Bringing Models Home: External versus In-house Modelling Expertise within the EU Commission’s Trade Sustainability Assessments

• In Event: Dilemmas in the production of advisory science - Session 1

Abstract

Within the European Commission’s larger framework of evidence-based policy-making, computer models are increasingly used to anticipate and evaluate the consequences of various policies. Yet, models are not neutral tools solely providing analysis and direction to policy questions, but also serve to empower and legitimize public policy. Modelling at the science-policy interface entails specific dilemmas and evidence practices that entangle multiple epistemic, political and social rationalities, demands, principles and norms.
In our presentation we discuss the specific characteristics and dilemmas of modelling for policy (advice) by the example of the EC’s Trade Sustainability Impact Assessments (SIA). Based on two case studies of recent SIAs, i.e. TTIP and EU-Australia, we analyze how distinct organizations and procedures of computational modelling influence respective science-policy interactions. While in the TTIP case, an external consortium was tasked with modelling potential economic effects, in the EU-Australia case, modelling results were provided by DG Trade. Specifically, we ask: How do the socio-technical arrangements of modelling differ between external and in-house contexts? How are boundaries (between expertise and policy, stakeholders, etc.) negotiated and (re)conceptualized in these distinct cases? Which implications does the recent shift towards in-house modelling have for the transparency and communication of modelling results and ultimately their (political) usability? Our results show how the shift to internal capacities within DG Trade has implications for potential lock-ins and dependencies of the central models used, the extent multiple modelling approaches are integrated, as well as questions regarding tensions between flexibility, transparency and independence related to the in-house modelling context.

Authors

• Titus Udrea, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Inst. of Technology Assessment (ITA)

• Anja Bauer, University of Klagenfurt

• Leo Capari, Institute of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences

• Daniela Fuchs, Institute of Technology Assessment of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ITA-OeAW)