Abstract
Citizen and stakeholder engagement is frequently portrayed as vital for socially accountable science policy but there is a growing understanding of how institutional dynamics shape engagement exercises in ways that prevent them from realising their full potential. Limited attention has been devoted to developing the means to expose institutional features, allow policy-makers to reflect on how they will shape engagement and respond appropriately. Here, therefore, we develop and test a methodological framework to facilitate pre-engagement institutional reflexivity with one of the United Kingdom’s eminent science organisations as it grappled with a new, high-profile and politicised technology, genome editing. We show how this approach allowed policy-makers to reflect on their institutional position and enrich decision-making at a time when they faced pressure to legitimate decisions with engagement. Further descriptions of such pre-engagement institutional reflexivity are needed to better bridge theory and practice in the social studies of science.
Highlights
Contemporary science policy is defined by its concern with the place of public and stakeholder voices in shaping the direction and form of research and innovation trajectories
The literature is replete with examples of attempts to foster participation in science policy (e.g. Bellamy et al, 2016; Betten et al, 2018; Entradas, 2014; Macnaghten, 2020) but these examples must be set against studies of the ‘mess’ of policy-making that show how path dependency and lock-in are inherent to institutionalisation processes within this domain (Dunlop, 2010; Marris and Calvert, 2019)
We found that Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC)-funded scientists locate plant genome editing in relation to five challenge areas: industrial biotechnology and bioenergy, biology underpinning health, genetic tool development, food security and sustainable agriculture
Summary
Contemporary science policy is defined by its concern with the place of public and stakeholder voices in shaping the direction and form of research and innovation trajectories This concern manifests through broad trends in public administration, such as commitments to ‘Open Government Initiatives’ (Fung, 2015; Pallett, 2015), but is mirrored by innovation-specific developments that include the normalisation of calls for engagement around new and emerging technologies (Rose, 2012), institutionalisation of state experiments with engagement in science policy (Pallett, 2015), and broad uptake of governance concepts such as responsible innovation (Stilgoe et al, 2013).
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