The Politics of Scientific Advice: Institutional Design for Quality Assurance

by Edited by Justus Lentsch , Peter Weingart

• ISBN13: 9780521177153
• ISBN10: 0521177154
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-07-11
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Controversies over issues such as genetically engineered food, foot-and-mouth disease and the failure of risk models in the global financial crisis have raised concerns about the quality of expert scientific advice. The legitimacy of experts, and of the political decision-makers and policy-makers whom they advise, essentially depends on the quality of the advice. But what does quality mean in this context, and how can it be achieved? This volume argues that the quality of scientific advice can be ensured by an appropriate institutional design of advisory organisations. Using examples from a wide range of international case studies, including think tanks, governmental research institutes, agencies and academies, the authors provide a systematic guide to the major problems and pitfalls encountered in scientific advice and the means by which organisations around the world have solved these problems.

Author Biography

Justus Lentsch is Department Head of the Doctoral Programme at the Heinrich Bll Foundation, a green think tank and an international policy network. Peter Weingart is Director Emeritus of the Institute for Science Technology Studies (IWT), Professor Emeritus of Sociology (of Science) at Bielefeld University and Visiting Professor at the Center for Research on Science and Technology, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. viii
List of tables	p. ix
Acknowledgements	p. x
Biographical notes	p. xi
Methodological issues: quality control and assurance in scientific policy advice	p. 1
Introduction: the quest for quality as a challenge to scientific policy advice: an overdue debate?	p. 3
Quality control and peer review in advisory science	p. 19
Reconciling representation with reality: unitisation as an example for science and public policy	p. 36
Looking for quality in all the wrong places, or: the technological origins of quality in scientific policy advice	p. 54
Collegial science advisory bodies	p. 71
Knowledge, advice and influence: the role of the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1970-2009	p. 73
International Commission on Radiological Protection: policy and worldwide standards	p. 102
The European Commission and the collection and use of science and technology advice	p. 115
Collegial science policy advisory bodies	p. 137
RMNO and quality control of scientific advice to policy	p. 139
Quality assurance through procedures - policy advice A by the German Science Council	p. 157
Research-based advisory organisations	p. 175
The industrial organisation of economic policy preparation in the Netherlands	p. 177
Quality control for the leading institutes of economic research in Germany: promoting quality within and competition between the institutes	p. 215
Quality control and the link between science and regulation from a national and EU administrator's perspective	p. 229
Science into policy: The European Environment Agency	p. 238
Reflective approaches to uncertainty assessment and communication	p. 259
Looking through the telescope - quality assurance in scientific advice to politics	p. 270
Scientific policy advice and foreign policymaking - Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP), the German Institute for International and Security Affairs	p. 286
Academies of science	p. 295
Scientific advice for policy in the United States: lessons from the National Academies and the Former Congressional Office of Technology Assessment	p. 297
Quality control in scientific policy advice: the experience of the Royal Society	p. 334
European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC)	p. 342
Quality control in the advisory process: towards an institutional design for robust science advice	p. 353
Index	p. 375
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