Author: Prof. Dr. Holger Straßheim
This is Part 2 of Prof Staßheim’s reflections of international comparative analysis of ethics bodies and committees. Part 1 foced on the institutional embeddedness of ethics advice.
In the last blog we explored how science-policy interactions, and by extension ethics – policy interactions are culturally and institutionally embedded. This helps us to develop a framework for international comparative analysis of ethics bodies and committees who provide advice to governments and policy makers. In this second part we look at the ideas of ‘civic epistemologies’ and ‘policy epistemics’ in more detail.
Context-specific shared commitments
The concept of ‘civic epistemologies’ sets out the ways by which expertise gains authority and evidence is validated in particular contexts. These ‘institutionalized practices by which members of a given society test and deploy knowledge claims’ (Jasanoff 2005, p. 255) vary fundamentally across countries. The contextual specificity of particular ‘civic epistemologies’ explains why – despite an international science system that is increasingly standardized and isomorphic – understandings and influences of policy expertise differ greatly across national contexts:
‘[The] American system highlights the values of transparency and explicit public criticism while seeking to attain a view from nowhere in relation to scientific knowledge. British political culture is less concerned with specialized knowledge and more with the character of the experts who serve the public. British policy stresses experts’ personal commitments to the public good and seek to ensure that experts will bring appropriate forms of experience to the issues before them. The German approach also implicitly embraces the idea of experts as society’s delegates, but it does so by mapping the macrocosm of society onto the microcosm of committee structure.’ (Jasanoff 2011b, p. 32)
Indeed, the concept of ‘civic epistemologies’ turned out to be highly instructive in understanding divergent modes of policy advice and expertise in research on environmental policy, sustainability governance, and studies on biotechnology (the following is based on Straßheim, Jung, and Korinek 2015; see also Bridel 2023 and De Donà 2023).
Cultural embeddedness of science and ethical advice to governments
Science and policy interact in manifold patterns shaped by institutions and administrative principles, practices of demarcation and boundary setting, as well as collectively shared understandings of what is politically relevant, publicly legitimate, and scientifically sound. As Jasanoff (2005, p. 15) convincingly argues: ‘With growing awareness of the culturally embedded character of both knowledge and policy, there are reasons to be skeptical of unproblematic learning from others’ experience.’ Expertise and ethical advice take many forms. What might be accepted as unquestionable and convincing in one cultural context might be met with doubts and skepticism in another.
What makes the UK and Germany different?
Cultural orientations to objectivity
A comparison between the UK and Germany might be instructive in this respect. The British empiricist tradition (Shapin and Schaffer 1985) is characterized by its “commitment to empirical proofs, which, in principle, should be evident to everyone” (Jasanoff 2013: 141).
Thus, there is a tight fit between this constitutive aspect of the British culture of expertise and the easy graspable demonstration of both scientific soundness and political relevance. This amalgamation of concepts of objectivity, however, stands in stark contrast to Germany´s culture of expertise. In Germany, objectivity, i.e., the “appearance of a view from nowhere”, as Jasanoff (2005: 267) puts it borrowing a term coined by philosopher Thomas Nagel, “is achieved by resolutely embracing views from everywhere”.
Yet, in contrast to Britain where this view from everywhere is dressed in the “commonsense vision” (Jasanoff 2011: 314), Germany´s “view from everywhere” comprises all institutional perspectives that are deemed as relevant for the issue at stake.
Cultural orientations to public interest and civil society
In Britain, the attribution of expert competence is tied to an individual “who achieves standing not only through knowledge and competence, but through a demonstrated record of service to society” (Jasanoff 2005: 268). This pattern of attribution of expertise is closely linked to Anglo-Saxon public interest culture where the government or government departments (rather than the state) draw their authority from obtaining “the public´s consent (or, at least, acquiescence) for measures devised in the public (general, national) interest” (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004: 53).
In Germany´s “organic” state tradition, by contrast, state and civil society are part of an essentially organic whole – a citizen is not “an atomistic individual but rather a member of an essentially organic society that exists in more or less formalized relationship with the state” (Loughlin and Peters 1997: 48). In this context expert credibility draws on institutional affiliation as sufficient testimony to the quality of the ensuing judgements (Jasanoff 2005).
Cultures of civil service
In contrast to Britain´s generalist public servants whose profession is mostly about policy and pragmatic management, Germany’s civil service is characterized by the prevalence of the so-called ‘Juristenmonopol’. German civil servants, predominantly trained by lawyers, are not only public employees but also personifications of the legal state.
In the UK, however, “the professional civil service provided politicians with both fearless advice, thanks to a security of tenure comparable to university professors” (Pollitt 2004: 103). This long-lasting influence of British administrative tradition is echoed in the evidence-based policy movement that accompanied New Labour’s reform activities since the late 1990s but has never been a priority for the German civil service (Straßheim and Kettunen 2013).
Cultures of ‘public witnessing’
In the British “stateless society” (Stillman 1991) the state has no legal basis and government is regarded as “necessary evil, whose powers are to be no more than are absolutely necessary, and whose ministers and officials must constantly be held to public account” (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004: 53). Accordingly, since all governmental authoritative claims require ‘public witnessing’ in Britain, British official science must allow the public to witness its scientific validity and objectivity.
On the level of government agencies, this demand of public witnessing is increasingly met by publishing a dense web of ethical checklists, ethical governance guidelines and meta guidelines (Freudl 2020).
In the German ‘Rechtsstaat’, in contrast, with its strong and all-encompassing body of public laws governing every administrative sphere, the state is a legal state vested with exceptional authority but constrained by its own laws.
The Weberian accountability of public servants is ensured through constitutionally and legally mandated rules under which they carry out their functions. Accordingly, once the rules for a German advisory body have been formally set in place and once it has been constituted, science advice is carried out in a relatively “invisible sphere of expert decision-making” (Jasanoff 2005: 261) whose authority is not exercised by means of public witnessing as in Britain.
Beyond universals: What counts as good ethical advice?
What counts as good ethical advice? There is no universal standard. Instead, a more comparative view on the political, administrative, legal and epistemological cultures of countries and regions might help us to get a better understanding of the international varieties of ethics and expertise, their transformations, and the implications for the normative and moral underpinnings of public discourses in an increasingly globalized world (De Dona 2023; Straßheim 2023).
Bibliography
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De Donà, Matteo. 2023. “Is it only about science and policy? The ‘intergovernmental epistemologies’ of global environmental governance.” Journal of International Relations and Development 26 (1):86-110. doi: 10.1057/s41268-022-00276-w.
Freudl, Rebecca-Lea. 2020. The Politics of Politico-Epistemic Authority. The Case of Independent Food Safety Agencies in the UK and in Germany. Tübingen: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (Dissertation).
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Straßheim, Holger, Arlena Jung, and Rebecca-Lea Korinek. 2015. “Reframing Expertise: The Rise of Behavioural Insights and Interventions in Public Policy ” In Moments of Valuation. Exploring Sites of Dissonance, edited by Ariane Berthoin Antal, Michael Hutter and David Stark, 249-268. Oxford: Oxford University Press.