Participation in the governance of uncertain futures Citizen or public participation (these tend to be used interchangeably, see: Irwin 2006a: 299) is often valorised in the governance of technoscience, both as a good in itself and as an essential component of legal and regulatory decision-making. In this chapter we consider how citizen participation is contingent on imaginaries. Our case study for the latter investigation is sustainable development as it has been linked to and operationalised in the European Union’s (EU’s) broader agenda on technoscientific innovation. At least in the global West, democracy and citizenship are so deeply embedded that citizens and publics always matter and ‘no participation’ is not an option. Indeed, there is increasing awareness of diverse citizenry and publics voicing and often contesting elite claims about public interests and needs, for example, with regard to risks and benefits of new technologies or (their attendant) environmental hazards (Fiorini 1990). A particularly important reason for the focus on participation is the recognition that complex scien- tific and technological systems have repeatedly and increasingly been unable to prevent – and can even actually produce – accidents, disasters and risks (Beck 1986; Beck 2009; Giddens 1998).
This has prompted a turn towards the integration of techniques and prac- tices into decision-making that together can be understood as constituting ‘technologies of participation’. These are a means through which citizens regulate and are themselves regulated into producing (procedurally if not substantively) legitimate legal and regulatory decisions in relation to new and emerging technologies (Flear and Pickersgill 2013). As such participation can be seen as a way of assuaging public fear and anxiety about the risks and ethics of technoscientific development, maintaining faith in progress, and the ability of law and regulation to govern in the face of uncertainty. Participation is also implicated in delineating the boundaries of responsibil- ity, helping to distribute credit for success and, more importantly, accountabilities in the event of failure (Black 2005).
technoscience, and of enhanced global development, have also been frus- trated by the idea that this might not be sustainable, impelling a turn to the multi-faceted and essentially contested concept of ‘sustainable development’ (Davidson 2011; Dresner 2002; Irwin 2006b; O’Riordan 2009). Here, we examine how this concept is defined, detailed, and mobilised in the context of the EU. The latter develops its approach from the widely cited and influ- ential definition found in the Brundtland Report (Brundtland), which famously describes sustainable development as being about ensuring that humans can meet ‘the needs of the present without compromising the abil- ity of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987: 43). By contrast, the second part of the definition is regularly neglected:
[sustainable development] contains within it two key concepts: the concept of ‘needs’, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs.
(ibid.) Within the EU, sustainable development has been increasingly linked to technoscientific innovation, producing a specific framing: ‘sustainable technoscientific development’. With regard to non-technical narratives and visual materials we outline the construction of this frame and how it produces and cements a gradual move away from Brundtland’s emphasis on global equity and the limits of economic growth. In doing so, we highlight imaginaries or collectively held symbolic views and architectures that help to manufacture and maintain social purpose and order, and which thereby help to legitimate formally accountable power: the frame itself, which is aimed at producing a knowledge-based economy inhabited and seemingly produced by its innovator citizens. Crucially, these imaginaries narrow the conditions of possibility for participation in this area, rendering it as a private productive activity in the marketplace. Innovators are ranked above consumers and ‘others’, and the image of a united Europe aiming for sustainability para- doxically limits the space for democratic-political debate in governance. Technologies of participation and imaginaries
The sheer diversity of the techniques and practices that together constitute technologies of participation prevents more than a limited overview. Participation can occur ex ante or ‘upstream’ (Mandel 2009; Tait 2009; Wilsdon and Willis 2004), in making the decision itself, or ex post such as when technoscience enters the marketplace and can be purchased by consumers. It includes attempts at public deliberation and involvement that
can be more or less extensive, ranging from input into technoscientific devel- opment and agenda-setting ahead of the decision to regulate, to public relations exercises that communicate governance efforts either alongside of – or perhaps in formally making – the decision. Wherever it occurs, participa- tion can be broadly active or passive.
Moreover, the participants comprising ‘the public’ can be rendered as citi- zens within different models, such as ‘citizenship-as-rights’ often favoured in liberal accounts of formal citizenship1in which the equal status of citizens as
rights-bearers is stressed, or ‘citizenship-as-participation’ inspired by civic republican ideas of participants who genuinely share in power in order to shape and steer governance (for discussion see: Pfister 2011). Participants can also be rendered as inter alia citizens, stakeholders, laypersons and consumers. These latter roles are not necessarily synonymous or coterminous with citizenship even as they are related to it, at least in terms of being part of ‘the public’. Perhaps especially within liberal accounts of democratic decision- making where it is delegated to trusted elites wielding scientific and technocratic knowledge and expertise (Flear 2009), the figures constituting ‘the public’ – and especially those not explicitly termed ‘citizens’ – function to quell contestation, produce public legitimacy and maintain a functioning economy. Overall, the use and deployment of participation is contingent upon its design and configuration in relation to increasingly complex, interlaced, and decentralised governance arrangements (Gottweis 2008; Yeung 2008).
Like participation, imaginaries, including those of science and technology, are one important key to the success and perpetuation of a key repository of formally accountable power, the nation-state, for and by which they have long been established, utilised and normalised (Anderson 1983; Ezrahi 1990; Scott 1998). Imaginaries provide symbolic (in contrast to formal) accounts of social order and political identity as well as of the shared history and common goals that bind a community together and legitimate political action. Latterly, scholars working within science and technology studies (STS) have highlighted the salience of imaginaries in attempts by nation- states to link their scientific and technological projects with their societies (through the sociotechnical) and use this to produce collectively imagined forms of social life and social order, so-called ‘sociotechnical imaginaries’ (Jasanoff and Kim 2009; 2013). In short, imaginaries are a key part of the symbolic and cultural foundations of political and legal-constitutional orders. Within this literature, there has also been an attempt to decentre nation- states and loosen their link to imaginaries through a focus on micro-social processes and how they emerge in transnational discourse (Pickersgill 2011). Through our case study of sustainable development and technoscientific innovation we highlight imaginaries found in textual and non-textual
1 In the EU context see especially Article 9 TEU and Articles 20–24 TFEU, which establish EU citizenship and its rights.
elements, including videos and images (Jasanoff 2001). In doing so, we build on extant literatures in order to expand and augment the study of imaginar- ies within law and political studies, which have engaged with technoscience, but have hitherto paid little if any attention to imaginaries. We do so by (re)focusing on the relations between imaginaries and legal and regulatory decision-making, and specifically that of the EU (arguably the most success- ful non-national-state supranational polity), which has also been the focus of studies on participation. We highlight how imaginaries help to render the future legible and governable, enlarging the scope of power and the means of producing legitimacy and identity for ‘Europe’. In addition, we seek to open a clear line of enquiry into how imaginaries help to determine who can and should participate in decision-making, including through configurations of the ‘citizen’ or ‘public’, how and why they are to participate, including by and through which knowledges, and the outcomes to be achieved.
Regard to the EU is also useful in that it is explicitly founded on the objec- tive of promoting European integration, and the decision-making capacity of its legal-constitutional order has been central to this project. This order draws on the historical and cultural heritage and imaginaries of European classical civilisation and, perhaps paradoxically, the subsequent nation-states that it purports to transcend. The EU also draws on related imagery of the nation-state, including a body of law and institutional practice (the acquis communautaire) produced by and embedded in institutions (especially the European Council, European Commission (Commission), Court of Justice of the EU, and the European Parliament), presidential roles (especially of the Commission and the European Council), a flag and an anthem. Together these are deeply resonant and potent ways of connecting with the disparate component peoples of Europe, figured – in another echo of European heritage – as not just publics, but also (EU) citizens.
At the same time, especially in the current era of austerity in the name of ‘Europe’, the EU’s stateness, democratic legitimacy, as well as the coherence and togetherness of its people(s) seems to be even more limited. The EU is constantly searching for its political identity, as well as for stable and mean- ingful relationships with its citizens.2Although the EU is struggling to draw
on established imaginaries of national political orders and national political communities, it nonetheless continues to make huge investments in the production and mobilisation of (old and new) imaginaries of Europeanness, through its polity, shared future and a ‘We’ or demos. These are particularly salient with regard to sustainable development, which, like the EU’s imagi- naries, attempt to transcend traditional national conceptual frames and institutions. Yet, as we go on to show, the EU’s imaginaries join sustainable development with technoscientific innovation in the frame of ‘sustainable technoscientific development’ for the symbolic production of its political and
legal-constitutional order. This helps to legitimate the EU’s actions and regulatory decisions, distribute responsibilities and the credit for success, limit accountabilities for failures, and as part of that to enrol EU citizens in its political projects, while also configuring them in relation to decision- making through those technologies of participation.
Sustainable technoscientific development and innovation in the EU
We turn now to overview how sustainable development has been gradually linked with technoscientific innovation and the configuration of citizen partic- ipation in relation to it. As an initial point, although Brundtland has proven hugely influential, there are different formulations of sustainable development circulating within and between policy domains. For instance, the specific mean- ing attached to the main elements of economic growth (Ihlen and Roper 2011; Kambites 2012), the environment (Ross 2009), and global social justice (Barkemeyer et al. 2011; Deutz 2012), as well as to their relative weight within the concept, can all differ. Sustainable development focuses less on specific uncertainties and risks and more on providing wide-ranging guidance on how to steer away from the current (unsustainable) trajectory. Moreover, sustain- able development is nearly always formulated as a cross-cutting idea impacting, at least in principle, on all policy domains, including technoscience.
The EU included sustainable development among its objectives in 1997 with the Amsterdam Treaty, which amended the then European Community Treaty, (now further amended and renamed the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU)). Moreover, several key policy documents refine the meaning of sustainable development and how it should be promoted by the EU – mostly in the context of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy (EU SDS), launched in 2001. The EU SDS consists of three main elements. First, it prioritises a list of key unsustainable trends requiring most urgent action.3Second, it addresses how the EU could promote sustainable develop-
ment globally. Finally, the EU SDS promotes a new approach to policy-making in order to mainstream sustainable development in all policy fields and inte- grate economic, social and environmental policy. This final element is closely tied to the EU’s ‘Better Regulation’ agenda, which promotes the political and administrative technology of (environmental) impact assessment as a way to produce coherent policy-making and facilitate mainstreaming.4
However, sustainable development has been increasingly narrowed through its link with technoscientific innovation within the overarching direction for
3 These areas of priority are: climate change and energy; sustainable transport; sustainable consumption and production; conservation and management of natural resources; public health; social inclusion, demography, and migration; global poverty and sustainable devel- opment changes.
EU governance provided by the European Council Lisbon Strategy (2000–2010) (Council of the European Union 2000; Armstrong 2008) which was followed by the subsequent ‘Europe 2020’ strategy (to cover 2010–2020). The 2000 Lisbon European Council formulated the much-cited strategic objective to make Europe the ‘most dynamic and competitive, knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustaining economic growth, employment and social cohesion’ (European Council 2000, emphasis added). In fact, the knowl- edge-based economy is not used just as a descriptive term but is also a powerful imaginary, which is constructed to gather diverse political actors around a vision of a better and achievable future (for academic formulations of this vision, see: Bell 1976; Drucker 1993). In order to promote this transition towards a knowledge-based economy, technoscientific innovation became the central ‘driver for the production and exploitation of knowledge [making it] above all a linchpin in the implementation of the Lisbon Strategy’ (European Commission 2005: 2, emphasis added).
Of particular note are some tensions within the basic political and legal- constitutional architecture, which have important consequences for the EU’s notion of sustainable development and its related imaginaries, especially of citizens and their involvement. To begin with, at the legal-constitutional level, sustainable development is a fundamental, long-term objective of the EU as defined by Article 3(3) of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) and Article 11 TFEU. However, its importance as a central value is much less significant when looking at political strategies operationalising and giving life to the concept of sustainable development. To begin with the EU SDS has only been designed as a complementary process adding an environmental dimension to the Lisbon Strategy’s economic and employment/social policy dimensions, as also affirmed by the 2009 review (European Commission 2009: 13–15). In other words, sustainable development – a fundamental long-term objective of the EU – is subsumed under two subsequent strate- gies to boost growth and employment, which are more limited in scope as part of a medium-term objective of economic optimisation.
This narrowing of sustainable development was reinforced by the subse- quent refocusing of the Lisbon Strategy on growth and jobs in 2005 (Kok 2004) and the adoption of the EU’s Europe 2020 strategy in 2010 – a new ten-year strategy for economic growth, mainly formulated in response to the economic and financial crisis then (and still) engulfing the EU (European Commission 2010a; European Commission 2010b). The focus going towards 2020 remains on fostering growth, particularly through the exploitation of knowledge5and the propagation of ‘knowledge workers’. In
this manner the EU claims that:
5 ‘Commission launches consultation on EU 2020: a new strategy to make the EU a smarter, greener social market’: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/ 09/1807. Emphasis added.
the Europe 2020 strategy is about delivering growth that is: smart, through more effective investments in education, research and innova- tion; sustainable, thanks to a decisive move towards a low-carbon economy; and inclusive, with a strong emphasis on job creation and poverty reduction.6
This promise is translated into quantitative targets in the areas of employ- ment, innovation, education, poverty reduction and climate/energy. One important novel element of Europe 2020 is the seven flagship initiatives formulated by the Commission as concerted EU level actions to realize the proclaimed combined notion of smart, sustainable, and inclusive growth.
The prioritisation of growth implies further reshaping of sustainable devel- opment. For instance, the strategic objectives of a low-carbon economy and ambitious goals with regard to reducing CO2emissions display strong envi-
ronmental commitments. Yet, the notion of sustainable growth, especially in the context of ongoing economic crisis, also implies growth that is resistant to future crises rather than the reflexive and equity-oriented notion adopted in Brundtland. In addition, in the EU sustainability regime, environmental protection is to be achieved by boosting economic activities instead of limit- ing them. For example, the EU’s industrial policy agenda – one of two flagship initiatives to promote sustainable growth under Europe 2020 – is meant to ‘focus explicitly on opportunities for sustainable growth and job creation while making the transition to more resource efficiency across industry as a whole’ (European Commission 2010c). For this purpose, a main goal is described as developing ‘the EU market for environmental goods and services’ (ibid.).
The other flagship initiative under the heading sustainable growth is ‘Resource-efficient Europe’. Acknowledging natural limits, the overall tone of this flagship initiative is about efficiency and growth potential. According to the Commission:
increasing resource efficiency will be key to securing growth and jobs for Europe. It will bring major economic opportunities, improve productivity, drive down costs and boost competitiveness … This will help stimulate technological innovation, boost employment in the fast developing ‘green technology’ sector, sustain EU trade, including by opening up new export markets, and benefit consumers through more sustainable products.
(European Commission 2011: 2)
6 ‘Europe 2020’: http://ec.europa.eu/europe2020/europe-2020-in-a-nutshell/priorities/ index_en.htm
All in all, the political and legal-constitutional architecture comprised of the TEU and TFEU, the EU SDS, the Lisbon Strategy and Europe 2020 suggests a very specific meaning of sustainable development in the EU. Sustainable development is not understood or operationalised as a far-reach- ing transformation of the economy in order to promote global and intergenerational justice in line with the limits and capacities of ecosystems i.e. the Brundtland formulation. Rather, technoscientific innovation is figured as a necessary requirement for sustainable growth, wealth, and employ- ment. In short, the sustainability of Europe is framed and understood as being its persistent economic success, which should guarantee that it is resilient enough to manage large economic crises and the challenges arising from globalisation, demographic change and the transition towards a knowledge-economy. These goals are achieved not on the basis of self- restraint, as implied by Brundtland, but rather through the greater efficiency and market leadership flowing from technoscientific innovation.
Based on how sustainable development is mobilised and embedded in the context of the strategies for growth and employment, a very specific frame and imaginary of sustainability in an integrated Europe comes to the fore: sustainable technoscientific development. Indeed, as we go on to outline, this works with the imaginary of the knowledge-based economy to order gover- nance in a particular way and shape the conditions of possibility for, the configuration, and design of participation in relation to it.