Knowledge, policy, and expertise: the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1970–2011
Knowledge, policy, and expertise: the UK Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, 1970–2011
复制标题
知识、政策和专业知识：英国皇家环境污染委员会，1970-2011 年
DOI：
10.1080/14649357.2016.1271508
复制
发表时间：
2017
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
A. Jordan
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Jordan
这本书承诺对皇家环境污染委员会进行“深入研究”，该委员会是英国政府的建议提供者，2011年作为紧缩运动的一部分被淘汰。从表面（即使书名中有“皇家”这个词），这可能不会让你的国际规划专家觉得这是一个有前途的研究项目主题。然而，在实践中，苏珊·欧文斯揭示了它绝不是平凡的，带领读者通过诸如决策中专家建议的性质和实践等重要主题进行了漫长的旅程，政策制定的政治以及公共权力产生和延续的方式。皇家委员会最初是由英国女王伊丽莎白二世于1970年成立的，旨在就一系列环境问题提供专家建议。像许多国家的环境部一样，它的起源要归功于20世纪60年代末雷切尔·卡森的开创性著作《寂静的春天》出版后，环境主义思想的浪潮席卷了许多西方民主国家。在其40年的历史中，它涵盖了从气候变化和土地利用规划到转基因生物和能源系统的惊人数量的主题。人们征求了它的意见，但它的调查结果往往被认为在政治上不方便。它寻求并基本上设法“向权力说真话”。事实证明，该委员会是一个充满活力和热情的建议提供者：其33份报告，所有这些报告都有严格的论点和精心引用，以每15个月一份的速度产生-无论以任何标准衡量，这都是一个了不起的产出。但是，如果有的话，它们产生了什么样的政策影响？这是欧文斯在本书中提出的一个广泛的问题。她通过分析它在政策制定中发挥的多重作用（例如作为专家咨询的提供者和作为政策前景扫描器），其内部工作实践以及可能是所有中最棘手的部分，它对政府和非政府组织的影响力来进行分析。最有影响力的研究成果往往是偶然发现的。这本书也是如此。欧文斯坦率地承认，作为另一个项目的一部分，她在采访委员会的一名办事员时偶然发现了这个话题。不久，她被招募为成员，她担任了10年（1998-2008）。所以欧文斯的账户是内部人士的账户。当她最终离开委员会时，欧文斯收到了自1970年以来每次会议的完整记录。在这一点上，她“意识到[她]已经成为相当非正式的，委员会的历史学家”（第六页）。从一个内部人士的角度写一份不公正的报告绝不是一件容易的事。我们应该感谢她接受了挑战。
This book promises an “in-depth study” of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, a provider of advice to UK governments which was culled as part of an austerity drive in 2011. On the face of it (and even with the word “Royal” in its title), this may not strike your average expert in international planning as a promising topic for a research project.In practice, however, Susan Owens reveals it to be anything but mundane, taking the reader on an extended journey through such weighty topics as the nature and practices of expert advice in policy-making, the politics of policy formulation and the manner in which public authority is generated and perpetuated. The Royal Commission was originally established by Queen Elizabeth II in 1970 to provide expert advice on a range of environmental matters. Like many national environmental ministries, it owes its genesis to the tide of environmentalist thinking that broke across many Western democracies in the late 1960s, following the publication of Rachel Carson’s seminal book, A Silent Spring. Throughout its 40-year existence it covered an astonishing number of topics from climate change and land use planning, through to genetically modified organisms and energy systems. Its advice was sought but often its findings were judged to be politically inconvenient. It sought and in the main managed to “speak truth to power”. The Commission proved to be a highly energetic and eager provider of advice: its 33 reports, all of them tightly argued and painstakingly referenced, were produced at a rate of one per 15 months–a remarkable output by any measure. But what, if any, policy impact did they have? This is the broad question that Owens sets out to address in this book. She does so by analysing the multiple roles it played in policy formulation (eg as a provider of expert advice and as a policy horizon scanner), its internal working practices and, perhaps the most slippery part of all, the influence it wielded over governmental and non-governmental organizations. Often there is a strong element of serendipity in the way that the most influential research is produced. And so it is with this book. Owens freely admits that she stumbled on the topic when she interviewed one of the Commission’s clerks as part of another project. Before long she was recruited as a member, a role in which she served for 10 years (1998–2008). So Owens’s account is that of an insider. When she finally left the Commission Owens was presented with the full set of minutes of every meeting since 1970. At that point she “realised that [she] had become quite unofficially, the Commission’s historian”(p. vi). Writing a dispassionate account from an insider’s perspective is by no means an easy task. We should be grateful that she took up the challenge.