CONSENSUS CONFERENCES

Consensus conferences are one of several practices (including citizen juries, scenario workshops, and deliberative polls, among others) intended to enhance deliberative public involvement in shaping social decision making about science and technology. Because public issues increasingly include complex scientific and technological components, and because the general public lacks the needed scientific knowledge, the management of those issues seems inevitably to slip out of the hands of ordinary citizens. Democratic governance, however, rests on the informed consent of ordinary people, and many observers worry that in numerous areas ordinary citizens are becoming less able to shape public policies.

Basic Issues

The basic concept behind consensus conferences is that public policies about science and technology will be improved significantly if policy makers can hear informed, deliberative public perceptions, concerns, and recommendations as they consider the choices they face. Informed and thoughtful public participation may also help to blunt two features of contemporary policy making about science and technology: intense and acrimonious partisan advocacy by both proponents and opponents of specific scientific and technological projects, and local Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) campaigns based in communities likely to be directly affected by those projects. In the first case, proponents and opponents of specific science and technology projects make sensationalized and exaggerated claims about the wisdom and foresight of their perspective and the mean-spirited and hysterical positions of their antagonists. All too often, ordinary citizens (who must live with the consequences of the policy decision) are unable to sort through the conflicting claims and counterclaims. In NIMBY situations, local citizens—often frustrated by the blare and noise of partisan bickering, and distrustful of all sides in the controversy—organize to oppose, delay, and obstruct projects desired by others.

Both processes result in political and policy paralysis, the spread of cynicism and apathy, and delay in addressing pressing public needs. Consensus conferences seek to address both problems by providing a group of average, non-expert citizens with the opportunity and the resources to conduct an informed and deliberative investigation of specific technologies, to develop policy recommendations they can all endorse, and to deliver those recommendations to policy makers and the public. In this way, consensus conferences allow the deliberating citizens to confront partisan advocates with reliable information rather than sensationalism, and also help to dissipate cynicism about governmental decision making that contributes to NIMBYism.

Danish Model

The Danish Board of Technology (BOT), a research arm of the Danish Parliament, developed the basic model of a consensus conference. Several months before the parliament must address an issue with significant science and technology elements, members of the parliament may ask the BOT to conduct a consensus conference on the issue. The lead time helps assure that citizen evaluations and recommendations are available to legislators in time to help shape parliamentary debates.

The BOT takes several steps to implement a consensus conference:

• It assembles an Oversight Committee, made up of experts and stakeholders in the specific technology under inspection.
• It develops background information about the technology and its probable social, economic, political, and ethical implications.
• It recruits twelve to fifteen Danish citizens to serve as the citizen panel. The citizens are paid a stipend to cover the costs of participation.
• And, finally, it conducts the consensus conference and makes the results available to parliament, the press, and the public.

The Oversight Committee serves to guide development of the background materials that will be given to citizen panelists. Because the Oversight Committee is composed of individuals reflecting the full spectrum of opinions about the technology in question, the Committee helps to assure that background materials are fair, accurate, and accessible to ordinary people. The Oversight Committee also monitors recruitment and selection of the citizen-panelists. In a broad sense, the Oversight Committee serves to keep the entire process honest, to prevent intentional or unintentional partisan slanting of background materials or of makeup of the panel.

The actual work of the consensus conference typically takes place over three weekends, about one month apart. This marks the consensus conference as one of the most intense public participation techniques, because most other practices last only one or two days, or even two or three hours.

During the first weekend, the panelists get acquainted with each other, with the staff facilitating the sessions, and with the processes and goals of the conference. They read and discuss the background materials, and are encouraged to raise whatever issues or concerns are important to them. In this sense, the consensus conference differs from a traditional focus group in which the panelists are asked their reactions to issues raised by the focus group sponsors. In effect citizens are given control of the agenda in a consensus conference. During the second weekend, the citizen members continue to discuss the technology and the background materials, and to sharpen their issues and concerns. They also begin to develop a series of follow-on questions for content experts who will attend during the final sessions.

During the final weekend—the actual Consensus Conference—three things occur. On the first day, a series of content experts, who reflect the spectrum of opinions within the expert community, provide responses to the follow-on questions the panelists raised earlier. This is followed by an open-ended question-and-answer session, with all the experts and panelists present. The panelists can thus ask any remaining questions, probe earlier responses, and seek clarifications.

After this, panelists withdraw (along with a facilitator) to deliberate. Their goal is to arrive at a common set of policy recommendations that express their collective judgment about how best to manage the technology. This task often lasts into the early hours of the morning.

The panel's report is submitted to the content experts to catch any remaining technical errors, but the experts do not comment on the policy recommendations. The report is then delivered to parliament and the public at a press conference. The staff of the BOT point to the frequency with which contending policy constituencies refer to consensus conference reports during parliamentary debates as evidence that consensus conferences help to shape policy outcomes.

In Denmark consensus conferences have addressed an array of science and technology issues, such as genetically modified foods, infertility, the human genome project, teleworking, and transgenic animals. Consensus conferences have been organized in several other countries—including Argentina, Australia, Austria, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom—although no other country has adopted the practice as thoroughly as the Danes. Consensus conferences have been conducted about fifteen times in the United States as parts of public deliberation research.

Consensus conferences in the United States have been held at the University of Massachusetts ("Telecommunications and the Future of Democracy"), the University of New Hampshire ("Genetically-Engineered Foods"), and ten times at North Carolina State University (two conferences dealing with "Genetically Modified Foods," six Internet-based conferences dealing with "Global Warming," and two conferences dealing with "Nanotechnology"). The North Carolina State conferences were part of a National Science Foundation supported research project dealing with public deliberations about science and technology.

Further Developments

The literature about public deliberations points to a number of concerns or problems that arise when citizens deliberate together. Groups of average citizens, when deliberating, employ a variety of decision heuristics which, observers worry, may introduce distortions into their thinking. Ordinary citizens, for instance, seem to focus on the risk of the month, shifting concern from one kind of risk to another based on which risk is currently receiving the most public discussion or which has been in the news (the availability heuristic). Similarly they seem to draw conclusions about the dangers of specific products through mental shortcutsthat can lead to factual errors about actual risks (intuitive toxicology). Risks or dangers that are exceptionally vivid also seem to gain greater public awareness, regardless of actual statistical probability (the affect heuristic). Critics also point to various social cascades in which unsubstantiated beliefs gain credibility simply because they are constantly repeated. Group polarization is another feature of some pubic deliberations. This involves the tendency for a group's final conclusions to support the group's original position, rather than a more centrist or moderate one.

The majority of studies pointing to such cognitive problems among ordinary citizens, however, focus on unfacilitated public deliberations. The current research suggests that many of these cognitive problems can be adequately addressed if professional and well-trained facilitators lead the public deliberations. Effective facilitation can, for instance, ameliorate the influence of strong-willed or domineering personalities, insure that citizen panelists are exposed to a wide argument pool, and detect and correct inappropriate decision heuristics. Consensus conferences, in particular, provide ample room for the beneficial effects of good facilitation, and provide sufficient time for the panelists to acquire substantial background information and to interact with a range of content experts. While these steps may not correct all cognitive and process issues in public deliberations, they can successfully address the most egregious problems.

Supporters of consensus conferences hope that the technique can be used wherever democratic governance of new technologies is pursued. While the outcomes of informed, deliberative citizen consideration of new technologies cannot substitute for the procedures of democratically elected government, consensus conferences may provide a mechanism for greater influence by ordinary citizens in the shaping of public policies concerning technologies that all must live with, and thereby create an enhanced level of democratic credibility for governmental decisions.

PATRICK W. HAMLETT

SEE ALSO Constructive Technology Assessment;Discourse Ethics;Science Shops.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Andersen, Ida-Elizabeth, and Birgit Jæger. (1999). "Scenario Workshops and Consensus Conferences: Towards More Democratic Decision-Making." Science and Public Policy 26(5): 331–340.

Fishkin, James S. (1991). Democracy and Deliberation: New Directions for Democratic Reform. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Asserts both theretical and empirical arguments in favor of enhanced public deliberation about public policy in general.

Hamlett, Patrick. (2002). "Citizens' Consensus Conferences: Learning and Public Confidence." Conference presentation, Annual Meeting of the American Association the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Boston.

Joss, Simon, and John Durant, eds. (1995). Public Participation in Science: The Role of Consensus Conferences in Europe. London: Science Museum. Contains general discussions of the origins of the Danish consensus conference process, developments and applications in Europe, and evaluations of the use of the technique.

Mayer, Igor. (1997). Debating Technologies: A Methodological Contribution to the Design and Evaluation of Participatory Policy Analysis. Tilburg, The Netherlands: Tilburg University Press. Examines the theoretical claims made in favor of enhanced participatory public policy analysis involving ordinary citizens and examines the impacts of consensus conferences.

Mayer, Igor S., and Geurts, Jac L. (1996). "Consensus Conferences as Participatory Policy Analysis, a Methodological Contribution to the Social Management of Technology." In 1996 International Symposium on Technology and Society: Technical Expertise and Public Decisions Proceedings. Danvers, MA: IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology.

Mendelberg, Tali. (2002). "The Deliberative Citizen: Theory and Evidence." In Research in Micropolitics, vol. 6, eds. Michael Delli Carpini, Leonie Huddy, and Robert Y. Shapiro. New York: Elsevier Press. Provides a comprehensive review of existing empirical literature on public deliberations.

Renn, Ortwin, Thomas Webler, and Peter Wiedemann, eds. (1995). Fairness and Competence in Citizen Participation: Evaluating Models for Environmental Discourse. Boston: Kluwer. Assesses the implementation and impacts of several kinds of participatory public policy and public deliberation techniques.

Sunstein, Cass R. (2002). Risk and Reason: Safety, Law, and the Environment. New York: Cambridge University Press. Examines analytical approaches to regulating technological risks, including critiques of both affective and cognitive problems associated with public deliberation.