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From Deliberation to Production: Public Participation in Science and Technology Policies of the European Commission (1998–2019)

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Abstract

This article investigates how a discourse about the role and value of public participation in science, technology, and innovation emerged and evolved in the research policies of the European Commission. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, two main discourses have been successively institutionalized: the first focused on participation in policy-making, while the second aimed at participation in the production of knowledge and innovation. This paper distinguishes three main institutional phases: (i) a phase dedicated to public participation in the governance of science and technology (2000–2010); (ii) a reframing period of science and technology policies by the Commission to integrate the growing emphasis on innovation (2010–2014); (iii) a period focusing on co-creation and citizen science as new ways to involve the public in science and technology (2014-today). Factors such as individual commitments of key policy actors, specific epistemic communities and institutional dynamics within the Commission played a crucial role in shaping the policies of participation. But broader factors are also essential to account for these changes. In this respect, the economic crisis of the late 2000s appears fundamental to understanding how the conception and promotion of public participation in the European science and technology policies have evolved over time. This paper thus offers new insights to the analysis of the political economy of public participation.

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Notes

  1. Initiatives aiming at including different publics in science and technology-related issues have been labeled in a number of different ways (e.g. public participation, public involvement, public dialogue, or public engagement). As our goal in this paper is to account for different forms of initiatives, including different publics in the pursuing of different goals, we deliberately choose to use ‘public participation’ as a generic term which, conceived in a broad sense, allows to report for different types of participations. This decision is consistent with the proposition made by Chilvers and Kearnes (2016) to broaden our understanding of ‘public participation’ to account for other types of procedures than the ‘traditional’ deliberative ones.

  2. We chose to focus on the European Commission and its Directorate General for research as our objective is to analyze European policies. Other institutions, such as the European Research Council and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology have been left out of the analysis as they do not engage formally, as institutions, in the fabric of the European research and innovation policies.

  3. The two scholars mentioned in the introduction (Felt 2010; Ryan 2015) were either part of these expert groups (Ulrike Felt) or adopted their framing (Lorna Ryan).

  4. Although a first reference to “Responsible Research and Application of Science and Technology” can be found in the FP6 (European Community 2002).

  5. One has to keep in mind that at least 2 years occur between the drafting of a call and project launch.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Pierre Delvenne, Pierre-Benoît Joly, Brice Laurent, Helga Nowotny, Dominique Pestre, and Arie Rip for helpful discussions and comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université de Liège, Place des Orateurs, 3, 4000, Liège, Belgium

    Hadrien Macq

  2. Université de Genève, Uni Carl Vogt, 1211, Geneva 4, Switzerland

    Élise Tancoigne & Bruno J. Strasser

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  1. Hadrien Macq
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Macq, H., Tancoigne, É. & Strasser, B.J. From Deliberation to Production: Public Participation in Science and Technology Policies of the European Commission (1998–2019). Minerva 58, 489–512 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-020-09405-6

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