Abstract
Scholars in science and technology studies (STS) have recently been called upon to advise governments on the design of procedures for public engagement. Any such instrumental function should be carried out consistently with STS’s interpretive and normative obligations as a social science discipline. This article illustrates how such threefold integration can be achieved by reviewing current US participatory politics against a 70-year backdrop of tacit constitutional developments in governing science and technology. Two broad cycles of constitutional adjustment are discerned: the first enlarging the scope of state action as well as public participation, with liberalized rules of access and sympathetic judicial review; the second cutting back on the role of the state, fostering the rise of an academic-industrial complex for technology transfer, and privatizing value debates through increasing delegation to professional ethicists. New rules for public engagement in the United Sates should take account of these historical developments and seek to counteract some of the anti-democratic tendencies observable in recent decades.
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Notes
“Boundary organizations” are organizations that sit at the boundary between science and politics, and thus both manage and are constrained by the needs of these two institutions (Guston 2000).
“Boundary object” is a sociological term used to describe an object that retains some common meaning for different social groups and yet is defined differently to suit different local needs and constraints (Star and Griesemer 1989).
CEQ was established by NEPA and entrusted with overseeing and coordinating federal agency implementation of the EIS process, as well as providing environmental advice to the president.
The debate entered the judicial record most explicitly in the opinions written by these two judges in a landmark environmental case of the 1970s, Ethyl Corp. v. EPA, 541 F.2d 1 (DC Cir. 1976). For further discussion of this case and the Bazelon-Leventhal debate, see my Science at the Bar: Law, Science and Technology in America (Jasanoff 1995). Krotoszynski (2006) has written a nuanced retrospective on the Bazelon-Leventhal debate, showing how neither judge rigidly adhered to one position or the other.
Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Corp. v. NRDC, 435 US 519 (1978).
35 USC. §§200–212. For the text, see http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/35/usc_sup_01_35_10_II_20_18.html (visited July 2011).
Diamond v. Chakrabarty, 447 US 303 (1980).
I am making a conscious analogy here to the “military-industrial complex”—a phrase made famous in US politics through President Eisenhower’s warning against it in his farewell speech to the nation in 1961.
Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 US 837 (1984).
Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, 415 F. 3d 50 (2007).
Ironically, during the administration of President George W. Bush (2001–2008), a persistent pattern of ignoring expert advice meant that administrative agencies acquired power unchecked by either democratic accountability or expert reason (Mooney 2005).
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Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Erik Fisher, Rob Hagendijk, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful and perceptive comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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Jasanoff, S. Constitutional Moments in Governing Science and Technology. Sci Eng Ethics 17, 621–638 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9302-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-011-9302-2