Paper short abstract:

More participation is a core demand within the responsible science debate. Through structured review of the stakeholder management literature this paper identifies criteria for the successful enactment of such demands and explores their practical resonance within science-based consumer protection.

Paper long abstract:

Across societal discourses more participatory knowledge production has been established as one of the core pillars of responsible science. Many argue this also extends to public science organisations, such as the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), with the statutory task to conduct independent risk assessment for consumer health protection. Such demands build on longstanding calls for more public participation in governance and societal processes at large, which find their roots in normative and strategic lines of argumentation. While the former tend to refer to democratic values, in particular notions of deliberation, the latter point to strategic goals, such as the building of trust, reputation and societal support including access to wider (knowledge) resources. Both sets of arguments are well established within and beyond the STS, political science or stakeholder management literature. What is less well established is how societal participation should be enacted, in other words what criteria need to be met in practice in order to achieve normative and strategic goals. This study aims to address this gap through a twofold process. Firstly, criteria for successful participation are identified based on a structured review of the stakeholder management literature. Secondly, the paper explores the empirical resonance of these criteria within the field of science based consumer protection through qualitative interviews with BfR employees and stakeholders. As such it makes not only a scientific contribution to the stakeholder management and wider participation literature but also starts a debate on practical demands on the enactment of more participatory knowledge production.