Was heisst "Politisierung von Expertise"?
In: Osterreichische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft, Band 36, Heft 3, S. 319-335
Controversies about biomedicine are characterized by moral uncertainty; they are negotiated as value conflicts. This presents a considerable challenge for politics because in modern societies there is no consent about what we should (not) know & do. The political response to this problem is the institutionalization of ethics expertise. With respect to Austria I will analyze the ethics councils' policy advice from an STS perspective. I will argue that the political utilization of expertise means to subsume it under the particular operation principles of the political system ("politicization of expertise"). During its political utilization, expertise is reconfigured in a way as to establish an identity between the experts' opinions & political objectives. Against this background policy learning can be described, at best, as a strategic use of expert dissent. Finally, I will show that the politicization of expertise is closely connected to a de-politicization of bioethical issues. References. Adapted from the source document.