Science and the Politics of Toxic Chemical Regulation:
U.S. and European Contrasts

Ronald Brickman

As technically complex issues become increasingly prominent on the political agendas of industrial-

ized societies, new patterns in the relationship of science and government emerge Required to make .decisions that must balance the expected rewards of technological advancement with the apparent need for technological controls, public officials turned to science to clarify the parameters of public choice and to point the way toward danger-free prosperity. But, more often than not, science appears to offer little help in avoiding or calming the political turbulence that can surround these complex issues. In many cases, it seems to have the opposite effect.

The highly publicized disputes over toxic chemicals, from DDT and saccharin to Love Canal and formaldehyde, illustrate well the dynamics of the process:

• New scientific evidence or a calamitous accident activates the issue in the public arena
• Contained at first within a limited scientific or policy circle, the issue gains political momentum rapidly, as a widening array of groups and bases of political authority take position to advance their particular cause.
• Contending private interests and government bodies issue elaborate ana1ytical rationales and supporting scientific evidence to bolster their viewpoints.
• Experts are drawn to the forefront of debate; areas of scietific uncertainty become the favoured terrain of dispute.
• Dispassionate scientific discourse is strained as opposing groups offer conflicting interpretations of an inadequate scientific base and cast aspersions on the credibility of their opponents' experts.
• 0n the sidelines onlookers deplore the politicization of the scientific debate and offer institutional devices, such as a science court or other forums of irreproachable "objective" analysis, to separate fact from opinion and to arrive at authoritative scientific consensus

This pattern recurs with such frequency in American politics that it is often taken as an inevitable consequence of the growing interdependence of science and public policy in advanced industrial society. Indeed, the pattem would appear to arise wherever three basic conditions are met: the need to incorporate science in public decisionmaking,coupled with scientists' inability to provide firm policy prescriptions; the activation of incompatible social values in a manner that approaches a zero-sum situation; and the mobilization of powerful social groups with opposing viewpoints

These preconditions of conflict and politicization are also present in the European countries. European governments are confronted with the same difficult regulatory choices as American authorities. They must reach decisions using science when science often fails to provide adequate guidance They are pressed in opposite directions by powerful industries, by labour unions, and by other groups defending the cause of public safety and yet, when examining the role of science in the European politics of toxic chemical regulation, one often fails to find the same central importance and politicizing tendencies. The characteristic American pattem is not completely absent but it is considerably more muted and found less frequently. In many of these countries, the control of specific chemical hazards rarely erupts into the full-scale confrontations that have become the norm in the United States. Technical arguments do not take center stage in the public debate, and the polarization of expert opinion around areas of uncertainty is much less in evidence. Interest groups do not take the same pains to assure an adequate contingent of scientific experts in their hire, to undertake their own studies and research, or to umcover the shortcom-ings in the arguments of opponents. The validity of altemative methodologies of risk assessment and the appropriateness of cost&emdash;benefit analysis do not figure prominently in discussions of regulatory policy, and such proposals as the science court have attracted little more than passing academic attention.

Clearly, European political processes give science a different role in the development and resolution of technically complex public issues than that observed in the United States. This essay focuses on those characteristics of U.S. and European political institutions which force upon science markedly different roles and importance in public debate and regulatory decisionmakmg over toxic chemicals. Indeed, much of what we know and have come to expect in the genesis of scientific argumentation in technical controversies appears to be more the result of features peculiar to American political life than the consequence of universal changes in the relationship of science and govemment.

Science and Legitimation

Science provides decisionmakers with more than relevant facts and tools of analysis; it also provides them with a source of legitimation for their actions. By invoking the authoritative canons of scientific reasoning and method, public authorities and others having a stake in technical issues seek to demonstrate the rationality of their position and thereby gain political support and acceptance.

The utility of science as a means of legitimation, however, depends on the availability of alternative means, including the time-honored means of hierarchy (occupancy of a legitimated role or by delegation from an accepted authority) and cooptation (the inclusion of affected parties in the formulation of a course of actionl). Due to their differing institutional and cultural contexts, the United States and the European governments have variable access to these alternative means of legitimation and use them differently in their programs of chemical regulation.

The hallmark of the American approach is severe restriction of both hierarchy and cooptation as a means to reach broadly acceptable decisions. Extreme fragmentation characterizes the process: Congress, the courts, the higher political echelons of the executive branch, as well as the agencies responsible for technological control all engage in the policy process on a nearly continuous basis. Congress exercises control through detailed legislation, frequent reauthorizations and amendments, and extensive oversight powers, including&emdash; at least until the recent Supreme Court decision checked the trend&emdash;the ability to veto proposed regulations. The role of the Courts has grown consistently over the past fifteen years, encouraged both by Congress' liberality in providing opportunities for judicial review and by an activist judiciary. More recently, the Office of Management and Budget and other bodies within the executive branch have carved out a growing role of review and approval. Each center of action and review is susceptible to the appeals of private interests, anxious to bend decisionmaking to suit their own purposes.

These institutional features deprive any American political institution of sufficient authority to make a definitive ruling. The proliferating external checks and procedural safeguards, originally intended to protect citizens and groups from arbitrary or biased decisionmaking but readily exploited by all interests to further particular aims, severely constrain the actions of regulatory officials.

Under these circumstances, U.S. administrators are encouraged to seek some independent basis of legitimation and support. Science responds to this need by giving decisions an aura of authority that is otherwise lacking. Indeed, science&emdash;not the unquestioned delegation of govemmental power to administrators to decide in the public interest&emdash;has been the foundation of regulatory intervention since the federal govemment first assumed responsibility for protecting the public from technological hazards. Expansion of the regulatory role in the 1960s and 1970s intensified the pressure (in particular, from the courts and Congress) on agencies to provide an objective, scientifically reasoned case for their actions. The consequences can be observed in the large R&D capabilities within the agencies, their heavy recruitment of technical specialists and use of outside consultants, and the elaborate scientific documentation accompanying rules.

In Europe, decisionmaking over technically complex rules takes place in a quite different setting. European parliaments, for example, take less active roles than the U.S. Congress in drafting regulatory legislation and in overseeing its implementation. Court intervention is far more episodic and restricted in scope. Only rarely do either higher political authorities or the public subject decisions on particular hazards to intense scrutiny. Interest groups direct the bulk of their political pressures through the narrow channels of administrative consultation.

European officials do not, therefore, feel compelled to bolster their decisions with scientific argumentation and formal analysis to the same degree as American authorities. A tradition of public deference to the bureaucracy and the political protection afforded by a ruling cabinet supported by a parliamentary majority help to give administrators the stature and legitimacy needed to issue acceptable rules. Their correspondingly lower demand for analysis is reflected in small R&D programs, in a relative lack of technical sophistication among rulemaking officials, and in the often perfunctory disclosure of the scientific rationale behind public actions. Because science is not accorded the same importance as a basis of legitimation in Europe, it has become a less relevant focus of attention to those who join the political debate.

Science and the Channels of Confrontation

U.S. institutions and participatory procedures do more, however, than simply enhance the political saliency of the scientific underpinnings of decisionmaking. They also provide maximum opportunity for exposing the weaknesses and uncertainties of the scientific case for or against a given course of action. Sensitive to a long-standing national fear of centralized authority and a concern that special interests might capture regulatory processes, the U.S. government has evolved a system of decisionmaking of unusual complexity and accessibility Legislation addressing specific kinds of hazards reinforces the general provisions in such statutes as the Administrative Procedures Act and the Freedom of Infommation Act, which guarantee any private citizen or group multiple opportunities to become informed of official rulemaking and to insert their opinion in the record. Given the dispersion of public authority, any party unhappy with the course of events enjoys a plethora of alternative pressure points to present its case and gain satisfaction. Whether through administrative petitioning, hearings, lobbying, litigation, or media campaigns, public intervention in the United States involves an uncompromising, unilateral presentation of one's own views and the adversanal confrontation of opposing views. The format itself encourages interested parties to elaborate the most rigorous defense of their positions and to attack that of their opponents.

Different channels of public participation in the European countries encourage different pattems of behaviour. The dominant forum is the standing advisory committee, whose members are drawn not only from academia, government bureaus, and laboratories, but also from the ranks of affected private interests. A typical example is the Higher Council on Public Hygiene, which makes recommendations to the French govemment on food additives and a variety of other public health issues. In Gemmany, the Committee on Hazardous Substances in the Workplace advises the Ministry of Labour on occupational health hazards. A number of committees of similar composition advise Great Britain's program of worker health and safety, which is itself headed by a tripartite commission.

These committees typically play a far more influential role in decisionmaking than any comparable body in the United States. As forums of official consultation and negotiation, where govemment officials and interests strive for consensus before decisions are made, they encourage agreement and compromise, rather than disagreement or the ascendancy of one interest over another. Participants recognize implicitly that their continued influence over decisionmaking depends on the effective functioning of the committee as a whole, even if the price may be adherence to constraining rules of the game.

These contrasting modes of public intervention create quite different pressures on science in the political process. Offered any number of forums for seeking satisfaction, an aggrieved party in the United States will seize upon every unproven assumption and analytical flaw in the arguments of opponents, drawing Congressional committees, the courts, the media, and ever wider scientific circles into the fray. An opponent's arguments will be dismissed as unobjective; one's own will be bolstered with every possible attribute of authoritative scientific opinion. In the process, the deficiencies of science as a guide to public policy are exposed to all.

In the European context, dominant modes of public participation fuse the scientific and political inputs of decisionmaking in a different way. Both "experts~ and partisan interests are typically represented in a single deliberative forum; each can derive support and direction from the other. Scientific uncertainties can be papered over in the drive for a political compromise. Moreover, because the regulation of technological hazards is recognized to be a matter of practical politics as well as applied science, the gains and losses of respective parties can be negotiated more openly and directly, rather than transmogrified into an esoteric technical debate.

Such a process places considerably lower demands and strains upon the role of scientific evidence in regulatory decisionmaking than the American procedure. Public authorities and contendmg interests do not need to glean the scientific literature for supportive material, and questions about the adequacy of the available data base are less relevant when the paramount factor behind public action is the political pulse of a standing committee representing the most powerful social groups concerned. As a result, the incorporation of scientific evidence takes on an almost perfunctory, routine character. In European licensing programs (such as those for food additives or pesticides), industry, following standard protocols, provides the necessary data, with little independent testing conducted by government or outside laboratories. Administrators check this information for its adherence to public guidelines, and send it to the appropriate committee for review. In a typical procedure, such as that followed by the French Ecotoxicity Evaluation Committee, a rapporteur will be designated to prepare a report for the next plenary session, when some kind of action is recommended to the responsible public authority. The whole process takes a few months and a minimum investment of resources&emdash;in breathtaking contrast to the years of analysis and thousands of hours of effort which normally precede regulatory action in the United States.

Some Further Implications

Institutional contexts, therefore, profoundly affect how science becomes embroiled in the development and resolution of technically complex issues The tensions familiar in American politics are hardly absent in the European context, but they take other forms and have less vigor.

The uses made of science in each regulatory system show both strengths and weaknesses. The Amencan system demonstrates a greater inclination to perfect and apply the theories and findings of science for policy purposes, and it generates more information relevant to the analysis of technical issues. It also strives to separate fact from value in the public arena and contains more safeguards against the appropriation of power via the monopolization of relevant knowledge. The European system, in contrast, demonstrates a greater ability to contain political conflict and to limit the politicization of the scientific basis of decisionmaking. It subordinates science to the political arts of compromise and consensus-building, but thereby leaves the respective weights of science and politics in the resolution of issues more a matter of public ignorance or ambiguity.

In both settings, science contributes to political instability by casting up new problems for Governments to solve without providing them with definitive solutions. Science also reduces political controversy by narrowing the range of feasible public choice. When neither science nor prior consensus provides an adequate basis for public action, institutions must fill the breach. But in structuring the relationship of science and politics, institutions also subject science to a distinctive policymaking status and dynamic. In the United States, institutions both place science on a pedestal and work to knock it off. In the European countries the less central role of science in political conflict helps to obscure its limitations, but also hinders its full exploitation as a rational tool of public decision.

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