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Paper short abstract

Institutional public participation is dominated by a narrow set of orchestrated formats that restrict who can take part from the outset. STS studies of participation in “uninvited” contexts can help illuminate and address these limits by seeking inspiring innovation from less controlled settings.

Paper long abstract

PEST studies have long examined the principle that increased, wider participation is both a condition for, and an indicator of, mature advanced democracies (or a pathway towards achieving them). In the decades since these processes have become institutionalised in the now-dominant formats of mini- and, increasingly, “big”-publics (e.g. national and global citizen assemblies), one characteristic stands out: they are ‘invited’ participatory processes (as the panel description notes). By analogy with wider social processes, invited participatory exercises are controlled by those who invite. Although this control is mediated by democratic participation principles, and by norms of dialogue and facilitation design – despite extensive rules and regulatory frameworks, invited participation is restricted from the outset. It cannot be fully open, it cannot be fully inclusive, and it cannot be fully democratic.

Parallel to PEST studies, STS has developed a rich tradition of work on public participation in ‘uninvited’ contexts. Admittedly, these encounters between publics and technoscience are less readily manageable (and transferable) than those carefully orchestrated; their reduced administrative legibility in institutional democratic settings, an obstacle for their political salience. Their ‘ecologies’ (Chilvers et al 2018) are messy, expertise compounded, outcomes uncertain, and who gets to participate can vary considerably through time and topic.

Based on two contrasting illustrations, each pertaining to the ‘ideal types’ broadly depicted above, I will make a case for a ‘more-then-now’ vision of public participation in science, claiming that the focus on ‘tested and tried’ models, even with innovations, carries fundamental limitations to the ‘PEST table’.