Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:58:06.758Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Democratising biotechnology? Deliberation, participation and social regulation in a neo-liberal world

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2010

PETER NEWELL
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

There is now significant policy and academic interest in the governance of science and technology for sustainable development. In recent years this has come to include a growing emphasis on issues of public understanding of science and innovative processes of deliberative and inclusive policy-making around controversial technologies such as nuclear power and agricultural biotechnology. Concern with such issues coincides with rising levels of interest in deliberative democracy and its relationship to the structures and processes of global governance. This article connects these two areas through a critical examination of ‘global’ deliberations about agricultural biotechnology and its risks and benefits. It draws on an extensive survey concerned with the diverse ways in which a range of governments are interpreting and implementing their commitments under the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety regarding public participation and consultation in order to assess the potential to create forms of deliberation through these means. The article explores both the limitations of public deliberation within global governance institutions as well as of projects whose aim is to impose participation from above through international law by advocating model approaches and policy ‘tool kits’ that are insensitive to vast differences between countries in terms of capacity, resources and political culture.

Type
Research Article
Information
Review of International Studies , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , April 2010 , pp. 471 - 491
Copyright
Copyright © British International Studies Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones and Brian Wynne (eds), Science and Citizens (London: Zed press, 2005); James Keeley (ed.), Democratising Biotechnology, IDS Briefings (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies 2003); Hebert Gottweis, Governing Molecules: The discursive politics of genetic engineering in Europe and the US (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1995).

2 Simon Joss (ed.), ‘Public participation in science and technology’, special issue, Science and Public Policy, 26:5 (1999); Walter Baber and Robert, V. Bartlett, Deliberative Environmental Politics: Democracy and Ecological Rationality (Cambridge MA: MIT press, 2005); Minu Hemmati, Multi-stakeholder processes for governance and accountability (London: Earthscan, 2002).

3 James Bohman, Public Deliberation: Pluralism, Complexity, Democracy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1996); James Bohman and William Rehg (eds), Deliberative Democracy: Essays on Reason and Politics (Cambridge: MIT press, 1997); John Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy and Beyond: Liberals, Critics, Contestations (Oxford: OUP, 2000); John Dryzek, Deliberative Global Politics: Discourse and Democracy in a Divided World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2006).

4 Manjusha Gupta and Robert V. Bartlett, ‘Necessary preconditions for deliberative environmental democracy? Challenging the modernity bias of current theory’, Global Environmental Politics, 7:3 (2007), pp. 94–107, p. 94.

5 Through interviews, surveys and data collection the experience of 16 countries was analysed; Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Estonia, Ethiopia, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico, Namibia, New Zealand, Norway, UK, US, Zimbabwe.

6 Roger Few, Kate Brown and Emma Tomkins, ‘Public participation and climate change adaptation: Avoiding the illusion of inclusion’, Climate Policy, 7 (2007), pp. 46–59.

7 William Smith and James Brassett, ‘Deliberation and Global Governance: Liberal, Cosmopolitan and Critical Perspectives’, Ethics & International Affairs, 22:1 (2008), pp. 69–92, p. 72.

8 WTO, Guidelines for Arrangements on Relations with NGOs, Document WT/L/162, 18. July, (Geneva: WTO, 1996).

9 Pratap Chatterjee and Matthias Finger, The Earth Brokers: Power, Politics and World Development (London: Routledge, 1994); Rorden Wilkinson, ‘The contours of courtship: The WTO and civil society’, in Rorden Wilkinson and Steven Hughes (eds), Global Governance: Critical Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 193–212.

10 James Bohman, ‘Cosmopolitan Republicanism’, The Monist, 84:1 (2001), pp. 3–22, p. 17.

11 David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi (ed.), Global Governance and Public Accountability (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005).

12 David Held, ‘Democratic Accountability and Political Effectiveness from a Cosmopolitan Perspective’, in David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi (eds), Global Governance and Public Accountability (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005), pp. 240–68.

13 Anne-Marie Goetz and Rob Jenkins, Reinventing Accountability: Making Democracy Work for Human Development (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004).

14 Michael Zürn, ‘Global Governance and Legitimacy Problems’, in Held and Koenig-Archibugi, Global Governance and Public Accountability, pp. 136–64.

15 Jan Aart Scholte, ‘Civil Society and Democratically Accountable Global Governance’, in Held and Koenig-Archibugi, Global Governance and Public Accountability, pp. 87–110, p. 87.

16 Ibid., p. 87.

17 This was an issue I discussed with activists and parliamentarians in Peru in December 2004 in relation to the implications of TRIPs to access to affordable drugs in the country. A similar experience of exclusion of parliaments was observed in relation to Kenya's acceptance of the TRIPs agreement, despite implications for farmers' rights to seed and existing plant variety protection legislation. Hannington Odame, Patricia Kameri-Mbote and David Wafula, ‘Globalisation and the international governance of modern biotechnology: implications for food security in Kenya’, IDS Working Paper, 199, Biotechnology Policy Series 20 (Brighton, UK: IDS, 2003).

18 Peter Newell, ‘Race, class and the global politics of environmental inequality’, Global Environmental Politics, 5:3 (2005), pp. 70–94.

19 Gabrielle Marceau and Peter Pedersen, ‘Is the WTO open and transparent? A discussion of the relationship of the WTO with non governmental organizations and civil society's claims for more transparency and participation’, Journal of World Trade, 33:1 (1999), pp. 5–49.

20 Peter Newell and Diana Tussie, (eds), ‘Civil society participation in trade policy in Latin America: Lessons and Reflections’, IDS Working Paper, 267 (Brighton: IDS, 2006).

21 Susan Sell, ‘The global IP upward ratchet, anti-counterfeiting and piracy enforcement efforts: The State of Play, 9 June 2008, {http://www.ip-watch.org/files/SusanSellfinalversion.pdf}; David Levy and Peter Newell (eds), The Business of Global Environmental Governance (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005).

22 James Meadowcroft, ‘Deliberative democracy’, in Robert Durant, Daniel Florini and Rosemary O'Leary (eds), Environmental Governance Reconsidered: Challenges, Choices and Opportunities (Cambridge MA: MIT press, 2004), p. 183.

23 Bohman, Public Deliberation, p. 17.

24 Brian Wynne, ‘Creating public alienation: Expert cultures of risk and ethics on GMOs’, Science as Culture, 10:4 (2001), pp. 445–81.

25 Shiv Visvanathan, ‘Knowledge, justice and democracy’, in Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones and Brian Wynne (eds), Science and Citizens (London: Zed, 2005), pp. 83–97.

26 Elements of the following few paragraphs draw from Peter Newell, ‘Corporate power and bounded autonomy in the global politics of biotechnology’, in Robert Falkner (eds), The International Politics of Genetically Modified Food (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp. 67–85.

27 Sheila Jasanoff, ‘Product, process or programme: Three cultures and the regulation of Biotechnology’, in Martin Bauer, (ed.), Resistance to New Technology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 325.

28 Les Levidow, Susan Carr, René von Schomberg and David Wield, ‘Regulating agricultural biotechnology in Europe: harmonisation difficulties, opportunities, dilemmas’, Science and Public Policy, 23:3 (June 1996), pp 135–57, p. 136.

29 Julia Black, ‘Regulation as Facilitation: Negotiating the Genetic Revolution’, Modern Law Review, 61:5 (1998), pp. 621–60.

30 Jasanoff, ‘Product, process or programme’.

31 Wynne, ‘Creating public alienation’.

32 Les Levidow, ‘Democratizing technology – or technologizing democracy? Regulating agricultural biotechnology in Europe’, Technology in Society, 20 (1998), pp. 211–26, p. 220.

33 Quoted in Levidow and Tait, ‘The greening of biotechnology’, p. 134.

34 Ibid.

35 Les Levidow, ‘Utilitarian bioethics? Market fetishism in the GM crops debate’, New Genetics and Society, 20:1, (2001), pp. 75–84.

36 Smith and Brassett, ‘Deliberation and global governance’, p. 72.

37 Les Levidow, ‘Regulating Bt maize in the US and Europe: A scientific-cultural comparison’, Environment (December 1999), pp. 10–23.

38 Ian Sample, ‘Scientists want top security for GM crop tests’, The Guardian (29 July 2008), p. 7.

39 Black, ‘Regulation as facilitation’, p. 628.

40 Wynne, ‘Public alienation’, p. 446–7.

41 Frans Brom, ‘WTO, public reason and food public reasoning in the “trade conflict” on GM food’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 7:4, (2004), pp. 417–31.

42 Ronald. J. Herring, ‘Opposition to transgenic technologies: Ideology, interests and collective action frames’, Nature, 9 (2008), pp. 458–63; Peter Newell, ‘Trade and biotechnology in Latin America: Democratization, Contestation and the Politics of Mobilization’, Journal of Agrarian Change, 8:2–3 (2008), pp. 345–76.

43 Peter Newell, ‘Globalisation and the governance of biotechnology’, Global Environmental Politics, 3:2 (2003), pp. 56–72; Peter Newell, ‘Bio-hegemony: The Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in Argentina’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 41 (2009) pp. 27–57.

44 Dominic Glover, James Keeley, Peter Newell, Rosemary McGee, Public Participation and the Biosafety Protocol, Commissioned Study for DfiD and UNEP-GEF (Brighton: IDS, 2003).

45 Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy.

46 Dryzek, ‘Deliberative Democracy’, p. 1.

47 Jurgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge MA: MIT press, 1998), p. 244.

48 Hemmati, Multi-stakeholder Processes; Holmes and Scoones, ‘Participatory Environmental Policy’; SEC Commission of the European Communities, White Paper on European Governance: Enhancing Democracy in the European Union, SEC (2000) 1547/7 Final October 11.

49 See Tim Holmes and Ian Scoones, ‘Participatory environmental policy processes: Experiences from North and South’, IDS Working paper 113 for discussion (2000), Brighton: IDS and POST (Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology), ‘Open Channels: Public Dialogue in Science and Technology’, Report no. 153 (March 2001).

50 Smith and Brassett, ‘Deliberation and Global Governance’, p. 90.

51 Dryzek, Deliberative Global Politics.

52 Smith and Brassett, ‘Deliberation and Global Governance’.

53 Andrea Cornwall and John Gaventa, ‘From users and choosers to makers and shapers: Re-positioning participation in social policy’, IDS Working Paper 127 (Brighton: IDS, 2001).

54 Glover et al, ‘Public Participation’ p. 9.

55 P. Newell, ‘Lost in Translation? Domesticating Global Policy on GMOs: Comparing India and China’, Global Society, 22:1 (2008), pp. 115–36.

56 ‘Eat Shit or Die? America gives Africa a choice’, The Ecologist, 33:2 (2003), front cover.

57 Peter Newell, ‘Bio-hegemony: The Political Economy of Agricultural Biotechnology in Argentina’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 41 (2009), pp. 25–57.

58 Dominic Glover, ‘Public participation in national biotechnology policy and biosafety regulation’, IDS Working Paper, 198 (Brighton: IDS, 2003), p. 10.

59 Ibid., p. 6.

60 Ethan. J. Leib and Baogang He, The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2006).

61 Gupta and Bartlett, ‘Necessary preconditions’, p. 94.

62 Robert Wade, ‘What strategies are viable for developing countries today? The World Trade Organisation and the shrinking of development space’, Review of International Political Economy, 10:4 (2003), pp. 621–44; Kevin. P. Gallagher, (ed.), Putting Development First: The Importance of Policy Space in the WTO and International Financial Institutions (London: Zed books, 2005).

63 Stephen Gill, ‘Globalisation, market civilisation and disciplinary neo-liberalism’, Millennium: Journal of International Relations, 24:3 (1995). pp. 399–423.

64 Erik Millstone and Patrick van Zwanenberg, ‘Food and agricultural biotechnology policy: How much autonomy can developing countries exercise?’, Development Policy Review, 21:5–6, (2003), pp. 655–67.

65 Newell, ‘Corporate power’.

66 Robert Falkner, Business Power and Conflict in International Environmental Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007).

67 Dryzek, Deliberative Democracy.

68 Robert Cox, ‘Social forces, states and world order: Beyond International Relations theory’, Millennium Journal of International Studies, 10:2, (1981), pp. 126–51.

69 Glover, ‘Public participation’, p. 25.