Goodbye Expert-Based Policy Advice? Challenges in Advising Governmental Institutions in Times of Transformation

Abstract

The global transformation towards sustainability has not only increased the demand for anticipatory and reflexive knowledge to support decision making, but also raises three challenges common to all forms of scientific policy advice: to appropriately consider societal norms and values (challenge of normativity), to integrate different forms of knowledge (challenge of integration) and to organize the participation of stakeholders (challenge of participation). While new forms of scientific policy advice in the field of sustainability research (SR) have emerged in response, the role of established actors such as the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag (TAB) is increasingly scrutinized. One of the fundamental characteristics of TAB’s model of scientific policy advice is a rigid boundary arrangement between politics and science that places a high value on the objectivity and authority of scientific knowledge. Based on a content analysis of digitalization-related TAB reports spanning three decades, we describe how a rather technocratic institution such as TAB has dealt with the challenges of normativity, integration, and participation, and we compare its approach with that of SR institutions. TAB has partly adapted its working mode to the new challenges, e.g., by trying out new methods to foster a stronger dialogue with stakeholders. However, TAB’s response to the challenges distinctly differs from the forms of transformative research conducted in the SR community. We argue that this is not only a necessary precondition to maintain its reputation as a trustworthy actor towards the Parliament but gives TAB and similar expert-based institutions a special role in the governance of societal transformation.

Ways towards Transformation—Conceptual Approaches and Challenges

“…Preparing policy advice, TAB uses the Leitbild of sustainability, the paradigm of a deliberative democracy and also the notions of fundamental rights as the background for recommendations. Further, coming from policy advice, it becomes obvious that norms and values as they are accepted in society are enshrined in laws and regulation and thus give a reference to specific legal frameworks, e.g., disability policy or privacy protection, which are again taken up as normative frames when providing policy advice ( [94], this issue).…”

“…The insights of the authors from TAB show that the knowledge of the need to involve more stakeholders is available, but the implementation-at least in the specific case of advice for the German Bundestag-is still in its infancy. This may also be due to the fact that the "distinction between the roles of scientific experts on the one hand and stakeholders as well as policymakers on the other is becoming increasingly blurry" ( [94] (p. 2), this issue). The only thing that can be stated is that there is a need to improve and standardize the societal impact assessment-also in order to better present the contributions of TA, SR and RRI to policymaking.…”

“…Questions about how to influence human activities for societal and systemic transformation and the role of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations ( [90], this issue); Working on the challenges of institutional scientific policy advice in a field of tension between scientific integrity and societal and political relevance, and in times of changing science-policy interfaces, needs to be based on scrutinizing previous definitions and applications of relevance criteria, in order to provide advice that meets changing expectations and framework conditions ( [94], this issue). This need also applies to:…”

Structured analysis of broader GMO impacts inspired by technology assessment to inform policy decisions

“…But while there are established concepts and methods of Technology Assessment (TA) for broader scientific policy advice concerning novel technologies at the parliamentary level and beyond (for Germany, cf. Kehl et al 2021), instruments for a systematic and transparent case-by-case assessment of these aspects are not yet available for GMO assessments. By assessing broader impacts, normative connotations can be made explicit (Myskja and Myhr 2020;Harfouche et al 2021).…”

“…It is widely acknowledged in TA that these challenges of normativity, participation and integration of knowledge cannot be ignored in legitimate scientific policy advice (cf. Kehl et al 2021).…”