Radioactivity in the environment chapter 18 public participation—potential and pitfalls

Radioactivity in the environment chapter 18 public participation—potential and pitfalls Radioactivity in the environment chapter 18 public participation—potential and pitfalls Radioactivity in the environment chapter 18 public participation—potential and pitfalls Radioactivity in the environment chapter 18 public participation—potential and pitfalls Radioactivity in the environment chapter 18 public participation—potential and pitfalls Radioactivity in the environment chapter 18 public participation—potential and pitfalls

Radioactivity in the Environment, Volume 19

ISSN 1569-4860, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-045015-5.00018-6

Public Participation—Potential and Pitfalls

Sven Ove Hansson, 1 , * and Deborah Oughton, 2 , *

1 Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Division of Philosophy, Stockholm, Sweden,

2 Centre for Environmental Radioactivity, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway

*Corresponding authors: E-mails: soh@kth.se, deborah.oughton@umb.no

18.1 INTRODUCTION

In the last one or two decades we have seen an increased focus on the importance

of stakeholder involvement and public participation in a number of policy areas, particularly those concerned with environmental issues and technology evalua-tion Formally, the requirement for participation was clearly stated in Principle

10 of the Rio Declaration:

Environmental issues are best handled with the participation of all concerned citizens,

at the relevant level At the national level, each individual shall have appropriate access to information concerning the environment that is held by public authorities, including information on hazardous materials and activities in their communities, and the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes States shall facilitate and encourage public awareness and participation by making information widely available Effective access to judicial and administrative proceedings, including redress and remedy, shall be provided (UNEP, 1992)

Chapter Outline

18.1 Introduction 333

18.2 What is Participation? 335

18.3 The Role of Participation

in Democracy 335

18.4 Two Ways to Justify

Participation 338

18.5 Quality Criteria for

Participative

18.5.1 Representativeness 340 18.5.2 Transparency 340 18.5.3 Impact on the

Decision 341 18.5.4 Early Involvement 341 18.5.5 Full Access to Expert Knowledge 342

18.6 Conclusion 343

Nearly 10 years later, The Aarhus Convention on Access to Information, Pub-lic Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters was legally ratified This was described by Kofi Annan as “the most ambitious venture in the area of environmental democracy so far undertaken under the auspices of the United Nations” (Aarhus convention, 1998) Since then, the requirement for stakeholder participation in decision making has been restated for instance in Article 26 of the Johannesburg World Summit on Sus-tainable Development, in a number of EC directives (e.g EC Directive, 2001/18 2001), and in the ICRPs recommendations on nuclear accident and emergency management (ICRP, 2009)

In the area of radiation protection, various forms of stakeholder involve-ment are common, mostly in relation to nuclear energy and in particular the sit-ing of nuclear waste repositories (Krütli, Stauffacher, Flüeler, & Scholz, 2010; Lidskog & Sundqvist, 2004) But involving stakeholders in decision making

is not without controversy Outcomes have been criticized both for taking too much notice of public opinion—“it is the job of those in power to take

Committee on Science and Technology, 1999)—and for paying too little atten-tion to stakeholder advice (Dienel & Renn, 1995; Webler, 1995) Procedures have also been criticized for being a waste of resources and even for undermin-ing democracy For example, in Europe, where stakeholder participation has become particularly popular in nuclear issues, a number of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) have expressed concern with the meaningfulness of

those in charge of the process have misled participants on what impact it can have on the eventual decision Many participation exercises have been accused

of simply being a subtle form of public relations or propaganda Despite the general consensus that public participation is important within policy making, the debate continues on exactly how that participation should be undertaken and by what criteria the various methods of participation should be evaluated (Oughton, 2008)

These questions are related to the underlying philosophical assumptions concerning the role of participation in a democratic society, and we will start

by examining those assumptions In order to establish robust evaluation

cri-teria, we need to be explicit about why public and stakeholder participation

is considered beneficial, who should participate, as well as exactly what kind

of process the stakeholders are involved in The answers will impact on how one evaluates the process of involvement After explicating the notion of par-ticipation in Section 18.2 we discuss in Section 18.3 what role participative procedures can and should have in a democratic society After some further discussion in Section 18.4 on how participation can be justified, we present in Section 18.5 a list of five quality criteria for participative procedures that are constructed to evaluate to what extent these procedures fulfill their democratic purpose

18.2 WHAT IS PARTICIPATION?

It is often unclear what is meant by “participation” in a decision-making pro-cess In democratic theory, “participative democracy” refers to a democratic procedure in which a large portion of the citizens are involved in politics in vari-ous ways in addition to voting, for instance by taking part in local meetings or in web-based political discussions (Musso, Weare, & Hale, 2000; Pateman, 1970)

As it is usually interpreted, participative democracy consists in actual partak-ing; unused opportunities to partake do not make democracy participative This

is the sense in which we will use the term “participation” here; it will refer to actual involvement in activities influencing the decision to be taken Those who participate may or may not be among those who will finally make the decision The term “decision-making process” can be taken in more or less inclusive senses An insightful description of democratic decision-making processes was made by Condorcet in his justification or the French constitution of 1793 He divided decision processes into three phases In the first phase, one “discusses the principles that will serve as the basis for decision in a general issue; one examines the various aspects of this issue and the consequences of different ways to make the decision.” In this phase, the opinions are personal, and no attempts are made to form a majority After this follows a second discussion

in which “the question is clarified, opinions approach and combine with each other to a small number of more general opinions.” In this way, the decision is reduced to a choice between a manageable set of alternatives The third phase

1847, pp 342–343 Cf Hansson, 2007)

It is not uncommon for participative procedures to take place only after the first of these phases has been completed, which means that the options open for choice have already been selected There can be a large difference between taking part in the decision-making process as a whole and being asked about the choice between options that have been preselected by others (Hansson, 2013; Section 7.2) In this paper, we will take the term “decision-making process”

in an inclusive sense that covers all three of Condorcet’s phases We will take

“decision-making process” and “decision-making procedure” to be synony-mous, and we will distinguish between participation in the different stages of the process

18.3 THE ROLE OF PARTICIPATION IN DEMOCRACY

We take democracy to be a rule by the people, meaning that the people are the real decision-makers This is a difficult ideal to realize, and one that has only been imperfectly realized Some authors have tried to rid democracy of this ideal The most prominent proponent of this approach was Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) In his view, democracy does not consist in the people taking polit-ical standpoints and electing officials to implement them Instead, it consists

in a market-like competition for leadership positions (Schumpeter, 1942 Cf

Joseph Lawrence, 1981) In what follows we will stick to the classical definition

of democracy as rule by the people

When a decision is made in a democratic society, what role should those who are personally affected preferably have in the decision? There are three possible types of roles that they can have The affected persons can

1 be decision makers,

2 be offered the opportunity to express their views, but not be decision

makers, or

3 be entirely left out of the decision making, and not even be heard.

Democratic theory does not have a simple answer to our question what role the affected persons should have The answer will have to depend on which the group of affected is and how it relates to the group(s) held to be sovereign in the issue at hand Traditional democratic theory primarily assigns sovereignty

to geographical units, namely nations and in some issues (by delegation) estab-lished political subunits of nations If the group of affected persons (roughly) coincides with a country or with a smaller political unit such as a municipality, then democratic theory and practice will support option (1), i.e the affected per-sons should be decision makers through the ordinary decision-making process But in risk-related issues, the affected persons are often not delimited in this way They may form an “ad hoc” geographical unit that does not coincide with any local political unit, or they may form a nongeographical unit including for instance the workers, neighbors, and customers of an industry (For examples, see chapters 10, 11, 14, 16 and 17.) This creates problems for democracy, since democracy, as we know it, is based on stable communities that are mostly geo-graphical Decision making in ad hoc units, created for each particular issue, would be exceptionally difficult to implement, and for two reasons: First, the delimitation of these units (presumably by higher-level decision makers) would create opportunities for gerrymandering of hitherto unknown proportions Secondly, the functionality of democratic decision-making depends to a large extent on the persistence of the decision-making units Decision makers who meet to make one single decision cannot be expected to be as willing to listen

to each other and find a workable compromise as decision makers who expect

to make many future decisions in the same constellation For these reasons, the creation of ad hoc decision-making bodies for a particular decision is seldom a practicable option Therefore, answer (1) to our question has to be rejected in such cases due to its impracticability, although it would, democratically, be the ideal answer Instead, we have to resort to answer (2), i.e the affected persons should be offered the opportunity to express their views, but the actual decision has to be made by others

In many risk-related issues, “those affected” form a group that is heteroge-neous both in terms of the nature and the strength of their involvement in the issue Often there is both a relatively small group of rather heavily affected persons, such as the neighbors of a projected new railroad, and a much larger

group of persons who are affected to a smaller degree, such as all those whose travel time will be reduced a few minutes by the new railroad There are strong reasons why the interests of each heavily affected person should have more weight than those of each slightly affected person However, it would be diffi-cult to construct legitimate and practicable decision procedures in which influ-ence is apportioned according to degree of interest Therefore, the distribution

of impact over the decision will have to be dealt with through judicious poli-tics rather than through the application of formal procedures that divide power unequally among the participants

In conclusion, the practical implementation of the democratic ideal that all decisions should be made jointly by those concerned requires considerable adjustment and compromise Decisions have to be made in stable units (such

as nations and regions), and often the group of persons affected by a particular decision does not coincide with any of these units However, these practical limitations in the implementation of the democratic ideal do not make it less urgent that those affected should be involved in the decision process and have

an influence on its outcome For this reason, a democratic government does not (as some seem to believe) replace or reduce the need for participative pro-cedures through which those most affected can influence a decision On the contrary, such participative procedures are a necessary component of a well-functioning democracy, in order to make up for the unavoidable misfit between decision-making units and the groups of persons affected by many decisions But the shifting and somewhat ephemeral nature of the group of affected persons is not only part of the justification for participative procedures as additions to the regular structures of representative democracy It is also the source of one of the major difficulties in the construction of such procedures, namely the so-called stakeholder identification problem: The persons affected for instance by an engineering project cannot in typical cases all be identified (Long, 1983) Since there are many degrees of affectedness, it is not possible to draw a sharp line between affected and unaffected persons In many cases, such

as that of a nuclear power plant, those affected are distributed over a large geo-graphical area This is also a major reason why the notion of informed consent cannot be transferred from medicine to the management of engineering proj-ects In the latter case, the group of affected persons has ill-defined boundaries, whereas for instance a surgical procedure or an hour with a psychiatrist “is for a specific, known individual” (Long, 1983, 60–61 Cf Hansson, 2006) ( Schinz-inger & Martin, 1983 claimed that this problem can be solved with vicarious decision-making, but that is a way to bypass the problem rather than to solve it.) The view on participation procedures that we have presented here is based

on the classical view of democracy as rule by the people In the discussion on participative procedures, other views are being heard that are closely related

to the Schumpeterian view of participation as an unnecessary and potentially counterproductive component of democracy According to such views, com-munication between authorities and laypersons should be primarily one way,

namely provision of information from the former to the latter This has been described as the “Decide-Announce-Defend” (DAD) model One of its con-sequences is that the public is invited to public relations activities rather than public participation activities It has been criticized for being more technocratic than democratic and for leaving the field open for lobbying from groups with vested interests while closing it for less vociferous and organized laypersons (Oughton & Forsberg, 2005)

Our approach is much more compatible with another approach to stake-holder and public participation that has gained much in approval in the last two decades, namely that which requires a two-way communication and dialogue This has often been called a bottom-up or deliberative democracy approach (Nielsen, Lassen, Sandoe, 2004) Its general aim is to involve all stakeholders

as early as possible in an open-ended decision-making process, and to solicit

as broad a range of opinions and knowledge as possible As a contrast to the DAD model, this style was rather succinctly described as a “Meet-Understand-Modify” (MUM) approach by a former president of the ICRP, Roger Clarke (Clarke, 2002)

18.4 TWO WAYS TO JUSTIFY PARTICIPATION

There are two major classes of justifications for methods of decision making, namely justifications based on the expected outcomes of a method and justifi-cations that refer to properties that the method has independently of what the outcome will be In short, we can express this as a difference between outcome-oriented and process-outcome-oriented justifications This distinction has often been explicitly referred to in the literature on democracy Some authors have justified democracy exclusively as a means to improve decision outcomes Hence, John Stuart Mill distanced himself from what he called “the metaphysical radicals, who hold the principles of democracy not as means to good government, but

as corollaries from some unreal abstraction—from ‘natural liberty,’ or ‘natural rights’.” Instead, he counted himself as one of the “philosophic radicals”, namely

“those who in politics observe the common practice of philosophers—that is, who, when they are discussing means, begin by considering the end, and when they desire to produce effects, think of causes” (Mill, [1837] 1982, p 353) In his utilitarian view, outcome-oriented arguments alone could justify democracy Others have justified democracy as an intrinsically just way of making deci-sions, in particular with reference to how it satisfies individuals’ rights to have influence on the society in which they live Such views have grown in impor-tance in the last half-century In an interesting article, the Canadian political scientist H.B Mayo (1911–2009) argued against outcome-oriented justifica-tions of democracy (Mayo, 1962) Different persons may have different views

on what the desired outcomes are, he said, and therefore democracy cannot be adequately justified in outcome-oriented terms Democracy is “an organizing principle, the principle of order and priorities and harmonization; what it is

about, what gives it content, is morality, economics, religion, education and so on” (p 559) Instead, democracy can be justified by process-oriented principles such as the intrinsic value of popular control and political equality

In the discussion of stakeholder participation both outcome-oriented and process-oriented arguments have been appealed to In practice there are two major classes of outcome-oriented arguments First, there are arguments that refer to the general usefulness of incorporating many inputs into an open-ended decision-making process These inputs can improve the outcome in otherwise unforeseeable ways

Secondly, there are the outcome-oriented arguments of those who see par-ticipatory procedures as means to achieve acceptance of a preselected decision option The following is a clear statement of that way of thinking:

“Community groups have in recent years successfully used zoning and other local regulations, as well as physical opposition (e.g., in the form of sitdowns or sabotage),

to stall or defeat locally unacceptable land uses In the face of such resistance, it is desirable (and sometimes even necessary) to draw forth the consent of such groups to proposed land uses.”

( Simmons, 1987 , p 6)

We consider the second type of outcome-oriented argumentation to be counter productive since it only promotes decision processes that do not fulfill the func-tions of participative procedures in a democracy, as outlined in Section 18.3 Many authors have promoted stakeholder participation in societal decision-making with process-oriented arguments such as principles of fairness and due process Such principles imply for instance that everyone’s interests should be taken into account and that all affected persons should have an opportunity to express their views on the imposition of any risk associated with a particular policy or technology (Shrader-Frechette, 1991)

As we see it, there is no need to choose between outcome-oriented and process-oriented justifications of participation Strong arguments of both types support the idea of participation (We refer of course only to the first of the two types of outcome-oriented justifications that we distinguished between above.) People have a right to influence on decisions that affect them, and when they exercise that right decision outcomes tend to improve

18.5 QUALITY CRITERIA FOR PARTICIPATIVE PROCEDURES

We are now going to present five quality criteria for participative procedures They all refer to how well the procedure fulfils the function of such procedures

in a democratic system, as outlined above in Section 18.3 We will consider both outcome-oriented and person-oriented aspects of their function

Criteria for the quality of participative procedures have been proposed before (e.g Rowe & Frewer, 2000) Our approach differs from others primarily

in the way in which they are based on democratic theory

18.5.1 Representativeness

Representativeness is important for both outcome- and process-related reasons Under the assumption that including the perspectives of all concerned improves the quality of the decision outcome, the absence of some of these perspectives will have a negative impact Under the assumption that the procedure has demo-cratic legitimacy that is independent of its outcome, such legitimacy will have to depend at least in part on the representativeness of the participants

However, due to the stakeholder identification problem discussed in Section 18.3, the criterion of representativeness is notoriously difficult to specify in a precise manner for a particular procedure In a procedure concerning the pos-sible environmental effects of a temporary storage facility for nuclear waste, how distant neighbors should be invited to participate? The workers at the plant should be included, but what about those of subcontractors, or plants sending waste to the facility?

In addition, once we have found an answer the question who should be rep-resented, it remains to determine by whom they should be represented On what grounds can an individual legitimately represent a group? Does (s)he have to be elected, or is it sufficient just to be a member who is willing to take part in the procedure? The former answer gives priority to representativeness, but the sec-ond makes for more open procedures Inclusiveness has sometimes been inter-preted as meaning that all individual stakeholders should have the opportunity

to be involved (Hunt, 2003)

The actual forms of representation will in many cases have to depend on practical constraints and limitations: Are representative organizations such as trade unions and community-based grassroots organizations available? How many persons in different categories are willing to participate? The difficul-ties in combining representativeness with openness can sometimes be solved by having parallel forms of participation, some of which are open so that all who wish to participate can do so in some way

18.5.2 Transparency

Transparency can refer both to the procedure itself and to the discussions per-formed within it The process should be transparent to enable the public to see what is going on and how decisions are being made In addition, the reasoning behind actions, deliberations, and eventual decisions should be made publicly available

Transparency is particularly important for participative procedures that are affected by the stakeholder identification problems, i.e procedures with vaguely delimited groups of affected persons If groups or persons with some potential interest in the matter have been excluded, then it should be possible for them

to react against their exclusion and demand a right to participate This requires that they have insight into the procedure so that they can judge for them-selves whether their exclusion was justified or not This is important for both

outcome-oriented and process-oriented reasons To the extent that they can con-tribute new information to the process, the outcome will be less well informed if they are not given the opportunity to do so To the extent that they are legitimate participants in the procedure, the legitimacy of the procedure as a whole will be lessened by their involuntary exclusion

It should be added that the transparency criterion is a general democratic requirement that is applicable also to nonparticipative procedures The delega-tion of a decision for instance to a group of experts is much more easily defended

if the public has the insight needed for an informed judgment on whether the delegation should continue or be revoked Obviously, other considerations can

on occasions outweigh the arguments in favor of transparency, but in such cases, the lack of transparency can often be partly compensated for, for instance by posterior disclosure or by disclosure to a representative oversight committee

18.5.3 Impact on the Decision

For a participative procedure to fulfill its function, its output should at least potentially have a genuine impact on policy If that is not the case, then the procedure can obviously not be justified with outcome-oriented arguments And

if participation has no impact on the decision, then it cannot fulfill the func-tion of participafunc-tion in a democracy, and therefore it has no process-oriented justification either

As mentioned above, one of the most common complaints against participa-tive procedures is their lack of influence on policy According to Wallentinus and Paivo (2001), there have been instances where bodies have sat down to listen to stakeholders in a succession of meetings, but no effort was made to adjust proposals to their suggestions Beder (1999) cites the lack of influence

as evidence that decisions have already been made and that policy makers are just going through the motions for the sake of public relations Participants in some of the earlier nuclear power consultations concluded that they were there

“to legitimize agency decisions, defuse opposition, warn the agency of possible political obstacles and satisfy procedural and legal requirements” (Kraft & Clary, 1993) To date, there is relatively good evidence that stakeholder par-ticipation can provide a valuable input of information to the decision-making process, but much less evidence of procedures having a direct impact on policy

We see this as a major problem area for research and for the development of new participative procedures and methodologies

18.5.4 Early Involvement

As we mentioned above, participative procedures can affect either the whole decision-making procedure or only parts of it It is in the early stages (Con-dorcet’s first phase) that issues and tasks are defined and delimited There-fore, to the extent that stakeholders have valuable information to contribute,

that information should preferably be entered into the decision process at an early stage when it is most useful This makes early involvement important for outcome-related reasons It is also important for process-related reasons, since limitations in the influence of stakeholders reduce the legitimacy of the proce-dures As we have already mentioned, it is a common criticism that stakeholders have only been involved at a late stage, after the decisions have de facto already been made However, the nature of stakeholder involvement may have to change

as the process develops For example, if there is strong expert disagreement over factual or technical information, then the appropriate role of laypersons will usually be to insure that expert discussions take place in the proper way and with the right instructions, rather than to participate themselves in detailed dis-cussions on difficult technical issues (Cf: Kaiser & Forsberg, 2002; Oughton & Strand, 2003) In other parts of the early discussions, such as those concerning the criteria by which alternative policies should be evaluated, direct layperson participation is essential

Often the early stages of participation focus on information gathering that may include surveys, polls, in-depth interviews or focus groups Polls, surveys, and interviews have the advantage of being cheap, and at least potentially repre-sentative However, they have the preponderant disadvantage of being one-way communication, not offering the participants the opportunity to inform them-selves and listen to the viewpoints of others before forming an opinion From that point of view, focus groups and other groups where participants actually meet and discuss are much to be preferred

18.5.5 Full Access to Expert Knowledge

Efficient participation in a decision-making process requires full access to rel-evant expert knowledge Participants with and without access to experts will not

be equal in terms of their ability to promote the ends they prefer the decision to serve Access to expertise is important primarily for outcome-related reasons;

it is not difficult to find examples verifying that more informed persons can provide more useful inputs to decision-making procedures

But in many participative procedures, access to experts is remarkably lim-ited The public hearing is a typical example of this Whereas the elite have opportunity to meet and discuss with experts on equal terms, most citizens only have access to them at meetings with experts and authorities on stage and the public in a mass audience There are, however, other types of procedures, such

as the citizen’s panels of Peter Dienel (1923–2006), in which the participants are provided with the same type of access to experts as the decision makers (Dienel, 2002) In particular in technically complex issues such as those relat-ing to nuclear energy, we believe it to be of utmost importance that the public has full access to experts This means that experts have to be available for group discussions and for hearings in small formats, not only for meetings with large audiences