Emerging design principles for the ‘working interface’

In Section 3.6, the process of science advice to policy was discussed, focusing on mechanisms of quality control, questions of the efficacy of scientific advice/

information and the norms and expectations at intersections of science, policy, and practice. In this section, the focus is on the design principles for a working interface that takes account of the state-of-the-art insights and practices for a high quality, transdisciplinary interface between knowledge and policymaking.

In order for any aspect of any policy process to be consistently recognisable as being positive under diverse political views, it is desirable that there be clarity concerning explicit criteria for what constitutes ‘good conduct’ (European Commission, 2004;

Rogers, 2008). Although such criteria are inevitably always to some degree uncertain, ambiguous, dynamic and context- and perspective-dependent (and therefore always negotiable), they nonetheless offer a basis for continual evaluation, improvement and redesign of ‘best practice’ (Wilsdon et al., 2014). Respected as ‘design principles’ which apply also to their own continuous re-negotiation and application, then, such criteria can aid policy actors of all kinds in engaging with each more effectively, efficiently and productively (S. Beck et al., 2014; Fischer, 2009; Stirling, 1999). It is not the purpose of this report to advocate particular extant evaluative criteria as normative principles.

Yet there is much that can usefully be done analytically to illuminate the kinds of issues that are most prevalent in relevant literatures bearing on the working interface between expertise and policy.

Based on wide and longstanding literatures concerning good practice in the field of policy advice from and for science (e.g. European Commission, 2015; Fealing, 2011;

Frickel & Moore, 2006; Gibbons et al., 1994; International Network for Government Science Advice, 2017; Keller, 2009; Lentsch & Weingart, 2011b; Pielke, 2007; Pielke &

Klein, 2010; Sarewitz, 2015; Sorlin, 2015; Sutherland et al., 2012) , the following broad issues come to the fore. They are characterised here in analytic and descriptive terms, rather than as normative prescriptions. The criteria most directly bearing on the task of characterising, partitioning and ordering relevant issues are the following:

• Each is broadly relevant in individual terms to the present focus on the task of

‘building a transdisciplinary approach for designing a working interface between expertise and policies’;

• Each is particularly prominent and well-developed in existing policy debates as well as distinct and readily operational in practice;

• The set of resolved issues is, despite areas of overlap, tension or ambiguity, collectively coherent as a group.

Accordingly, the issues summarised here are, in rough order of flows in policy cycles, about ‘trustworthiness’: ‘independence’; ‘transparency’; ‘inclusiveness’; ‘accessibility’;

‘responsiveness’; ‘deliberation’; ‘rigour’; ‘precaution’; ‘responsibility’ and ‘democracy’.

5.7.2 Trustworthiness

One significant positive quality, repeatedly referred to on all sides of political debates concerning policy advice from and about science, involves various notions of ‘trust’

(Herreros, 2004; R. Löfstedt, 2005; Porter, 1995; Siegrist, Earle, & Gutscher, 2010;

Slovic, 1999). At one level, the quality of trust is a self-evident public good, which (at its best) helps enable good practice, robust institutions, healthy discourse and effective social outcomes (Brewer & Ley, 2013; Büscher & Sumpf, 2015). Yet there also arise a number of queries concerning many established ways of thinking about trust. First, it is important to note that relations of trust are only clearly positive under all views, if they are mutual, reciprocal and symmetric as between different

actors involved in policy processes (Economic and Social Research Council Global Environmental Change Programme, 1999). In particular, trust should be demonstrated as much ‘downwards’, by actors in positions of privilege and power (towards other interested and affected parties and publics), as ‘upwards’ to the benefit of incumbent interests and cultures in any given policy process (Haerlin & Parr, 1999). Otherwise, the language of ‘trust’ can become an instrumental code in support of inequalities, patronage and dependencies of kinds that favour incumbency and privilege and (at worst) risk becoming a smokescreen merely for ‘public acceptance’ (Flynn & Bellaby, 2007; Stirling, 2008; Wynne, 1983).

Second, it also emerges strongly, that trust is only a self-evident positive quality if it is grounded in substantive practice rather than rhetoric (Wynne, 1975). This means in relation to all social actors engaged in policy processes around expert advice for and from science, that the legitimate exercise of diverse values, interests and understandings should be undertaken in ways that are not merely ‘trusted’ in superficial communicative terms, but ‘trustworthy’ in their underlying material practice (Hardin, 2002; Kornai & Rose-Ackerman, 2004; Korsgaard, Brodt, & Whitener, 2002). This can be enhanced if representatives of the affected stakeholder groups are included in the governance process and have full access to the scientific advice (Kim & Lee, 2012;

Webster & Leleux, 2018).

5.7.3 Independence

Arguably, one of the most prominent issues raised in policy literatures bearing on expertise in governance concerns ‘independence’. It is in the nature of policy processes around expert advice — as well as decisions concerning science itself

— that these necessarily involve not only complex bodies of knowledge, but also contending social values and interests (Felt et al., 2007). Even where all concerned act in good faith, the policy arenas around such processes are routinely characterised by high political and economic stakes and asymmetric gradients of power (Stirling &

Mitchell, 2018). In addition, the expert knowledge itself is typically partly shaped and mediated by the particular institutional cultures in which it is developed, involving specific framings of ‘salient problems’ and ‘possible solutions’ as well as more general areas of focus and emphasis (sometimes necessarily sidelining various other aspects) (Jasanoff, 2005b). Occasional tensions and contestations can also often arise not only at the levels of individual experts, committees and agencies (Taig, 2002), but also between disparate academic organisations, disciplines and cultures (Jasanoff, 2011a). It is in the nature of science itself that such tensions can — if they are openly acknowledged and transparently managed — make contributions to the robustness and productivity of the resulting combined understandings (Grayling, 2008). Yet it is when these asymmetries and dynamics of power, privilege and contending values and interests within science are obscured or denied that policymaking can be placed at greatest risk of being considered in some way

‘untrustworthy’ (Alan Irwin & Wynne, 1996).

To this end, respect for the importance of ‘independence’ is not about making claims to ostensibly transcendent objectivity and definitiveness on the part of notionally singular and self-confident ‘sound scientific’ prescriptions (Gorman, 2002). What is entailed and required instead in much discussion of ‘independence’ is open recognition that values and interests are always unavoidably intrinsic to any body of scientific expertise (Sarewitz, 2004). This illuminates a distinction between alternative aspirations, that might be termed ‘independence through transcendent authority’

and ‘independence through robust plurality’ (Voss, Bauknecht, & Kemp, 2006). The former asserts traditional romanticised notions of scientific expertise (themselves ironically oddly unscientific in the ways they assert authority over process) (Lacey, 1999). In the latter case, aiming for independence is always provisional, lying in explicit acknowledgement of the different ways in which contrasting forms and conditions of expertise typically give rise to divergent pictures of problems and solutions (Collins & Evans, 2007). Here, it is arguably by means of methods that systematically show how contrasting conclusions can arise under alternative framings in ‘plural and conditional’ ways that science advice processes may most confidently be considered ‘independent’ (Stirling, 2010).

5.7.4 Transparency

In wider debates concerning criteria of good practice in governance of the most general kinds, one of the most widely discussed issues is transparency (R. W. Oliver, 2004). That the evidence base and processes of reasoning behind any given area of policymaking be open to public scrutiny and validation is of obvious benefit in helping to ensure the robustness of the resulting decisions. However, even in these terms, transparency is not an unqualified public good (O’Neill, 2002). The issues surrounding this quality are not self-evident (Neyland & Woolgar, 2002).

For instance, efforts at transparency can often come at significant cost (Aven &

Renn, 2010) and it is important that these costs on the part of particular actors are justified by benefits on a wider societal basis (Gupta, 2008). Where transparency entails the production of bewildering volumes of discussion or data (without due attention to organisation, prioritisation or explication), then (something that might be misconstrued as) transparency can even become an obstacle to effective policy processes (Lord, 2006).

Likewise, if efforts at transparency have the real-world effect of pushing those actors who are thereby exposed to political jeopardy, into more informal and less well-documented avenues for decision-making, then measures intended or labelled as ‘transparency’ can also be counter-productive (Henriques, 2007). It is sometimes the case that provision of specific informal and private spaces for mutual awareness-raising can offer important complements to wider disciplines of transparency (Andersson, 2008). Taken together, it is regarded across a wide range of literatures to be an important aid both to effective decision-making and the associated demonstration of trustworthiness in policymaking on and by science, that it be possible for third parties to interrogate the basis for associated understandings and modes of reasoning.