Technology Assessment for Parliaments — Towards Reflexive Governance of Innovation

Abstract

Bütschi and Almeida explore TA's importance for policy making today, taking into consideration parliamentarians' needs and expectations. The chapter highlights the challenges policy makers have to face when dealing with science, technology and innovation and discuss how TA can address them at an institutional level. These challenges go beyond the complexity of STI policy issues. Globalization challenges policy making on science and innovation as issues spill over national boundaries. As innovation is increasingly expected to foster growth and employment, policy making has to foster innovation and mitigate risks. And last but not least, the financial crisis is challenging parliamentary democracy with top-down fiscal crisis policies. This is where the advanced dialogical and transdisciplinary practices of TA may add value that other advisory practices cannot.

Breaking the myth of neutrality: Technology Assessment has politics, Technology Assessment as politics

“…The recent de-institutionalization processes in Flanders and Denmark have been understood mostly in terms of unintended consequences of power politics which had little to do with criticisms of the very practice of TA or the quality of the knowledge produced (Delvenne et al 2012, Hennen and Nierling 2015, Bütschi and Almeida 2016, Rosskamp 2017. But this new wave of "foxy" politicians may additionally consider that institutionalized TA embodies the establishment one needs to get rid of, as it misrepresents the concerned stakeholders, and is structurally unable to provide the knowledge that help decisions to be made.…”

Legislative science advice in Europe: the case for international comparative research

“…These have furthered understanding of the different ways that these units are structured across Europe, as well as how different factors shape their varying design and operation (Lentsch and Weingart, 2011;Bütschi, 2012;European Parliamentary Technology Assessment, 2012;Bütschi and Almeida, 2015;Hennen and Nierling, 2015a,b). Moreover, the "intense networking and mutual learning processes" within the EPTA Network has led to a collective learning about methodologies and ideas and "a widening field for mutual exploration and collaboration" (Hennen and Nierling, 2015a: 9).…”