Experts and the Environment—The UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 1970–2011
Experts and the Environment—The UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution 1970–2011
复制标题
专家与环境——英国皇家环境污染委员会 1970-2011
DOI：
10.1093/jel/eqr031
复制
发表时间：
2012
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
S. Owens
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
S. Owens
英国皇家环境污染委员会于1970年首次任命，2011年废除，在环境政策和立法方面取得了重要进展。本文探讨了委员会的影响力的背景下，更广泛的问题，在现代民主社会的专业知识和政策的形成。在介绍了委员会的简介之后，报告阐述了专家咨询机构作用概念化的四种不同方式。然后，它审查了委员会施加影响的情况，并确定了有助于建立其声誉并使其发挥作用的做法和特征。特别重要的是它作为一个“专家委员会”的组成，它的自主性，它在网络中的定位，以及它在环境政策形成的四十年中的持久性。分析表明，最好从不同效果的连续统一体的角度来看待影响力，咨询机构可以同时发挥多种作用，专门知识与政策之间的关系必然既复杂又具有偶然性。最后，就委员会的消亡以及在考虑专家咨询的未来时必须谈判的紧张局势提出了一些想法。
The UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, first appointed in 1970 and abolished in 2011, has been credited with important developments in environmental policy and legislation. This article examines the Commission's influence in the context of wider questions about expertise and policy formation in modern democratic societies. After presenting a brief biography of the Commission, it sets out four different ways in which the role of expert advisory bodies has been conceptualised. It then examines the circumstances in which the Commission exerted influence and identifies the practices and characteristics that helped build its reputation and enabled it to have effect. Especially significant were its composition as a ‘committee of experts’, its autonomy, its positioning within networks, and its endurance over four, formative decades for environmental policy. The analysis suggests that influence might be best thought of in terms of a continuum of different effects, that advisory bodies can simultaneously perform multiple roles, and that relations between expertise and policy are necessarily both complex and contingent. Finally, some thoughts are offered on the Commission's demise and on the tensions that have to be negotiated in considering the future of expert advice.