Working Paper Nr . 2 / 2016 Concepts of Stakeholder Involvement in Science Evidence from Sustainability Research

This paper substantiates previous qualitative work on stakeholder involvement (SI) in science with evidence from practice. Through a web-based survey among scholars and researchers engaged with sustainability or transition research in Germany and internationally, current stakeholder involvement practices are systematically evaluated. The underlying framework consists of five criteria that are crucial for a scientist’s perspective on stakeholder involvement: understanding of science, kind of knowledge, objectives, roles and the science-policy-interface.Building on these criteria, four ideal types of SI in science are derived: the technocratic, the neoliberal-rational, the functionalist and the democratic type [43]. Based on this conceptual work, we strive to answer the following four research questions: In what way do scientists involve stakeholders today? What kind of concepts and ideals underlie their actions? Do ideals and reality match when scientists involve stakeholders? How do researchers’ concepts of and ideals concerning stakeholder involvement relate to the types of SI identified in our previous research? Our results (n=52) give an interesting overview about different backgrounds and types of stakeholder involvement in science. Even though most respondents do not see a clear gap between their concepts of SI and their experience when conducting it, they stated manifold problems and trade-offs. Although there was agreement on some of the criteria for SI, the data did not reflect consistent types of SI as defined in our framework (see [43]). This might be a hint towards a lack of training and reflection of practitioners towards conceptual and theoretical questions of (transdisciplinary) science. We conclude that more qualitative research on actual practices is needed to better understand the stakeholder-scientist nexus.