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.
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