About the project
PEriTiA investigates the conditions under which people trust expertise used for informing public policy. Funded by the EU programme Horizon 2020, the project brings together philosophers, social and natural scientists, policy experts, ethicists, psychologists, media specialists and civil society organisations to conduct a comprehensive multi-disciplinary research.
See the project's website for further information (peritia-trust.eu)
Objectives
To investigate:
- and compare the existing systems through which experts assume an advisory role in policy-making decisions in some selected European countries.
- the role of digital media in establishing, enhancing or diminishing the levels of trust in experts.
- the psychological mechanisms of trust in experts, social indicators of experts’ trustworthiness, and the emotional and cognitive components of trusting behavior.
- the ethical requirements of trustworthy expertise
- the extent to which Citizen’s Fora of deliberation where representative groups from the general public and experts, policy-makers and journalists meet can generate trust and trustworthiness.
Publications
Governance by Hybrid Advisory Committees – A Hallmark of Social Democracy?
In this article, featured in the book Social Democracy in the 21st Century, Cathrine Holst and co-author study ad hoc policy advisory committees that propose public policies on the basis of consensus. They compare the Norwegian system with those of Germany and the European Union. They find significant similarities between the three committee governance systems. They show that these kinds of ad hoc advisory comittees tend to generate a kind of coordinated negotiated expertise. To shed light on the resemblances across the systems they develop a notion of consensus-orientated political and epistemological systems.
Eva Krick, Cathrine Holst, 2021. "Governance by Hybrid Advisory Committees – A Hallmark of Social Democracy?", Social Democracy in the 21st Century, Nik. Brandal, Øivind Bratberg, Dag Einar Thorsen. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-631020210000035006.
Science Advice in an Environment of Trust: Trusted, but not Trustworthy?
In this paper, Torbjørn Gundersen and Cathrine Holst examine trust in science advice mechanisms, (i.e. institutions) designed to include scientists and other experts in public policymaking to provide warranted knowledge relevant to policy issues and policy recommendation based on that knowledge.
Gundersen, T., & Holst, C. (2022). Science Advice in an Environment of Trust: Trusted, but Not Trustworthy? Social Epistemology, 36(5), 629–640. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2022.2101564
A New Dark Age? Truth, Trust, and Environmental Science
In this review, Torbjørn Gundersen and co-authors examines the alleged crisis of trust in environmental science and its impact on public opinion, policy decisions in the context of democratic governance, and the interaction between science and society.
Gundersen, T., Alinejad, D., Branch, T.Y., Duffy, B., et. al. (2022). A New Dark Age? Truth, Trust, and Environmental Science. Annual review of environment and resources, 47(1), 5-29. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-120920-015909
https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-environ-120920-015909
