The Regulation of Life Sciences: Themes for Comparative Analysis

Abstract

This panel seeks to explore and analyze emerging modes of governance of the life sciences in Europe and North America, and discuss both empirical patterns and normative implications. The life sciences are a field in which utilitarian and technology-driven approaches and more sceptical views and indeed a ‘new moralism’ reinvigorating traditional values are salient. The multiple values that many issues in the life sciences involve implies a politics on both substance and process. For example, since assisted reproductive technologies arrived on the systemic agenda as ‘policy problems’ in the 1980s, the debate over public and private modes of governing these technologies is going on, and the salience of this debate even has increased in recent years. Thus, for this field, the theme of Regulation in an Age of Governance is extremely important. The life sciences have attracted the (in part government-solicited) attention from social science and law to consider ethical, legal and social aspects, but political scientists, often well at home in other policy fields, are only just beginning to discover the life sciences. This contrasts with the salience of the choice among modes of governance and arrangements for regulation in this field, and our aim with this panel is to bring the two closer together. We believe that life sciences such as assisted reproductive technologies are a very useful focus for the diverse subdisciplines within political science, both for empirical analysis and normative theory development.

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