Responsibility to Drill or not to Drill in the Arctic Ocean? Epistemic Communities and the Translation of Techno-scientific Uncertainty into Political Power

Since the early 1990s the scope of the study of epistemic communities in International Relations has expanded at the same rate with the increase in cross-border international cooperation. This article argues that the associated growth in the kinds of expert networks under investigation has left one specific type of epistemic community essential in the translation of scientific knowledge into political power largely unaccounted for. The expert communities in question consist of networks of natural and technical scientists whose work conserves - rather than reforms - the dominant relationships between science, technology and society in the international system. I conceptualize these expert networks as ‘international system conserving epistemic communities’. I call their counterparts correspondingly as ‘international system reforming epistemic communities’ I use a combination of system-level, constructivist international theorizing and qualitative case studies to illustrate how the empirical analysis of both is essential for the understanding of the different normative roles scientific and technological experts hold in world politics. The core concept in this description is ‘international developmental paradigm’. The cases consist of the study the changed horizons of expectation for what is deemed as reasonable human activity in the Arctic in the new northern policies of Norway, Canada, and Russia.