in terms of stages or cycles, for example the concept of the “life-cycle of information,” or what Rich (1981a) calls the “knowledge cycle.” These cyclic frameworks, while they formally provide for feedback as well as feed-forward loops, are often quasi-linear by virtue of their common emphasis on chainlike activities that are irreversible. Environmental management frameworks tend to relate the need and use of knowledge to stages in policymaking, such as problem recognition, policy formulation, policy implementation, and monitoring.

Functional frameworks originate in the sociology and economics of knowledge applications (e.g., Holzner, Dunn, and Shahidullah, 1987; Holzner and Marx, 1979; Machlup, 1980). Interdependent knowledge functions, along with the social structures by which these functions are performed, are viewed as a complex social system of knowledge, or “knowledge system” for short...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• 1 Knowledge, Power, and Participation in Environmental Policy Analysis: An Introduction
• Part I: Coping with Boundaries
• Part II: The Transnational Challenge
• Part III: Bio-Hazards: Policies and Paralysis
• Part IV: The Citizens’ Perspective
• Part V: Confronting Ordinary and Expert Knowledge
• Part VI: Developments in Research Programming
• Part VII: Policy Sciences’Aspirations
• About the Contributors