Download The challenges of building cosmopolitan climate expertise

Advanced Review
The challenges of building
cosmopolitan climate expertise:
the case of Germany
Silke Beck∗
By generating intense public scrutiny of international climate science, the
‘climategate’ controversy has paradoxically underlined the authoritative status
accorded to scientific knowledge in policy decision making on climate change.
In contrast to the universalizing discourse of international climate science (as
presented by the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC)), notable
differences exist between countries with regard to the degree of public trust in
its expertise. Focusing on the German case, this article explores how and why
countries vary when it comes to interpreting and validating ‘universally valid’
expertise. It argues that differences in the way climate change are addressed in
national research and decision making cannot be explained solely by the quality of
scientific knowledge available, because it is the same body of knowledge (produced
by the IPCC) that provides the common point of reference. The reception of
scientific evidence for climate change by publics and policy makers depends
additionally on the ways in which scientific claims are validated and rendered
authoritative for public use and on prior criteria of what counts as scientifically
valid and policy-relevant knowledge. This article then discusses the implications
entailed by these national differences in terms of interpreting expertise on matters
of global relevance. It shows why the task of producing policy-relevant knowledge
‘under the public microscope’ requires new forms of interdisciplinary scientific
judgment and justification toward wider publics. It reviews recent initiatives set up
to respond to ‘climategate’ and discusses the alternatives offered by a wide range of
efforts to promote a differentiated, reflexive, and culturally sensitive ‘cosmopolitan’
approach.  2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
How to cite this article:
WIREs Clim Change 2012, 3:1–17. doi: 10.1002/wcc.151
INTRODUCTION
A
t first sight, Annex I countries all share
major epistemic, technological, and political
characteristics which generally reflect their common
constitution as market economies and democratic
systems. They also have in common the fact that
scientists have played and continue to play a crucial
and ever increasing role in decision making on climate
change.1–3 Countries such as the United States, the UK,
and Germany in particular are engaged in considerable
efforts to build up climate research programs, and
∗
Correspondence to: [email protected]
Department of Environmental Politics, UFZ—Helmholtz Centre for
Environmental Research, Leipzig, Germany
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they also make major contributions to the work of
the IPCC. However, the countries grouped under
the Annex I umbrella differ significantly in the ways
scientific expertise provided by the IPCC is received
and validated. Even if not openly addressed, notable
differences can be seen to underlie recent controversies
over IPCC reform, particularly when it comes to
negotiating common rules of procedure governing
the assessment process. Controversies over the IPCC’s
‘conflict of interest’ policies reveal that not only the
policies per se but also the underlying criteria for
what counts as valid policy-relevant knowledge have
become contested. Symptomatic of these controversies
is the German government’s appointment of an
IPCC representative from Greenpeace, which appears
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deeply biased and suspect—if not to say corrupt—to
representatives from other nations where there is a
strict insistence on separating science and politics.4–7
This article reviews the challenges to science and
decision making in a globalizing world (section Challenges for Science Policy in a Globalizing World).
Section Precaution and ‘Catastrophism’—The German Case reconstructs the German response to climate
change and illustrates how public trust in scientific
expertise forms a major foundation of climate policies. This article concludes with reflections on what
changes are needed if trust in scientific expertise is
to be maintained among various global publics and
robust knowledge is to be available for processes of
decision making on climate change (section Challenges
for Building Cosmopolitan Expertise).
CHALLENGES FOR SCIENCE POLICY
IN A GLOBALIZING WORLD
‘One-Size-Fits-All’?
The IPCC has the formal mandate to provide policyrelevant information to decision makers involved in
the Conferences of the Parties to the Framework
Convention on Climate Change (FCCC). Since being
set up in 1988, the IPCC has produced four extremely
wide-ranging assessment reports. The publication of
the latest IPCC report in 2007 (AR4) demonstrates
that the scientific evidence for global warming is now
overwhelming, even if scientific predictions of future
climatic changes remain shrouded in uncertainty.
Climate change thus appears to rest on a robust
consensus among scientists.8–10
The primary role of the IPCC in politics is not to
compel or determine political action, as suggested
by the linear model of expertise, but to develop
and spread heuristic knowledge about global climate
change and to inform policy makers about the general
extent and structure of the problem.11 In this respect,
the IPCC holds a remarkable degree of definitional
power. The IPCC has indeed been instrumental in
issuing warnings, setting agendas, and turning climate
change from a scientific into a political problem.
It has played a key role not only in defining the
issues related to climate change and attributing and
detecting causes but also in establishing the very terms
and framework conditions of negotiation for coping
with climate change. The IPCC has thus contributed
toward raising awareness and fostering a common
understanding of climate change as a single, global
and all encompassing risk that requires a united,
multilateral solution.12 With its First Assessment
Report (AR1), the IPCC became the forum for political
negotiations on climate change and established a
2
skeleton agreement for the FCCC. Its second report
helped to catalyze the negotiations that finally resulted
in the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. In 2007, climate
change became a priority political issue in many
industrialized countries, and the Nobel Peace Prize
was awarded jointly to the IPCC and former US vice
president Al Gore for their efforts in consolidating
and disseminating greater knowledge about humaninduced climate change. Thus the IPCC has provided
impetus and input to international negotiation
processes, which may not directly have triggered
climate policies but may nonetheless have made
decision making more politically relevant. As a result,
many countries and organizations have delegated
considerable authority to the IPCC to identify, define,
and evaluate issues of policy concern.13,14
To maintain the political authority of international climate science in a highly politicized context,
the IPCC decided to speak ‘with one voice’ on behalf of
the global scientific community and to come up with a
single, unitary international authoritative assessment.
It conducted one of the most complex and inclusive
exercises in international scientific consensus building ever undertaken. This strategy indicates that the
formal mandate bestowed upon the IPCC did not, in
and of itself, generate among politicians an immediate
acceptance of its statements as authoritative. Instead,
the IPCC sought to enhance its authority by introducing procedural innovations. Its attempt to restrict the
range of knowledge admitted into the policy process
represents an effort to control debate in the broader
political arena. This is one way of avoiding a repeat
of the experience with the issue of nuclear power,
when contradictory expert views paralyzed the policy
debate. This strategy has not precluded other bodies
working on the issue, but it did help to establish the
IPCC as a privileged authority and discursive trendsetter to whom all others would henceforth have to
refer. Confronted by demands for political relevance
and universal representation, the IPCC responded by
trying to broaden and deepen the foundations of its
knowledge claims both internally and externally. The
active and ongoing consultation process launched by
the IPCC has done much to iron out differences and
to marginalize opposition.13,15
The IPCC not only synthesizes knowledge but
also validates the scientific evidence for knowledge
claims. In doing so, it has operated in largely
uncharted territory and with no shared, prearticulated commitments or rules of procedure. The
IPCC thus has to invent its own processes, procedural
rules, and governance structures. It also has to
make numerous choices in terms of selecting and
organizing scientific advice, establishing criteria for
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the legitimation of scientific evidence and for selecting
experts, organizing review procedures, and specifying
its own mandate.16 In this way, the IPCC has become
a pioneer in the globalization of science policies.
This is remarkable insofar as science policy has
traditionally been a domain of decision making in
which nation states strongly defend their national
sovereignty.17–19 The IPCC has also succeeded in
becoming the exclusive authority for setting standards
for the production and validation of policy-relevant
knowledge used in international climate policy.
Following the linear model of expertise, it is thus
supposed to provide a blueprint for expertise that
applies to everyone everywhere. As international
organizations, the IPCC and the FCCC are designed
to promote transnational convergence and uniformity
by expanding the base of shared knowledge about
climate change and by setting standards.20 There
are constant interactions between Annex I states
both at governmental level and at the level of
working relationships regarding climate science
assessment. This ongoing exchange of ideas, tools
for scientific assessment and appraisal, and techniques
for improving the scientific basis of decision making
suggests that a good deal of mutual learning is already
occurring. These trends all point toward a convergence
on similar understandings of climate science and
similar actions regarding climate policy.21
The Paradoxical Nature of Political
Authority
Even if the IPCC claims to be neutral and ‘not prescriptive’, its findings are received in a highly politicized
political context, where almost every scientific finding
can have far-reaching implications for the stakeholders concerned. By characterizing global warming as a
major problem, scientific claims may challenge vested
interests, disrupt longstanding social relations, and
question deeply ingrained lifestyles. As soon as lobby
groups from the oil and car industries (mainly in the
United States) realized the relevance of IPCC’s findings
to their own business strategies, they began to attack
the IPCC and to discredit its findings, subsequently
dubbed the ‘inconvenient truth’.22,23 One indirect and
indeed paradoxical indication of the IPCC’s authority in policy-making circles is the fact that many
lobby groups have invested a remarkable amount of
resources in attacking and discrediting the IPCC’s
findings. The strategy of these ‘merchants of doubt’
appears to be that of undermining the scientific evidence used to inform far-reaching policy to mitigate
climate change. The strategy ‘doubt is our product’ led
to the politicization of the scientific debate on global
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warming. Scientific controversies over the evidence for
climate change have thus become a proxy for political battles over whether and how to react to climate
change.24 The irony, of course, is that both sides of the
climate controversy—climate change advocates and
skeptics alike—act as if climate policy will be decided
by science alone. Thus challenges to the authority of
the IPCC turn out to be part of a struggle to gain power
and authority in global climate politics.18 The attacks
on the IPCC, paradoxically, have not contributed to a
loss of epistemic or political authority but—quite the
contrary—to attracting more attention and attributing greater significance to the IPCC reports than the
latter would have otherwise enjoyed.
The events surrounding ‘climategate’ reveal the
paradoxical nature of the authority ascribed to the
IPCC in relation to international climate policy.
‘Climategate’ began with the controversial publication
of stolen professional correspondence between a small
number of leading climate scientists from the Climatic
Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK. It
continued with the discovery of errors and distortions
in the supposedly authoritative 2007 IPCC report.25
The content of the stolen emails and the discovery of
errors in the IPCC report were immediately taken up
by the mass media and led to heated discussions within
the virtual community of global publics. What started
as a ‘battle over truth’ has thus turned into a ‘war
over public opinion’.26 As these events indicate, the
IPCC has been faced with growing public scrutiny and
demands for public accountability. Since being widely
accepted as the most neutral and authoritative source
of expertise on climate change, the IPCC has become
a victim of its own success and has strayed into the
line of fire. Events such as the awarding of the Nobel
Peace Prize to the IPCC and Al Gore have raised public
awareness of climate change and forced policy makers
to consider options for responding to it.27 This official
seal of recognition has contributed to putting the IPCC
onto the world stage. The IPCC has thus become a
prime target of critical public and political attention.25
The stolen emails appear to have contributed
to a public mood of ‘suspicion’. It has been argued
that the publication of these emails shows that some
areas of climate science are plagued by intense antagonism, a (politically motivated) ‘witch hunt’, and a
combination of groupthink, political advocacy, and
alarmism.28 The slow and inadequate responses of
the IPCC leadership have arguably served to exacerbate the problems. It attests to the fact that the IPCC
has fallen well short of its mandate to function as a
credible and legitimate advisory body. The controversial publication of climate scientists’ emails and errors
in the IPCC reports fed into larger concerns about the
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reliability of the IPCC and about the trust placed in it:
could politicians and the public still rely on the IPCC
to provide a sound assessment of scientific knowledge on climate change and still trust the IPCC’s key
messages?29 The media uptake following ‘climategate’
also indicates that the authority of the IPCC was at
stake. Thus ‘climategate’ turned out to be not only a
question of the technical integrity of science but also
one of public confidence: ‘Telling people ‘‘Hey, trust
me—I’m an expert’’ is just no longer enough’.5,30
Last but not least, there is a growing gap
between the IPCC establishment and the expectations expressed by some blogging scientists and others within the global public sphere. The latter are
demanding greater accountability and transparency in
climate research and assessment, calling for open and
accountable forms of knowledge production rather
than the IPCC’s authoritarian and exclusive ones.28
‘Climategate’ thus reveals the kind of challenges that
international expert panels need to address. These
include building consensus within the relevant disciplinary communities while at the same time gaining
public acceptance for claims that may challenge established social relations and ways of living—and all
this in the context of a heightened demand for public
accountability.
PRECAUTION AND
‘CATASTROPHISM’—THE GERMAN
CASE
In this section, the focus is on the German perception of the global expertise on climate change as
provided by IPCC. The concepts developed in comparative studies of national science and regulatory
policies31–34 are taken as a point of departure for
reconstructing the German case. The concept of ‘civic
epistemology’ offers a promising way of systematically
addressing problems of public trust and credibility in a
comparative perspective. It refers to publicly accepted
and procedurally sanctioned ways of accounting for
the epistemic basis of decision making.33 Rather than
adhering to an impact or outcome-oriented approach,
it follows a process-oriented approach. Thus it takes
account of the ways in which scientific knowledge is
validated and made authoritative for public use rather
than focusing on the content and substance of the science itself. The concept of ‘civic epistemology’ is used
here as a heuristic tool for reconstructing the German response to climate change in a systematic way.
Two case studies on climate change35–40 are taken as
points of reference for exploring whether or not the
German response to climate change conforms to the
conventional national pattern of civic epistemology.
4
The German ‘Climate Catastrophe’
What is striking in the German case—especially in the
light of the U.S. case—is the virtual absence of scientific or political conflict over the reality of man-made
climate change itself. In Germany, it was a group of
elite scientists who were instrumental in putting global
climate change on the national public and political
agenda in 1986. A subgroup of the German Physical Society (Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft), the
Study Group on Energy, published their ‘Warning of
an Impending Climate Catastrophe’. They framed the
‘CO2 problem’ as a ‘climate catastrophe’. Scientists
(and nuclear lobby groups) have used climate change
to promote nuclear energy as a clean, CO2 -free source
of energy and have thus linked it to the question
of future energy policy, one of the most polarized
controversies in German policy making today. ‘Climate catastrophe’ subsequently became the dominant
national way of framing the issue.41 Since the late
1980s there has been a solid national consensus on
the climate catastrophe that has remained stable to this
day.35–38,40 After the Chernobyl accident of 1986, the
German public was particularly sensitive to environmental risks and felt directly vulnerable to them. This
risk consciousness—German ‘angst’—can be seen as
part of a wider concern about the catastrophic potential of technological risks, perceived as the unintended
side effects of scientific progress, and technological
ingenuity and resulting in irresponsible actions and
unmanageable dangers.37–40
Expert Commission as a Microcosm
of German Society
One key mechanism for generating expertise as a
foundation for national decision making in Germany
is the parliamentary inquiry commission (EnqueteKommission). This was the mechanism chosen to
translate the IPCC assessment into the national context. The first inquiry commission, appointed in 1987,
convened under the heading ‘Preventive Measures
to Protect the Earth’s Atmosphere’ (Vorsorge zum
Schutz der Erdatmosphäre). In 1991, a second inquiry
commission, ‘Protection of the Earth’s Atmosphere’
(Schutz der Erdatmosphäre), succeeded the first one.37
It is important to note that, in the German
context, virtually no public debate has ever taken
place about the strength of the scientific evidence on
climate change. German scientists have thus seldom
been subjected to critical scrutiny and have rarely had
the status of their knowledge politicized.22,23 In the
United States, in contrast, expert deliberation on the
scientific evidence for climate change has been open to
public scrutiny and has been additionally amplified by
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immense media attention, thereby fueling the climate
change debate even further.11,42–46
The remarkable German confidence in climate
science is due largely to the efforts of the first inquiry
commission. One of its major achievements was to
maintain the status of scientific expertise as the
primary resource for legitimating regulatory decisions.
The inquiry commission was trusted because the way
in which it worked conforms to the key features of
Germany’s national civic epistemology:
• The inquiry commission is a hybrid organization
that enables the joint participation of legislators
and technical experts and combines scientific
expertise and political representation within a
single advisory body. Experts are selected by
a political body, the Bundestag, rather than
through scientific bodies, as in the United States.
This appointment practice fits with the national
style of public accountability which is a key
criterion of the national civic epistemology. Commissions often include experts with broader and
less specialized expertise, such as representatives of associations (Verbände), industry, and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The
aim of this strategy is to neutralize opposition
and to enhance the political effectiveness of the
commission’s recommendations. The assessment
process used by the second commission, however, demonstrates the pitfalls of this setting.
The conservative coalition government, which
had a parliamentary majority at the time, used
its power to select experts to ensure it had
control over the commission. As soon as associations, politicians and lobby groups realized the
political influence of the first commission, they
tried to influence it and use it as a forum for
political bargaining. The conservative coalition
began to recruit experts from industry and interest groups such as the industrial federation, the
chemical industry, the automobile industry, and
the nuclear industry.
• Trustworthiness is traditionally a product of
institutional affiliation in Germany.33 Both commissions embodied a broad and inclusive form
of institutional representation. The participants
represented a wide range of institutions, from
nuclear power companies to Greenpeace. A commission’s expertise is expected to be binding,
because the group as a whole is capable of
speaking for the wider community it represents.
Commissions are thus thought to be a microcosm of the society that will be affected by its
policy advice. The first commission initiated a
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research program that integrated a large number
of German research institutes (including the skeptical ones) into the assessment process and forced
mainstream German science to provide a consensual assessment of the state of knowledge. Both
the breadth and inclusiveness of the research
program and the consensual style of formulating outcomes resonate with the German style of
expertise which are also a feature of the national
‘civic epistemology’.33,47,48 Knowledge produced
in such settings is objective not only by virtue
of the participants’ individual qualifications but,
even more so, as a result of incorporating all the
relevant viewpoints into the outcomes produced.
As its title indicates, the first commission
adopted in 1987 the precautionary principle to inform
the national response to climate change. The choice
of the precautionary principle as opposed to riskbased standards of regulation signals a change from
earlier practice. Whereas in the early years, German
scientists had followed the same pattern as in the
United States—calling for ‘sound’ science and pursuing a ‘wait-and-see’ approach—they later turned the
issue into a political problem that had to be made
the subject of regulatory policy. This choice has had
enormous implications for the evaluation of the scientific basis of public policy.49 It is now institutional
support rather than ‘sound science’ that counts as
the ultimate foundation of political legitimacy in Germany. The first inquiry commission was instrumental
in orchestrating that kind of support.
Political Closure
The first commission was instrumental not only in
forcing scientific and political closure but also in accelerating decision making by encouraging close communication between the Bundestag and the ministries,
especially the Federal Ministry for the Environment,
headed by Klaus Toepfer. Its findings were translated
into parliamentary decision making and set the stage
for a short phase of lively political activity in the
early 1990s which resulted in the declaration of ambitious national reduction targets in many European
countries. Even before the commission published its
own policy recommendations in June 1990, including
the national reduction target for CO2 emissions, the
German government adopted the precautionary principle as the overarching national response to climate
change and finalized the target of a 25% reduction in
CO2 emissions nationwide.50 In this sense, the work
of the first commission was highly successful in terms
of political effectiveness. Almost every German government, regardless of its composition, has declared
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a high-level commitment to far-reaching targets for
climate mitigation and has adopted a forerunner role
in international negotiations.
Not surprisingly, German debates—after the
enactment of far-reaching regulations—have remained
resolutely focused on political rather than factual
issues. In the international arena, in contrast, the
politics of climate change are represented as proxy
debates on the scientific evidence of global warming.
Resistance and public controversies arise in Germany when it comes to implementing far-reaching
mitigation targets rather than facing the ‘reality’
of human-induced climate change itself. While the
existence of global warming and the urgent need
for mitigation policies has never been openly contested in Germany, almost every German government
has faced problems in enforcing implementation and
compliance beyond ‘end-of-pipe’ measures.51 Both
inquiry commissions—in 1987 and in 1991—had to
resolve controversies that reflected conflicts over the
distribution of power and resources as well as deeper
political conflicts concerning the boundaries of state
intervention, and they both led to contradictory outcomes. The nature of these conflicts was reflected
in the ambiguity of the second commission’s recommendations, which ranged between the extremes of
calling for comprehensive regulation on one hand and
postponing its implementation on the other.37–40
In Germany, then, expert decision making has
retreated to the relatively invisible sphere of public administration, where lobby groups can directly
influence processes of legislation and implementation.
Backed up by the neocorporatist structure of the political system, a coalition of industrial lobby groups and
conservative politicians has succeeded in dominating
the assessment and regulatory processes. This way
of insulating the implementation process from the
public gaze is in keeping with established national
styles of accountability, forms of demonstrating the
objectivity of expert knowledge claims which can
be seen as part of the national civic epistemology.
While the first commission was quite successful in
terms of political effectiveness, the working processes
of both commissions lacked public transparency and
accountability. The corporatist closure of assessment
and decision-making processes in Germany has led to
factual asymmetries of power with regard to which
views are presented in public debate and what access
exists to the resources necessary to express those views
through the conduct of scientific assessments. NGOs
and other civil society organizations have virtually
been excluded from these assessment processes. This
feature resonates with the German style of public
knowledge making and visibility: in contrast to the
6
United States, there is no further need for accountability to a wider, potentially excluded and potentially
‘irrational’ public in Germany.33
Triggered by international media coverage, ‘climategate’ was also reported in German newspapers
around February 2010.35,36 Even if controversies have
been highlighted in the German media and more attention has been given to climate skeptics in the aftermath
of ‘climategate’, there is still no public backing off
from the consensus position on the need for emissions
reductions.52 There are also growing concerns at Germany’s Ministry of Education and Research, which is
spending EUR 250 million ($338 million) to support
climate science this year.53 In response to ‘climategate’, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research
has organized internal meetings involving scientists
who represent the country’s most important research
institutions.
Similar to the Study Group on Energy in 1986,
the governing coalition under Chancellor Angela
Merkel tried to take advantage of strong public concerns about the climate ‘catastrophe’ to reintroduce
nuclear power in late 2010. It triggered outspoken
public criticism and nationwide resistance, and contributed to the remarkable rise in popularity of the
Green Party in 2010. This example points to a specific feature of the German political landscape: while
the reality of climate change has never been in doubt
in Germany, nuclear power now faces a remarkable
degree of opposition. The use of nuclear power as a
so-called ‘bridging technology’ in the national energy
mix and the implementation of new technologies (such
as, carbon capture and sequestration) have turned
into sites of resistance and of the repoliticization of
the climate debate. As in the 1980s, resistance to
nuclear power has turned into a wider issue of trust
in the institutions of this representative democracy
and expertise. In the aftermath of the accident at the
Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in March 2011,
Chancellor Merkel made an astonishing political Uturn. She went from being an enthusiastic supporter
of nuclear energy to arguing for phasing it out as soon
as possible.54 As an immediate response, Merkel has
set up two expert bodies, one for technical aspects
and one for ethical questions.55 It appears that she
has set up hybrid and inclusive expert commissions to
generate consensus on contested issues, thus offering
protection from a growing risk awareness and resistance among the general public.5 This strategy reveals
similarities to the setting up of inquiry commissions on
climate change in 1986 and indicates the path dependence involved in drawing on inclusive expertise for
building trust in German decision making.
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In summary, the work of the inquiry commissions reflected specific aspects of a national civic
epistemology, in particular the inclusion of all voices
and actors affected, the drive for consensus accompanied by a desire to keep conflict out of science, and the
creation of an expert body to anticipate and legitimize
legislative action.37 The experts’ practices conformed
to a national tradition of expertise that requires ‘univocal’ expert statements and disapproves of open
polarization among experts. In this way, the inquiry
commissions were instrumental in building trust in
climate science and providing the necessary expert
justification for far-reaching mitigation policies. One
of the most striking features of German political culture is its consensual style.47,48 Influential scientific
organizations, the Bundestag, the government, and
even industry, have all tried to speak as if ‘with one
voice’. German lobby groups have not openly joined
international or U.S. lobby groups such as the Global
Climate Coalition, as criticizing climate science and
resisting climate protection would immediately lead
to a loss of credibility. This can be read as a symptom
of Germany’s strongly consensus-oriented political
culture.a
CHALLENGES FOR BUILDING
COSMOPOLITAN EXPERTISE
One of the main lessons learnt from the German case
is that a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model of expertise cannot
work because the most appropriate ways of producing, using, and validating scientific expertise can vary
from case to case, from context to context and from
culture to culture. The German case provides a compelling example of lingering divergence rather than
growing convergence in the reception of scientific
expertise on climate change. Even if climate change
has been identified by a scientific community speaking
globally as if with one voice, the uptake of scientific findings in policy arenas has been highly uneven
and selective, and public assent has not been readily
forthcoming.9,20,56 This is particularly the case when
it comes to questions of trust and credibility. There
is plentiful evidence that the backlash against climate
science and mistrust of climate scientists has been
much stronger in the United States than in Germany.
The national responses to ‘climategate’ also recall
deeper historical and cultural patterns and reflect certain key features of a national civic epistemology: the
hybrid and inclusive expert commissions set up to
represent a ‘microcosm of society’ were instrumental
in providing a form of broad and consensual expertise
that is trusted in Germany. In contrast to a onesize-fits-all model, the ways in which policy-relevant
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knowledge is used and validated in different contexts
and settings do not converge but rather still vary
substantially from one country to another in almost
ideal–typical fashion: hybrid and inclusive consensus
building processes carry more weight in Germany than
pure, disciplinary norms uncontaminated by overt
interests.5,31–34
These differences also explain why the IPCC
faces more resistance in the United States, for instance,
than in Germany. While the IPCC’s procedures for
seeking peer review conform to German forms of public accountability and styles of expertise, they fail to
respond adequately to different traditions of achieving
knowledge closure that do not share the hybrid, consensual, and closed approach to expertise. Mistrust of
the IPCC can be explained partly by a resistance
to international organizations and the underlying
assumption that policy, like scientific knowledge, has
to be coordinated by a single authority at the global
level (multilateralism). These forms of cultural divergence indicate that the relationship between scientific
expertise, policy making, and public trust is neither
uniform nor linear nor deterministic.5,13,57–62 The very
fact that national differences still exist signals a need
for the role of science in future climate policies to
be rethought. The question remains: if nation states
such as Germany and the United States can diverge
so greatly, how can credibility be established across
international public arenas?
The Official Reaction: Trust Through
Internal Transparency
This section discusses how current initiatives seek to
cope with these challenges. In response to ‘climategate’, the InterAcademy Council (IAC) was set up
under a UN mandate to review the IPCC’s processes
and procedures.63 In August 2010, the IAC devised
a set of recommendations aimed at strengthening the
IPCC’s processes and procedures so as to be better
able to respond to future challenges and ensure the
ongoing quality of its reports. At its 32nd plenary
session in October 2010, the IPCC initiated intergovernmental negotiations on how to implement the IAC
recommendations. These negotiations were continued
at the 33rd plenary session in May 2011.64 Both
the IAC and the IPCC focused on improving internal
processes, procedures and structures for peer review,
quality control, and communication rather than on
the substantive content of IPCC reports. The IAC recognizes that the IPCC is operating ‘under the public
microscope’ and has concluded that ‘accountability
and transparency must be considered as a growing
obligation’.27 The IPCC has dealt with the recommendations in a particular way: it has made internal
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procedures more transparent to scientific peers and
governments. However, this emphasis on making
IPCC procedures more internally accountable, inclusive, and transparent actually diverts attention away
from the public arena and fails to render the IPCC
more democratically accountable, a point already
made often by Brian Wynne in relation to other controversies over risk. In key respects, the prevailing
reformist discourse can be seen to act by default as
a cover—a legitimizer—of the existing structures and
concepts driving the assessments.65 This narrow framing of the reform process can be read as an attempt
to keep the reform debate away from the political
‘whirl’. It accords with the IPCC’s self-description as
neutral ‘but not prescriptive’.59,66 It holds that information is produced prior to and independent of policy
making and can thus be universally provided. The
self-description thus mirrors and reinforces the onesize-fits-all model of expertise that—as this example
indicates—continues to dominate perceptions among
climate scientists, policy makers, and advisors to some
extent.14,15,20,24,62,67–69
Even as it reforms its internal procedures and
management structures, the IPCC is reluctant to
openly address challenges like the demand for public
accountability. Although the IPCC does not conduct traditional research but rather produces policyrelevant knowledge, the IPCC establishment still
proceeds as if the panel produces primary ‘scientific knowledge’ generated by traditional scientific
research. Even if the widely inclusive, extremely intensive peer review process has already opened up the
debate about climate change to a far wider range of
actors than is usually consulted in science,70 it still rest
on traditions of scientific quality control and accountability. As a result, the reform discourse does not
challenge but rather reinforces the underlying ideal of
‘sound’, neutral disciplinary science.
The IPCC has reduced the question of how to
inspire public trust to the technical question of efficient communication. The communication strategy
adopted by the IPCC in May 2011 remains linear,
one way, hierarchical, top-down, and paternalistic.
Designed to secure public acquiescence in advance, it
is prescriptive and repeats the elitist and paternalistic
mantra ‘we know what is best for you’. It is set up
to provide a context in which the Panel’s leadership
can maintain its exclusive authority over the translation and interpretation of its findings and thus to
defend its privileged position as the gate keeper of
scientific truth.71 As a result, the ‘public’ is reduced to
an illiterate and passive resource to be drawn on for
support in battles ‘over the public truth’. The main
problem with the IPCC’s communication strategy lies
8
in the fact that it is based on the deficit model of public
understanding of science.72,73
The communication strategy is still based on the
assumption that public doubts and the lack of political action are caused by the politicization of science
by powerful corporate interests,10 the media’s misrepresentation of dissent9 and poorly informed public
opinion.11,42–46,70,74 According to this model, mistrust
can be countered simply by transferring knowledge
and engaging in top-down communication.73,75,76
In short, more and better science and communication will trigger political action and public consent. The alarmism (or ‘climate porn’) promoted by
some climate advocates (including IPCC chairman
Pachauri) and certain media outlets also follows this
line of argumentation.75,77–79 The limitations of this
approach, however, have become increasingly obvious. By using its communication strategy as a means
of controlling the interpretation of its outcomes, the
IPCC is exacerbating rather than solving the problem
of public trust.40,80–82
More and better information and communication are not enough to resolve the problems facing
climate experts with regard to public misgivings.
‘Climategate’ also demonstrates that trust in science
does not depend on the strength of internal consensus
among scientists alone as many scientists may have
hoped, given that the latest IPCC report signaled that
controversies over the existence of global warming
have finally been settled.5,40 Indeed, many scientists
have become frustrated that the evidence they have
already provided has not prompted political action
and public trust.83
Given these challenges, the IPCC reform efforts
are too narrowly focused on regaining public trust
in its findings and procedures. The main problem
remains, namely, that the assessment processes are still
conducted behind ‘closed doors’ and thus protected
from rather than opened up to public scrutiny by
broader audiences such as observer organizations,
NGOs, and the wider public.
The IPCC leadership is still seeking to control the
reform process and is delaying the introduction of farreaching procedural innovations that may undermine
its own power. In this sense, the reformist discourse
is being instrumentalized as a ‘cover’ for the existing
processes and concepts that guide the assessments.
‘Public witnessing’ is still confined to experts and government representatives who already participate in the
IPCC’s review and approval processes. As a result, the
procedures and institutional arrangements for providing public accountability are still lacking—even
though the need for them today is more critical than
ever. Despite being intergovernmental in name and
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The challenges of building cosmopolitan climate expertise
gaining greater political influence, the IPCC is subject to none of the legal political requirements that
constrain, but also legitimize, national expert committees. These reform efforts are necessary but not
sufficient to build trust: they may satisfy many scientists but do not meet growing public expectations
for public accountability.84 The IPCC is not able to
demonstrate to the wider public (like bloggers) that
experts are not conspiring to dupe them. The IPCC
establishment appears reluctant to implement already
adopted principles, like its own conflict of interest
policy, and in some cases is delaying their implementation until the next assessment cycle in 2014.
This lack of compliance and the reluctance to implement the IAC’s recommendations serves neither to
improve the organization’s performance nor to rebuild
trust.
The Cosmopolitan Alternative
As we have shown, the history of the climate controversy illustrates the limitations of the one-size-fits-all
model of expertise and demonstrates the need for a
more productive and trusted role for the scientific
community in contributing to the information needs
of decision makers.85 Perhaps, the most promising
alternative to the IPCC’s model of expertise is to be
found among the wide range of efforts to promote a
‘cosmopolitan’ approach to climate politics. As Sheila
Jasanoff,86 Mike Hulme,18 Antony Giddens,51 and
David Held87 have argued, climate change is not
just an environmental problem or a policy problem
that requires a single, global top-down solution determined by scientific consensus. Instead, it is a site of
contestation and reconfiguration of ways of thinking
and making decisions about climate change. Despite
emerging from different theoretical backgrounds and
exhibiting considerable differences, what these cosmopolitan concepts have in common is that they call
for a more differentiated, reflexive, and more culturally sensitive approach to scientific expertise in the
more complex, contingent, contested, and ‘nested’
settings of global politics. The following section summarizes how these scholars frame and address the
challenges of providing expertise in a globalizing
world.
Moving Beyond the Boundary Between
Facts and Values
The IPCC’s reluctance to ‘get its hands dirty’ by
openly addressing its public accountability reveals the
schizophrenic position of having an awareness of the
context while at the same time ignoring it. This selfunderstanding may explain why reflections on the
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IPCC’s political and public role are systematically
excluded in the current reform debate. It allows IPCC
experts to act in an overtly political manner while
simultaneously claiming to be disengaged from politics. Climate science and policy, however, cannot be
strictly separated, as the linear model of expertise
implies. As a matter of fact, the boundary between
facts and values or invariably becomes fuzzy and
science and policy become inextricably intertwined
in controversies over climate change.88–90 Empirical
findings confirm the ever greater interpenetration of
knowledge and values.91 As indicated above, at the
international level, scientific controversies over the
evidence for climate change have become a proxy for
political battles over whether and how to react to
climate change.24 In this way, scientific controversies
about the causes of climate change are closely linked
to political arguments about questions of causation,
the attribution of responsibilities and the distribution
of costs and benefits.5,17,33,92–94
The problematic implications of this schizophrenic position are generally not recognized. Rather
than arguing about the political interests and values
which motivated the political controversy in the first
place, all the parties become embroiled in a controversy over the scientific foundations on which their
views are based. The larger difficulty lies in the way
the problem is framed: scientific evidence counts as
the sole foundation of political authority. As a result,
policy commitment and public consent are reduced
merely to a question of whether the science is right
or wrong. Ignoring the political context in which the
IPCC operates is, paradoxically enough, instrumental in exaggerating the politicization of science rather
than keeping problems away from the ‘political whirl’.
Scientific and political statements become inseparable: it has become difficult to disentangle political
arguments about climate policies from scientific arguments about the evidence for human-induced climate
change. The quality of both political debate and
scientific practice suffers as a consequence. ‘Stealth
advocacy’ (Pielke)—the use of allegedly neutral climate science to justify a particular policy option—does
not solve but contributes to the current loss of
trust.
Cosmopolitan approaches highlight the fact that
disagreement expressed in disputes about scientific
evidence is often rooted in more fundamental differences over epistemology, values, and the sources of
well-being, or about the role of science in policy making as demonstrated by the German case.95 Even when
scientists, politicians, and publics agree on the basic
principles and most robust findings of climate science, there is still plenty of room for disagreement
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about what the implications of that science are
for action. Even if not openly addressed, there are
remarkable cultural differences underlying the recent
controversy over the IPCC reform, particularly with
regard to negotiating common criteria for evaluating
assessments and establishing rules of procedure and
governance structures for global assessments. These
divergent national traditions present additional hurdles for producing and validating global expertise. The
IPCC thus inevitably functions as a site of contestation
among competing models of expertise and underlying criteria regarding how to govern and evaluate
expertise.
Indeed, the IPCC’s self-description as ‘neutral’ is
a political choice in itself. These political choices inside
science cannot be ignored but have to be acknowledged and dealt with reflexively. Rather than assuming
that disputes and disagreements are solely scientific,
the issues at stake have to be treated more honestly
as political and economical matters that need to be
solved by political decision making and by public
deliberation. If the many factors and criteria that go
into a policy commitment are recognized, scientific
authority can no longer be the sole foundation of
political authority.67,88,96 The political choices and
moral dimensions entailed by expert practices call for
openness and accountability when offering scientific
advice.
Performance and Credibility
Cosmopolitan approaches call for moving beyond
the ‘artificial’ separation between scientific issues and
those of public credibility and accountability. They
argue that public transparency and accountability do
not necessarily undermine but, on the contrary, help
to create public trust in climate experts. They follow a
line of argumentation opposed to the one espoused by
the IPCC. Even if there is a remarkable degree of scientific consensus, as the IPCC’s 2007 report indicates,
its public acceptance cannot be taken for granted. As
shown by the German expert commissions, trust in
science cannot be reduced to a question of scientific
purity. In the case of the IPCC, trust is given neither by any formal authority (such as a UN mandate)
nor by the strength of the scientific evidence alone.
Even though—or rather, precisely because—the IPCC
was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, its authority was
challenged. These examples also indicate that trust is
a matter of the performance and persuasive power of
the people and institutions who speak for science. As
mentioned above, in order to maintain its political
authority, the IPCC tries to speak with one voice. Its
statements are obviously for political consumption:
10
the IPCC plays down differences because it believes
that consensual statements coming from a scientific
arena carry more clout in the political arena than do
many disparate voices expressing conflicting views.
Consensual outcomes, it holds, enjoy greater authority in the international arena, a view which anticipates
and mirrors the consensual UN mode of decision
making and its respective governance structure in the
‘shadow of hierarchy’.
Cosmopolitan approaches, however, share the
assumption that what matters are not consensual
statements per se but the ongoing relationships
between experts and the public and a willingness
on the part of responsible experts and institutions to
demonstrate why the public should trust them rather
than their consensual orchestration.5,40 Public trust
thus depends on the ways in which policy-relevant
knowledge is validated and made authoritative for
public use. As an example, the reluctant responses
of the IPCC establishment and its poor performance
contributed toward exacerbating the problem of trust,
although the scientific quality of the IPCC reports was
seriously challenged. Not just scientific consensus but
also the Panel’s relationship with the public—the way
they communicate and interact with one another—is
crucial. As science studies, scholars have shown over
the years, the credibility of knowledge claims and
trust in ‘abstract’ experts relates to long-established,
culturally situated practices of interpretation and
reasoning.33,97 As demonstrated by the German
case, however, ways to maintain public trust vary
significantly.
Coping with Pluralism and Diversity
The technocratic notion that better science will settle these differences ignores their roots in political,
national, organizational, and intellectual culture. The
value of science is necessarily restricted when expert
bodies are thought of as forcing consensus but are
condemned to fail because they cannot solve underlying conflicts over values. This results in inaction and
fosters political gridlock. It renders both policy and its
supporting science vulnerable to the dogmatic amplification of doubt.96,98,99 Scientists can play a more
constructive role in politics if, instead of discrediting
rivals’ expertise, they acknowledge political and cultural differences and do not expect them to be resolved
by science.66,100–102 Rather than forming an expert
consensus about universally valid policy options, an
alternative approach has to recognize the diversity
of knowledge sources and the plurality of values in
a polycentered world. This cosmopolitan reframing
also encourages discussion around alternative (nonscientific) representations of climate change and may
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The challenges of building cosmopolitan climate expertise
open up discussion of paths not previously identified
and options not previously considered.96,98,100,103
What are the implications of a cosmopolitan
perspective on the issue of science and decision
making? These deep-seated cultural differences and
the nature of policy-relevant uncertainties and disagreement require further explanation and a deeper
understanding.15,67 One of the major challenges is
how to cope with the variety and diversity of scientific approaches, knowledge sources, framings and
options, and underlying values. Hybrid expert bodies
like the IPCC are forced to find a common approach
to conceptualizing climate change. Their task is to
develop appropriate procedures that bridge culturally
divergent styles and legitimize the expression of plurality in the world system. From this perspective, the
establishment of consensus can no longer be considered as important as engaging in a full exploration of
the implications of diversity and uncertainty for decision making.104 However, what are the implications
of such an approach? Does such a perspective lead to
endless debates not only about the scientific evidence
but also about the legitimacy of the competing sets
of criteria for what counts as scientifically credible
and politically legitimate knowledge?5 Or are there
mechanisms, procedures, and institutional arrangements available for dealing with these challenges in
a scientifically credible and politically legitimate and
trustworthy way?
‘Think Globally, Act Locally’
‘Think globally, act locally’ has become the motto for
environmental politics at the local level and points
to the continued importance of local knowledge
and bottom-up, place-based identity formation in
designing and implementing climate policies.93 NGOs
and other civil society organizations, however, have
faced particular problems in reconciling the global,
systemic perspective of scientists with the practical
needs of local politics.
While the IPCC fits neatly into the UN’s multilateralist order, one of the future challenges it is likely to
face is how to respond and adjust to a changing order
of governance. The indications are that the current
order will be replaced by a more fragmented, polycentered order of governance with pluralistic, nested
political decision-making structures. It is critical to
take into account the interplay of different levels and
the nested institutional landscape of decision making.
This political–institutional nestedness requires actors
in the different rule structures to coordinate their
actions in order to reach a political decision and
implement it.105 These changing political framework
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conditions will contribute to amplify the diversity of
knowledge sources and the plurality of values.
Processes of Mediation and Translation
The one-size-fits-all model of expertise tends to
abstract information from local contexts and cultures
and to decouple it from systems of experience and
understanding.86 Following this model, the IPCC, for
instance, obscures the local and situated characteristics of knowledge.106,107 Since scientific knowledge
is situated and context dependent, it also has to be
‘translated’ and communicated into relevant languages
across scales in order to inform policy at different levels. The need to open up debate on climate science
thus calls for stronger processes of mediation and
translation. Adaptation to climate change can be seen
as a site of relocalizing climate change in local cultures
and linking it to more personal scales of meaning and
experience which are central to understanding both
the credibility of and resistance to the knowledge
claims of the IPCC.62,86,106 Re-embedding climate
change in local cultures also implies a shift from
abstract, top-down approaches to expertise to placebased, bottom-up ones involving local and regional
jurisdictions and citizens.
The growing public scrutiny of the IPCC and its
particular task of producing policy-relevant knowledge demands new forms of interdisciplinary expert
judgment and public justification that have more
to do with public accountability in the democratic
political sense than with the quality of the science
being assessed by scientific peers.84 The calls to render scientific expertise more transparent demands a
responsiveness to the scrutiny of an educated public.28
Deliberative approaches not only require designing
expert bodies to be more transparent and accountable to the public but also opening up processes of
deliberation for interested actors.
As an alternative to top-down, paternalistic communication processes in response to ‘climategate’,
cosmopolitan scholars promote a more distributed
and participatory approach, one that engages scientists, governments, and publics in a shared process
of mutual understanding and genuine dialog.108,109,87
Trust can also be rebuilt by opening up different forms
of public and policy engagement in understanding the
processes and practices of experts, as much as explaining the substance of that knowledge. Cosmopolitan
approaches strongly emphasize the value of engaging
different parties in a common dialog. Deliberations
thus should not be restricted to interpretations of scientific findings. They should also be opened up to the
ways in which the assessments are organized, reports
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are produced and reviewed, and to how the expert
body is governed.
These forms of opening up expertise are thought
to be instrumental to both improving the quality of
the assessment and ensuring the legitimacy of the
process.110 Rather than undermining trust in science, this would actually allow the public to place
their trust more discerningly in the various types
of knowledge that scientists can offer.28 Hybrid,
inclusive procedures akin to the German inquiry
commissions—although criticized as being too ‘politicizing’—hold more promise than approaches that
stress the integrity of experts and disciplines to the
detriment of plurality of opinion.5
It is an empirically open question whether or not
public scrutiny and the demand for public accountability made by some sections of the blogosphere and
civil society will lead to different outcomes than those
of the campaigns started by ‘merchants of doubt’.
Such questions point to the need to open up the
debate on the ‘democratization’ of global expertise. They also require that a distinction be made
between different forms of the politicization of science
and depoliticization of politics and their implications
for democratic politics. As the IPCC demonstrates,
scrutiny enacted by the ‘merchants of doubt’ does not
necessarily lead to the ‘democratization of science’;
instead, it may lead to proxy debates on scientific
evidence that do not challenge but rather reinforce
elements of ‘technocracy’. Even if the rivals in these
prevailing controversies are pursuing different political agendas, they all are committed to idealized,
naive, and oversimplified notions of what ‘sound’
science is.
‘Democratization of Democracy’
Trust in abstract experts is dependent not so
much on the democratization of expertise111 but
on what Giddens has called the ‘democratisation of
democracy’.51 The one-size-fits-all model leaves little
room for robust democratic debate and choice with
respect to institutional arrangements and policies.
Although the IAC and IPCC reform efforts focus on
questions of governance, they are reluctant to openly
address IPCC’s role in climate policy.18
The ‘delegated’ decision-making authority and
empowering function exercised by the IPCC in
global policies, however, raise questions of political
legitimacy and democratic representation.58,92,112–114
Although the role of expertise in democratic societies
has been subject to extensive scholarly debate in recent
years, the discussion on how to democratize global
expertise seems to play a marginal role. Empirical
12
studies focus on the epistemic and political closure
of debates that results in single, technical ‘silver bullet’ solutions, such as global emissions markets, and
on their path dependency in global environmental
governance. What is lacking is a discussion of alternatives, of which democratic ideals are invoked in this
debate, and of the implications for our understanding (and evaluation) of scientific accountability and
legitimacy.
Deliberative Concepts of Democracy
Deliberative concepts of democracy offer a complementary approach to science studies and science policy
studies.111 The heightened demand for public accountability mirrors the structural problems inherent in the
existing system of global climate governance.87 Deliberative approaches advocate that democracy should
become a learning process in and through which people come to terms with the range of issues they need
to understand in order to hold defensible positions.
Uncertainties associated with climate change demand
a wide range of experience, expertise, and consultation
and thus offer opportunities for deliberative processes
that can lead to new and innovative ideas about public policy and about how democracy might work. To
remodel climate politics around deliberative democracy is thus to create an opening for a change in the
way democracies address climate change.87 The interest in trust has not been matched, however, by an analysis of the context of existing institutional frameworks
and governance structures. This is not only a question
of trust and accountability but also one of democratic
delegation and representation.82,115,116 The authority
of scientific experts in hybrid forms of governance is
insufficiently understood, particularly when it comes
to broader implications for our understanding of
democratic legitimacy and accountability.117 This also
requires that we look more closely at how to create
flexible, reflexive, and accountable institutions of representative democracy that can track the emergence
of issues and are imbued with regulatory authority to
respond proportionately as new information develops.
As soon as we recognize that science cannot compel
public policy, the need to develop effective institutional arrangements for it to inform public policy in
an appropriate way becomes greater than ever.117
CONCLUSION
While the IPCC has been able to provide a common
knowledge base for international climate policies, its
credibility in the eyes of citizens and policy makers
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The challenges of building cosmopolitan climate expertise
around the world still varies significantly. As shown
in this article, these differences are due mainly to
different approaches and underlying criteria for interpreting and validating policy-relevant knowledge for
decision making. The hybrid and consensual approach
was highly effective in terms of achieving closure in
the scientific and political debate and in accelerating
political decision making in Germany. Two German
expert inquiry commissions were instrumental in providing broad institutional support for far-reaching
mitigation policies and enjoyed a remarkable degree
of trust. Different national styles of public knowledge making and expertise also explain why the IPCC
faces more resistance in the United States than in
Germany. The IPCC’s procedures fail to respond adequately to U.S. traditions of achieving knowledge
closure.
These observations have consequences of global
significance for expertise: the IPCC’s task of producing
policy-relevant knowledge ‘under the public microscope’ requires new forms of public justification that
still vary significantly across contexts and cultures.
Given these challenges, recent initiatives aimed at
responding to ‘climategate’ are too narrowly focused
on improving the quality and transparency of the
science. Even if there is still a remarkable degree of scientific consensus, its public acceptance and credibility
can not be taken for granted. Taking transparency and
accountability seriously ‘as an obligation’ requires that
it be addressed openly. Procedural and institutional
arrangements for novel forms of expert judgment,
quality control, and public disclosure of politically
relevant knowledge are entirely lacking at the global
level. The question of public accountability and trust
in global expertise requires further explication and
research. It also calls for a dialog to be started up
between different social science traditions such as science and technology studies, social psychology, and
deliberative theory.
NOTE
a
This feature of German political culture is partly
grounded in the legal tradition of ‘The Rule of
Law’ (Rechtsstaat), which requires unambiguous and
unequivocal statements. It is mirrored in the structure
of the political system: the principles of coalition government and cooperative federalism also reinforce the
preference for consensual solutions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Mike Hulme, Myanna Lahsen, and Kathleen Cross
for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. This article is part of the project ‘Nested
Network’, funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research, Funding Initiative ‘Research on the
Relationship between Science, Politics, and Society’.
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FURTHER READING
Bäckstrand K, Khan J, Kronsell A, Lövbrand E, eds. Environmental Politics and Deliberative Democracy. Examing the
Promise of New Modes of Governance. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar; 2010.
Dryzek J, Norgaard R, Schlossberg D, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Climate Change and Society. Oxford: Oxford
University Press; 2011.
Jasanoff S. A new climate for society. Theory Culture Society 2010, 27: 233–253.
Lentsch J, Weingart P, eds. The Politics of Scientific Advice: Institutional Design for Quality Assurance. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press; 2011.
Volume 3, January/February 2012
 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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