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2 - Science, politics, and science in politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Andrew Dessler  and
Edward A. Parson
Andrew Dessler
Affiliation:
Texas A & M University
Edward A. Parson
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
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Summary

The climate-change debate, like all policy debates, is fundamentally an argument over action. How shall we respond to climate change? Do the risks it poses call for action, and if so, how much effort – and money – shall we expend, and on what type of action? Listen to the debate and you will hear many different kinds of arguments – about whether and how the climate is changing, whether human activities are responsible, how much of the change occurring might be natural, how the climate might change in the future, what the effects of the changes will be and whether they matter, and the feasibility, advantages, and disadvantages of various responses. Although these arguments are distinct, when advanced in policy debate they all serve to make a case for what we should or should not do. They aim to convince others to support a particular course of action.

This chapter lays the foundation for understanding these arguments. The next section lays out the differences between the two kinds of claims advanced in policy debates, positive and normative claims. Sections 2.2 and 2.3 then discuss how science examines and tests positive claims, and how participants in policy debates use both positive and normative claims to build arguments for and against proposed courses of action. Section 2.4 examines what happens when scientific and policy debates intersect, as they do for climate change. Finally, Section 2.5 discusses the role of scientific assessment in managing the boundary between scientific and policy debate.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change
A Guide to the Debate
 , pp. 31 - 60
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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References

Farrell, Alexander and Jäger, Jill, eds. (2005). Assessments of Regional and Global Environmental Risks: Designing Processes for the Effective Use of Science in Decision-making. Washington, DC: Resources for the Future.
The studies collected in this volume examine how scientific and technical assessments of several environmental issues were designed and managed, to provide practical insights into how to conduct effective assessments. Produced from the same research project as the Mitchell et al. volume cited below, this one uses the same framework to evaluate assessments according to their scientific credibility, legitimacy, and decision relevance and saliency.
Jasanoff, Sheila (1990). The Fifth Branch: Science Advisors as Policymakers. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
This study of scientific advisory bodies to US government agencies examines the processes by which the boundaries between the scientific and political domains were negotiated in several regulatory controversies, and the conditions that contributed to more or less stable and effective maintenance of the boundary – and a more or less constructive relationship between scientific advice and regulatory decision-making – in each case.
Kuhn, Thomas (1962). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
This study of the social processes by which scientific disciplines make progress was the first to note the contrast between two starkly different modes of change in scientific understanding: normal, incremental progress that depends on a certain deep and unexamined structure of shared assumptions (which Kuhn called “paradigms”) about what questions are important and what lines of research are interesting or promising; and occasional revolutionary upheavals that follow the accumulation of some critical quantity of results that do not fit within the paradigm.
Mitchell, Ronald, Clark, William, Cash, David, and Dickson, Nancy, eds. (2006). Global Environmental Assessments: Information and Influence. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
This synthesized collection of studies of scientific assessment processes in several environmental issues examines the mechanisms by which assessments can inform and influence policy decisions, and the conditions that shape whether they do so. It examines how assessments operate and are used in political settings, and argues that effective assessments, in addition to being scientifically credible, must also be perceived as legitimate in their process and participation, and must present their outputs in terms that are sufficiently salient and relevant to decision-makers.
Ruckelshaus, William D. (1985). Risk, Science, and Democracy, Issues in Science and Technology. 1:3, Spring 1985, pp. 19–38.Google Scholar
Ruckelshaus, Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency under Presidents Nixon and Reagan, argues that effective environmental policy depends on maintaining enough separation between scientific-based processes of assessing environmental risks, and more political processes of deciding what to do about the risks based on the best scientific information that is available.

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