Strategic ignorance and politics of time: how expert knowledge framed shale gas policies

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the various uses of expert knowledge during the controversy over shale gas in France and in Quebec (Canada). Cross-fertilization between policy analysis and science and technology studies demonstrates that political uses of expertise better explained the policymaking process in focusing on two specific utilizations: strategic ignorance and politics of time. Using data from press analysis, interviews, reports and documentation analysis, this article shows that social movements can also use strategic ignorance to support their environmental claims and that mastering the pace of the controversy and the policy debates enabled actors to better support their policy claims. The French case illustrates those two arguments while the Quebec case provides a more tradition account of State/Industry’s utilization of knowledge production to delay decision and divert opposition.

KEYWORDS:

• Hydraulic fracturing
• shale gas
• expert knowledge
• public policy
• strategic ignorance
• politics of time

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. While Quebec is a Canadian province, it has a regulatory authority over energy and the environment similar to France. The federal strata played the same role as the European Union for France, that is providing expert knowledge, but it did not have an important impact on national/provincial debates.

2. Another set of 22 interviews with key French policy actors was made available from collaboration on the topic of shale gas in France.

3. In France, many MPs were at the same time mayors or local officials.

4. Statement of the Prime Minister Charest in late 2010.

5. Office Parlementaire d’Evaluation des Choix Scientifiques et Techniques: parliamentary office assessing scientific and technical choices.

6. Conseil Général de l’Industrie, de l’Energie et des Technologies (General Council of Industry, Energy and Technology, CGIET) and the Conseil Général de l’Environnement et du Développement Durable (General Council of the Environment and Sustainable Development, CGEDD).

7. Three elections mattered for MPs to support the ban (the regional election of March 2011 marked a severe defeat for the government, the cantonal election of September 2011, and general election of April 2012 increased political attention to the problem), but none of them determined the decision.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sébastien Chailleux

Sébastien Chailleux is tenure track at Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour and at Passages laboratory. He coordinates a junior chair focusing on the politicization of the utilizations of subsurface for energy transition such as shale gas, carbon and energy storage, and mining. He recently published a case study on France in The Extractive Industries and Society.