Ethics, Policy & Environment, Volume 15, Issue 1, Page 71-76, March 2012.

The idea of public or stakeholder engagement in governance of science and technology is widely accepted in many policy and academic research settings. However, this enthusiasm for stakeholder engagement has not necessarily resulted in changes of attitudes toward the role of stakeholders in the dialogue nor to the value of public knowledge, practical experience, and other inputs (like salient questions) vis-à-vis expert knowledge. The formal systems of evaluation of the stakeholder engagement activities are often focused on showing that the method (...) is efficient and works. In this article, we argue that every stakeholder engagement process should be evaluated beyond a simple assessment of the methodology and that the wider context of the stakeholder engagement activity should also be addressed. We evaluate two different stakeholder engagement activities against the existing method evaluation criteria and demonstrate their limitations for assessing the quality of a stakeholder engagement. We argue that these criteria need to be extended so that engagement processes will have a chance to improve not only policies but also their democratic legitimacy. (shrink)

This paper discusses the role of the expert in giving advice to policy makers. It argues that, since biotechnology is an area characterised by value conflicts and fragile public trust in scientific experts and authorities, broader consultation processes which include both ethicists and laypeople should be conducted.“Expertise, it may be argued, sacrifices the insight of common sense to intensity of experience… The expert fails to realise that every judgement he makes not purely factual in nature brings with it a scheme (...) of values which has no special validity about it” (Laski, 1930). (shrink)

Over the past ten years there has been an increased awareness of the importance of stakeholder involvement and public participation in policy making. However, despite the general consensus that stakeholder participation is important within decision-making, the debate as to how that participation should be undertaken and how the various methods for participation should be evaluated continues. This paper presents a number of possible evaluation criteria, suggesting that the appraisal of both procedures and outcomes needs to include consideration of the legitimacy (...) of the procedure, in addition to the more common efficiency evaluation of procedures and outcomes. Together with experience from case studies, these criteria are then used to highlight the main promises and pitfalls of the various participation procedures. (shrink)