Conclusion: a democratic tension?

Abstract

This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in this book. The book frames the contribution to the existing literature in the context of three waves of scholarship that addressed the nature and interaction of expert and political authorities, including the normative question of how they should interact given liberal democratic requirements for legitimate policy. The arguments made by wave two Science and Technology Studies (STS) challenging science's traditional claims to objectivity and autonomy providing important and well-founded insights into both the nature and limits of science and the knowledge it produces. The International Whaling Commission (IWC) was the first international wildlife management regime to explicitly make science the exclusive basis for policy making, but that science predicated on the survival and revival of whale stocks after over-hunting, with the long-term aim of continuing whaling on a sustainable basis.