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Summary
This report presents the findings of a study group held during 1998 and 1999. A
series of eight meetings explored emerging technologies and the governance
issues they raise for the scientific and policy communities.

Technology and Governance

In the early part of the 21st century, the technologies emerging from the
information technology and biotechnology revolutions will present
unprecedented governance challenges to national and international political
systems. These technologies are now shifting and will continue to affect the
organization of society and the ways in which norms emerge and governance
structures operate. How policymakers respond to the challenges these
technologies present, including the extent to which developments are supported
by public research funds and whether they are regulated, will be of increasing
concern among citizens and for governing bodies. New governance
mechanisms, particularly on an international level, may be needed to address
these emerging issues.
The governance challenges are emerging because of the very nature of these
technologies. Information and biological technologies have in common that their
control and use are largely in the hands of the individual. The technologies that
drove the industrial revolution are systematic and complex, and putting them
into use requires collective action, social infrastructure, and technical know-how.
Information and biological technologies do not have the same large-scale,
systematic naturemaking it harder to control their dissemination and use. The
governance challenge is no longer democratic control over centralized systems
as it was in the 20th century, with such technologies as nuclear weaponry and
energy, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, medicine, and airlinesbut
governance over decentralized, distributed systems. The features that make
these technologies different from and their potential benefits greater than those
of other technologies increase their potential for abuse.
The mechanisms societies use to control, direct, shape, or regulate certain kinds
of activities is what we mean by governance. Governance is almost always
conducted by governmental bodies, although it can be carried out in other ways.
Yet, the practical obstacles to governance of these new technologies are

tremendous. Success in governing them requires the cooperation of

stakeholders, states, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), interest
organizations, and the average citizen. Within any decisionmaking process,
commercial, defense, social, and individual interests will intermingle, and a
consensus among many players may be integral to any workable outcome.
Accordingly, two central questions seem relevant: Is society likely to call for
governance in new technology domains, such as the Internet and biotechnology?
What governance issues do these technologies raise?

Changing Attitudes Toward the Need for Governance

Two recent shifts in attitudes strongly influence the issue of governance within
technological arenas. The first shift is the decline of conventional top-down
governance models and an emphasis on applying privatization; deregulation;
downsizing of bureaucracy; and private, market-based solutions to many social
problems. This trend is especially evident in telecommunications and
information technology (IT). The largely positive and beneficial nature of IT,
coupled with the anti-statist attitudes of the late 20th century, have shifted
attitudes toward technology more generally and disinclined many from
considering regulation as an effective solution to the challenges new technologies
present.
The second shift is a changing public attitude toward the conduct of scientific
research and the resulting technological innovations that might best be summed
up as follows: Dont leave scientific decisionmaking to the scientists. The most
important influence on this perspective may have been our experience with the
advent of nuclear weapons. Many greeted this world-changing technological
development with great alarm, which has led to the creation of an international
regime to prevent the technology from spreading. In the United States, the 1995
Government Performance and Review Act concisely illustrates this trend toward
greater societal interest in knowing the outcomes emerging from the scientific
enterprise. New reporting requirements are being introduced despite continued
protestations from the scientific community that such accountability is not
practical and may even be detrimental to innovation.
These trends suggest that the publics perspective about science and technology
has become increasingly sophisticated. There seems to be general recognition
that regulating new technologies poses substantial challenges and often has
unintended consequences that may be as troublesome to society as the problem
the regulation was intended to prevent. Recognition also appears to be growing
that technological innovation is not always necessarily benign and that some

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regulatory actions have served societal objectives effectively. Accommodating

both perspectives raises difficult and complex issues for those who would offer
governance approaches.

Possible Approaches to Governance

A consensus emerged from the study group that a top-down approach to
governance of these technologies would not be practical. In the realm of
standard-setting, a bottom-up, informal approach could prove workable, given
the incentives for participants to converge on a single standard. However,
regulation is more challenging. Enforcement across a wide variety of countries is
likely to present problems, especially when top-down intergovernmental
mechanisms lack force or fail because governments are unwilling to pressure one
another. Moreover, the extent of the control of these technologies and their
applications that is or will be in the hands of the individual makes regulation
particularly difficult. Given that many decisions about use and application will
be made on an individual basis, it is hard to image any regulatory structure
without wide buy-in from the polity.
Accordingly, one approach to regulating technologies like these might be to use a
distributed decisionmaking model that would involve a significant number of
organizations and users in deciding what technologies to support with research
and development funds; what technologies need governance; what the norms of
use and application should be; and whether, how, and at what level of formality
to regulate technologies.
Another possible approach would be using citizen councils to make
recommendations to higher-level, more formal governing bodies. One model
might involve aiding the organization of hundreds of citizen councils across the
United States (or even around the world) and encouraging them to deliberate the
norms of use, regulation, and governance of technology. Using the networking
capacities of information technology, such councils could conceivably deliberate
and share ideas on a series of governance questions in a way that draws toward a
consensus of views on how to manage and govern technologies.
A third model the study group discussed was governance by the actions of
NGOs. In numerous recent examples, NGOs, empowered by low-cost electronic
communications, have been able to act to achieve outcomes that sovereign
nation-states, acting either alone or in concert, could not. However, since NGOs
base their authority primarily on the voluntary choices of their members, this can
raise issues of legitimacy and may be applicable to only a limited range of
problems.

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Ultimately, because the technologies emerging from the information and

biological revolutions are inherently global, success in governing these
technologies is likely to depend on some model that involves all stakeholders
states, NGOs, interest organizations, and citizensto cooperate in developing
governance norms or structures.