Page - 188 - in Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies - Conference Proceedings of the 17th STS Conference Graz 2018

different understandings of participation and critical differentiation of different functions. Lehtonen (2010, 179–181) developed a very useful and comprehensive classification of different functions of participation, namely the normative, the instrumental and the substantive function. The normative function focuses on the process of participation and deliberation to guarantee legitimacy, for instance in terms of equality of resources, openness for arguments and an equal representation of interests. Then the instrumental function focuses on goals of different interest groups and their motivations to build legitimacy and trust in government, authorities and public decisions. The substantive function focuses on the outcome of participatory and deliberative processes which means an integration of a wide range of values, knowledge and discourses to open up for new perspectives and to achieve better solutions. Furthermore, criteria of participation are needed to evaluate and categorize different standards of participation. For this purpose, Renn (2013) distills the fulfillment of a good standard of participation down to four basic criteria of participation processes in infrastructure projects: First, fairness must be guaranteed. That means participants have equal rights and duties. Second, there must be a common ground of competence which should be guaranteed through the accessibility of information and knowledge. Third, rules of conversation techniques and scopes of action of participants should be introduced and maintained to gain legitimacy. And last but not least, efficiency should be met through the incorporation of participation outcomes in decision-making (Renn 2013, 80). Such processes require willingness of individuals within public authorities to give-up or share privileges, for instance in terms of knowledge, information, and power. At the same time, individuals need to be open to new perspectives and arguments. Due to this dynamic, the knowledge and information gap is not easily reduced or even closed. Power relations are also not simply balanced, because they are not only preserved by status and official positioning, but also through rhetorical abilities, pre-existing knowledge and the individual ability of information processing (see also Geißel 2009). Accordingly, comprehensiveness of information is equally important as accessibility of knowledge and information. The interested public and NGO members as well as individuals who are directly or indirectly affected will have to be prepared to work together with stakeholders and public authorities in participatory processes. This requires – beside resources1 – commitment and openness for other perspectives to be able to reconsider and enhance one’s own arguments. In particular the fourth criterion suggested by Renn (2013) – efficiency – is difficult to meet in Germany, because of missing legal regulations at the national level to incorporate participation outcomes in decision-making. Deliberation in informal and formal participatory processes might be one option to take participation outcomes into consideration (see also Geißel 2012). This means that the decisions are still made by the legitimate decision-makers and not by the people as it would be the case in a national referendum. Dryzek (2010, 11–12) characterizes such deliberative spaces as „accountable spaces“ where individuals of authorities come together with individuals of the interested public to deliberate in symmetric inter-open spaces in order to achieve legitimacy of collective decision-making. For too long nuclear waste governance focused on the instrumental function which means that 1 In order to guarantee equality it is also important to give actors a chance to debate on an equal footing. Here financial and time resources come into play, but cannot be discussed in detail. For further reading see Hoppe (2010) and Geißel (2008; 2012). 188