The politics of expertise in assessing alternatives to glyphosate in France

Abstract

Transitions to sustainability require not only structural policy reforms, but a rethinking of how policy-relevant expertise is produced. Scholars of Science and Technology Studies have used the concept of boundary work to examine how governments mobilize experts to establish epistemic and political authority for public policies. Less attention has been paid to the ways in which boundary work affects the scope of policy options to advance sustainability transitions, notably in the context of sociotechnical lock-in of dominant technologies. This article analyzes French pesticide regulation on alternatives to glyphosate in agriculture to reveal the governance implications of the construction of expertise. It examines how state actors and scientific experts performed cognitive and sociopolitical boundary work to affect both the framing of government-commissioned scientific reports and the institutions and policy instruments through which the government addressed the glyphosate problem. The article analyzes the factors that shaped the development of a novel regulatory instrument which restricts the use of glyphosate based on the availability and costs of alternatives, rather than on health or environmental risks alone. This process limited the framing of glyphosate alternatives to practices considered economically and practically feasible by selected experts and excluded more systemic alternatives from policy debate and instrumentation. The adoption of this regulatory instrument reflects specific institutional contexts, power differentials between governmental ministries, and the hidden political influence of a powerful agricultural sector and agrochemical industry. This article shows how expertise design plays a key role in defining the scope of policy options and determining allocations of political power.