Political science has shown an increasing interest in a seemingly paradox observation: the illusive relation between the two trends of participatory governance tools and appeals to “sound science” and expertise in the context of scientific policy advice. One the one hand, scientific policy advice is seen as being (re-)politicized by increasing stakeholder participation in the context a “new governance approach”. On the other hand, evidence-based policy making or other practices of scientific policy advice appealing to “sound science” are interpreted as a proof of the depolitization and quasi “scientification” of politics.
Based on the preliminary results of a comparative study of scientific advisory agencies in German and British food safety policy, this paper approaches the concept of politization vs. scientification (as one form of depolitiziation) from an organization theoretical perspective, arguing that these in part contradictory developments are to be analyzed as a recursive pendulum shift – over time, between single stages of scientific policy advice process, or between the arenas in which scientific knowledge is transformed into politically relevant and useful expertise. It therefore asks what discursive and institutional mechanisms are at work (1) in demarcating areas of politically defined competencies and inter- and intra-organizational procedures and practices from scientific ones, and (2) in integrating political criteria of rationality, such as the political control over advisory agencies, or the inclusion of stakeholders into the various processes of scientific policy advice, and scientific criteria, such as independency and objectivity. In a second step, it explains the commonalities and differences between the British and the German style of demarcation and integration; suggesting that the commonalities are to be understood in the context of the specific characteristics of “boundary organizations” at the science-policy nexus, and the differences by political-administrative national cultures of demarcation and integration the advisory agencies are embedded in.
