Scientific expertise and political accountability: paradoxes of science in politics

Two paradoxes form the nucleus of the problems of scientific expertise and policy-making. The first is the simultaneous scientification of politics and the politicisation of science. This has destructive effects: the increased use of scientific expertise by policy-makers has not increased the degree of certainty, in fact it becomes delegitimating. This gives rise to the second paradox: despite the loss of authority of scientific expertise, policy-makers do not abandon their reliance on existing advisory arrangements, nor do the scholars adapt their ideas on science and its relation to politics. How can this stability be achieved? How can science-politics be institutionalised? Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.