Politics vs. Science: Contrasting Policy-making Discourses at the Conference on Disarmament and the International Telecommunication Union

Much of the literature on intergovernmental policy-making predicts that scientific advice by technical experts will take a backseat to political and national-interest considerations. This has certainly been the case at the Conference on Disarmament (CD), which remained deadlocked for the last 20 years owing to continued political squabbles among its member states and the resulting inability to reach consensus on even mundane matters, such as the establishment of its programme of work. In contrast, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has earned a reputation of an effective policy-making body that vehemently guards its science-based deliberations from any attempt at bringing politics into the process. This paper argues that the aforementioned outcome variation cannot be adequately explained by looking at traditional scholarly explanations of negotiation outcomes such as formal decision-making procedures, number of actors, or issue-salience since both CD and ITU follow the same procedure - consensus, ITU has more than double the CD membership, and both CD and ITU decide on high-salient issues pertaining to national security and military affairs. Instead, this paper contends that much of the outcome variation can be explained by looking at the dominant type of expert knowledge used by the two communities of practice. By employing a combination of methods, from process tracing, participant observation, and ethnographic interviewing of CD and ITU policy-makers, to discourse analysis of minutes of proceedings, the author demonstrates that there is a link between the type of knowledge used and the ability of the body to move towards consensus. Specifically, the findings indicate that a community of practice composed of diplomats (CD) is more likely to accept arguments based on political (in)feasibility and national interests, whereas community composed of technical experts is more likely to challenge such arguments. Notably, scientific knowledge was used strategically at all levels of ITU policy-making to depoliticize contentious policy issues. Similarly, where diplomats draw on their learned expertise to use procedural loopholes to stall policy-making process whenever in their interest (and accepts such practices as legitimate when employed by their peers), technical experts seldom resort to such measures and react with disdain should others resort to such methods. The findings also indicate that repeated interactions among technical experts promote formation of epistemic communities with strong commitment to scientific discourse and corresponding propensity for discarding any claims within the policy-making process that are not based on concrete evidence. In contrast, no such formation of epistemic community was observed with respect to the CD diplomats, arguably due to the lack of mutual trust and professional respect. Finally, while the evidence shows that use of scientifically-based knowledge for policy-making does fosters consensus-building, it also indicates that barriers to entry and participation for outsiders may be close to insurmountable in such forms of global policy-making. This suggests that while policy-making based on highly specialized expert knowledge may indeed be more likely to lead to consensus, there may be a trade off between inclusiveness and participation of civil society on the one hand, and effectiveness of consensus decision-making, on the other.