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The Unravelling of Technocratic Orthodoxy?
This chapter argues that the contemporary politics of technology regulation play out through a key tension – between an established narrow framing of what is at stake in technology regulation, namely the optimisation of singular pathways of technological progress based on a control-based vision of risk management, and countervailing pressures to challenge those reductionist framings and open up questions about technological vulnerability, and ultimately technological choice, to wider deliberation and collective decision-making. Case studies of the European regulation of transgenic plant varieties and pesticides are drawn on to show how, in some political contexts, the uncertain, contested and provisional nature of much regulatory knowledge has been made explicit by actors and events, helping to force a partial 'opening up' of otherwise routine processes of knowledge closure, and potentially leading to a significant broadening of technology regulation. The cases also illustrate how such processes pose a fundamental challenge to the privileged position of incumbent industrial interests within orthodox regulatory practice, and how many institutions and industry bodies have responded by trying to reassert an orthodox technocratic depiction of regulation, and in doing so avert experimentation with more ambitious, potentially transformative, forms of technology policy.
BASE
The Politics of Technological Upgrading: International Transfer to and Adaptation of GM Cotton in Argentina
In: World development: the multi-disciplinary international journal devoted to the study and promotion of world development, Volume 59, p. 521-534
Taste and Power: The Flavouring Industry and Flavour Additive Regulation
In: SWPS 2014-15
SSRN
Working paper
Mad Cow Disease — Painting Policy‐Making into a Corner
In: Journal of risk research: the official journal of the Society for Risk Analysis Europe and the Society for Risk Analysis Japan, Volume 10, Issue 5, p. 661-691
ISSN: 1466-4461
BSE: A Paradigm of Policy Failure
In: The political quarterly: PQ, Volume 74, Issue 1, p. 27-37
ISSN: 0032-3179
BSE: A Paradigm of Policy Failure
In: The political quarterly, Volume 74, Issue 1, p. 27-37
ISSN: 1467-923X
The Evolution of Food Safety Policy–making Institutions in the UK, EU and Codex Alimentarius
In: Social policy and administration, Volume 36, Issue 6, p. 593-609
ISSN: 1467-9515
After the British government announced in March 1996 that a novel fatal human disease (now called variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease) had emerged and was almost certainly caused by consuming BSE–contaminated food, national and international authorities have been struggling to deal with the consequences of a serious loss of public confidence in the safety of foods and in food safety policy–making institutions. One of the main ways in which governments and officials have responded to those challenges has been by initiating a broad range of structural and procedural reforms to the ways in which public policies are decided, legitimated and communicated. This paper outlines some of the more important respects in which national and international authorities have changed the ways in which they assess and manage the risks to human consumers of food–borne hazards. The focus is on developments in the UK, the EU and, at the global level, the Codex Alimentarius Commission; the period covered runs from the late 1960s until summer 2002. The discussion focuses on the case for separating the responsibilities for regulating and sponsoring the agricultural and food industries, for conducting risk appraisals and decision–making in open and democratically accountable ways and for drawing on experts representing a wide range of interests and expertise rather than on a narrow industry–based group. The paper concludes by indicating some key structural and procedural conditions for effectively differentiating the scientific from the political aspects of risk appraisal and decision–making, and then for coupling them together in ways that would provide both scientific and democratic legitimacy.
The Evolution of Food Safety Policy-making Institutions in the UK, EU and Codex Alimentarius
In: Social policy & administration: an international journal of policy and research, Volume 36, Issue 6, p. 593-609
ISSN: 0037-7643, 0144-5596
Politics of expert advice: lessons from the early history of the BSE saga
In: Science and public policy: journal of the Science Policy Foundation, Volume 28, Issue 2, p. 99-112
ISSN: 1471-5430
Politics of Expert Advice: Lessons from the Early History of the BSE Saga
In: Science & public policy: SPP ; journal of the Science Policy Foundation, Volume 28, Issue 2, p. 99-112
ISSN: 0302-3427, 0036-8245
Beyond Skeptical Relativism: Evaluating the Social Constructions of Expert Risk Assessments
In: Science, technology, & human values: ST&HV, Volume 25, Issue 3, p. 259-282
ISSN: 1552-8251
Constructivist analyses of risk regulation are typically agnostic about what should count as robust or reliable knowledge. Indeed, constructivists usually portray competing accounts of risk as if they were always equally contingent or engaged with different and incommensurable issues and problem definitions. This article argues that assumptions about the equal reliability of competing accounts of risk deserve to be, and sometimes can be, examined empirically. A constructivist approach grounded in epistemological realism is outlined and applied empirically to a particular comparative U.S./U.K. case study of pesticide regulation. The article argues that while the scope for interpretative flexibility when addressing risk issues is clearly extensive, it is not unconstrained. By scrutinizing the structure and coherence of particular risk assessments and policy decisions by reference to both empirical evidence and commonly held robust standards of interpretation, the article argues that the U.K. evaluation was not only less precautionary than its U.S. equivalent, but it was also less well constructed and therefore less reliable. Several social and institutional characteristics of U.S. and U.K. policy making are highlighted that appear variously to facilitate or inhibit the production of reliable knowledge and the making of prudent policy decisions.
Food and Agricultural Biotechnology Policy: How Much Autonomy Can Developing Countries Exercise?
In: Development Policy Review, Volume 21, p. 655-667
SSRN
Regulating technology: international harmonization and local realities
In: Pathways to sustainability series
Technological lock-in in action: Appraisal and policy commitment in Argentina's seed sector
In: Research policy: policy, management and economic studies of science, technology and innovation, Volume 52, Issue 2, p. 104678
ISSN: 1873-7625