Over the past decade, research on ethical advice and ethics bodies in public policy has turned into a lively and expanding field. Studies of public policy, administration, and expertise have highlighted the ways in which ethical judgements interlink scientific knowledge and collectively binding decisions. Current debates on global pandemics, Artificial Intelligence or Planetary Health entail new ethical controversies. Some findings argue that ethical commissions and committees have become a renewed form of technocratic or scientistic governance by ‘checklist ethics’. In studies on the European Union, ethics bodes have been found to be decisive in framing decision-making as more controllable, in disempowering citizens value judgements, and in outsourcing value contestations by delegating them to specialized experts. Others maintain that they are instruments of political legitimation and serve a more symbolic function of justifying vested interests and industry demands.
Still, there is a lack of empirical and especially comparative studies on the institutional and cultural embeddedness of ethics bodies and expertise across countries and governance levels, on how ethics advice is sought and provided, why specific issues become ethically controversial while others remain undisputed, and the dynamics within different ‘ecosystems’ of ethical expertise.
This panel invites papers from multiple conceptual and methodological backgrounds. We are especially – but not exclusively – interested in discussions on the following questions:
- How is ethics advice provided across different countries and governance levels? How are science, policy, and society related in different advisory arrangements on ethics?
- How are epistemic, moral, and political authority constellations structured within and between ethical commissions and committees?
- When do issues become 'ethical' in ethical advisory institutions and in public discourses? Which issues remain in the ignorance zone of ethical discourses and why?
- How is ethics advice used and/or not used by governments and policy makers in crisis situations?
- How can policymakers, administrators and government institutions be supported in navigating ethical expertise – especially during times of crisis?
- What could be central elements of reflexive modes of ethical evaluation?
The panel is organized by members of the ESRC-funded international research project “Ethics and expertise in times of crisis: Learning from international varieties of ethics advice”.