Abstract
In 2010, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research started a series of citizens’ dialogues on future technologies. In the context of the German history of public participation in technology-oriented policy making, these dialogues are unique for at least two reasons: The Federal Ministry retains the responsibility for the entire process and is heavily involved in its planning, organization and communication, and the number of participants and process elements is significantly higher than in most other participative events. The paper presents insights into the political background of the citizens’ dialogues, its general concept as well as first observations from the dialogue rounds on energy and high-tech medicine. In addition, it discusses reactions of other political actors and expectations regarding legitimacy and representativeness of the dialogue results.
Highlights
Political decision-making with respect to new technologies is challenged more and more by public ‘resistance’ even though there is no general technophobia in Europe.1 Historically rooted in the debate about nuclear power, still present with a focus on potential nuclear waste disposal sites and reactivated by the nuclear accidents in Fukushima, nowadays technologies assumed to be much less controversial get under public pressure as well
In the context of the German history of public participation in technology-oriented policy making, these dialogues are unique for at least two reasons: The Federal Ministry retains the responsibility for the entire process and is heavily involved in its planning, organization and communication, and the number of participants and process elements is significantly higher than in most other participative events
There was a planning assessment procedure and it took more a decade to get through the whole process resulting in the decision to change the railway station from a dead-end station into a pass-through underground station
Summary
Political decision-making with respect to new technologies is challenged more and more by public ‘resistance’ even though there is no general technophobia in Europe. Historically rooted in the debate about nuclear power, still present with a focus on potential nuclear waste disposal sites and reactivated by the nuclear accidents in Fukushima, nowadays technologies assumed to be much less controversial get under public pressure as well. Against the background of this recent trend towards a more dialogue-oriented policy-making process, we would like to introduce the citizens dialogue on future technologies of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research from a perspective of a technology assessment institution that was (and, at the time of writing of this paper, still is) participating in the design, realization and evaluation of this process.. In summer 2010, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) put out a call for tender for the organization of citizens’ dialogues on future technologies Among other goals, these dialogues should create a forum that involves citizens on a broad basis, that gives them the opportunity to inform themselves about new key technologies and research projects, that allows citizens to form an opinion in a public discourse and to advocate for the results of this opinionforming process in discussions with policy, industry and academia. We expected to get—as participant observers— some insights into the expectations of government officials on dialogue processes and into the reception of its results—and the problems related to that—in government institutions; and (c) in the established practice of self-reflexivity in TA to test claims like that—in contrast to more expert based assessments—participative elements in technology assessment and technology governance can increase the quality and the robustness of social knowledge
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