Policy-oriented technology assessment across Europe. Expanding capacities

The volume Policy-Oriented Technology Assessment Across Europe. Expanding Capacities is the final publication of the FP7-funded project PACITA, Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment. The project, now finished, has mapped the field of technology assessment (TA) across Europe, and the opportunities for connecting existing national efforts. It is not to be understood as an all-encompassing, unifying, and homogenous formula for how TA in Europe should be done, but as a dialectic approach that seeks to recognize the local needs of national governments and the potential offered by national institutions, as well as the added value of building intra-European connections between them. The idea is not only laudable on its own TA terms; it is also importantly in line with the ‘European project’ and the attempt at creating democratic governance across a culturally and politically diverse continent, to which the book adds sensitivity for science and technology.

The book is logically divided into three parts: mapping the current landscape, best practices and lessons to be learnt, and spelling the future of cross-European TA. The whole is preceded by a Manifesto that sets the programme for a European version of TA. The manifesto makes a compelling case, primarily by raising the right questions that will be addressed in the remainder of the book: how can democratic societies, increasingly operating at the European level, deal properly with the dynamics generated by technological and scientific change?

The first part sketches the European landscape of – largely dispersed – TA practices. Chapter 1 shows, by means of three case studies, how TA must be understood not only in terms of the information it produces, but also in terms of the relations that emerge between TA professionals and others. The chapter then concludes that TA must importantly offer connections between society, parliament, government, and science and technology. Also, connections are to be made between countries that have an infrastructure for TA and countries that do not, and between various levels of organization. Chapter 2 explores possibilities for developing TA in countries that lack a clear tradition of it. Interestingly, the authors sketch three basic modes for TA to operate institutionally: as an institution supporting parliament, as an innovative network created from existing knowledge institutions, and as an activity that is unfolded by traditional players such as universities and academies of science. The second mode, of making a novel network from existing institutions, is developed further in Chapter 3. It comes hardly as a surprise, when the authors conclude that TA is not something that can be adopted en bloc, but needs adaptation and reinvention for each country, and even each problem field. Consequently, they also warn against seeing the development of TA as taking steps on an evolutionary ladder, but instead advise to see it as prudently selecting the best ideas and practices that are available from accepted institutions.

Chapter 4 discusses the needs and expectations of political and policy actors. In view of the complexities caused by science and technology as such, their transnational nature, and the currently unstable financial landscape, TA might have some fruitful reflexive, dialogical, and transdisciplinary methods on offer. Chapter 5 in fact poses some very pertinent questions in view of the overall aim of the project: what the added value of cross-European TA is, what modes of operation are apt, and which actor groups must be targeted to effectuate an impact at the European level. It is also the most reflexive chapter in how it addresses the very project itself. One of the vital issues it observes is the absence of a genuinely European public. While this has been argued before at a more general level as a better explanation of the arguable democratic deficit of Europe (see e.g. Eriksen 2005), it is still quite interesting to explore this from a particularly TA-informed perspective. However, if it is stated that this integration should be inclusive and diverse, it comes a bit as a surprise that TA as developed throughout the rest of the book is importantly addressed at institutional players, not a distinctly public sphere.

The second part of the book consists of three chapters that each discuss a practical experience with cross-European attempts at TA. Chapter 6 most directly engages with the challenges that emerge from translating national arrangements for TA into European ones. At the same time, the project about which the chapter reports is itself an attempt to try out new arrangements. The difficulties and lessons learnt are themselves convincing: political actors must be addressed also at institutional levels, not as only individual persons; creating solid evidence should be shaped as an iterative and reflexive process; different levels of TA advancement across member states poses challenges of its own; and it requires prudence to have TA professionals act as both experts and process managers. Chapter 7 discusses novel arrangements to organize stakeholder dialogues in cross-European settings, in particular workshops based on scenario writing. One matter of complexity is that it is difficult to arrive at scenarios that are both specific enough to provoke discussion, and generic enough to enrol all actors. The last chapter of this part, 8, offers a novel perspective on citizen participation, and how this could be achieved in a multi-sited way. Interestingly, the authors take issue with the seeming dichotomy between national citizens and European policy as a false one: European citizens are by definition already of a cosmopolitan sort, and the transnational nature of issues has long been recognized. The chapter points out some interesting views on what consensus could mean at the European level. This last element is a noteworthy exception to the lacuna that runs through these three chapters: it remains largely unclear what is distinctly European or cross-national about the lessons learnt, why European complexities are fundamentally different than other sources of complexity, and why we should strive for any consensus at the European level.

The final part offers strategic advice on how TA can be positioned. Chapters 9 and 10 inform the reader of TA summer schools and workshops that contributed to the consolidation of TA practices in the broader framework of responsible research and innovation (RRI). A four-stage approach to TA was disseminated: identification of the issue, selection of relevant methods, selection of relevant actors, and offering policy advice. Chapter 11 explores what it takes to establish a European TA platform. It concludes reflexively on the observation that the TA community has taken too much for granted its relevance and its right to existence, and remained too much inward-looking. The last chapter discusses possible electronic solutions to international TA cooperation. Apart from the straightforward provision of information, an interesting avenue for further development stands out: a forum aimed at interaction should be built. It is not substantiated further, though, how this interaction is to be curated. The bleak outlook for a secure funding of the website, at the end of the chapter, leaves little hope either.

Despite some clever observations and warnings in the first part, it is a pity to see that the second and third parts of the book repeat important shortcomings that should be known by now. For example, citizens, experts, politics, society, etc. are invariably referred to as seemingly fixed classes. One of the lessons of decades of thinking through science, technology, and society should have been that such classes are always problematic in themselves. Also, top-down and linear models abound, such as the above-mentioned four-stage model from Chapter 10, even though Part 1 so prudently warned for this. In this specific example, the identification of the public is made subordinate to the identification of the issue. This offers a stark contrast with novel approaches to RRI, which start their inquiry at a desired sociotechnical future and the impacts that are to be made to achieve that, rather than at a particular technology or even an industry (Owen, Macnaghten, and Stilgoe 2012). It is because of their modernist approach, on top of a lack of substance, that the claims that TA has important roles to fulfil in RRI, abundant throughout the book, hardly ever convince.

A final note is to be made here. It is probably a fact of twenty-first-century, project-driven academic life that once a project is over, ‘the book’ is still to be compiled even though most project members have run off to their next occupations. This book is a pitiful example of the lack of engagement in such post-project phases – or so I guess from the many repetitions and overly thin connections. Also, one need only look at the list of participating institutions on page xiii, where it takes fairly limited knowledge of all the relevant languages to spot at least a handful of misspelled names. If editing a book apparently does not include taking your own contributors seriously, the reader is left to wonder about how seriously they are taken.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research [31399300].