The politics of advisory expertise: chief scientific advisers in UK Government, 1990-2010
What are the defining qualities of ‘good advice’ in advanced democratic policy-making? In the UK, the employment of chief scientific advisers (CSAs) has served for several decades as a critical mechanism for incorporating ‘good scientific advice’ into policy decisions. Despite the ubiquity of this advisory model across major government departments however, the actual practices used by CSAs to provide advice to UK Government have barely been examined by social scientists. This paper documents the findings of a small study of CSAs, based upon sixteen semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis. Drawing on theoretical concepts from science and technology studies, it sets out tentative answers to two principal questions: 1) How do actors at the science-policy interface conceptualise the role and responsibilities of a CSA?; and 2) How do actors at the science-policy interface define ‘good advice’, and what kinds of practices do CSAs deploy to ensure that they meet this standard in going about their work? The paper’s findings have implications in particular for understandings of the role of boundary work in regulating both expert authority and policy-making credibility in the UK context (Gieryn, 1983; Bijker et al., 2009).
Date:
19 May 2015, 15:00 (Tuesday, 4th week, Trinity 2015)
Venue:
64 Banbury Road, 64 Banbury Road OX2 6PN
Venue Details:
InSIS Seminar Room
Speaker:
Dr James Palmer (University of Oxford)
Organising department:
Institute for Science, Innovation and Society
Organisers:
Dr Rob Bellamy (InSIS, University of Oxford),
Dr Sophie Haines (InSIS, University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address:
enquiries@insis.ox.ac.uk
Part of:
InSIS seminar series: Ecologies of Expertise
Topics:
Booking required?:
Not required
Audience:
Public
Editor:
Sophie Haines
