Identifying and Evaluating Strategies for Constructing Serviceable Truths

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The problem of marrying expert knowledge to authoritative political decision making is ancient but continually vexing. A tradition of scholarship in describing and legitimating technical-advisory and assessment institutions has not significantly improved upon the conventional wisdom to-keep experts `on tap, not on top.` However, the recent joining of a constructivist understanding of-science to traditional concerns of expertise has led to a provocative prescription for the pursuit of what-have been called `serviceable truths.` These are truths that contain both scientific and political elements that allow parties to a dispute to achieve a workable concensus. The proposed research: 1) identifies a set of strategies to-create serviceable truths; 2) seeks empirical examples of these strategies; 3) evaluates their use; and 4)-elaborates and probes hypotheses about their use and impact.- The strategies derive from a critique of current-approaches and preliminary empirical work.- Cases are selected so as to include strategies deployed by decision makers in political institutions and those in technical institutions. They are further symmetric in that one case in each type of institution will include one-`pure` strategy, which subordinates concerns from outside the institution, and one `mixed` strategy, which-attempts to blend concerns relevant to both political and technical institutions. Preliminary research has-identified one empirical case with each strategy and has evaluated the strategies as analytical constructs,-but not as empirical strategies.- The proposed research focuses on providing additional analytic support to these strategies,-consulting literature in political decision making, science studies, and elsewhere. More importantly-it will conduct detailed empirical work, primarily elite interviews, in the cases already identified and, where-relevant, add additional cases. It will further appraise the strategies critically in the context in which-decision makers deployed them, in an effort to evaluate whether their success in context comports with predictions about their adequacy, value, effectiveness and legitimacy.- This research will not only extend a tradition of scholarship about the making of technically-complex political decisions by elaborating the concept of the `serviceable truths` into a set of decision-making strategies but, through an explicit dissemination plan, it will also provide helpful guidance to-decision makers in both political and technical institutions who seek to resolve problems at the-boundaries of politics and science.-