Kubota, Tadafumi;
(2024)
The 'Imagined Publics' in Science Policy: A Study of Public Engagement around Advisory Committees.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
This thesis reveals how different social imaginaries of publics can be constructed around science policymaking practice in different countries. It explores how conceptions of legitimacy can contribute to the construction of publics and their concerns. STS scholarship that explored the struggle for coexistence and coordination of public insights and scientific advice at the national level in the science policy arena has successfully explicated how scientific expertise is incorporated in a culturally specific manner into collective decision-making. Nevertheless, these perspectives have still been influenced by a cultural bias of highlighting legitimacy regarding the input process, which particularly prevails in Western democratic theories. Also, previous studies have paid insufficient attention to the engagement of administrative staff, dismissing them as merely a machinery of policymaking practices or, conversely, treating them as authoritative power, mixing them with other political elites as an oppositional monolith to the public. Reflecting on a comparative case study of policy discourses regarding ethical and regulatory issues around emerging germline genetic intervention technologies in Japan and the UK, the thesis reveals that these two societies, both with a liberal democratic culture, emphasise quite different forms of legitimacy as well as responsibility in policymaking practices. This research also reveals the involvement of administrative staff in the materialisation of these conceptions. Furthermore, I argue that the difference in legitimacy and responsibility plays a critical role in how the views of citizens are incorporated into and excluded from policy decision-making, as well as how civil servants or other administrative staff engage with policymaking processes. This perspective not only helps our understanding of the non-Western culture of scientific expertise and democracy but also provides a more detailed description of the analysis of science policy-making across different political cultures as another foundation for comprehending public engagement in science and technology.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The 'Imagined Publics' in Science Policy: A Study of Public Engagement around Advisory Committees |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2024. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Science and Technology Studies |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10195242 |
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