In recent years, a growing number of researchers in science and technology studies have begun to examine the relationship between science and politics. Specifically, they focus on citizen participation in highly technical policy problems and explore the possibility of a technical democracy that avoids pitfalls of technocracy. This focus, however, downplays a possibly more serious obstacle to technical democracy than technocracy, namely, realpolitik. Based on ethnographic and textual data on citizen–government interactions in the aftermath of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, we first show how citizens mobilised radiation detectors and counter-experts to force the Japanese government to admit scientific uncertainty about the permissible dose limit. We then explain why this successful mobilisation nonetheless had only a small impact on evacuation and compensation policies in terms of the pre-disaster structure of Japanese politics: the dominance of commission-based policy-making allowed the bureaucratic government to play realpolitik in the face of scientific uncertainty to expediently pursue its own interest, circumventing both democratic deliberation and technical rigour.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
AsahiShinbun (2011, 13March). Hibaku no eikyō wa buryō, p. 17.
2.
AsahiShinbun (2011, 7March). Kan seiken hinanchiiki kakudai wo kentō, p. 5.
3.
AsahiShinbun (2011, 20April). Ministry of Education announces a criterion for the use of school facilities, p. 38.
4.
AsahiShinbun (2011, 7December). Baishō, ko to ninpu 40 man’en hokawa hitori 8 man’en, p. 39.
5.
AldrichD. P. (2008). Site fights: Divisive facilities and civil society in Japan and the West. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
6.
AldrichD. P. (2013). Rethinking civil society-state relations in Japan after the Fukushima accident. Polity, 45(2), 249–64.
7.
BijkerW. E., BalR., & HendriksR. (2009). The paradox of scientific authority: The role of scientific advice in democracies. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
8.
CallonM., LascoumesP., & BartheY. (2009). Acting in an uncertain world: An essay on technical democracy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
9.
CallonM., LascoumesP., & BartheY. (1981). Unscrewing the big leviathan: How actors macro-structure reality and how sociologists help them to do so. In Knorr-CetinaK. & CicourelA. V. (Eds.), Advances in social theory and methodology: Toward an integration of micro- and macro-sociologies (pp. 277–303). Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
10.
CollinsH., & EvansR. (2002). The third waves of science studies: Studies of expertise and experience. Social Studies of Science, 32(2), 235–296.
11.
CollinsH., & EvansR. (2008). Rethinking expertise. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
12.
CurtisG. L. (1999). The logic of Japanese politics: Leaders, institutions, and the limits of change. New York: Columbia University Press.
13.
EndōN. (2013). Genshiryoku songai baishōseido no kenkyū: Tokyo Denryoku Fukushima Genpatsujiko karano kōsatsu. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.
14.
EpsteinS. (1996). Impure science: AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge. Berkeley: University of California Press.
15.
FinnemoreM., & SikkinkK. (2001). Taking stock: The constructivist research program in international relations and comparative politics. Annual Review of Political Science, 4(1), 391–416.
16.
FischerF. (2009). Democracy and expertise: Reorienting policy inquiry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17.
FukushimaMinyū (2011). Jitaku wa shitei taishō nanoka. Retrieved from http://www.minyu-net.com/ (accessed 1July2011).
18.
GilpinR. G. (1984). The richness of the tradition of political realism. International Organization, 38(2), 287–304.
19.
HabermasJ. (1998). Between facts and norms: Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
HessD. J. (2007). Crosscurrents: Social movements and the anthropology of science and technology. American Anthropologist, 109(3), 463–472.
22.
HessD. J. (2011). To tell the truth: On scientificcounterpublics. Public Understanding of Science, 20(5), 627–641.
23.
HilgartnerS. (2006). Science on stage: Expert advice as public drama. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
24.
HirakawaH., & ShirabeM. (2015). Rhetorical marginalization of science and democracy: Politics in risk discourse on radioactive risks in Japan. In FujigakiY. (Ed.), Lessons from Fukushima: Japanese case studies on science, technology and society (pp. 57–86). New York: Springer.
25.
IioJ. (2007). Nihon no touchikōzou. Tokyo: Chūō Kōron Shinsha.
26.
JasanoffS. (1990). The fifth branch: Science advisers as policymakers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
27.
JasanoffS. (2003a). Technologies of humility: Citizen participation in governing scienceMinerva, 41(3), 223–244.
28.
JasanoffS. (2003b). (No) accounting for expertise. Science and Public Policy, 30(3), 157–162.
29.
JasanoffS. (2005). Designs on nature: Science and democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
30.
JasanoffS. (2012). Genealogies of STS. Social Studies of Science, 42(3), 435–441.
31.
JohnsonC. (1995). Japan, who governs? Controversial issues in Japanese government and foreign policy. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
32.
KogaS. (2011). Kanryō no sekinin. Tokyo: PHP Kenkyūjo.
33.
LatourB. (1999). Pandora’s hope: Essays on the reality of science studies. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
34.
LatourB. (2000). When things strike back: A possible contribution of ‘science studies’ to the social sciences. British Journal of Sociology, 51(1), 107–123.
35.
LatourB. (2004a). Politics of nature: How to bring the sciences into democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
36.
LatourB. (2004b). Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern. Critical Inquiry, 30(2), 225–248.
37.
LatourB. (2005). From realpolitik to dingpolitik or how to make things public. In LatourB. & WeibelP. (Eds.), Making things public: Atmospheres of democracy (pp. 14–41). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
38.
LengwilerM. (2008). Participatory approaches in science and technology: Historical origins and current practices in critical perspective. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 33(2), 186–200.
39.
MeyerJ. W. & RowanB. (1977). Institutionalized organizations: Formal structure as myth and ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340–363.
40.
National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (NAIIC). (2012). Report. Retrieved 10December2012, from, http://warp.da.ndl.go.jp/info:ndljp/pid/3856371/naiic.go.jp/index.html
ParthasarathyS. (2010). Breaking the expertise barrier: Understanding activist strategies in science and technology policy domains. Science and Public Policy, 37(5), 355–367.
43.
PekkanenR. (2006). Japan’s dual civil society: Members without advocates. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
44.
Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation (RJIF). (2012). Fukushima Genpatsu Jiko Dokuritsu Kenshō Iinkai Chōsa kenshō hōkokusho. Tokyo: Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation.
45.
SakiyamaH. & TakagiGakkō (2011). Haha to kono tameno hibaku chishiki: genpatsu jiko kara shokuhin osen made. Tokyo: Shinsuisha.
46.
SchudsonM. (2006). The trouble with experts: And why democracies need them. Theory and Society, 35(5–6), 491–506.
47.
SchwartzF. J., & PharrS. J. (Eds.). (2003). The state of civil society in Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press.
48.
Shindō, M. (2012). Seiji shudō: kanryōsei wo toinaosu. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō.
49.
TurnerS. P. (2003). Liberal democracy 3.0: Civil society in an age of experts. London: SAGE Publications.
50.
WeberM. (1947). The theory of social and economic organization. New York: The Free Press.
51.
YoshiokaH. (2011). Genshiryoku no shakaishi: sono Nihonteki tenkai. Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun Shuppan.
