Science and policy: participated research or “war of reports”?

Sandra Junier, one of my colleague here at TU Delft, introduced during our habitual lunch meeting, the issue of the role of expertise in policies, which is, specific to water management, the main topic of her PhD research.
She used a case to illustrate the relations between what i would call "knowledge" and "power": the events before the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) had to be implemented in the Netherlands.

The core request of WFD is the achievement of “good status” for all the water bodies. “Good" is a relative concept, depending on the level of naturalness of the water system. The competence to define this was left to the single states. Every country had to classify its own water systems into the categories of “natural, heavily modified”, or “artificial”.
In 2003 a Dutch research institute published a report whose result stated that the complete WFD implementation would imply to put aside 2/3 of the Dutch agriculture.
Agriculture is a very important sector in Holland, having an important role in the Dutch economy. Even if you would not say it from the taste of its tomatoes!
The report heavily influenced the debate, coming out just before the discussion, and leading to concern and resistances within the agricultural sector.
The national government instructed the authority to be "pragmatic", meaning taking into account existing economic interests.
The result was that the WFD implementation in the Netherlands was very in protection of the agriculture:
Most of the water bodies have been classified as “artificial” or “heavily modified” (98% in total). Even considering that the Dutch landscape is strongly urbanized and modified, this datum appears in its largeness when compared to German value (52%) and even more, the French one, which was around the ten percent.
In this case the policy making process was influenced mostly by only one interest: the debate was in fact dominated by that information provided by that report.

Apart from the specific case. It is interesting to analyze the different models of interaction between policy makers and experts.
Sandra summarizes them in three models, plus one.

1)science provide the knowledge, politics decide

I call this "the ideal case", but it is more a wish than reality: a situation in which science holds the truth, enlightening the politics, intended here in general as representatives of some organized interest. Unfortunately reality shows more often the second and third models:

2) Politics use the science that better fits their needs

In this model, in which politics do "knowledge shopping° according to their needs, recognized that many many research centers can get to different conclusions. Reality is complex and can be framed in different ways, different framework can give completely different policy indications.
Science is not that monolithic as it appears to be. Divergences exists, and the best strategy for an organized group of interest is sponsoring the “stream” that better fits their needs.
A third model is

3)Every stakeholder use science strategically

Organized interests have their own research centers. Every group trusts its own one, leading the political discussion to a so-called “dialogue of the deaf”, or using another image, “war of reports”.

The fourth model, in which Sandra seems to believe, is the “coproduction of science”. In which the knowledge is produced together and eventually accepted by (possibly) all the stakeholders.
This seems a good solution ahead of the others. But, there are, in my opinion, two issues.
Of course participated sounds better, suggesting a more democratic and more inclusive process, or using water management terms, more integrated. However, scientific research is a specialistic work, often involving few experts, thus participation must be structured and organized. Non-expert can add no information to a technical discussion, and their presence risks of not being of any value. In my opinion, a more effective model is the involvement of stakeholder's technical representative, experts that stand up for their interests in the scientific debate. The idea is, someway, that organized interests, having their own research centers, joining for a participated science production.
Another question about the coproduction of science model, in my opinion, is if this model is only possible in some political contexts? The Dutch debate and society are marked by a strong harmony and a tendency to the compromise. It requires a level of trust among the actors that can be already wear out. I remember in fact that at Enel, where I worked some years ago, a colleague referred to stakeholders involvement as "having a viper in one’s bosom”.

Transparency on the funding sources of a research institutes can add information to assess its credibility. And to add information to the debate.
In conclusion, one of the propositions that will be part of my final PhD thesis: "the capital of a researcher (or, in this case, a research institute) is its authoritativeness. As a capital, authoritativeness is both a positive value, a form of power, and it is self-reproducing: it can be used to gain even more of it. It is however a “soft power”, it is in fact based on the researcher capacity to convince.