Who Should Deliberate When

Abstract

King Arthur and his 150 knights sitting around a 200’diameter table is a potent metaphor. Unfortunately, we donot see the image of “fellowship” among scientists and stake-holders that Carolyn Raffensperger (this volume) does.Rather, we see participatory problems akin to those encoun-tered in environmental problem solving: What was the pro-tocol for handling commoners who wanted to sit at the table?How did knights converse across that expanse? Did the tableprovide merely an illusion of equality? Undoubtedly KingArthur needed Merlin for a facilitator.The National Research Council’s (NRC) reportUnderstanding Risk (Stern and Fineberg 1996) advocates thatagencies consider how to involve stakeholders in the riskcharacterization process, rather than whether to do so.Agencies should operate from a default assumption that suchdeliberation is “necessary and appropriate” at each stage ofthe process, according to the NRC. However, the report doesnot provide much practical guidance to agencies that want todevelop deliberative processes about risk characterization, letalone to approach environmental problems more broadly, asRaffensperger eloquently advocates. As the report acknowl-edges, there is little systematic knowledge about what worksin public participation or other deliberative processes.Therefore, Understanding Riskdoes not include step-by-stepinstructions (which would be unsubstantiated).Calls for scientist/citizen deliberation in environmentalpolicy have been made since the passage of ground breakingenvironmental legislation in the 1970s (e.g., Cramer et al.1980, Dietz 1984, 1988), including recently from prominentinstitutions other than the NRC (e.g., National EnvironmentalJustice Advisory Commission 1996, Presidential/Congres-sional Commission on Risk Assessment and Risk Manage-ment 1997). Analysts have also provided compelling reasonsfor such deliberation,