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Public participation refers most often to participatory political process of reclaiming interests, values and worldviews by social actors who are not professional or elected politicians. This chapter aims at reconsidering this form of expert representation, or civic epistemology, in relation to the tensions and reconfigurations of the Czech environmental movement and issues. The first part analyses the implications of the proposal for National policy for research development and innovation (2009-2015) and the second one discusses three cases of production and use of knowledge in three environmental knowledge production activities (urban ecology, rural and landscape ecology and conservation biology).

From the perspective of reflexive governance, this study probes into the transformative capacity and roles of government and civil society, and aims to determine how the authoritative developmental neo-liberalism state was challenged by civil society in democratization from the end of the 1980s, when it encountered a crisis of governance legitimacy. By analyzing the anti-petrochemical movement of the recent two decades, this paper recognizes the important historic line, and proposes that without innovative governance, a regime of expert politics with hidden and delayed risk will result in higher degrees of mistrust and confrontational positions by the public. In contrast to the government, local and civil societies are growing through the anti-pollution appeals of simple group protests into systematic and robust civic knowledge and strategic action. By administrative, legislative, judicial, and risk statement paths, such strategic mobilizations break through authoritative expert politics and reshape new civic epistemology. The process of reflexive governance is extremely radical. When two parties cannot commit to dealing with a high degree of mistrust, they will not be able to manage the more dramatic threat of climate change. Fundamentally speaking, a robust civil society will be an important driving power competing with government, in terms of constructing innovative governance.

This is the first edited scholarly collection devoted solely to the epistemology of democracy. Its fifteen chapters, published here for the first time and written by an international team of leading researchers, will interest scholars and advanced students working in democratic theory, the harrowing crisis of democracy, political philosophy, social epistemology, and political epistemology. The volume is structured into three parts, each offering five chapters. The first part, Democratic Pessimism, covers the crisis of democracy, the rise of authoritarianism, public epistemic vices, misinformation and disinformation, civic ignorance, and the lacking quantitative case for democratic decision-making. The second part, Democratic Optimism, discusses the role of hope and positive emotions in rebuilding democracy, proposes solutions to myside bias, and criticizes dominant epistocratic approaches to forming political administrations. The third and final part, Democratic Realism, assesses whether we genuinely require emotional empathy to understand the perspectives of our political adversaries, discusses the democratic tension between mutual respect for others and a quest for social justice, and evaluates manifold top-down and bottom-up approaches to policy making.

The Fukushima nuclear disaster was profoundly a man-made one, resulting from the organizational failure of nuclear emergency preparedness. To fully understand the cause of this disaster, I propose to extend an organizational perspective on disasters into a macro-institutional perspective on disaster preparedness. To this end, I borrow from science and technology studies the concepts of "sociotechnical imaginary" and "civic epistemology" to probe the deepest layers of meaning-making constitutive of disaster preparedness. I then apply these concepts to the history of nuclear energy in postwar Japan that was centered on the developmental state pursuing industrial transformation. Specifically, I illustrate how the "pacifist imaginary" emphasized positive contributions of "the peaceful use of nuclear energy," legitimating a priori the promotion of nuclear power as a means of economic development; and how the "technocratic epistemology" invoked the superior competencies of state bureaucrats and expert advisers, legitimating post hoc their disregard for the possibility of a severe accident. The imaginary and epistemology thus enabled the developmental state to pursue pro-nuclear policy by securing acquiescence from the majority of citizens and discrediting the minority of antinuclear activists – until the earthquake and tsunami exposed the preparedness failure in March 2011.

How climate models came to gain and exercise epistemic authority has been a key concern of recent climate change historiography. Using newly released archival materials and recently conducted interviews with key actors, we reconstruct negotiations between UK climate scientists and policymakers which led to the opening of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in 1990. We historicize earlier arguments about the unique institutional culture of the Hadley Centre, and link this culture to broader characteristics of UK regulatory practice and environmental politics. A product of a particular time and place, the Hadley Centre was shaped not just by scientific ambition, but by a Conservative governmental preference for 'sound science' and high evidential standards in environmental policymaking. Civil servants sought a prediction programme which would appeal to such sensibilities, with transient and regional climate simulation techniques seemingly offering both scientific prestige and persuasive power. Beyond the national level, we also offer new insights into the early role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an evolving international political context in the shaping of scientific practices and institutions.

How climate models came to gain and exercise epistemic authority has been a key concern of recent climate change historiography. Using newly released archival materials and recently conducted interviews with key actors, we reconstruct negotiations between UK climate scientists and policymakers which led to the opening of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research in 1990. We historicize earlier arguments about the unique institutional culture of the Hadley Centre, and link this culture to broader characteristics of UK regulatory practice and environmental politics. A product of a particular time and place, the Hadley Centre was shaped not just by scientific ambition, but by a Conservative governmental preference for 'sound science' and high evidential standards in environmental policymaking. Civil servants sought a prediction programme which would appeal to such sensibilities, with transient and regional climate simulation techniques seemingly offering both scientific prestige and persuasive power. Beyond the national level, we also offer new insights into the early role of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and an evolving international political context in the shaping of scientific practices and institutions.

Pro-regime militias / Clionadh Raleigh and Roudabeh Kishi -- Civilian defense forces and violence against civilians / Andrew Thomson -- State-militia relations and repression / Erica De Bruin -- Science and epistemology as territory in conflict : the U.S. occupation and violence against academics in Iraq / Julie Mazzei -- Violence against civilians and the legitimacy of community-based armed groups in Kenya and Haiti / Moritz Schuberth -- The YPJ of Northeast Syria and the socialization of restraint towards civilians : 'Jin, Jiyan, Azadi' / Mario A. Fumerton, Wladimir van Wilgenburg, and Zinah A.N. Hamawandi -- Conclusion -- the study of militias and violence : where to go from here? / Corinna Jentzsch.

Utrum sit una tantum vera enumeratio virtutum moralium / Sophie Grace Chappell -- Generosity : a preliminary account of a surprisingly neglected virtue / Christian B. Miller -- An eye on particulars with the end in sight : an account of Aristotelian phronesis / Maria Silvia Vaccarezza -- Honesty as a virtue / Alan T. Wilson -- Virtue epistemology, enhancement, and control / J. Adam Carter -- Epistemic paternalism and the service conception of epistemic authority / Michel Croce -- Neuromedia and the epistemology of education / Duncan Pritchard -- Epistemic vice and motivation / Alessandra Tanesini -- Senses of humor as political virtues / Phillip Deen -- Citizens' political prudence as a democratic virtue / Valeria Ottonelli -- Hope as a democratic civic virtue / Nancy E. Snow

"Boundary Organizations: Intermediaries in Science–Policy Interactions" published on by Oxford University Press.

This thesis has examined the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) controversy in Korea in terms of civic epistemology conceptualised by Jasanoff. The Korean BSE controversy occurred as a result of uncertainty over BSE being mobilised within complex political and economic contexts between Korea and the US, particularly over the issue of the import of US beef after 2003. The complexity of the interests impeded the Korean government from adopting a clear position on BSE risk in beef, and thus led to public distrust and massive public protests in 2008. The controversy demonstrated what I have called an authoritarian character of civic epistemology in Korea, such as the dominance of the government in knowledge production, public accountability limited to procedural form, and dependence on foreign authority. It can be ascribed to the traces of the development process which had been led by a powerful state and which relied on importing advanced countries' knowledge and skills. However, simultaneously, the controversy showed that this civic epistemology is in transition, challenged by a growing civil society and an increasing demand for public participation. In light of this, rather than a one-off phenomenon, the BSE controversy in Korea could be defined as a symptom of tension caused by friction between the ingrained approach to policy-making and increasing public awareness of democracy. This pattern of civic epistemology, I suggest, is a distinctive outcome of Korea's status as a latecomer country which has achieved compressed economic growth and recent political democratisation.

Prediction plays a vital role in every branch of our contemporary lives. While the credibility of quantitative simulations through mathematical modeling may seem to be universal, how they are perceived and embedded in policy processes may vary by society. Investigating the ecology of quantitative prediction tools, this article articulates the cultural specificity of Japanese society through the concept of Jasanoff's "civic epistemology." Taking COVID-19 and nuclear disasters as examples, this article examines how predictive simulations are mobilized, contested, and abandoned. In both cases, current empirical observation eventually replaces predictive future simulations, and mechanical application of preset criteria substitutes political judgment. These analyses suggest that the preferred register of objectivity in Japan—one of the constitutive dimensions of civic epistemology—consists not in producing numerical results, but in precluding human judgment. Such public calls to eliminate human agency both in knowledge and in policy-making can be a distinct character of Japanese civic epistemology, which may explain why Japan repeatedly withdraws from predictive simulations. It implies the possibility that Western societies' faith in human judgment should not be taken for granted, but explained.