Regulatory Science – Transformations at the Science-Policy-Public Nexus

Abstract

Contemporary discourses on regulatory and other forms of advisory science show contradictions seemingly pertaining to the transforming of the science-policy-public nexus in total: Political reliance on science to solve collective problems has never been higher. At the same time, however, with the tight coupling of science and politics, science has lost its unquestioned epistemic authority, in particular when confronted with “wicked problems”. In a political culture increasingly demanding public transparency and openness, politics needs to draw legitimacy from allowing regulatory science to be visibly produced and communicated. Yet, this allows critics of official advisory science to easily challenge science-based arguments. Accordingly, regulatory science has to be generated and communicated under the conditions of the simultaneity of scientization of politics and the politicization of science. Taking this development as a starting point, this panel aims at shedding light on practices, actor constellations, governance modes and discourses in regulatory science. In particular, we are interested in how the governance of regulatory science is affected by globalization, transnationalization or Europeanization and how different forms of advisory science are made authoritative in the context of highly complex, uncertain and contested policy issues. This panel welcomes theoretical and empirical (in particular comparative) papers that relate to one of the following questions: How do organizations situated at the science-policy-public nexus generate expert authority? And how is their expert authority contested? How can we understand country- or field-specific differences? How is the governance of regulatory and other forms of advisory science affected by globalization, transnationalization or Europeanization? How can we understand the observed convergences and/or divergences? How can we understand the increasing political relevance of particular forms of evidence, such as behavioral science? How do particular forms of governance of advisory science pose a challenge (or contribute to) democracy?