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Article Excerpt
Introduction
Since their introduction to the market, genetically modified organisms (GMOs) have encountered resistance from European publics. Consistently, Eurobarometer surveys reveal a low level of support for GM food, especially when compared to other applications of biotechnologies, such as in pharmaceuticals. The most recent Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology (Eurobarometer, 2006) shows that even the introduction of the new regulation on the commercialization of GM crops and the labeling of GM food appears to have done little to allay the European public's anxieties concerning agri-food biotechnology.
Institutional reactions to public skepticism have changed over time. In the 1990s, efforts were aimed at increasing the social acceptability of GMOs by presenting novel biotechnology in a highly positive light and as very promising in terms of research and economic development. Public resistance was ascribed mainly to public ignorance, scientific illiteracy, and a deficit of trust in institutions. In official representations, "experts" were depicted as addressing the issue with "objective risk," whereas the public was supposed to have a subjective approach, marked by fears and anxieties (Levidow, 2007). Unfavorable press campaigns and antiinnovation attitudes were assumed to be at the heart of the difference. Accordingly, strategies to cope with public skepticism were aimed at promoting better information and improving communication between scientists and lay people.
However, various studies in the 1990s revealed that such an "educational" approach ignored some crucial elements of the European attitudes toward GMOs. Resistance, it was observed, was more a result of social and cultural reasons than of scientific illiteracy, lack of knowledge and education, or negative mass-media communications (for an analysis, see Lujan & Todt, 2007). According to the studies on public understanding of science (PUS) conducted at the end of the 1990s and in many cases funded by the Directorate General (DG) for Research of the European Commission (EC), the general public was more concerned with the following questions: Why do European societies need GMOs? What are their benefits? Who should decide about licensing them? Who is accountable in case of harmful effects? What are the remedies that authorities may foresee in case of damage to the environment or human health? How should the risk be assessed and how independent are the experts assessing it? European publics refused to frame the question in terms of risk for human health only but raised social, environmental, and economic questions. In particular, questions of equity and fairness have taken precedence in the debate over questions of risk and safety--"[m]any people perceive the benefits predominantly to lay with the producers and the risk with the public" (Torgersen, Lassen, Jelsoe, Rusanen, & Nielsen, 2000).
At the same time, a radical critique of regulatory institutions and their ability to manage risk was informed by evidence of institutional failure in the case of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy scandals in the mid-1990s. Critics called into question the technocratic approach of EC institutions and stressed that, in order to deliver regulative decisions that are both fair and effective, public participation should be strengthened (Levidow & Cart, 1997; Shrader-Frechette, 1991; Thompson & Wesley, 1996; Wynne, 2001). These recent developments have underlined the importance of "democratising expertise" (Liberatore & Funtowicz, 2003), hence shifting the focus of the strategies for involving the general public from education and information toward a more active and direct participation. In particular, the need to involve citizens in the regulation, promotion, and implementation of biotechnologies has been stated in a number of official documents of the EC (EC, 2000a, 2000b, 2001a, 2001b). In the academic literature, studies on participative technology assessment (PTA) have multiplied (Bora, 2006; Borras, 2006; Hansen, 2006; Joss & Brownlea, 1999; Klinke & Renn, 2002; Rothstein, 2004). The approaches endorsed are diverse but share the aim of contributing "to an optimal alignment between technological and societal developments" (Van Den Ende, Mulder, Knot, Moors, & Vergragt, 1998).
In the regulatory framework inaugurated at the beginning of this decade, promotion of public participation has assumed a more relevant role, with specific requirements for the involvement of the lay public in technological assessment and inclusion of "consumer interests." In addition, ethical and societal concerns are included as legitimate considerations in the procedures of authorization of GM products in the EU market (Ferretti, 2007). In particular, the two directives regulating deliberate release into the environment of GMOs (Directive 2001/18/EC) and GM food and feed (Regulation 2003/1829/EC) set two different (although similar) procedures for authorization, both of which make provisions for public participation. In practice this takes the form of Internet consultations and thus instances a case of e-participation.
E-Participation has, in the last decade, attracted the interest of policy-makers as a tool for reaching a wider public, thus improving transparency and information dissemination. It has been observed that an Internet platform, on the one hand, lowers the costs (both in terms of time, human, and material resources) of information dissemination as well as feedback collection, and, on the other hand, increases the transparency of consultation (Sheridan & Riley, 2006). For these reasons, Internet platforms have been regarded as a communication channel that is especially effective in engaging citizens in the democratic debate, favoring bottom-up inputs in policy-making and even empowering citizens as coproducers of policy (Finke, 2005; Macintosh, 2004).
The participatory exercise under study is a good example of how electronic support makes consulting the public possible in circumstances in which it would be hardly imaginable by means of more traditional techniques of communication. This is because making repeated consultations any time a product is considered for authorization and collecting citizen input efficiently requires a reliable and fast information system. Indeed, in the case of procedures for authorization of GM products, the lay public can directly participate in the assessment of individual products. This has been a task thus far reserved for experts appointed at the European level or by competent national authorities. Abels (2007, p. 107) calls "PTA in strict sense" the argumentative dialogue between experts and counter-experts concerning specific technical problems so as to reach deliberative solutions. Participation exercises involving lay people have instead had several diverse goals, which often include discussing issues that are ethically and socially controversial, initiating processes of social learning, improving accountability, and enhancing the level of acceptance and legitimacy of political decisions and trust in institutions (Abels, 2007; Kohler-Koch, 2007). For example, the lay public was involved in general stakeholder consultations and workshops about GMOs or citizens' forums such as "GM Nation" in the UK (2002-3) and the "Diskurs Grune Gentechnik" in Germany (2001-2002). Such a separation between an "epistemic" function of expert participation and a "legitimizing" function of lay participation (Ferretti, 2007) has been criticized for presupposing a divide between (subjective) ethics, which allegedly is the main concern of the lay public, versus (objective) science judgements, which are a matter for experts (Wynne, 2001). By opening an access point both for counterexperts and for the lay public, direct participation in the authorization of single GM products represents a departure from this traditional approach by mixing up the features of lay and expert participation.
This paper presents for the first time a comprehensive analysis of the functioning of this kind of e-participation at the EC level. Several authors (Ferretti, 2007; Pellizzoni, 2001; Rothstein, 2004) have indicated that crucial to any analysis of participation is the question of whether these procedures can fulfill the functions assigned to them by means of institutional design (e.g., mitigating the democratic deficit in risk assessment institutions, enhancing information dissemination). At the same time, this functional dimension is the most recalcitrant to measurement, and the difficulty of identifying goals, setting criteria for assessing efficiency, and measuring success, especially when it comes to citizen impact in decision-making, has been discussed at length (Nowotny, 2005; Van den Ende et al., 1998). Aware of these difficulties, we will use the threefold goals of e-participation identified by the OECD (2001) as a yardstick: (1) favoring the delivery of information to the citizens, (2) promoting citizen consultation so that they can provide feedback on issues and questions defined by the institutions, and (3) fostering active participation, which aims at citizen engagement in defining the agenda of policy-making. We will assess our empirical findings in light of these criteria.
Legal Framework
Directive 2001/18/EC sets out two regulatory regimes.: Part B for controlling GM releases for research and development, and Part C for placing GMOs on the...
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