Modeling for Policy Science-based models as performative boundary objects for Dutch policy making

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of models for policy by drawing on and exploring the tensions between the notions of boundary objects and performativity. The notion of boundary object has proven to be useful in gaining a better understanding both of the hybrid character of science-based models and their role in the coordination between different social worlds. However, by assuming that these worlds remain stable, an investigation into the performative nature of models tends to be overlooked. Therefore, this paper investigates how models are constituted by negotiations between scientists and policymakers and at the same time constitute social worlds. It examines two simulation models developed in different Dutch policy contexts: a macroeconomic model for the health care system and an ecological landscape planning and assessment model. The paper shows that models not only actively coordinate social worlds but also contribute to changing them. The performativity of models ranges from generic instrumental) to substantial as they infl uence social worlds to the extent that these worlds start behaving the way models describe.

Enhancing science-policy interface in marine environmental governance: Oil spill response models as boundary objects in the Gulf of Finland, Baltic Sea

“…In order to do so, boundary objects should be "plastic enough to adapt the local needs and the constraints of the several parties employing them, yet robust enough to maintain a common identity across sites" ( [16], p. 393). This interpretive flexibility means that the objects may have different meanings in different worlds; this allows for negotiation and exchange of knowledge without the need for consensus [64,65].…”

“…However, not all models are boundary objects per se. For boundary objects to be effective, they must have both the capacity to represent and share multiple types of knowledge from different domains and interests at 'stake' [17,69] as well as generate opportunities to transform knowledge to action [15,63,64,70]. According to Carlile [17,18] boundary objects need to be able to provide different actors with a common syntax for communication (traverse syntactic boundary), translate their knowledge by learning of knowledge differences and dependencies and creating shared meanings (traverse semantic boundary), and transform knowledge to create common interests (traverse pragmatic boundaries).…”

Modelling the pandemic: attuning models to their contexts

“…66 Viewed in this way, models enhance the capacity of knowledge to translate across boundaries, such as when science translates into policy and when global strategies are tweaked into local actions. 67 The model, precisely because it has latitude as a space of triangulation and speculation, potentiates a working relationship, in which dialogue is made possible. 61 68 A more open approach to triangulation reveals the multiple situated versions, indeed 'models', of pandemics-in-context which are at play, and made-to-matter, in any given moment.…”

Co-production and economics: insights from the constructive use of experimental games in adaptive resource management

“…More specifically, despite the wide-ranging discussions on experimental practices since Guala's 2005 pioneering work, economic methodology has become more narrowly focused on methodological issues related to the internal and external validity of experimental results, notably their extrapolation for policy. Science and technology studies, in contrast, show a broader interest in the constructive role of experiments and models in policy-making (the so-called co-production of science and policy, or knowledge and governance), for instance, and in their coordinative and mediative roles of these as performative and boundary objects at the science-policy interfaces (Van Egmond & Zeiss, 2010). I propose that economic methodology should be broader in focus and should critically appraise the new ways in which science has an impact on policy.…”