No description available.

Transboundary watershed management seeks to reconcile the dichotomy between political lines and the resources that flow freely over such borders. Transboundary waters cover half of the earth’s surface and define the natural communities of over 40% of the global population. Because water plays an integral role in every culture and society, international entities seek to identify the principles and methods that minimize conflict and maximize harmonious water resource management across borders. Successful management practices to date have aimed to incorporate relevant scientific literature throughout the basin using alternate governance structures. International River Basin Organizations (IRBOs), independent governing structures, provide one such method of governance along shared water bodies. In order to determine how science influences policy and management in IRBOs, this research examines five case studies across three IRBOs: The International Joint Commission, the International Commission for the Protection of the Danube and the Mekong River Commission. To understand the gap between science production and its incorporation into IRBO policies, we conducted a comprehensive literature review and applied the findings from existing scientific literature to understand science-policy process in the five case studies. Within each case study we traced the story of science production and its uptake into policy by highlighting two types of key information in the process: the role of mandates and IRBO structure, and the IRBO’s relationship with relevant actors. Through this process we identified and explored the gap between science production and policy action, demonstrating which mechanisms are essential for generating policy founded on scientific research.

This dissertation presents the case for a normative vision of the relationship between technical experts and other non-expert members of a democratic citizenry. This vision is grounded in two key insights that have emerged from the field of science and technology studies. First, is the "third wave" science studies movement that identifies problems of expertise as the "pressing intellectual problem of the age." Characterized by the problems of legitimacy and extension, Collins and Evans build the case for the extension of the category of expertise to include those who have the relevant experience but lack relevant accreditation. Alongside this extension of the category of expertise is the extension of those who participate in the framing of techno-scientific issues. This dissertation builds a case for the inclusion of all democratic citizens in the problem framing process. What we are left with from the current "third wave" literature is a multi-tiered prescription for the role of non-experts in public decision-making about science and technology. On the ground floor, when the issue is being framed there is a need to include non-expert stakeholders (in theory, any concerned democratic citizen). Once a framing of the problem has been constructed, there is a need to recognize a larger category of people who count as "expert." Together, these constitute the two most powerful prescriptive elements of expertise developed in the recent science studies literature. The dissertation then explores claims that it is specifically "deliberative" theories of democracy that are best suited to make sense out of this democratization of expertise. After presenting a typology of deliberative theories of democracy that clears up a serious problem of equivocation found in appeals to deliberative democracy in current STS literature, this dissertation argues that only a specific set of deliberative theories of democracy, "discursive" deliberative theories of democracy, are capable of fulfilling the role theories of deliberative democracy are assigned in current STS literature. The dissertation then goes on to suggest how these new insights into the democratization of expertise might affect future instantiations of technology assessment mechanisms (such as the office of Technology Assessment) in the U.S. / Ph. D.

During the transition era, economic resurgence in post-Soviet petro-states, such as Russia and Kazakhstan, was decisively fuelled by an abundance of oil and gas resources during a time of high and long-sustained demand for hydrocarbons in the world market. Thus, these states' energy sectors acted as the cornerstone of their post-Soviet economic and political development. However, in regard to foreign investment in their energy sectors, the governments of the different former Soviet states took strikingly different approaches: Russia for instance imposed restrictions on foreign economic groups, while Kazakhstan was more receptive to foreign investment in the sector. Given their shared economic and political background in the Soviet era discovering what accounts for this policy trend helps understand the divergence in the transition experience and more deeply rooted differences. This policy-oriented study examines perceptions, chiefly by interviews, and foreign investment strategies in the energy sector. It assesses institutional, economic and social background factors shaping perception and, to the degree that it can be determined, policy-making in post-Soviet Russia and Kazakhstan.

The need to protect diverse biological resources from ongoing development pressures is one of today's most pressing environmental challenges. In response, "ecosystem services" has emerged as a conservation framework that links human economies and natural systems through the benefits that people receive from nature. In this dissertation, I investigate the science-policy interface of ecosystem services in order to understand the use of ecosystem service decision support tools and evaluate the pathways through which ecosystem services knowledge impacts decisions. In the first paper, I track an ecosystem service valuation project in California to evaluate how the project changes the social capacity to make conservation-oriented decisions and how decision-makers intend to use ecosystem services knowledge. In a second project, I analyze a global sample of cases and identify factors that can explain the impact of ecosystem services knowledge on decisions. I find that the perceived legitimacy of knowledge (whether it is unbiased and representative of many diverse viewpoints) is an important determinant of whether the knowledge impacts policy processes and decisions. For the third project, I focus on the global use of spatial ecosystem service models. I analyze country-level factors that are associated with use and the effect of practitioner trainings on the uptake of these decision support tools. Taken together, this research critically evaluates how ecosystem service interventions perform. The results can inform the design of boundary organizations that effectively link conservation science with policy action, and guide strategic efforts to protect, restore, and enhance ecosystem services.

Canadian science policy has increasingly linked the value of academic knowledge to its contribution to economic competitiveness. A market vision of scientific quality is embedded in new funding criteria which encourage academic scientists to collaborate with industry, generate intellectual property, and found companies. While the “Mode 2” thesis advanced by Gibbons and Nowotny asserts that quality criteria in science are changing to incorporate economic relevance, there is little empirical evidence to either refute or substantiate this claim. Using Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this study explores the responses of basic health scientists to market-oriented funding criteria. The goal of the study was to understand how scientists, occupying different positions of power in the scientific field, defined “good science” and pursued scientific prestige. Twenty semi-structured interviews were carried out with 11 scientists trained before and 9 trained after the rise of market-oriented science policy. Data derived from Curriculum Vitae and Background Information Forms were used to estimate the type and volume of capital each participant held. Scientific capital, as reflected in peer-reviewed publications and grants, was perceived as the dominant form of recognition of scientific quality. However, “entrepreneurial capital”, as reflected in patents, licenses, industry funding and company spin-offs, functioned as a new form of power in accessing resources. Study participants adopted different positions in a symbolic struggle over competing visions of “good science” and used different strategies to acquire scientific prestige. Some pursued a traditional strategy of accumulation of scientific capital, while others sought to accumulate and convert entrepreneurial capital into scientific capital. Findings suggest that there is no longer a single symbolic order in the scientific field, but that the field is stratified according to a scientific and market logic. Hence, support is provided for both continuity with “Mode 1” and change towards “Mode 2” evaluation of academic quality.

Canadian science policy has increasingly linked the value of academic knowledge to its contribution to economic competitiveness. A market vision of scientific quality is embedded in new funding criteria which encourage academic scientists to collaborate with industry, generate intellectual property, and found companies. While the “Mode 2” thesis advanced by Gibbons and Nowotny asserts that quality criteria in science are changing to incorporate economic relevance, there is little empirical evidence to either refute or substantiate this claim. Using Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this study explores the responses of basic health scientists to market-oriented funding criteria. The goal of the study was to understand how scientists, occupying different positions of power in the scientific field, defined “good science” and pursued scientific prestige. Twenty semi-structured interviews were carried out with 11 scientists trained before and 9 trained after the rise of market-oriented science policy. Data derived from Curriculum Vitae and Background Information Forms were used to estimate the type and volume of capital each participant held. Scientific capital, as reflected in peer-reviewed publications and grants, was perceived as the dominant form of recognition of scientific quality. However, “entrepreneurial capital”, as reflected in patents, licenses, industry funding and company spin-offs, functioned as a new form of power in accessing resources. Study participants adopted different positions in a symbolic struggle over competing visions of “good science” and used different strategies to acquire scientific prestige. Some pursued a traditional strategy of accumulation of scientific capital, while others sought to accumulate and convert entrepreneurial capital into scientific capital. Findings suggest that there is no longer a single symbolic order in the scientific field, but that the field is stratified according to a scientific and market logic. Hence, support is provided for both continuity with “Mode 1” and change towards “Mode 2” evaluation of academic quality.

abstract: This project develops the "socio-technical contract" concept, a notion that signifies the kinds of socio-technological assumptions and arrangements that characterize a particular domain of policy or practice. Socio-technical contracts, unlike their social contract counterparts in political theory, represent active negotiation and renegotiation of social contracts around emerging technologies, as opposed to the tacit social contracts of thinkers such as Locke. I use the socio-technical contract concept to analyze the governance of assisted reproductive technologies in the United Kingdom. For increasing numbers of people, reproduction is happening in a fundamentally different way. Conception outside of the womb became a reality with the 1978 birth of Louise Brown, the first baby born via in-vitro fertilization. Alongside Louise Brown's birth emerged new social and governance configurations around reproductive technologies, including, in the United Kingdom, the establishment of a national regulatory agency, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. The project applies the socio-technical contract concept in order to examine how distributed governance and socio-cultural processes in the British context worked over time to renegotiate fundamental ideas about families and kinship, the boundaries of "ethical" science, rules governing release of information, the "right to an identity," the role of the state in the reproductive choices of individuals, and general approaches to how to think about the roles and relationships of the child, parents, and the state in and around the introduction of these technologies. As these changes have occurred, policies, social understandings, and legal rights have been renegotiated and new governance capacities, what I call "anticipatory capacities," have come into existence to manage and coordinate change across complex social systems. In illuminating anticipatory capacities in each context, I explore the tools deployed by government actors, scientists, stakeholders, and citizens in negotiating evolving socio-technical contracts around reproductive technologies. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Political Science 2014

Orientador: Renato Peixoto Dagnino / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Geociências / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-23T23:16:21Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Silva_RogerioBezerrada_D.pdf: 1172901 bytes, checksum: f226bbaeb5d9f902cf179859222cbada (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Resumo: Este trabalho trata da relação entre o governo e a comunidade científica no Brasil focando nos condicionantes da agenda de pesquisa da universidade. Sua hipótese é a de que o governo, ao aumentar o dispêndio para a pesquisa universitária, poderia estar limitando as autonomias - de gestão, financeira e de pesquisa - da universidade. Para evidenciar o comportamento político da comunidade científica e do governo no processo decisório das políticas públicas relacionadas à universidade e à C&T, o trabalho adota, no plano metodológico, o enfoque da Análise de Políticas. No plano analítico-conceitual, tem como referência os Estudos Sociais da C&T; o que permite classificar aquela relação segundo duas lógicas. A primeira é a da "política para a ciência", onde o "para" indica que o propósito do governo seria fomentar a pesquisa sem interferir na definição do que deve ser pesquisado. A segunda lógica é a da "política da ciência", em que o "da" igualaria a Política de C&T a outras políticas acerca das quais o governo, em função das demandas cognitivas que elas colocam, possui interesses específicos; e, por isso, privilegiaria as pesquisas cujos resultados podem alavancar outras políticas. O objetivo deste trabalho é entender como a agenda de pesquisa da universidade, condicionada pelos valores e interesses desses dois atores, é elaborada. Ele está organizado em cinco capítulos. O primeiro apresenta o referencial teórico-metodológico utilizado para analisar a relação entre esses dois atores. O segundo trata das noções de autonomia encontradas na literatura sobre o ensino superior latino-americano. Limitando o escopo dos Estudos Sociais da C&T, o foco do capítulo três é a autonomia da pesquisa universitária. O Capítulo quatro indica, através de informação secundária, como essa autonomia é condicionada por aquela relação. Em seguida, se analisa a partir de dados primários como essa relação se apresenta na Unicamp; a qual por ser atípica é especialmente adequada para reforçar os resultados mostrados no capítulo anterior. O trabalho conclui sugerindo, por um lado, que, mais do que incorporar à sua agenda de pesquisa as demandas, do governo e das empresas, colocadas pelas políticas públicas, a comunidade científica parece estar apenas declarando sua aderência a elas. E, assim, tentando manter sua legitimidade social para seguir acessando os fundos provenientes dos impostos que paga a população. Por outro, e contrariando os que entendem a autonomia da universidade como uma condição para sua adesão aos anseios dessa população, que a autonomia de pesquisa parece estar atuando num sentido oposto / Abstract: This thesis deals with the relationship between the government and the scientific community in Brazil focuses on the constraints of the research agenda of the university. Its hypothesis is that the government, to increase the spending to university research, may be limiting the autonomies - management, financial and research - of the university. To highlight the political behavior of the scientific community and the government into the decision-making process related to the higher education and the S&T policies, the work adopts, on the methodological level, the Policy Analysis. In addition, on the analytical and conceptual level it follows the S&T Studies approach; which allows classifying that behavior according to two logics. The first logic is named "policy for science", where the "for" indicates that the purpose of government would be to promote research without interfering with the definition of what should be researched. The second, "policy of science" in where the "of the" means S&T Policy should be focused by government, as many other policies, depending on its contribution to fulfill cognitive demands. Which means that government should restrict its support to the research that would produce results that could leverage other public policies. The objective of this work is to understand how the university research agenda, conditioned by the values and interests of these two actors, is been formulated. The thesis comprises five chapters. The first, presents the theoretical and methodological frameworks used to analyze the relationship between the two actors. The second, is centered on the notions of autonomy found in the literature on higher education in Latin America. Using a line of inquiry pertaining to the S&T Studies, the next chapter focuses on one of these autonomies, the autonomy of research. Chapter IV indicates, through secondary information, how the relationship between the government and the scientific community conditions this autonomy is conditioned. Then, with the same purpose, it analyzes primary data concerning the State University of Campinas that is especially suitable to reinforce the results shown in the previous chapter. The thesis concludes by suggesting that the scientific community is not including into its research agenda the government and enterprises cognitive demands introduced into S&T Policy. On the contrary, it seems to be declaring their adherence to these demands just in order to maintain the social legitimacy that authorize it to access government funds. Secondly, and contrary to what is usually supported the work stress that research autonomy is not favoring the arrival of population concerns and demands to university research agenda / Doutorado / Politica Cientifica e Tecnologica / Doutor em Política Científica e Tecnológica

No description available.