Good science, green policy: The role of scientists in environmental policy in the United States

This dissertation is a comparative case study of the role of scientists in environmental policy making. The study is empirical and analyzes scientists' participation in the policy process during three stages of decision making: agenda setting, legislation, and implementation. Two cases, acid rain and climate change, are used as the basis for examining scientists' role. The purpose of the study is to address competing claims in the science-in-policy literature about the influence that scientists exercise in public decision making. The study examines both the resources scientists use in establishing themselves as credible experts and the constraints they confront in attempting to mobilize those resources in different institutional contexts. The central finding of the study is that scientists' role changes significantly across stages of decision making. Scientists who participate early in the development of a policy issue face few institutional constraints and are able to mobilize a number of resources to establish their credibility as experts in the policy making process. As policy issues advance from one decision making stage to the next, the increasing formalization of the policy process limits scientists' participation by elaborating a specific role that they must enact in order to maintain their legitimacy. This role is based in positivist notions of the objectivity and universality of science. The discrepancy between scientists' actual participation in policy making and the idealized role which legitimizes their participation produces a number of coping strategies that scientists use to maintain their credibility as objective experts while trying to ensure their relevance in the policy process. These findings suggest a dynamic theory of the role of scientists in decision making that can account for instances where scientists exercise considerable influence and circumstances where their role in decision making is limited.