Social sciences, technology assessment, and the pandemic: A comparative analysis of social science-based policy advice and its representation in parliamentary advisory institutions in France, Germany, and the UK during the COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 crisis has put the question of the political use and misuse of science back at the centre of public discussions (Hilgartner et al. 2021) by decision-makers and civil society. The current focus on scientific knowledge has favoured specific disciplinary fields, particularly STEM (Lohse and Canali 2021). So far, though, recent statements by politicians and parliamentarians from different European countries have reflected the problematisation of social science research and knowledge production activities (Boltanski 2009). In fact, in the last decade, Western politicians have been wading through buzzwords and political formulas, "wokism", "academic freedom", or "cancel culture", especially related to (critical) social sciences. This renewed interest in this field also seems to extend to parliamentary structures. Even some PTA structures were starting to take an interest in this disciplinary field, such as the UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, which secured funding from the Economic and Social Research Council in 2013 to allow the creation of a fourth section for Social Sciences. Such a demand, however, remains peripheral. One of the reasons for this disciplinary gap is that social sciences have a reputation for not being able to provide "ready-to-go" solutions that can be implemented easily and quickly in "evidence-based policies", as pointed out by Parsons (ibid. 2002). Societal expectations towards those disciplines are becoming more demanding, and the injunctions to conduct research that is, at best, responsible and dependent on a democratic mission and, at worst, neutral and value-free are multiplying (Harding 1992). In the political and media debate, they are at the heart of the requests as soon as it is a question of providing tools to tackle ethical or moral issues (Lemieux et al. 2010), such as artificial intelligence (Miller 2019) or COVID-19 (Pickersgill 2020). Against this background, this paper addresses the following research question: to what extent do we observe a shift in the role and functions of academic advice from the social sciences in advisory institutions responsible for TA in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom during the COVID-19 pandemic? In this paper, we aim to approach the relationship between technology and governance by focusing on disciplinary fields and their differentiated treatment in PTA institutions. We will try to understand what place has been given to discourses from social sciences compared to STEM in the TA process and to what extent it evolved during the COVID-19 pandemic by investigating three cases: OPECST in France, TAB in Germany, and POST in the UK. To approach them, we will mix three qualitatively driven approaches (primary document analysis, secondary literature review, and prosopography) over the period from March 2020 to February 2022. We intend to demonstrate that, particularly in times of crisis, the call for social science expertise is deeply related to the question of democratic legitimacy (Pitkin 1967; Merton 1973; Brown et al. 2005), should it be in terms of content (scientific solidity), function (public acceptance), or procedure (disciplinary representativeness).