Town Meetings on Technology: Denmark's Experience with the Consensus Conference (page 2 of 2)
By Richard Sclove Technology Review

Not that consensus conferences are better than the OTA approach in every possible way. While less accessibly written and less attentive to social considerations, a traditional OTA report did provide more technical detail and analytic depth. But OTA-style analysis can, in principle, contribute to the consensus conference process. For example, the 1993 Dutch consensus conference on animal biotechnology used a prior OTA study as a starting point for its own more participatory inquiry.

Timeliness and Responsiveness

Once the panelists have announced their conclusions, the Board of Technology exemplifies its commitment to encouraging informed discussion by publicizing them through local debates, leaflets, and videos. In the case of biotechnology, the board has subsidized more than 600 local debate meetings. The board also works to ensure that people are primed for this whirlwind of post-conference activity. For example, the final four-day public forums are held in the Parliament building, where they are easily accessible to members of Parliament and the press.

Nor is it any accident that the topics addressed in consensus conferences are so often of parliamentary concern when the panelists issue their findings. The board has developed the ability to organize a conference on six months notice or less largely for the purpose of attaining that goal. This timeliness represents yet another advantage over the way technology assessment has been handled in the United States: relying mostly on lengthy analysis and reviews by experts and interest groups, the OTA required, on average, two years to produce a published report on a topic assigned by Congress. In fact, one complaint leveled by the congressional Republicans who argued for eliminating the agency was that the process it employed was mismatched to legislative timetables. Upon learning about consensus conferences and their relatively swift pace, Robert S. Walker, Republican chair of the House Science Committee, told a March 1995 public forum that if such a process can "cut down the time frame a useful information, that would be something we would be very interested in."

The Board of Technology's efforts do seem to be enhancing public awareness of issues in science and technology. A 1991 study by the European Commission discovered that Danish citizens were better informed about biotechnology, a subject that several consensus conferences had addressed, than were the citizens of other European countries, and that Danes were relatively accepting of their nation's biotechnology policies as well. Significantly, too, Simon Joss, a research fellow with the London Science Museum who has conducted interviews on consensus conferences with Danish members of Parliament, has found the legislators to be generally appreciative of the process--indeed, to the point where several eagerly pulled down conference reports kept at hand on their office shelves.

And although consensus conferences are not intended to have a direct impact on public policy, they do in some cases. For instance, conferences that were held in the late 1980s influenced the Danish Parliament to pass legislation limiting the use of genetic screening in hiring and insurance decisions, to exclude genetically modified animals from the government's initial biotechnology research and development program, and to prohibit food irradiation for everything except dry spices. Manufacturers are taking heed of the reports that emerge from consensus conferences as well. According to Professor Tarja Cronberg of the Technical University of Denmark, Danish industry originally resisted even the idea of establishing the Board of Technology but has since had a change of heart. The reasons are illuminating.

In conventional politics of technology, the public's first opportunity to react to an innovation can occur years or even decades after crucial decisions about the form that innovation will take have already been made. In such a situation, the only feasible choice is between pushing the technology forward or bringing everything to a halt. And no one really wins: pushing the technology forward risks leaving opponents bitterly disillusioned, whereas bringing everything to a halt can jeopardize jobs and enormous investments of developmental money, time, and talent. The mass movements of the 1970s and 80s that more or less derailed nuclear power are a clear example of the phenomenon.

By contrast, early public involvement and publicity--of the sort that a consensus conference permits--can facilitate more flexible, socially responsive research and design modifications all along the way. This holds the potential for a fairer, less adversarial, and more economical path of technological evolution. A representative of the Danish Council of Industry relates that corporations have benefited from their nation's participatory approach to technology assessment because "product developers have worked in a more critical environment, thus being able to forecast some of the negative reactions and improve their products in the early phase."

For example, Novo Nordisk, a large Danish biotechnology company, reevaluated its research and development strategies after a 1992 panel deplored the design of animals suited to the rigors of existing agricultural systems but endorsed the use of genetic engineering to help treat incurable diseases. The firm now wants to concentrate on work more likely to win popular approval, such as animal-based production of drugs for severe human illnesses.

Bringing It All Back Home

Finding suitable topics for U.S. consensus conferences would hardly be difficult; a variety of technically complex and socially significant issues currently on the federal agenda could work. One likely candidate would be the evolution of the information superhighway. The World Wide Web and other information systems promise to significantly affect everyone in our society, including many people who do not presently use computers and who are poorly represented in current deliberations on telecommunications policy.

Another good topic would be post Cold War reorganization of the U.S. national laboratory system. All taxpayers finance that system, which is intended to function as a national resource. However, blue-ribbon commissions appointed to help chart the labs' future have focused on the concerns of scientists, the military, industry, and the communities immediately adjacent to the labs--not on the needs of the American public as a whole.

Moreover, the mechanisms for distributing lay panel reports and encouraging follow-on social debate are readily available in this country. They include the Internet and the League of Women Voters. Also, the Connecticut-based Study Circles Resource Center, the Public Agenda Foundation, and the Kettering Foundation are experienced in facilitating nonpartisan, public-affairs discussions across the United States--everything from study groups with four or five people to large community forums.

Of course, a lay panel composed of, say, 15 people would represent a feeble statistical sample in a nation whose population numbers 250 million. However, hearing the considered views of a diverse group of 15 ordinary citizens would be a marked improvement over excluding the lay perspective entirely, which is the norm in most contemporary technology policy analysis and decision making.

Skeptics could also point out that consensus may be much easier to attain in a small, fairly homogeneous nation such as Denmark. But it is not as if consensus is impossible here; U.S. juries routinely reach consensus on highly contested, complex legal disputes. And besides, the significant feature of the consensus conference model is not consensus itself but the cultivation of informed citizen judgment. The final report can and often does identify issues on which the panel is unable to reach agreement. The report from the 1993 Dutch consensus conference on animal biotechnology included majority and minority o fact, believing that consensus is not essential to the model at all, Dutch organizers renamed their variant simply a "public debate."

Consensus aside, would an ad hoc assemblage of U.S. citizens even be capable of deliberating together reasonably? There is some reason to think so. The intensive preparatory weekends that precede a public consensus conference help by letting lay panelists get to know one another and develop their ability to reason together. More to the point, key real-life trials have met with encouraging results. For instance, although Britain is populous and racially and socioeconomically diverse, panelists on the first U.K. consensus conference proved quite able to converse and work together.

And the Jefferson Center--a Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization that explores new democratic decision-making methods--has developed a deliberative format, known as a "citizens jury " process, that is similar in many ways to a consensus conference. In 1993, such lay panels formed working relationships sound enough to permit an examination of such contentious issues as national health care reform and federal budget restructuring. The panels' conclusions did not directly alter government policy, but they received enough media attention to influence public debate, and elected officials paid attention. Indeed, representatives from the budget jury were invited to discuss their proposals with the U.S.

Senate Finance Committee.

As to the question of who should organize consensus conferences, European organizers stress the need to seek an institution that is--and will be perceived as--scrupulously impartial on the issues under debate, authentically committed to democratic deliberation, and of sufficiently high stature to attract strong media, popular, and government attention. Consider, for example, the Library of Congress or a trusted nonprofit organization such as the League of Women Voters. But for maximum media attention and social influence, congressional or presidential sponsorship, with bipartisan oversight, would presumably be ideal. With many Americans convinced that the federal government has grown seriously out of touch with the concerns of ordinary citizens, perhaps consensus conferences would be one way to start rebuilding trust.

Of course, we might start on a more modest level, to learn some of the ropes, before going national. Norman Vig, a Carleton College political scientist who has studied technology assessment throughout western Europe, recommends experimenting carefully in different U.S. institutional settings and at various governmental levels. For instance, the consensus conference methodology could be applied in a university setting, or at the state level on issues in science and technology policy pending before the legislature.

At least in the abstract, we Americans are fiercely proud of our democratic heritage and our technological prowess. But it is striking that we do virtually nothing to ensure that these twin sources of national pride are in harmony with one another. Consensus conferences are not a magic bullet for all that ails democracy or for ensuring that science and technology are responsive to social concerns. But they do reawaken hope that, even in a complex technological age, democratic principles and procedures can prevail and, indeed, extend into the technological domain.