Epistemic community
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An epistemic community is a
"...a network of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy relevant knowledge within that domain or issue-area."[1]: 3
Although the members of an epistemic community may originate from a variety of academic or professional backgrounds, they are linked by a set of unifying characteristics[1] for the promotion of collective amelioration and not collective gain.[2] This is termed their "normative component".[1] In the big picture, epistemic communities are socio-psychological entities that create and justify knowledge. Such communities can constitute of only two persons and yet gain an important role in building knowledge on any specific subject. Miika Vähämaa has recently [when?] suggested that epistemic communities consist of persons being able to understand, discuss and gain self-esteem concerning the matters being discussed.[3]
Some theorists argue that an epistemic community may consist of those who accept one version of a story, or one version of validating a story.
Most researchers carefully distinguish between epistemic forms of community and "real" or "bodily" community which consists of people sharing risk, especially bodily risk.
It is also problematic to draw the line between modern ideas and more ancient ones, for example,
From this view, an epistemic community may be seen as a group of people who do not have any specific history together, but search for a common idea of home as if forming an intentional community. For example, an epistemic community can be found in a network of professionals from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds.[4]
As discussed in Peter M. Haas's definitive text,[1] an epistemic community is made up of a diverse range of academic and professional experts, who are allied on the basis of four unifying characteristics:
- a shared set of normative and principled beliefs which provide a value-based rationale for the social action of community members;
- shared causal beliefs which are derived from their analysis of practices leading or contributing to a central set of problems in their domain and which then serve as the basis for elucidating the multiple linkages between possible policy actions and desired outcomes;
- shared notions of validity, i.e. intersubjective, internally defined criteria for weighing and validating knowledge in the domain of their expertise; and
- a common policy enterprise, or a set of common practices associated with a set of problems to which their professional competence is directed, presumably out of the conviction that human welfare will be enhanced as a consequence.
Thus, when viewed as an epistemic community, the overall enterprise of the expert members emerges as the product of a combination of shared beliefs and more subtle conformity pressures, rather than a direct drive for concurrence (Michael J. Mazarr). Epistemic communities also have a "normative component" meaning the end goal is always for the betterment of society, rather than self gain of the community itself (Peter M. Haas).
In international relations and political science, an epistemic community can also be referred to as a global network of knowledge-based professionals in scientific and technological areas that often affect policy decisions.[5]
Role in environmental governance
The global environmental agenda is increasing in
As a result, conditions of
- the scale of environmental problems,
- cause-and-effect interrelations of ecological processes, and
- how (science-based) policy options will play out.[9]
Therefore, epistemic communities can frame environmental problems as they see fit, and environmental decision-makers begin to make policy-shaping decisions based on these specific depictions.[10]
The initial identification and bounding of environmental issues by epistemic community members is very influential.[11] They can limit what would be preferable in terms of national interests, frame what issues are available for collective debate, and delimit the policy alternatives deemed possible.[6] The political effects are not easily reversible.[12] The epistemic community vision is institutionalised as a collective set of understandings reflected in any subsequent policy choices.[12]
This is a key point of power. Policy actors are persuaded to conform to the community’s consensual, knowledge-driven ideas without the epistemic community requiring a more material form of power.[1] Members of successful communities can become strong actors at the national and international level as decision-makers attach responsibility to their advice.[1]
As a result, epistemic communities have a direct input on how international cooperation may develop in the long term.[6] Transboundary environmental problems require a unified response rather than patchwork policy efforts, but this is problematic due to enduring differences of state interest and concerns over reciprocity.[1] The transnational nature of epistemic communities means numerous states may absorb new patterns of logic and behaviour, leading to the adoption of concordant state policies.[6] Therefore, the likelihood of convergent state behaviour and associated international coordination is increased.
International cooperation is further facilitated if powerful states are involved, as a quasi-structure is created containing the reasons, expectations and arguments for coordination.[12] Also, if epistemic community members have developed authoritative bureaucratic reputations in various countries, they are likely to participate in the creation and running of national and international institutions that directly pursue international policy coordination, for example, a regulatory agency, think tank or governmental research body.[1]
As a result, epistemic community members in a number of different countries can become connected through intergovernmental channels, as well as existing community channels, producing a
Limitations
Some refutations have been formulated about epistemic communities, in the study of the circulation of international expertise. Firstly, one should be cautious about the risk of retrospective thinking when conceptualizing epistemic communities. Indeed, the solutions proposed by expert groups which are eventually adopted by policy makers are one but many that have been formulated by the scientific community. The epistemic community proposition is confirmed by the fact that the solution adopted are necessarily "tolerable" by policy makers, who choose between all those which have been proposed by the scientific community.[14] Secondly, it is difficult to assess the limits of the term "experts". For instance, the G7 "experts" would in fact be civil servants from the member-states of the organization, who therefore cannot claim the scientific legitimacy of researchers.[15] Finally, this hypothesis does not take into consideration the influence of national contexts in the agenda-setting of epistemic communities. The experts are restricted to the limit of the tolerable in their own national context, which is also crucial in the adoption of the solutions they propose at the local level.[15]
See also
- Epistemic community (international relations)
- Global governance
- Knowledge falsification
- Network governance
- Social network
- Internationalism
- Transnationalism
- International community
- Statism
- Governmentality
References
- ^ S2CID 145360263.
- S2CID 154610359.
- S2CID 144925336.
- ISBN 9780415164863.
- ^ e.g. Morin, Jean-Frédéric, Louafi, Sélim, Orsini Amandine and Mohamed Oubenal, Boundary organizations in regime complexes: a social network profile of IPBES, Journal of International Relations and Development, 2016, http://www.chaire-epi.ulaval.ca/sites/chaire-epi.ulaval.ca/files/publications/morin_et_al._2016_ipbes.pdf
- ^ S2CID 143111616.
- JSTOR 3186430.
- S2CID 144600345.
- S2CID 155063439.
- .
- S2CID 144605928.
- ^ S2CID 154353057.
- S2CID 55131189.
- ^ Jacobson, Harold Karan; Stein, Eric (1966). Diplomats, Scientists, and Politicians: The United States and the Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations. Ann Harbour: University of Michigan Law School.
- ^ a b Economy, Elizabeth Charissa (1994). Negotiating the terrain of global climate change policy in the Soviet Union and China: Linking international and domestic decision-making pathways. Michigan: University of Michigan.
Further reading
- Cross, Mai'a K. Davis (January 2013). "Rethinking epistemic communities twenty years later". S2CID 202244258.
- Morin, Jean-Frédéric (2014). "Paradigm Shift in the Global IP Regime: The Agency of Academics" (PDF). S2CID 3615527..
- Reinalda, Bob; Verbeek, Bertjan, eds. (1998). Autonomous policy making by international organizations. Routledge/ECPR Studies in European Political Science Series. London New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415164863. Details.
- Sens, Allen; Stoett, Peter (2014). Global politics: origins, currents, directions (5th ed.). Toronto, Ontario: Nelson Education. ISBN 9780176509477.
- Willard, Charles A. (1996). Liberalism and the problem of knowledge: a new rhetoric for modern democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226898452. Details.