Designing Institutions for Science-Policy Interaction

Abstract

This analysis aims to investigate the extent to which the institutional framework encompassing the science-policy dialogue may serve as an instrument for improving the effectiveness of the endeavour. The immediate source of this focus of study is the increasing interest among negotiation theorists in the manners in which the institutional arrangements of negotiation processes may affect negotiation behaviour by inducing or restricting particular courses of action (see inter alia Buzan, 1981; Miles, 1977; Nordquist, 1985; Sanger, 1987; Sebenius, 1984; Underdal, 1989; Winham, 1977; Zartman, 1975 and 1978). The interest in institutional structures as modifying agents to individual actor behaviour originates in organisational studies (see for instance, Egeberg, 1984; Scott, 1981; March and Olsen, 1989; Powell and DiMaggio, 1991), and surfaced within international studies particularly with the intense focus on international regimes from the latter part of the 1970s onwards (see especially Keohane and Nye, 1977; 1987; Krasner, 1983; 1988; Young, 1989). Regime theory emerged as a reaction to the anarchic and state-centred approach to international relations characterised by structural realism (see especially Waltz, 1979; and for a critique of this approach see Keohane (ed.), 1986). In contrast to structural realists, regime theorists claim that states do not operate in an entirely anarchic system in all areas of international relations. While there is no authority at the international level corresponding to nation state governments, actors’ behaviour is still, in some areas, restricted by “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations” (Krasner, 1983) — i.e., international regimes.