Nowadays, policy makers consider public participation in innovation policies essential for their success. In the past, opposition to new technologies has often been dismissed as ‘luddism’, attributed to public ignorance and explained in terms of a ‘deficit’ in public understanding of science and technology. Such views, although by no means dead, have recently been widely discredited. Public anxieties should be taken into account more seriously. Public participation would encourage people to learn about new technologies. Participation is assumed to legitimate the resulting policies and to build public trust in governance. Technologies have to be ‘socially robust’ as well as technically sound. A wide variety of recent initiatives in this area are currently assessed and attempts at standardization and benchmarking are underway.[1]

Obviously, the recent shift in policy views was inspired by food scandals such as the BSE crises and the controversy over GM food. In Europe it is also closely associated with emerging European regulatory regimes. Prominent members of the STS community paved the way for the change, with studies that showed the ‘deficit hypothesis’ to be ill founded and deficient. Yet, to claim a final victory for the pro-participatory views advocated by STS scholars would be premature. The reception in the policy bureaucracies have been mixed. “Elitists’” views on public understanding and participation are still at hand, as a close reading of policy documents reveals.[2]

Instead of becoming overjoyed by its success, STS should be more cautious and critical, and take a closer look at the new participatory initiatives. Are they indeed an improvement? If so why, and where? Or are they yet another form of ‘politics as usual’, geared to lure the public to accept developments that are already irreversible? Empirical STS analyses and theoretical reflection should address such questions. For that a readjustment the intellectual and political agenda of STS seems required. Below I will present some material about the GM food debate in The Netherlands to illustrate some of the issues.

The Netherlands’ food and genes debate and NGOs: building new forms of public representation The Dutch debate about GM food and agricultural biotechnology was initiated by parliament in 1999 and took place in 2001. Between 1999 and 2001 the debate was designed in negotiations between stakeholder groups and representatives of the government. As it turned out, the NGOs and government representatives held quite different views on the questions to be asked and the role stakeholder organizations should play. Those in charge of preparations at the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Conservancy, and Fisheries were inspired by the new perspectives on participation. They wanted to create as much room as possible for ‘ordinary citizens’ to learn about the new technology and to express their own views on possible uses. In such a debate NGOs and industry were supposed to be ‘supporting actors’ and ‘facilitators’ rather than ‘key players’ or ‘leading actors’. Yet, these representatives of the government also thought that a discussion about the acceptability of biotechnology as such was void and useless. Biotechnology exists as an irreversible fact, they argued, and Dutch politics would have to deal with its consequences for agriculture and food production. NGOs wanted a debate about the acceptability of biotechnology in agriculture as such as well as about alternative solutions to problems in food production. For them the question about whether specific applications of biotechnology would be acceptable and beneficial, should be preceded by a more general debate about food problems, risks and needs.

Preliminary consultations showed that industry and NGOs were keen to participate in a debate, but saw the debate mainly as a platform to put forward their own views. There were few signs that the opposing parties were prepared to reconsider their positions during or after the debate.[3] This encouraged the government to limit the influence of such groups as much as possible. A public replay of a debate between the entrenched would serve no purpose. Instead it was decided that the debate should offer opportunities for ordinary citizens to learn about new products based on bio-technology and to form opinions about the boundary conditions and limits to be set with respect to the introduction of such products.

The NGOs disagreed with this framing of the central questions as well as with the role accorded to them in the debate. Yet, they decided to go along with the debate and to see whether they could redirect it at a later stage. Immediately after its installation, however, the organizing committee made it clear it would not take orders from radical NGOs:

“…I would like to keep it out of the sphere of the ‘believers’. On the one hand there are those who are convinced it will be beneficial to people and on the other hand there is Greenpeace, certain that it will lead us to world destruction. Such people never convince one another”.[4]

In line with the recommendation of a governmental working party that had prepared the debate, the Committee decided to focus activities on a number of already known as well as some imaginary applications of bio-technology. For each of these products arguments for and against would be listed. Participants were supposed to review these arguments and to add arguments of their own. After long deliberations between the committee, the agencies involved and the stakeholder groups, nine examples were chosen. They included: a sustainable tomato, herbicide-resistant corn, a BSE free cow, cholesterol reducing milk, fungi-resistant potatoes, terminator seed, and vitamin A enriched Rice (golden rice).

These products were the starting points for the various debating activities to be organized. A controlled focus group experiment would be at the core of the entire process. Six focus groups of twenty-five people each would be formed in such a way that the results would be more or less representative for the Dutch general public. The focus groups would meet twice. In between the sessions a special meeting would be organized in which the Committee would interrogate experts about questions that had emerged in the first round of focus group discussions. Participants in the focus groups were encouraged to take part in the panel meeting.

Alongside the focus group discussions a wide range of public debate activities would be organized.[5] 5 Public meetings at the local level were stimulated and subsidized, provided the organizers would come up with a report. Special lessons at schools were prepared. An interactive website was launched and advertisements and calls to participate were to be published. A limited number of national events was envisaged to get mass media coverage. A specially designed toolbox with information material, a booklet describing the nine examples, survey forms, and a video introducing the debate was put together. Opinion surveys before and after the debate were organized to assess the opinions of the general public about GM food and to assess the effects of the debate. At a rather late stage a special web-based debate was initiated to include voices and views related to the situation in developing countries.

The choice of products to be discussed and especially the information video became crystallization points for pitched battles between the organizers and the critical NGOs. A first version of the video was presented at the public launch of the debate in May 2001. It was immediately rejected by the NGO as biased in favor of GM food. The Committee itself was unhappy with the video as well and ordered a remake. The result was presented after the summer. Once again the NGOs said it was unacceptable. They demanded a more balanced presentation in which non-GM alternatives to solve food problems would be put on an equal footing. They demanded that the current video should be withdrawn from the ‘toolbox’ and the debate. The Committee refused to do this. In response fifteen NGOs walked out and announced that they would organize their own debate. The move was officially deplored by the Committee, but members also made it clear they were fed up with the tactics of the NGOs.

By then the controversy between the critical NGOs and the Committee had become the main topic in the mass media coverage of the debate. It overshadowed and tainted the debate about GM food and would continue to do so. The debate about GM food had become at least as much a debate about the role of critical and especially semi-professional NGOs such as Greenpeace in civic deliberations as it was a debate about GM food. Once the final report had been published with conclusions that were not particularly surprising given the design of the debate, members of the Committee lashed out at the critical NGOs in interviews. For example:

“I am a member of almost all of these organizations …but I never received a letter at home in which we were asked for our opinion. This raises questions about the functioning of such organizations. With their highly ethical and moralizing standpoints they are much more detached from what …people find than they are willing to acknowledge. They are diehard idealists”.[6]

The Dutch debate and examples of similar debates in other countries suggest that public participation exercises will become a fifth form of representation of the public alongside and possibly in competition with already existing forms. If formal elections for parliaments are the first form political representation, mass movements and civic groups constitute a second form. Professional mass media constitute a third form of public opinion and public opinion surveys are a fourth form of representing what the public thinks. Government-initiated exercises of public participation should be added to this list as a fifth form. Of course, these various forms overlap and are co-extensive, but this should not blind us to tensions and competition between these various forms. Their relations should be carefully assessed and the new form should be analysed in terms of its performativity and civic epistemology, i.e., whether and how a new conception of citizenship is framed and promoted at the level of substantive issues as well as in terms of the attitudes, qualifications and behaviours required from participants.

Configuring citizenship The information video provides a good entry point to analyze the conception of citizenship implied in the ‘Food and Genes Debate’. Just like literary texts can be said to have an ‘implied reader’, the video has an implied conception of scientific citizenship. A key role is played by the voice-over. The voice-over is the key narrator and the publics’ representative in the video story. It voices questions and concerns that are supposed to be on the public’s mind. What is at stake in the debate about GM food? What should we - the public - expect? What to make of the contrasting arguments and views? What are the risks involved; what beneficial effects do protagonists expect?

The video is divided into a general introduction and several sections in which the exemplary products are discussed. At the beginning we see people engaged in their everyday business in supermarkets and on farms. We see bottles of wine and beer and bread and we are reminded that we have used biotechnology through the ages. But now something has changed. It is now possible to intervene at the level of the hereditary materials themselves in new and radically different ways. An animation video starts and explains the basic principles using images of DNA and RNA floating in empty space and a pair of scissors. Click, click, it is that easy! But should we do it? Is it safe? What are the risks and benefits? Aren’t we playing God?

A white-coated scientist appears in a pop-up window. He looks directly at us and announces that an endless variety of new products is on its way, even though environmental activists cause delays. His pop-up window closes and new ones appear that show us other experts. These experts are in charge of safety regulation. They tell the audience that there are no significant risks, i.e., that these risks are under control. Regulatory frameworks have been sufficiently elaborated recently and although there are still some problems left, the basic framework is solid and adequate. Other experts pop up and tell the audience to be less certain. One key academic expert is an ecologist (no white coat, filmed outside and looking away from the camera). He points out that genetic reproduction is fundamentally uncertain and cautions us. We are only beginning to understand the complexities involved, so we should be careful. When he is finished the voice-over points out that this scientific uncertainty may not apply to all applications of biotechnology, but is associated with quite a lot of them. It is time to become more specific and a new section in the video starts in which the genetically modified tomato is presented as a first product that is already available.

Subsequently, various examples of GM food products are presented in separate sections of the video. There is also a separate section on risk and a part is devoted to a discussion of Golden rice and to food problems in the Third World. Each section repeats the format just described. The voice-over introduces the product or issue and the first questions. Subsequently, experts appear in pop-up windows and address the question as well as other issues put forward. The expert voices include scientists, economists, regulators, representatives from NGO’s (Greenpeace, Consumers Association), representatives from industry, agriculture and an organic farmer. For a single product the majority of experts seem to agree that it makes no sense, but about most of the other GM products opinions are balanced.

Throughout, the focus of the video is on the new products envisaged. Alternatives are only presented in relation to the discussed GM product and appear to have their own problems and limitations. Time and again the same questions are raised: What are the envisaged advantages? Is the product economically viable? What are the risks? Will it make the farmers more dependent on agriculture giants and the seed industry? Will products be labeled to guarantee consumer freedom? Will there be a product line of GM free food?

The video is carefully balanced. The space allotted to the protagonists and opponents appearing in pop-up windows is more or less equal. And yet, the entire flow of the argument frames the spectator/citizen as a pragmatist, a consumer and, at least implicitly, as an adherent of the institutional division between state and economy - maybe a skeptical one, but nevertheless… State intervention is almost exclusively associated with issues of health and safety. It is assumed that the fate of food products - whether ‘GM’ or ‘organic’- will be decided at the market. Consumer freedom should be guaranteed, but through labeling and safety regulation Agricultural practices should be allowed unless they conflict with such regulations or endanger the natural environment.

This implicit conception of citizenship is as much encouraged by what is said and presented as by what has been left out. The question, ‘Aren’t we playing God?’, is indeed raised at the beginning but it is never addressed in the video after that. The same goes for other ethical concerns. Only environmental safety and health issues are mentioned. With respect to starvation in the Third World, seed companies will offer terms of trade to farmers that will take care of objections. While opponents and skeptics raise doubts and point out that the new rice strains will not solve the problems, self-confident entrepreneurs radiate a ‘can do’ mentality and point out their civic respectability.

With respect to political decision making the video is completely silent. The implied citizens are presented as undifferentiated members of the public writ large. Apparently they are Dutch, but no specification is ever given of the polity of which they are supposed to be a part. How that polity is restricted by international agreements and European treaties already in place is not mentioned either. Apparently, the civic debate is to be about products of biotechnology and not about sovereignty, democracy and the global economic order. The latter only surfaces in the form of concerns about the increasing dependence of farmers on big industry. Remedial measures for this are mainly discussed and presented in connection with the farmers in the Third World.

The way of framing just sketched also has consequences for science and scientific knowledge in relation to citizenship. Fundamental scientific questions are not presented as particularly relevant in a direct way. The technology is presented in a black-boxed version and fundamental questions are side-stepped in favor of a discussion about risks and safety issues in connection with specific products and cross-pollination. Insofar as these are framed as technical risk issues, the citizen is once again framed as an outsider, listening to experts and hopefully well represented by experts from NGOs and by the consumers association. More general political, economic and ethical questions with respect to food are not considered to be topics for extensive consideration and expert commentary.

Conclusion The Dutch debate about GM food has been inspired by the new ideas about participation that have recently emerged. Yet, it is also clear that the design of the debate also diverged from the principles recommended by prominent STS scholars. Of course, it would be quite naïve to attribute this to a limited understanding of STS analyses. The Dutch debate functioned as a political machine. It promoted particular versions of the problems the political system faces and ignored or deflated other versions. More than in other cases it worked to delegitimize NGOs, but that aspect should not blind us to the fact that public participation exercises will always be selective and will implicitly or explicitly promote certain versions of citizenship and the problems we face instead of others. Claims that we are now given space to ‘ordinary citizens’ or ‘average consumers’ do not automatically imply that democracy and public deliberations are indeed enhanced. And neither should a public display of modesty on the side of experts be taken as proof for that. We have to investigate these new participatory exercises more closely, especially now that policy makers and marketing experts around the globe have started to embrace them. Are we indeed looking at new conceptions of citizenship emerging? Or are we looking at the latest version of ‘politics as usual’? Or is it a restyling of existing conceptions of citizenship and economic liberalism to address problems of international economic competition and corporate exploitation of science? Most importantly is the question of how to distinguish more systematically and in an empirically informed manner between these various interpretations?

The research on which this article is based is part of work for the EU funded thematic network STAGE. See: http://www.stage-research.net. A more detailed and comprehensive analysis of the Dutch debate and its more general implications is in preparation. The author thanks Myrthe Egmond for her support.

Notes

1. See H. Banthien et.al. Governance of the European research Area: The Role of Civil Society. Final report. Bensheim, IFOK, October 2003.
2. R.P. Hagendijk, ‘The public understanding of science and public participation in regulated worlds’, Minerva, 2004 (1), 1-19.
3. Rapport Schuttelaar, 2001.
4. Interview with the Committee’s chair, dr. Jan Terlouw, deVolkskrant, 23 February 2001. My translation.
5. Initially the plan was that focus group meetings would be public and the representatives of media and stakeholder groups would attend. Later on it was decided that focus groups would meet behind closed doors to encourage that people would feel free to speak up and participate.
6. Renate Dorrestein (interview), NRC Handelsblad, 10 January 2001, p.2., my translation.