Policy-Oriented Technology Assessment Across Europe

Front matter

oaloraverpivot

POLICY-ORIENTED TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT ACROSS EUROPE

Lars Klüver, Rasmus Ojvind Nielsen and Marie Louise Jorgensen pem Du b Policy-Oriented Technology Assessment Across Europe

Contents

List of Figures vii List of Tables viii Preface ix Acknowledgements xii List of Contributors xiv

Introduction: On the Concept of Crossb European Technology Assessment 1 Rasmus Ojvind Nielsen and Lars Klüver The TA Manifesto 13

PartI Expanding Technology Assessment

Part II Exemplifying Cross-European Technology Assessment

The Future Panel on Public Health Genomics - Lessons Learned and Future Perspectives

André Krom, Mara Almeida, Leo Hennen, Edgaras Leichteris, Arnold Sauter and Dirk Stemerding

The Future of Ageing - Stakeholder Involvement on the Future of Care Marianne Barland, Pierre Delvenne and Benedikt Rosskamp

Europe Wide Views on Sustainable Consumption Marie-Louise Jorgensen, Ventseslav Kozarev and Kathrine Lindegaard Juul

Part III Building Capacities for Cross-European TA

Making Technology Assessment Accessible to New Players Pierre Delvenne, Benedikt Rosskamp, Ciara Fitzgerald and Frédéric Adam

Training TA Professionals Danielle Bütschi, Zoya Damaniova, Ventseslav Kovarev and Blagovesta Chonkova

Building Community - Or Why We Need an Ongoing Conference Platform for TA

Constanze Scherz, Lenka Hebáková, Leonhard Hennen, Tomás Michalek, Julia Hahn and Stefanie B. Seitz

E-Infrastructure for Technology Assessment M. Nentwich

Index

157 164

List of Figures

1.1

12.1

Four spheres involved in the relation model of PTA 23 Currently operational models of (P)TA 24 Overview over core economic and R&D data 41 Possible pathways towards TA 49 The PACITA scenarios for the future of ageing 109 Homepage of the TA portal 153

List of Tables ii Key elements of the relational model of TA and related research issues and lessons learned 30 31 Likelihood of institution taking over a particular function 63 51 Overview of PACITA example projects 81

6.1 Items highlighted in Policy Brief on Public Health Genomics 96 71 Content of scenarios on the future of ageing 110

72 Policy recommendations produced by

> participating stakeholders 112 81 Europe Wide Views in numbers 118 114 2nd PACITA Conference programme 145

Preface

This volume gives an updated picture of technology assessment (TA) in Europe and provides outlooks towards the establishment of a common European TA capacity for knowledge-based policy formation.

The volume gathers contributions from participants in the PACITA (Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment) project, which ran from 2011 to 2015. The volume is divided into three parts, which are preceded by Introduction that posits the expansion of

> TA capacities across Europe as a necessary supplement to existing European institutions, as well as a re-print of the so-called PACITA Manifesto, which urges policy makers at national and European levels to support such an expansion.

Part I of the book - Expanding Technology Assessment - pushes the concept of TA beyond its traditional limits and shows how TA may be institutionalized as a flexible system of collaborative efforts among a diverse range of actors across Europe. Chapter 1 examines existing TA institutions and their institutional roles and argues that TA as an umbrella term in fact applies to a broad range of “TA-like’ policy support functions that might meaningfully be termed ‘policy-oriented technology assessment’ Chapter 2 gives an account of the practical efforts and successes within PACITA at expanding TA geographically to the participating countries, yet without formal parliamentary TA institutions, namely Belgium (Wallonia), Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania and Portugal and shows the multiplicity of ways in which x Preface

TA may be adapted to the different national contexts. Chapter 3 takes the point of view of institutional entrepreneurs in the post-communist partner countries and depicts the process of adopting TA and adapting it to established national and organizational cultures. Chapter 4 conveys the outcomes of a series of parliamentary dialogues about the possible value of TA for parliaments in which parliamentarians called for a cross-European TA capacity to support reflexive European governance of science, technology and innovation. Chapter 5 sums up the decadelong experience in the TA field of developing cross-European forms of collaboration as well as the practical experiences gained in PACITA. Here, the common lesson is that not only is European collaboration in TA methodologically and organizationally feasible but it also adds greatly to the value of individual TA projects by allowing cross-national learning and comparison.

Part II - Exemplifying Cross-European Technology Assessment - digs into three example projects that were part of PACITA. Here, three different methodological approaches were applied on three highly policy-relevant topics. Chapter 6 describes a cross-national ‘Future Panel’ of parliamentarians from different member states, which facilitated a strategic learning process about the possible contributions of public health genomics to the healthcare systems of the future. Chapter 7 tells the story of a process of structured parallel national stakeholder dialogues about the future of ageing, which fed into and connected national and European policy debates on ageing society Chapter 8 describes and analyses a cross-European citizen summit event concerning European policies on sustainable consumption, which made it clear that nationally rooted deliberation on highly complicated matters can serve as a filter to sort the real wishes of citizens out from the fears of decision makers about citizens’ reactions to policy measures. Overall, the three chapters show that developing practices of cross-border TA is both practicable and valuable, but it needs to be institutionally rooted at national level — with European support.

The final part, Part IIL, of the book - Building Capacities for Cross- European TA - takes on the concrete question of how to proceed in establishing cross-European TA capacities. The chapters explain some of the steps already taken within the PACITA project and point to future perspectives for building on those efforts. These include the development of common training courses for practitioners (Chapter 9), educational seminars for policy makers and journalists (Chapter 10), international

Preface xi

TA conferences (Chapter 11) and a common IT-platform for exchange and collaboration among practitioners (Chapter 12).

All contributions to this volume stand on the shoulders of the public deliverables of the PACITA project, which are available at www.pacitiaproject.eu.

xii

Acknowledgements

The PACITA (Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment) project was funded by the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement number 266649, which made the project possible.

We wish to thank the network for European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) for taking the initiative to launch PACITA. Special thanks also go to Member of the European Parliament, former Research Commissioner and former Chairman of STOA Philippe Busquin, as well as former Chairwoman of the Committee for Education, Research and Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag Ulla Burchardt, for driving debate on expanding technology assessment to all European member states, thereby providing a platform on which PACITA could unfold.

We are grateful to all those parliamentarians from the member states who involved themselves in the project and helped to further the debate. We are also thankful to the many stakeholders and citizens who chose to spend time participating in the example projects within PACITA.

Last but by no means least we wish to thank the international colleagues who supported the PACITA project with fresh insights and critical perspectives. For participation in the project's advisory panel, thanks go to Attila Havas, Gilbert Fayl, Nera Kuljanic, Theo Karapiperis, Timothy M. Persons and Wiebe Bijker. For taking time out to help shape this book, thanks go to Dionysia Lagiou, Hillary Sutcliffe, Josee van Eijndhoven and Karel-Herman Haegeman.

Acknowledgements xiii

The members of the PACITA consortium:

Fonden Teknologiraadet The Danish Board of Technology Foundation Denmark

Institute of Technology Assessment, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Karslruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Rathenau Instituut

The Rathenau Institute, Netherlands

Teknologiraadet

The Norwegian Board of Technology, Norway

Institut für Technikfolgen-Abschatzung, Austrian Academy of Sciences

The Institute of Technology Assessent, Austria

Applied Research and Communifactions Fund, Bulgaria

Institute of Biology and Chemistry, Portugal

Institut Samenvlevning en Technologie

Institute for Society and Technology, Flandern, Belgium

Catalan Foundation for Research and Innovation, Catalonia, Spain

Swiss Centre for Technology Assessment, Switzerland

Ziniy Ekonomikos Forumas

Knowledge Economy Forum, Lithuania

Technologické centrum AV CR Technology Centre ASCR, Czech Republic

Univsertié de Liége, SPIRAL University of Liége, SPIRAL Research Centre. Wallonia

Colàiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh University College Cork, Ireland

Magyar Tudománuos Akadémia Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary xiv

List of Contributors

Frédéric Adam, PhD, Associate Professor of Business Information Systems at University College Cork in Ireland and a visiting research fellow in the School of Economics and Management at Lund University, Sweden.

Mara Almeida, BSc, PhD in Developmental Biology, project manager at the Institute of Biological and Chemical Technology, Portugal.

Marianne Barland, Master in European Science and Technology studies, project manager at the Norwegian Board of Technology (NBT), Norway.

Danielle Biitschi, doctorate in Social Sciences and Economics, senior researcher and project manager at TA-Swiss, Switzerland.

Blagovesta Chonkova, MSc in Public Policy, project officer at ARC Fund, Bulgaria.

Zoya Damianova, MSc, MBA, program director responsible for strategic development at ARC Fund, Bulgaria.

Pierre Delvenne, PhD in Political Science, research fellow at SPIRAL Research Centre, University of Liège, Wallonia, Belgium.

Ciara Fitzgerald, PhD, is a lecturer in the Department of Accounting, Finance and Information Systems, senior postdoctoral research fellow, University College Cork, Ireland.

Katalin Fodor, International Relations Officer, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary.

List of Contributors xv

Jurgen Ganzevles, MSc, PhD, senior researcher at the Rathenau Instituut, the Netherlands.

Julia Hahn, MA in Cultural Sciences, scientific staff member at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.

Lenka Hebakova, MSc in Political Science, project manager at the Strategic Studies Department of the Technology Centre ASCR, the Czech Republic.

Leonhard Hennen, Dr. phil In Sociology, senior researcher at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.

Marie Louise Jorgensen, MSc in Public Administration, project manager at the Danish Board of Technology Foundation (DBT), Denmark.

Lars Klüver, MSc In Biology/Ecology, Director of the Danish Board of Technology Foundation (DBT), Denmark. Coordinator of the PACITA project.

Ventseslav Kozarev, MSc in Public Policy, MA in Political Science, researcher at ARC Fund, Bulgaria.

André Krom, PhD, senior researcher in the technology assessment department of the Rathenau Instituut, the Netherlands.

Edgaras Leichteris, Masters in Law and Management, PhD student in Public Administration, Director of Knowledge Economy Forum, Lithuania.

Katrine Lindegaard Juul, MSc in social anthropology, project manager at the Danish Board of Technology Foundation (DBT), Denmark.

Tomas Michaelek, PhD in International Relations, research policy analyst in the Strategic Studies Department of Technology Centre ASCR, the Czech Republic.

Judit Mosoni-Fried, Dr oec. in Economics, senior researcher at the Institute for Research Organization, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary.

Michael Nentwich, Dr habil Director of Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria.

xvi List of Contributors

Rasmus Ojvind Nielsen, MA, PhD student In Public Administration, researcher at the Danish Board of Technology Foundation (DBT), Denmark.

Linda Nierling PhD in Sociology, researcher at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.

Walter Peissl, PhD in Social Sciences, Deputy Director and a senior researcher at the Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria.

Benedikt Rosskamp, MSc, PhD in Social and Political Science, researcher at SPIRAL Research Centre, University of Liége, Wallonia, Belgium.

Arnold Sauter, Dr rer. nat. in Zoology, vice-director of office of technology assessment at the German Parliament (TAB), Germany.

Constanze Scherz, Diploma in Social Sciences, scientific staff member at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.

Stefanie B. Seitz, Diploma in Biology, PhD, scientific staff member at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.

Dirk Stemerding, PhD, senior researcher at the Rathenau Instituut, the Netherlands.

Rinie Van Est, research coordinator and 'trendcatcher' at the Rathenau Instituut, the Netherlands.

OPEN

Introduction: On the Concept of Cross-European Technology Assessment

Rasmus Ojvind Nielsen and Lars Klüver

Abstract: Nielsen and Kliiver introduce the concept of cross-European technology assessment developed in the PACITA project, the layers of which are unfolded in the remaining chapters of this book. As a supplement to existing > European institutions, cross-European technology assessment is a vision of a networked support system for national parliaments supplying process-support for knowledge-based and participatory policy making. As well as discussing the possible role of such a support system within existing European frameworks of policy formation, Nielsen and Kliiver propose the necessity of capacity building modelled on the concept of cross-European technology assessment as a means to counterbalance trends towards European centralization in the face of grand societal challenges.

Kliiver, Lars, Rasmus Ojvind Nielsen, and Marie Louise Jorgensen, eds. Policy-Oriented Technology Assessment Across Europe: Expanding Capacities. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. DOI: 10.1057/9781137561725.0007.

European societies are pushed and pulled by tremendous forces in many directions at once. Science and technology has provided Europe and the world with incredible advances in production, health care, communication and almost any other aspect of human life. But our resource-hungry systems of production and consumption strain the supporting capacities of natural ecosystems, and we are moving from an era of abundance to one of scarcity. In a world of globally interconnected economies, systemic risks seem to increase exponentially and to far surpass the traditional managing capacities of nation states. Too often, however, the backbone reaction of decision makers is to invoke protocols of crisis management: gathering control in governmental centres and placing authority in the hands of narrow elites. In the case of the science-society relationship, large-scale research and innovation efforts accompanied by centralized social engineering regains prominence as decision makers attempt to take effective action. But while better knowledge and smarter solutions must undoubtedly be part of Europe’s way forward, centralization in itself presents a danger to the social fabric of societies. Whenever societal decision making is disconnected from the perspectives of those that feel its consequences in their daily lives, alienation and dissatisfaction enters the relationship between governments and citizens. Attempts to address the grand societal challenges of our time must therefore first face the necessity of building capacities for effective democratic governance. Each step towards stronger centralized capacities for action must be accompanied by equal steps to build capacities for problematizing evidence, debating values and adapting solutions to fit local needs and cultural contexts.

The core message of this book is that technology assessment holds at least some of the needed answers for how we can build such decentralized capacities for knowledge-based democratic decision making. Technology assessment (TA) is a discipline of public administration that seeks to build bridges between research and innovation, society at large and political decision makers. To operationalize this institutional mission, a wide range of methods have been developed that enable TA organizations to dynamically address different gaps of knowledge and communication in different societal situations. As such, TA may be viewed as an institutional answer to the problem of governing research and innovation responsibly, where the problem of governance is seen first and foremost as a problem of decoupling between the different kinds of knowledge and different sets of values held by different societal actors.

Introduction 3

The emergence of a diverse policy support function

TA began as an interdisciplinary academic endeavour in the 1960s, at which time the long-term risks from indiscriminate use of modern chemical and nuclear technologies was becoming increasingly clear. Pitted against an establishment unwilling to admit to its own errors of judgement, TA first took the form of ‘reactive movement within academia, aiming to provide alternative evidence to support advocacy of mainly environmental protection and work-place conditions. This ‘watchdog’ role was expanded institutionally in the US at the national level when Congress established its Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1972. Here TA - or parliamentary TA (PTA) as it came to be known - would act as analytical support to congressional oversight of the societal opportunities and consequences of the technological development.

TA was one of several strands of new, interdisciplinary forms of analysis seeking to provide guidance for decision makers in advanced industrial societies. Environmental impact assessment, risk assessment, foresight studies, technology ethics and the cross-disciplinary field of science-and-technology-studies (STS) all have their historical roots and institutional raison détre in the apparent complexity of governing modern technology and the loss of popular trust suffered by experts and industrial stakeholders. There are many overlaps between these traditions in terms both of pragmatics of method and outlooks regarding the science-society relationship. The lines between TA and non-TA are thus not sharply drawn, and the different traditions mentioned continue to enrich each other.

In Europe, the first proposals for establishing capacities similar to that of the OTA were made immediately after the first round of European expansion in 1973. The idea of a common European Office of Technology Assessment, however, proved difficult for the member states to swallow, and a centralized unit dedicated to technology assessment and foresight would not see the light of day until the establishment of the Institute of Prospective Technology Studies (IPTS) as a subunit of the Joint Research Centre in 1992. Meanwhile, the TA concept had more immediate rapport with the individual national parliaments in Western Europe and the European Parliament itself. Beginning in the early 1980s and inspired by processes of knowledge sharing within the Commission-driven FAST program, TA institutions were established in connection with parliaments in Denmark, France,

Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. An office for Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA) was set up in connection with the European Parliament in 1987. At later stages, PTA organizations were also established in Belgium, Finland, Greece, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland while TA organizations, but without the ‘P’, established in Austria, the Czech Republic and within the Council of Europe have also been part of the landscape of TA in Europe (see also Chapter 1 and Chapter 2). Over the years, these TA institutions developed more ‘proactive’ roles for TA in supporting policy development. TA became closely linked with foresight studies and now shares the attempts to identify desirable pathways for development through forward-looking exercises. Some TA institutions took part in developing ‘constructive’ TA approaches to embed reflection on ethical, legal and social aspects (ELSA) in the development process itself. Other institutions developed methods for citizen participation and stakeholder inclusion in policy development for technological innovation and planning, precipitating the ‘deliberative turn’ in research and innovation policy. Today, TA thus walks on two legs: policy analysis and public engagement.

Since at least the turn of the millennium, the stakes of science and technology policy have been raised significantly. The perspectives of impending climate change and peak oil, which have been accompanied by increasing global competition in innovation, have driven science and technology policy towards more complex forms of reflexive governance. In this situation, the European TA field has increasingly sought to consolidate its methods and to provide ‘strategic intelligence’ for European policy makers acting at both national and European levels. The European Parliamentary Technology Assessment (EPTA) network was established in 1990 to enable cooperation among dedicated parliamentary TA units and units with similar goals. The IPTS has increasingly sought to orchestrate deliberation at European level between different TA and foresight organizations. And various parliamentary and non-parliamentary TA organizations have been increasingly involved in the European Commissions framework program for research, especially under those lines of research which are today known as Science with and for Society (SWAFS).

Introduction 5

Mobilizing TA for grand challenges - the PACITA Project

The PACITA (Parliaments and Civil Society in Technology Assessment) project was set up under the 7th European Framework Program for research and development. It ran from 2011 to 2015 and was coordinated by the Danish Board of Technology. Working under the assumption that TA will need to adapt to the change towards the internationalization of science, technology and policy, the project's overarching goal was to mobilize and expand the European TA community through processes of mutual experimentation and learning. Through such expansion, the working hypothesis of the project was that the TA field can grow into a Europe-wide support system for broadening the knowledge base of policy making in Europe. Helping to spread nationally based arrangements for providing TA services across Europe would serve the triple purpose of supporting national parliaments and governments, supporting and connecting national democracies across Europe in transnational dialogue and collaboration and helping to strengthen the bottom-up dimension of European democratic governance. We call this distributed support system ‘cross-European TA’

The PACITA strategy for an expanding TA field was bound up with a strengthening of national democratic institutions. In the four-year course of the project, it gathered a group of fifteen partner organizations from different European countries in collaborative processes, which were at once linked to European agendas and based on national debates. Among these partners, some are established TA organizations connected to parliaments or otherwise formally organized to support national policy (the partners from Austria, Belgium (Flanders), Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Switzerland), while others are organizations with closely related missions interested in developing locally appropriate institutional models for TA (the partners from Belgium (Wallonia), Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland and Portugal). Among the members of this group, enough diversity with regard to national settings was represented that the outcome of the project would be applicable across EU28 and the group of associated or candidate countries.

6 Rasmus Øjvind Nielsen and Lars Klüver Main findings of the project

The project pursued four operational aims, the outcomes of which are documented in this book. The first aim was to map and conceptually categorize existing PTA institutions and practices. The second aim was to help guide countries, which as yet had no such dedicated TA functions, in establishing TA institutions appropriate for their specific culture and settings. The third goal was to showcase and give hands-on experiences with the praxis, methodologies, outcomes and social value of collaboration among TA institutions across Europe. Finally, the fourth goal was to begin the process of building up mutual capacities for training and communicating TA practice and results in order to build a cross-European TA capacity of infrastructures and human resources.

To what extend are the goals of such a project realistic? It is of key importance to assess the contributions as well as the limitations of what has been attempted. A key issue in this regard is the question of methods and how well they travel from their original national contexts to other cultures and to cross-national collaborations. For example, PACITA carried out a process of stakeholder deliberations on the future of ageing in which national responses were formulated to strategies developed at European level (see Chapter 7). Here, it was clear that the national processes in and of themselves were both politically useful and perceived as legitimate by the participants. And from a trans-European point of view, the simultaneous but nationally particular formation of ideas for policy presents a potentially highly valuable addition to the general European policy-formation process. But we must acknowledge at the same time that without a clear institutional mandate within the overall process of European policy formation, the recommendations produced by such nationally based bottom-up processes risk drowning in the whirlwind of European debates. Similarly, institutional issues produced profound challenges to an experiment in which the PACITA partners orchestrated a cross-national Future Panel. The Future Panel is a process in which parliamentarians from across the political spectrum take part in a common process of learning and forming opinions about complex issues that arise from science and technology. In this case, a cross-national panel would gather to learn about and debate the possible contributions of advanced genomics research to public health care in the future (see Chapter 6). Here again, while those parliamentarians

Introduction 7 who did take part were positively surprised and enthused by the spirit of deliberative inquiry that is embodied in the Future Panel, it was the lack of a common mandate from the involved parliaments which proved to be a stumbling block in the recruitment of parliamentarians for participation.

The benefits, however, should not be underplayed. A third PACITA experiment focused on public engagement and gathered citizens in different European member states in citizen summits to deliberate on the complex trade-offs involved in policy for sustainable consumption (see Chapter 8). This experiment provided strong indications that, when applied to the cross-European level, a deliberative take on public engagement seems to be a viable strategy for squaring the circle of democratic involvement in centralized European policy making. Simultaneous national processes in which citizens are briefed on the best available knowledge and afforded time to deliberate in socially diverse groups provides high-quality, nationally founded, but still ‘European’ inputs to the European policy process.

Looking at the method dimensions, the PACITA model of bottom-up development of cross-European TA that organized and operationalized by existing and emerging TA institutions and that was supported by the European Commission seems to be a viable pathway for sowing the seeds of cross-European TA. The outcomes of the project are surely tangible and promising. But at the same time, the PACITA project covered only fifteen countries and, as such, was an experiment, though a successful one. Ultimately, the idea of a Europe-wide implementation of TA must be taken up politically and given a mandate in order for cross-European applications of TA methods to really work.

The PACITA project may be said to have expanded European TA capacities in at least four different dimensions:

Geographically: We have aimed at expanding the capacity and formal institutionalization across Europe and have succeeded in doing that perhaps more importantly, we have also sown seeds for further expansion in the future.

Collaboratively: Developing cross-European TA for the benefit of Europe as well as for the member states has been a core aim of PACITA, and we have definitely proved that there is a large need for this and that there are big potentials in developing a truly European collaborative space for TA.

Conceptually: The background, context and function of existing TA institutes have been scrutinized intensely with important new insights in the role and function of TA as a result.

Conceptually: The background, context and function of existing TA institutes have been scrutinized intensely with important new insights in the role and function of TA as a result.

Politically: At two parliamentary meetings with representatives from the EPTA and PACITA countries and beyond, it was clearly stated by the MPs that TA has a very important role to play for EU, Europe in a wider sense, and for the EU member states. A clear call has been made for a strong Commission engagement in widening the TA landscape in Europe and in providing options for new countries to take up TA.

Why cross-European TA?

What this book substantiates is the claim that going forward, the issue is not whether cross-European TA is possible. The book shows that the needed professional approaches exist, the national capacities can be built — often on the shoulders of existing ones — and collaboration between institutions distributed across Europe can be brought to work. Rather, the question is whether and why European policy makers and parliamentarians at national and transnational levels ought to support a vision of the development of cross-European TA capacities. The remainder of this introduction is dedicated to providing a frame in which to answer this question.

To begin with, we should try to get at the overall question whether there is in fact a need to strengthen national level capacities for policy analysis and public deliberation. The standard counterargument is that with global challenges we need global solutions and a strengthening of transnational decision-making capacities. For many, a ‘return’ to the nation state is unrealistic and represents in any case a step backwards. We are, however, not arguing for a 'return' to the nation state and a purely intergovernmental mode of European collaboration. On the contrary, our argument is that national democracies need strengthening in order to take their proper place in European - or global - multilevel governance.

The cornerstone of European collaboration remains the subsidiarity principle. And while the future will tell whether European collaboration will grow into federation, the sign of the times do not point in

Introduction 9 that direction. A realistic approach to drawing on Europe's collective strengths to efficiently address grand challenges must therefore take seriously the continuing role of national member states as a crucial level of policy adaption to local contexts. By the same token, with the process of European integration halted somewhere between inter-governmentalism and federated statehood, European institutions remain systematically under-democratized. Consequently, the national parliaments will remain privileged as fora for maintaining true European democracy.

What remains true logically, however, is challenged in real life. At the national level, the capacities of parliaments to act as counterweight to national executives have been systematically weakened by European integration. Parliaments have less formal access to providing input to common European policy processes than do governments. Parliaments therefore end up on the receiving end ofthe policy process, and the diversity of input that they represent is narrowed significantly. A similar effect of narrowing democratic diversity can be traced in the representative function of political parties. Here, the process of European integration has led the major centre parties in each member state to crowd around common middle positions compatible enough with the European mainstream to be strategically viable.

This process of consensus-building that centres on ‘necessary’ rather than ‘wished’ policies is amplified by the national economic strategic idea of the competition state’ - the conception that international competition forces nations to act as if they were large companies. This conception has had highly detrimental effects on the range of futures and policies being imagined, and politically, it has inhibited the agility of centre parties, thus weakening parliamentary collaboration across parties.

The need for strengthening national parliaments is not about strengthening individual nations against the European community, nor is it a call for dis-integration. Rather, it is a call for strengthening precisely the part of the European system, which must be strong if Europe is to become legitimate

The role of cross-European TA in European governance

The inadequacies of the national and regional levels of governance are well understood and lie at the heart ofthe motivation for the development of the European Union in the first place. The capacities needed to continuously modernize society’s infrastructure through research and development have long surpassed the size of the purses of individual nations. Consequently, cooperation on the advancement of research was one of the very first issue areas where the logic of cooperation became clear to European member states. Likewise, the scale of the mechanisms needed to render innovation economically viable has outgrown national markets. This is why the common European market has been a central guiding star for Europe for more than a generation and the European Research Area has such a prominent position.