Abstract
Until recently, evaluating the risks of technology has been considered a technical problem, not a political issue; a problem relegated to expertise, not to public debate. But disputes have politicized the issue of risk and led to the development of procedures to enhance public acceptability of controversial projects. Our paper reviews various types of hearings, public inquiries, advisory councils, study groups and information forums that have been formed in the United States and Western Europe to resolve disputes over science and technology. We analyze the assumptions about the sources of conflict and the appropriate modes of decision making that underly these procedures. And we suggest some reasons for their rather limited success in reducing political conflict and achieving public consensus.
A version of this paper appeared as D. Nelkin and M. Pollak, “Public Participation in Technological Decisions: Reality or Grand Illusion,” Technology Review, September 1979, 55-64. The authors would like to acknowledge the German Marshall Fund and the National Science Foundation EVIST Program for their research support.
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References
Task Force of the Presidential Advisory Group on Anticipated Advances in Science and Technology, “The Science Court Experiment,” Science, 193: 653, August 20, 1976.
See discussion in B. Ackerman, The Uncertain Search for Environmental Quality, New York, The Free Press, 156 ff, 1974.
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Nelkin, D., Pollak, M. (1980). Problems and Procedures in the Regulation of Technological Risk. In: Schwing, R.C., Albers, W.A. (eds) Societal Risk Assessment. General Motors Research Laboratories. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0445-4_11
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0445-4_11
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