Why Public Participation in Risk Regulation? The Case of Authorizing GMO Products in the European Union

摘要

Citizen scrutiny is supposed to bring about better governance, and greater participation in public policy decisions is usually regarded as a sign of a healthy and lively democracy. In this paper, I have explained how participation is thought of as a way to confer legitimacy on public institutions and a remedy to the 'truncated democracy' diagnosed by Ulrich Beck, but also to provide a better epistemic justification of decision-making outcomes by including lay perspectives as argued by Brian Wynne (2001). Several authors (Hunold and Young, 1990; Abels, 2005) perceive participation as the possible solution to the conflict between the need for good science and democratic decisions.