Revisiting “Upstream Public Engagement”: from a Habermasian Perspective

Abstract

The idea of conducting Bupstream public engagement,^using nanotechnology as a test case, has been subject to criticism for its lack of any link to the political system. Drawing on the theoretical tools provided by Habermas, this article seeks to explore such a Blink^, focusing specifically on the capacity of civil society organizations (CSOs) to distil, raise and transmit societal concerns in an amplified form to the public spheres at the European Union (EU) level. Based on content analysis and semi-structured interviews with relevant actors, this article examines the evolution of CSO approaches towards nanotechnology over the past decade and investigates whether and how upstream public engagement could contribute to more vibrant public spheres and facilitate the formation of communicative power. The answer to these questions is twofold: on the one hand, moving public engagement Bupstream^enables CSOs to be better informed and to become part of the debates more quickly. A Bgreen alliance^is taking shape, which calls for more stringent regulation on nanomaterials. On the other hand, upstream public engagement has turned out to be unsuccessful in generating substantial and sustained interest. A number of CSOs have quit this field in frustration at the tokenistic engagement and out of fatigue after the intense lobbying battle for Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH).

Auditing the ‘Social’ of Quantum Technologies: A Scoping Review

“…Many concepts such as "democratizing science, and technology" [98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106], "participatory technology assessment" [107][108][109][110][111][112][113][114], "technology assessment" [115][116][117], "parliamentary technology assessment" [118][119][120], "anticipatory governance" [121][122][123][124], "upstream engagement" [125][126][127][128][129][130], "responsible innovation" [131], "responsible research and innovation" [132][133][134][135][136][137] and most recently, "transformative vision assessment" [138], as well as fields such as AI-ethics, bioethics, computer science ethics, information technology ethics, nanoethics, neuroethics, and robo-ethics have emerged to engage with the recognized reality that scientific and technological advancements have social, legal, ethical and economic consequences. The authors of several academic articles have begun to highlight the need for the governance of quantum technologies [139]…”

Limits and benefits of participatory agenda setting for research and innovation

“…Abels and Bora [8] for instance conclude that regarding the "high potentials of conflict in ethical debates […] participatory TA is an unpredictable tool with limited possibilities". Whilst there are several reasons for failing to reach the intended impact, more and more scholars point towards public engagement activities to be inserted within the research and innovation system as early as possible (upstream engagement), as lateness of respective activities has been identified as an important reason for the failure [30,[43][44][45][46].…”

Human centred science and technology—transdisciplinary foresight and co-creation as tools for active needs-based innovation governance

“…Despite widespread PE enthusiasm, scholarly and political debate developed various critical and hypercritical arguments. The most commonly identified shortcomings include that PE fails to deliver the aimed for results, such as gains in rationality, stimulating debate or actual impact on strategy and policy-making [41,54,57,59,60,[71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79][80]. Here, discrepancies particularly emerge, when bridging the gap between theory and practice [81,82].…”