Innovation in expertise. Modeling and simulation as tools of governance

Computer-based modelling and simulations are fast entering the realm of governance. They are proving to be a necessary expertise and type of knowledge to use in public decision-making. To be sure, experts advising governments in various areas have long been using models and modeling techniques, in the simple sense of the creation of systems of elements that are logically or formally related to one another. Crime and social unrest, toxicity, energy production and consumption or climate have all been modeled by various scientific communities, and those models have been fed in national and international policy-making. IT technologies, however, are fast increasing the capacity to model and, through the use of models, to simulate, visualize, anticipate, build scenarios or predict. In this sense, modeling and simulations represent technical innovations in governance and public action.

Objectives

The INNOX project has established three objectives. The first is to explain how governance has become a space that is prone to technological innovation, and specifically to modeling as an innovation. Second, the project aims to assess the extent of the changes that modeling really creates in governance, in terms of a change in the types of actors involved in governance and relationships between them, as well as the practices and types of knowledge used in administrative decision-making and public intervention or the ways of conceptualizing and speaking about public issues and policies. These objectives will be achieved by means of investigation in three different types of modeling or use of models in governance: model-based simulation in the area of crime control; scenarios of energy transition; predictive and high-scale evaluation of chemicals toxicity.

Lines of inquiry

Three different lines of inquiry will be followed in the investigation of these cases. The first theme is “production and markets for models”, or the proponents and developers of models and their uses: expert communities and particular industries or companies. It will also look into the competition between those very actors and their relationships with public authorities. The second theme is “Administration and decision”. It looks at the shifts that occur (or not) in the practices of decision-making in agencies, and related evolutions in the types of knowledge and expertise used, as well as modes of organization and relationships of public organizations with their audiences and interest groups. Third, an analysis of “public space, mobilizations and controversies” will be undertaken, to assess how and to what extent models produce a new form of knowledge and arguments for social movements or public interest groups, and how that impacts on dominant policy paradigms. Documentary, qualitative and quantitative analyses will be used for each line of inquiry in each of the three cases.

Operations

To achieve the project, a team of 9 researchers from two closely related social science research centres has been put together. Both centres work in the areas of science and technology studies, as well as research and innovation policies. They are part of the Institut Francilien Recherche Innovation Société. There will be a close interaction throughout the project with organizations that have a stake in the development of modeling in each of the three cases or sectors. These organizations are included as partners in the project.
The expected benefits of carrying out this ambitious project are: an improvement of the understanding of current technological transitions in governance and expertise; an increase in the capacity of the very actors of these transitions to make sense of it and steer it; the development of an analytical scheme for innovations in expert-based governance; finally, the successful installation of the team of social scientists and of the two social science centres as reference for research in the nascent field of studies of Science, Technology and Innovation in Society.