Abstract
To create a societal change towards a sustainable future, constructive relations between science and policy are of major importance. Boundary organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have come to play an important role in establishing such constructive relations. This study contributes to the development of empirically informed knowledge on the challenge of balancing different expectations for how the science–policy relation is to be constructed to create trustworthy knowledge and policy decisions, i.e., when to be what and to whom. This study revisits Climategate and uses the public debate on the IPCC’s credibility, legitimacy, and policy relevance that followed Climategate as an analytical window to explore how the IPCC balanced the science–policy relation in a trustworthy manner. The analysis is based on a document study. The study shows how different expectations on the science–policy relation coexist, and how these risks create a loss of trust, credibility, legitimacy, and policy relevance. Thus, for boundary organizations to have a chance to impact policy discussions, reflexivity about the present epistemic ideals and expectations on knowledge production is of major importance, and must be reflected in an organizational flexibility that is open to different strategies on how to connect science and policy in relation to different actors and phases of the knowledge production process.
Highlights
To create a societal change towards a sustainable future, constructive relations between science and policy are of major importance
The current study aims to address this knowledge gap through an empirical focus on the most well-known organization at the boundary between science and policy—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—and through a theoretical interest in how the IPCC faced and managed the science–policy relation during one of its greatest challenges yet: Climategate
This study focuses on the normative ideas of how to balance the relation between science and policy that were expressed throughout Climategate and guided the IPCC in their management of the crises
Summary
To create a societal change towards a sustainable future, constructive relations between science and policy are of major importance. Parker and Crona [8] identify how tensions create a social landscape within which organizations situated at the boundary between science and policy navigate multiple and shifting expectations and power relations in their ambition to create constructive and efficient science–policy relations Their idea of the landscape of tensions creates a theoretical explanation of what it means to balance when to be what and to whom ([8], cf civic epistemologies in Jasanoff [9], and Lidskog and Sundqvist [10]). The current study aims to address this knowledge gap through an empirical focus on the most well-known organization at the boundary between science and policy—the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—and through a theoretical interest in how the IPCC faced and managed the science–policy relation during one of its greatest challenges yet: Climategate.
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