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Instructions for being unhappy with PTA — The impact on PTA of Austrian technology policy experts´ conceptualisation of the public (ITA-manu:script 10-02)

    Alexander Degelsegger, Helge Torgersen

ITA manu:scripts, pp. , 2010/12/17

doi: 10.1553/ITA-ms-10-02


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doi:10.1553/ITA-ms



doi:10.1553/ITA-ms-10-02


Abstract

Participatory Technology Assessment (PTA) is said to increase democratic legitimacy, take up lay knowledge and improve technological solutions. Today it is part of science/technology policy rhetoric and, sometimes, practice. We confront some elements of the scholarly discussion on PTA with policy-makers’ understandings of the process in Austria. Here, participation often gets framed as a form of PR and a sensor for public sentiments rather than as a forum of multiple rationalities and co-development of policy projects. This understanding can be related to underlying conceptions of democracy and the public. As a conclusion, governance styles would have to change before PTA was to become more than a laboratory experiment.

Keywords: PTA, Participatory technology assessment, technology policy, conceptualisation of the public, deficit model, administration, models of democracy