Accountability of Expertise: Exploring the Concept with a Case Study on Glyphosate

Risk regulation today is increasingly ‘science-based’ and the conclusions of expert advisory agencies on the ‘safety’ of a product are judiciously obeyed. As key decisions move upstream, the question of the accountability of the agencies is often raised but has not received an adequate conceptual solution. The usual response of the agencies themselves is to cling on ‘science’ as a source of incontrovertible truths and to insulate themselves from anything that does not pass some unspecified test for being scientific. Scientific rigour is taken to be the exclusion from consideration of all factors which do not qualify as scientific in the English sense of the word. Even social-scientific expertise is regarded as political and therefore inadmissible to the domain of expertise. Thus, even where agencies are open to public participation – and accountable to stakeholders – most of the evidence and the arguments the latter can bring forward are bound to fall on deaf ears. While procedurally open the agencies are substantively shut. The present paper attempts to offer an alternative to the ‘strengthening science’ approach by redefining the concept of accountability. It conceives accountability in terms of the twin requirements to give account and to take into account. It argues that in most regulatory controversies stakeholders diverge not merely on the issue of ‘safety’, but also on what matters for the authorisation, i.e. what factors are relevant for something to be assessed as ‘safe’. That is why we need an adequate concept of accountability that ensures that all views are duly considered. The second part of the paper illustrates the poverty of the ‘sound science’ view with a case study of the assessments of glyphosate – a popular herbicide whose current EU authorisation is to be renewed this year.