Technology Assessment and neoliberal STI policies as dancing partners: critical insights in the new spirit of Technology Assessment

To paraphrase Luc Boltanski and Eve Chiapello’s famous monograph on capitalism (2006 [1999]), this paper hypothesizes that to successfully develop or simply to survive, Technology Assessment needs a spirit, that is, an ideology that morally justifies actors’ engagement in TA. The corollary of such a hypothesis is that investigating the spirit of TA necessarily involves paying due attention to politics of TA (Delvenne et al. 2015). In this respect, I will ask the questions: is there a new spirit of Technology Assessment as there is a new spirit of capitalism? What does it imply for TA practices, rationales and methodologies? To address these questions, I will explore the tension surrounding two interrelated sets of science, technology and innovation (STI) policies that evolved together in Europe since the 1980s onward. On the one hand, I focus on the expanding process of neoliberal policies unconditionally supporting STI as strategic resources to generate growth and competitiveness. On the other hand, I link this process with policy decisions to institutionalize Technology Assessment processes and activities to frame and anticipate the potential side effects of STI in newly emerging strategic science regimes. TA and neoliberal STI policies coevolved as “dancing partners” (Rip 1992), relatively independent and closely interacting at the same time. I inquire into the experimental, transforming character of TA by linking its emergence and development to the broader institutional setting of which it is a part. My analysis brings a macro-sociological and political sensitivity to bear on TA and its politics. Rather than conceiving of TA as a mere management tool or neutral governance technique, I suggest that TA processes enact, as well as counteract, dominant innovation policies. Conversely, I look at recent TA de-institutionalization processes in Flanders and Denmark to offer some reflections on the future of TA. Based on previous researches and on participatory observation in a European FP7 project aimed at expanding TA institutions in Europe, I question TA’s ability to exert its critical capacities if it is to survive only as an instrument aligned with recent policy discourses, particularly responsible research and innovation, that emerged in the aftermath of Lisbon’s strategy.