5
Jensen, 2013) as a starting point for our case study
on stakeholder involvement. We discuss how
an established participatory procedure is made
to travel from one national context to another.
We are interested in how the ‘technology’ itself
Science & Technology Studies 31(3)
Lost in Translation: Czech Dialogues by Swedish
Design
Zdeněk Konopásek
Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University & The Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic/
zdenek@konopasek.net
Linda Soneryd
Department of Sociology and Work Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Karel Svačina
Center for Theoretical Study, Charles University & The Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
Abstract
This study explores the journey of a model for stakeholder involvement called RISCOM. Originally
developed within the field of radioactive waste management in Sweden, it was later used in the
Czech Republic to re-establish public dialogue in the process of siting a geological repository. This
case offers an opportunity to empirically study the fragility and ambiguous results of organized spread
of public involvement across various domains of technological innovation and national contexts. We
show how three circumstances – (1) the ambition to make RISCOM an internationally used model
for public dialogue, (2) the specific situation in the Czech siting process, and (3) the short-lived and
limited success of the subsequent Czech dialogues by Swedish design – were intrinsically related and
sustained each other. Better understanding of such complexities might contribute to a more realistic
attitude toward technologized democracy, i.e., toward practices of public deliberation increasingly
becoming instrumental, transferable, and depoliticized.
Keywords: socio-technical controversy, public dialogue, nuclear waste management, sociology of
translation
Article
Introduction
Transferring an elaborate design to a different
setting and putting it into use out of its original
context is an intricate business with uncertain
results. We take this well-known STS lesson (Bijker
and Law, 1992; De Laet and Mol, 2000; Nielsen and
6
is being transformed or translated during its displacement.
Thus, we mobilize the relatively wellestablished
imagery of technology transfer for
the purpose of studying how formalized public
involvement models are being spread across
the EU. We argue that potential consequences
of these activities can be problematic in specific
ways. Namely that technologies of participation,
transferable from country to country under supervision
of participatory experts, may easily contribute
to instrumentalization, depoliticization, and
emptying of deliberative politics.
To make this argument empirically grounded,
we present and critically discuss the story of
how a Swedish design for public dialogue called
RISCOM1
was transferred to the Czech Republic.
RISCOM, as a set of principles and recommendations
for structured and transparent communication
among stakeholders, was originally shaped
during public debates on geological repositories
of high-level nuclear waste in Sweden. After some
time it entered the international arena: as part of
several European projects it was proposed to facilitate
– and democratize – siting processes related
to planned geological repositories in the Czech
Republic and other East European countries. We
will show that, on the one hand, RISCOM made an
important achievement in the Czech case, since it
helped to bring all the main actors to a discussion
table after previous negotiations had completely
crashed. On the other hand, RISCOM failed from
a broader and more subtle perspective. Its application
contributed to the subsequent shift toward
more authoritative decision-making and another
crisis of mutual trust in the Czech repository siting
process.
The case study on RISCOM was part of a
broader collective work on the European Commission
(EC) funded research project InSOTEC.2
Our
data consist of documentation, interviews with
key actors, and observations of various meetings
and events. Data relating to the Czech Republic
were collected by Zdeněk Konopásek and Karel
Svačina and the Swedish data were collected by
Linda Soneryd. RISCOM was first implemented in
the Czech Republic within an EC funded project
Arenas for Risk Governance (ARGONA, 2006-
2009). Soneryd was involved in the ARGONA
project studying the development of RISCOM in
Sweden (see Elam et al., 2008). The implementation
of RISCOM in the Czech Republic, Poland
and Slovakia was also an element of yet another
EC-funded project Implementing Public Participation
Approaches in Radioactive Waste Disposal
(IPPA, 2011-2013). Several participants in the
IPPA project were also members of the InSOTEC
research team. On the one hand, the existence of
this concurrent implementation project provided
us with many useful exchanges and experiences.
On the other hand it situated us into a
rather delicate situation. By critically analysing
the efforts to implement RISCOM in the Czech
Republic, we were necessarily and openly putting
in question some key aspects of these EC-funded
efforts. Despite this, all the concerned colleagues
were willing to talk and discuss. We very much
appreciate their collaboration under such circum-
stances.
On translation and treason
We suggest that the Czech dialogues by Swedish
design need to be assessed against complexities
that unfold before our eyes as soon as the process
of transferring RISCOM from one setting to
another is understood as its translation. The concept
of translation is a crucial part of the vocabulary
associated with actor-network theory, ANT
(Callon, 1986; Latour, 1986) and with ANT-inspired
studies of technology transfer in particular (e.g.
Law, 2006). Simply put, actor-network theory
helps to understand how success or failure – in
terms of truth, continuity, durability, resistance
or reality – is practically and specifically achieved.
How is it that things come to work? More specifically,
in relation to the problem of technology
transfer, how does it happen that some technology
is effectively transmitted to a new setting?
The general ANT-like answer is: because it was
translated. In relation to our specific subject, to
articulate RISCOM anew, in a new setting, means
articulating it differently.3
The issue is not that one
simply has to adapt the transferred technology to
meet new conditions and requirements. The process
of translation always involves “displacement,
drift, invention, mediation” and the creation of
links “that did not exist before” that modify eleScience
& Technology Studies 31(3)
7
ments or agents since they are combined in new
ways (De Laet and Mol, 2000; Latour, 1994: 32).
Thus, by definition, there is no transportation
without transformation. It does matter, however,
what specific transformations occur and how.
Translation can be good or bad, better or worse.
Faithful or unfaithful. Processes of translation
always in some sense entail betrayal or treason
(Galis and Lee, 2014; Law, 1999), more or less.
We can therefore talk about failure. Or success
– if the translation is done well.4
In our case, for
instance, the communication model transferred
to the Czech settings may or may not function in
the same (expected) way as the ‘original’ Swedish
RISCOM. Or, eventually, the involved actors may
even start doubting to what extent the object in
their hands metamorphosed into something else,
into a completely different procedure deserving
its own name and identity.
Thus, locating a technology in a new context is
a complex and risky movement, involving subtle
transformations, by necessity not only of the travelling
object itself, but also of those who want
to make it travel and those who want to use it
in the new settings (Callon, 1986). The perspective
of translation allows us to look at the case of
RISCOM’s transfer with an understanding of its
complexities and ambivalences. We believe that
such an understanding is important for a critical,
and yet constructive analysis of contemporary
participative practice. Moreover, following the
intricate trajectories of the RISCOM story offers a
specific opportunity. With the help of the concept
of translation, we hope to avoid picking up
perhaps the easiest possible explanation of what
happened to RISCOM on the way to the Czech
Republic, namely that a well-established element
of democratic culture was simply confronted with
the underdeveloped (post-communist) political
culture in the target country.5
Although such
an explanation would not completely miss the
point, it would definitely miss the opportunity for
a broader lesson about stakeholder involvement
– about what happens when it becomes a piece
of political technology, eventually transferable
across borders and various settings.6
Spreading public involvement
models: Technologizing democracy
Stakeholder involvement and public participation
has become a yardstick for the quality and legitimacy
of governance across a number of policy
domains.7
Celebrated in general, participation
nonetheless attracts critical attention of contemporary
analysts (e.g., Irwin, 2006; Sundqvist, 2014;
Wynne, 2007). In our paper we join these critical
examinations by focusing on how the expansion
of forms for invited participation like RISCOM can
turn public involvement into a predominantly
technical issue.
This ‘technological’ aspect of participation is
of course nothing new. No matter that conflicts
intrinsically belong to politics (Hirschman, 1994)
and that a conflict often directly precedes, as a
triggering event, the introduction of professionally
orchestrated deliberative exercises, invited
public involvement is often framed as attempts
at neutralizing, avoiding or preventing controversies
(Kleinman et al., 2011). The organizers of these
events expect from them that they would serve as
lubricants with the help of which the entire decision-making
machinery runs smoother and less
contested. Public deliberation then gets emptied
from its political nature. Indeed, it gets depoliticized.
As noted by Andrew Barry (2001: 7), “the
deployment of technology is often seen as a way
of avoiding the noise and irrationality of political
conflict”– and this is true even for technologies of
participation.8
The idea of technologized public deliberation
events significantly relates to what Alexander
Bogner (2012) terms ‘lab participation’: “a form of
participation organized by professional participation
specialists, taking place under controlled
conditions and largely without reference to public
controversies, political participation demands,
or individual concerns” (Bogner, 2012: 510). Lab
participation is characterized by being often
organized in the context of a research project and
funded by a third party, and by being very welldocumented.
Since respective events neither have
been initiated or framed by public concerns nor
have any impact on decision-making and seldom
invite grassroots activists or NGOs, they are said to
“bear practically no relation to the world outside”
(Bogner, 2012: 511). According to Bogner, labKonopásek
et al.
8
participation has deeply paradoxical and not quite
convincing results. Bogner’s concept is particularly
relevant for us, since a ‘laboratory’ character
of RISCOM, as we will explain soon, was explicitly
formulated as one of its founding characteristics.
In other words, RISCOM was intended and specifically
designed as lab participation – and as such,
with real effects in the political realm. Our case
may therefore be taken as an opportunity to
elaborate Bogner’s arguments and specify them
further.
The laboratory nature of
the RISCOM model
The background ideas of RISCOM are inspired by
a simplified version of Jürgen Habermas’s theory
of communicative action in combination with elements
of organizational theory (Espejo, 2007). The
design is based on a set of principles9
and practical
recommendations10
for making communication
between stakeholders structured, transparent
and meaningful. Among other things, it establishes
a ‘Reference Group’ and a ‘Working Group’
within the Reference Group. All the participants,
i.e., the project team and members of the Reference
Group, have to sign agreements that oblige
them to comply with the RISCOM principles.
RISCOM is therefore rather similar to many
other recommendations for public dialogues
about controversial issues. It is unique, however,
by certain laboratory qualities, explicitly formulated
and often emphasized by its authors. Since
the beginning, it has been crucial for the RISCOM
design that the involved parties feel that it is safe
to enter the dialogue. To achieve such an effect,
RISCOM tries to create a specific deliberative
“neutral arena”(Andersson andWene, 2006), which
has the form of a contained environment, established
temporarily by the organizers to get the
participants dis-connected from real-life politics
and decisions. Within this laboratory space, participants
commit themselves to act as equals, united
by the respect toward ‘fair dialogue’. By means of
such dialogue participants expose themselves to
a challenging, and yet friendly mutual stretching.
With the help of stretching“the force of the better
argument” should become manifest and participants’
perspectives may eventually get enriched,
shifted or even shaken. After RISCOM finishes
its work, the stakeholders return to the realm of
political struggle subtly transformed by the experience
of a ‘politically neutral’ dialogue, in which
everything can be freely expressed, without the
constraints of specific political tasks or interests
(e.g. Andersson et al., 2011).
To sum up, the specific value of RISCOM is
based on the idea that it allows what ordinary
political engagement does not allow: unconstrained
exchange of arguments and views
between equals. We could therefore understand
RISCOM as a true and explicit lab-participation
experiment in Bogner’s (2012) terms. Temporary
detachment from real politics is, in fact, the main
and even acknowledged effective force here, at
least in theory.
The Swedish life of RISCOM
Nuclear waste management in Sweden11
has
enjoyed a reputation of being more open and
participatory than in many other countries (Dawson
and Darst, 2006). During the 1980s, however,
the search for a suitable place for nuclear waste
disposal was a technocratic endeavour insensitive
to citizens in the concerned municipalities (Elam
and Sundqvist, 2011). With the aim to gain more
knowledge of the Swedish bedrock SKB (Swedish
Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management co) made
studies that included drilling, without the consent
of the municipalities and with very insufficient
information given to the population. This resulted
in fierce local protest and the implementer SKB
had to stop the drillings before the investigations
were completed. It was impossible for the nuclear
waste company to continue with its investigations
and SKB changed its strategy to a ‘voluntary
approach’ (Elam et al., 2010): in 1992 the company
sent a letter to all municipalities and asked
if they were welcome to make site-investigations.
The letter made clear that the municipalities that
allowed the company to make feasibility studies
were neither obliged to agree to further investigations
nor to host a nuclear waste disposal facility.
Around the same time the government
authorities (the Swedish inspectorate for nuclear
activities, SKI, and the Swedish Radiation Protection
Agency, SSI) made their own interpretation
Science & Technology Studies 31(3)
9
of the situation. The local protests had created
a stalemate in the siting process, and it was
obvious that ensuring the quality of the bedrock
was not enough: acceptance was equally crucial.
This insight made the government authorities
turn to dialogue. With the aim to explore what a
siting process could look like that all actors could
perceive as legitimate, the Swedish inspectorate
for nuclear activities started the Dialogue project,
which was a direct predecessor to the RISCOM
model (SKI, 1993a; 1993b).
The Dialogue project took place over a few
years in the beginning of the 1990s. It involved
environmental organisations, municipalities and
government authorities and it was organized
as a simulated review process of an application
concerning the final disposal of nuclear waste,
seeking permission to construct a final disposal
system (SKI, 1993a). SKI funded the project, hoping
that it could lead to a common view around the
decision-making process and a credible review
process in the future.
The government authorities then continued to
refine a design for dialogue through two research
projects. RISCOM I (1996-1998) explored how
nuclear waste management could be more transparent
and engaged basically the same people
that were involved in organizing the Dialogue
project. RISCOM II was an EC funded research
project (2000-2003) and involved testing the
design for public dialogue on radioactive waste
management in other countries. A few years later
RISCOM guided public dialogue on another highly
controversial issue – the planning and building
of a new infrastructure for mobile telephone
communication (Soneryd, 2008; Lezaun and
Soneryd, 2007).
After this short excursion into a non-nuclear
issue, the RISCOM model found its way back to
nuclear waste again, when the Nuclear Waste
Council decided to set up a Transparency
programme during the late phases of the site
selection phase. The aim of these hearings was
to open up questions of relevance for long-term
safety that had been little discussed at the public
consultations organised by the nuclear waste
company SKB, for example the question of alternative
technical concepts.
Overall, RISCOM and related dialogue forms
have been relatively marginal to nuclear waste
management in Sweden (Elam et al., 2008; Elam
et al., 2010). Although the government authorities
SKI and SSI have approached stakeholder involvement
rather openly from 1990s and onwards, the
nuclear waste company SKB has not shown much
interest in RISCOM. The limits of the dialogue
can be also seen in the lack of direct impact
on real decision-making. Even if some of the
RISCOM activities – for example the Transparency
Programme organized by the Swedish Nuclear
Waste Council (2007-2010) – did raise some challenging
issues, they never seriously challenged the
pre-eminent position of SKB’s RD&D programme
(cf. Elam and Sundqvist, 2009).
RISCOM travelling to
the Czech Republic
The RISCOM model came to the Czech Republic in
the middle of a governmental moratorium on the
process of siting geological disposal. This moratorium
was declared in 2004, after previous negotiations
had failed.12
The state agency RAWRA
and the Nuclear Research Institute were invited
to become participants in an EC project ARGONA
(2006-2009), headed by the Swedish author of
RISCOM.13
One of the main aims of this project
was to “test and apply approaches to transparency
and participation by making explicit what it
would mean to use the RISCOM model and other
approaches within different cultural and organizational
settings” (see ARGONA, project summary,
undated).14
In order to achieve this, a ‘Reference
group’ was established in 2008. The group
brought together various stakeholders from state
organizations, municipalities, and NGOs.
The moratorium was concluded by an international
conference called “Towards geological
disposal without conflict” organized by RAWRA in
November 2009. This event represented a ‘turn’ in
the approach of RAWRA as the key implementing
state organization. After technocratic measures,
protests and moratorium, emphasis was now put
on negotiation and dialogue. Representatives of
RAWRA started to emphasise that without the
consent of the municipalities, they would not go
forward with site investigations. RISCOM and the
Konopásek et al.
10
ARGONA project were quite important topics at
the conference: several speakers appreciated their
role in the Czech Republic, and called for continuing
similar activities.
In about a year after the ARGONA project ended
the RISCOM Reference Group found a successor:
a national “Working Group for dialogue about
geological disposal” (WG) was established. It was
initiated by RAWRA as an advisory body of the
Ministry of Industry and Trade, seemingly outside
the experimental logic introduced by the original
RISCOM. But it was in many respects similar to
the former Reference Group and already during
its first meeting it was suggested that the WG
might become associated with a new EC-funded
project, IPPA, which was just being prepared
and for which the implementation of RISCOM in
several post-communist European countries was
a key task (Andersson et al., 2011; see also IPPA,
undated). Although some members of the group
did not necessarily have to be fully familiar with or
even aware of RISCOM (research interview, 2012),
WG’s key representatives clearly considered the
WG as a direct successor of the ARGONA project’s
Reference Group and as a part of RISCOM (and
IPPA) activities in the Czech Republic (research
interviews, 2011, 2012). Also according to the
official IPPA report, “The Working Group was
founded on the RISCOM principles” (Vojtěchová
and Steinerová, 2013: 2) and RISCOM became the
engine of the entire dialogue among stakeholders
in the Czech siting process (Vojtěchová and Steinerová,
2013: 22).15
The WG had therefore two
faces, unreflectively combined together.16
It was
to offer a RISCOM-like safe space – an environment
where the participants could “meet, peacefully,
without any extra goals... that could restrain or
push the participants” (research interview, 2011).
At the same time, however, members of the group
tried to develop the agenda of an advisory body
(commenting legislation and policy materials).
The WG met eleven times between 2010 and
2013. However, already in 2011 there seemed to
be growing frustration among members of the
WG. Mayors of concerned municipalities increasingly
felt that the entire dialogue had become
empty and just for show. The Ministry of Industry
and Trade was showing more and more neglect
toward what was happening inside the WG,
which was repeatedly noted with uneasiness in
minutes from WG’s meetings. While mayors often
expressed their dissatisfaction relatively openly,
similar attitudes were tacitly developing among
the Ministry people too, which became fully manifested
later on.
As a result, participants in the WG increasingly
started to act beyond the group’s framework,
which only contributed to mutual frustration.
Both mayors and NGO people complained that
even if an agreement on something is achieved
within the WG, it does not mean anything since it
is sooner or later rolled over by informal backstage
negotiations outside the WG. But they themselves
started communicating outside the WG too, like in
earlier times, for example by means of a separate
and confidential e-mail list. In this communication
some of the opposing mayors called the
body a “Potemkin’s group”. The WG simply began
eroding and overflowing on several sides. Nevertheless,
the integrity of the WG was still kept by
the repeated claim of RAWRA that it would not
proceed with the planned site investigations
against the will of concerned municipalities. This
was taken as a key guarantee that ‘fair dialogue’,
however ineffective and emptied, would continue.
At the same time, partners of the EC-funded
project talked in front of international audiences
and in the project reports about the success of
RISCOM in the Czech Republic (e.g., Andersson,
2012a).
The course of events got more dramatic in
mid-2012. At that time, as a result of bilateral
negotiations between RAWRA and individual
municipalities and with the support of approved
financial compensations, it seemed that local
governments at two candidate sites were going
to sign the contracts for site investigations. In
response to this, local opposition intensified
and new referendums eventually refused the
site investigations. This was a blow for the state
administration, which was apparently hoping that
the site investigations might finally become more
widely accepted and that further steps toward
the repository could be taken. At that moment, in
fact, the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the parent
institution of RAWRA, lost patience. Without prior
caution it changed the direction back toward an
authoritative, expert-driven decision-making. It
Science & Technology Studies 31(3)
11
openly dissociated itself from RAWRA’s strategy
focused on dialogue. It was decided to apply for
the site investigations even without the consent
of concerned municipalities, regardless of the key
promise RAWRA repeatedly gave within the WG.17
The trust of municipalities and NGOs was
deeply shaken by these events. They perceived
the situation as a return to the years before the
moratorium. The WG almost ceased working.
While RAWRA declared its interest in continuation
of the WG, at least formally, the others hesitatingly
agreed with further work on the condition
that the status of the WG would change into a
more action-oriented body. In addition, a background
material for the revision of the governmental
“Strategy for nuclear waste management”
asked for a deep transformation of the existing
WG too. It suggested, for instance, that those
who are not seriously interested in “constructive
negotiations” about the repository should be
excluded from the WG (NRI, 2013). In short, the
WG was most probably either going to be fully
transformed into something else or completely
abandoned.18
The IPPA project, presenting the
WG as the RISCOM Reference Group, was to end in
2013. One of the last IPPA reports (elaborated by
two Czech participants), in its Recommendation
section, does not refer to RISCOM at all anymore
(Vojtěchová and Steinerová, 2013). Experiments
with dialogue among equals evaporated. ‘Clarification
of arguments’ and ‘mutual understanding’,
so emphasised by RISCOM, but followed inconsistently
already before, were completely abandoned.
To sum up, it is clear that the trajectory that
started under the auspices of EC and with RISCOM
is over.19
This trajectory initially raised high
hopes, but ultimately made all the participants
of the process frustrated. RAWRA, as a key local
proponent of RISCOM-like dialogue, got almost
extirpated.20
Not only municipality representatives
and activists, but also Ministry people and
technical experts were increasingly dissatisfied
with the situation.21
Much of the frustration came
from what seemed to be an ineffective dialogue
leading to nowhere. And even the leader of the
IPPA project and Swedish author of RISCOM
suddenly started talking only with hesitation
about how RISCOM was implemented in the
Czech Republic (personal communication, 2013).
RISCOM as a widely applicable technology of
participation was left, in this particular case, alone
and questionable.
Translating the RISCOM model
How can we understand this RISCOM story? How
can we interpret the attempt at transferring the
model from one context to another as a complex
movement of translation? A simple explanation
of the failing dialogue described above might
refer to different political cultures, legal frameworks
and other context conditions. In Sweden,
for example, the municipalities involved in the siting
process have a relatively strong position compared
to the municipalities in the Czech Republic.
In the Czech Republic, moreover, there are many
municipalities on each preselected site, which
makes negotiations more difficult than in sparsely
populated areas of Sweden. In general, it is tempting
to assert that RISCOM failed because, being
based on the highly advanced Swedish (or Western
European) democracy, it simply did not fit well
into the specific Czech setting, with all the legacies
of communist rule and with the blindness of
Czech authorities and policy makers toward the
centrality of the public in the entire process (Dawson
and Darst, 2006). Let us put, however, such
explanations aside (which does not mean dismissing
them!) and try to understand the situation
even more subtly.
How the Czech siting process and RISCOM
became attractive to each other
When the Czech governmental moratorium
was coming to an end, it was clear that the siting
process had to be restarted on new grounds.
However, RAWRA did not quite know what to do.
Although it already had the experience with public
protests, which preceded the moratorium, it
was still basically an engineering organization, full
of technical specialists, without the experience
of engaging in a public debate. In this situation,
RISCOM came as a light at the end of a tunnel,
showing a possible way to proceed out of the
deadlocked situation. It provided an opportunity
to start anew on a relatively widely accepted
basis. In fact, RISCOM provided RAWRA with a new
identity: with the help of ARGONA and related
Konopásek et al.
12
efforts, RAWRA became the main guarantor of the
newly adopted approach and the dialogue with
municipalities became its main mission. At this
point in time, geological projects of RAWRA were
suspended (see RAWRA Annual Reports 2004-6
available at SURAO, undated), and “everyone [at
RAWRA] became engaged in communication with
the public” (research interview with a RAWRA
employee, 2011).
This transformation of RAWRA was necessarily
limited. The personnel remained basically the
same and it lacked sensitivity toward democratization
in technical innovation.22
RISCOM, as a
seemingly transferable ready-made procedure for
how to facilitate public dialogue, therefore looked
particularly attractive. By adopting the Swedish
technology for public dialogue, RAWRA was able
to replace the technocratic view that there are no
reasons to involve the concerned municipalities
with the conviction that achieving the consent of
local people is something basically technical and
manageable.
An important thing was that RISCOM came
to the Czech Republic as ‘the Swedish model’.
Since the early stages of the Czech siting process,
Sweden had often been referred to, implicitly and
explicitly, as the role model in deep geological
repository development.23
In official presentations
as well as in our interviews with Czech stakeholders
it was implied that RISCOM was widely
used in Sweden, and that it lead to successful
siting of the repository. This was, let us remind,
somewhat contradictory, first, to the original
framing and practice of RISCOM events as experimental,
and second, to the relatively marginal
position that RISCOM had in Swedish radioactive
waste management.
It was only perfect that RISCOM appeared
as something imported, and not invented or
designed by a direct participant in the deadlocked
Czech situation. In the eyes of the public,
RAWRA had been discredited by that time, and
the concerned people did not trust the implementers.
Anything ‘made by RAWRA’ would have
seemed suspicious. Further, RISCOM was not just
a product of a ‘third party’ (a well-tested product,
it was believed), but it was introduced to the
Czech situation together with a third party – i.e.,
international mediators, relatively detached from
the ongoing conflict. This helped to neutralize the
situation and get the involved parties to sit at one
table again.
Not only the implementers regarded this
Swedish import positively. Also the NGOs
expressed a cautious optimism. Activists were
unhappy with how the negotiations between
RAWRA and the municipalities had been carried
out, and they saw the introduction of RISCOM not
only as “one of the first attempts at transparency”,
but also as an opportunity to show “how untransparent
and wrong the way of doing the whole
thing here” had been (research interview, 2013).
Furthermore, the activists often refer to Sweden
as an example of a desirable voluntary approach;
the possibility of Swedish municipalities to decline
the project throughout the entire siting process
was appreciated and put in sharp contrast to the
Czech reality.24
RISCOM, as‘the Swedish approach’
was therefore welcomed also by other stake-
holders.
The Czech situation at the time of the moratorium
was very attractive for the Swedish RISCOM
implementer too – and for related reasons. The
attractiveness (or“interessement”, as Callon (1986)
would put it according to his sociology of translation)
was mutual. We mentioned above that
the inventors and proponents of RISCOM had the
ambition to systematically develop the model
into a universally applicable procedure already
in the early Swedish life of RISCOM. For them,
European research and policy projects provided
unique application opportunities. Post-communist
members of the EU constitute an especially
good market for such services. Public deliberation
in complex socio-technical controversies
represents a relatively new challenge for policy
makers in these countries. The state administration
is often unprepared for possible conflicts,
lacking qualified personnel and resources. And if
it eventually happens, like in our story, that public
initiatives get furious and irritated in response
to some careless technocratic decision-making,
policy makers become eager to participate in
public involvement projects. No wonder that such
countries provide a rewarding terrain for foreign
public deliberation professionals, a genuine laboratory
for testing new democratic approaches.
Science & Technology Studies 31(3)
13
Adopting the RISCOM principles and
making them empty: From stretching to
safe space
When talking with the Czech participants it was
clear that all of them had heard about RISCOM, or
at least about ‘the Swedish approach’; but hardly
anybody was able to explain what exactly RISCOM
was and how it was supposed to work. RISCOM
was therefore widely accepted in the new setting
mainly as a general appeal toward fair dialogue,
and not as a strict experimental or laboratory form
of deliberation.
It was easy for the Czech stakeholders to
adopt RISCOM in such a non-specific form,
since everybody had been frustrated from the
protracted non-communication and general
distrust.The prospect of sitting around a table and
just talking to each other, bounded by the rules
of mutual respect and under the supervision of
a relatively independent moderator, looked very
refreshing and attractive (research interviews,
2011, 2013). Thus, the RISCOM framework became
quickly accepted and shared by all the participants
without contestation – but only at the cost
of losing important specificities of the model.
But RISCOM was not only de-specified, it
was also emptied. As noted above, activities
within the newly established stakeholder groups
quickly turned into a dialogue for dialogue. In
the beginning of the ARGONA project the stated
aim was “to increase common knowledge of all
aspects related to siting geological disposal with
the goal to increase transparency and engage
public in the decision-making process”(Minutes of
the first Reference Group meeting, 13 May 2008,
available at SURAO (undated) – emphasis added).
This never really happened though. Whereas in
Sweden some RISCOM activities included discussions
about, for example, alternative technical
options (such as deep boreholes), the Czech
debate within the WG focused mainly on the
status of the group itself and, generally, on how
to strengthen the legal position of municipalities
in the siting process. Geological and engineering
aspects were left out of the debate, while the only
relevant issue became how to obtain agreement
with the concerned municipalities. Indeed,
“feelings of people” (NRI, 2013: 76), and not alternative
technical solutions, became the primary
target during this dialogue-phase of the siting
process.
The tendency toward emptying the dialogue
(by means of making it acceptable and workable
in the new setting) can be observed in a number
of ways. Let us take, for example, the following
shift. In official presentations, the authors of
RISCOM used to emphasize‘stretching’as a crucial
concept and activity within the RISCOM model
(Andersson, 2011, 2012b). Stretching is explained
to mean publicly “testing and challenging the
claims put forward by the proponent and the
relevant authorities” (Westerlind and Andersson,
2004: 1). However, in our data we have not found
any signs of stretching being actually applied
during the Czech RISCOM activities. This concept
is neither mentioned in any of the materials
produced by the WG, nor was any of the meetings
we have visited or heard of organized around
stretching practices. Stretching simply did not
seem to play any important role in the Czech part
of the project.25
While the importance of‘stretching’was diminishing
during the introduction of RISCOM in the
Czech Republic, another notion was gaining more
and more significance: the notion of ‘safe space’
(for dialogue).26
Safe space can be understood
as a precondition for stretching; then it would
be a space where participants do not feel threatened
by possible conflicts and pressures to reach
decisions so that stretching may become as challenging
as possible. However, without stretching,
safe space easily becomes a space where nothing
important happens – a space serving those who
actually do not want to engage in an effective,
change-producing dialogue. And this was far
away from what the Czech stakeholders (not only
municipalities and NGOs, but also the Ministry)
ultimately expected from the dialogue. As already
mentioned, the participants, as soon as their
pleasure from dialogue in general had gone away,
became frustrated by the fact that negotiations
within the WG had almost no real consequences
and the RISCOM-like space of the WG was simply
‘safe’mainly for RAWRA.
Therefore, we can see that a shift in emphasis
from ‘stretching’, which remained an opaque
expression for the Czech participants, to ‘safe
space’ contributed to a rather legitimate feeling
Konopásek et al.
14
that the dialogue did not have direct impact on
the situation. Let us remember, nonetheless,
what was discussed in one of the earlier sections:
the RISCOM style of dialogue was by definition
intended to be politically irrelevant, so to speak.
At least in terms of immediate consequences. As
a deliberately laboratory dialogue, temporarily
established outside of real-life politics, it is to be,
in the sense of practical politics, for ‘nothing’. So
where is the problem?
From a marginal, supplementary
procedure, to the main vehicle of political
deliberation
RISCOM’s laboratory character was obvious and
clearly articulated when RISCOM started its life
in Sweden. Already the Swedish Dialogue project
was explicitly organized as an experiment. It
was organized as a role-play in which participants
reviewed a fictitious application from the nuclear
waste industry to build a repository at a hypothetical
site. In the report the fictional character
is emphasized in phrasings such as: “the transfer
of the experiences from the project to a real
review process will require a continued dialogue
between the real actors” (SKI, 1993a: 12, emphasis
added).
RISCOM organized within the ARGONA project
in the Czech Republic resembled a ‘lab participation’
exercise in many respects (Bogner, 2012): it
was led by participation professionals; the participants
were made to sign formal agreements; it
was organized in the context of a research project
and funded by a third party; and it was well-documented
and subject of further research. The aim
of ARGONA was “to test and apply approaches
to transparency and participation in decisionmaking
process within the participating countries”
(Vojtěchová, 2009: 3). All this was in line with
previous RISCOM projects.
One important thing was different though,
largely unnoticed.27
Originally, in Sweden, RISCOM
was one of many forms of public dialogue or
participation. As such, it was rather complementary.
As Elam et al. (2008) put it, RISCOM had the
function of being repair work to SKB’s failures –
by opening up issues that threatened the legitimacy
of the nuclear waste programme if they
had continued being silenced and neglected
(Elam et al., 2008; see also Elam et al., 2010). Only
under such conditions, the specific laboratory
design of this procedure makes sense. Participation
in RISCOM provides a unique experience,
not available ‘in the wild’, namely that it pulls the
stakeholders out of the political turmoil, putting
them into artificial conditions of a fair and safe
Habermasian dialogue. Such dialogue may enrich
participants’ perspectives, clarify their arguments
and make them better prepared for practical
political negotiations after the project is over. In
order to work, therefore, the utopia of RISCOM
has to be established temporarily and as a specific
complement to real political negotiations. A
dialogic exercise of this kind cannot replace actual
negotiations and democratic decision-making. It
makes sense only as an accompaniment of it, an
extra with specific added value.28
In the Czech Republic, however, RISCOM
became associated with the main and sometimes
the only recognized form of actual public
dialogue, the Working Group – a true showcase
of the turn toward a more democratic approach.
Put differently, the distinction between the
inside and the outside of the RISCOM space,
emphasised by RISCOM inventors as the effective
force of its approach, was not maintained in the
Czech setting. The Czech RISCOM, contrary to
the situation in Sweden, had simply no outside.
It became integral to the only recognized deliberative
forum, the WG. RISCOM’s possible specific
import, as an experimental dialogue separated
from real-life politics, could not be fulfilled.
In conclusion: Democratic
participation in and out
of the laboratory
Was RISCOM translated successfully? Talking
about success and failure is always a delicate
thing: success or failure for whom and within what
time frame? Seen as a clearly demarcated model,
as a stable, strictly defined and tightly controlled
experimental object, RISCOM can never fail. Its
failure can always be explained by the fact that
the RISCOM model was not implemented properly
and as strictly as possible (and thus failure must be
ascribed to something else).29
The actor-network
logic of translation, however, imagines a different
Science & Technology Studies 31(3)
15
RISCOM. While travelling from case to case, from
one country to another, RISCOM was being transformed
by contributions of many hands, more or
less directly responsible for these movements.
Especially when located far away from the
Swedish reality, e.g., in meeting rooms in Prague,
RISCOM quite visibly ceased to be an exclusive
creation of its original authors, and was redefined
and reshaped by other actors too. Most of the
Czech participants did not actually intend to
import a specific and rather supplementary
element of a broad range of public involvement
techniques. Instead, some were interested in
RISCOM simply as an embodiment of the‘successfully’
accomplished process of siting in Sweden
(not quite correctly); others saw it (quite misleadingly)
as something associated with the spirit
of voluntary approach, within which Swedish
municipalities were treated with much more
respect and care than was the case in the Czech
Republic. Yet, it cannot be concluded that the
Czech stakeholders simply misunderstood the
essence of RISCOM, violated its key principles and,
in fact, implemented – badly – something else.
The very original Swedish authors of RISCOM were
pretty close to the entire translation process, an
important part of it, indeed. They actively pursued
their own interests while translating RISCOM
along this particular trajectory, using all the
respective transmutations for their own purposes.
These purposes had nothing to do with preserving
RISCOM, at all costs, in its original contours, but
rather with developing it into an internationally
relevant tool that could be repeatedly applied
and tested in different countries (see, e.g., the IPPA
project and its key reports).
How to understand the story of RISCOM’s
translation then? Initially, the ARGONA project
brought something really new and refreshing to
the Czech situation. RISCOM offered an attractive
political fiction, which seemed to bring a true and
practical relief from serious personal and social
tensions related to the deadlocked controversy
and years-long moratorium. But this could not
take long. Turned into a rather general appeal
to fair dialogue and transparency, RISCOM soon
became a rather empty deliberative exercise. This
introduction of RISCOM into the Czech environment,
under the direct supervision of its authors,
deprived this peculiar lab-style dialogue from the
only meaningful context it could have. Actors on
both sides of the controversy got increasingly
frustrated by what seemed just for show and
without palpable results and at the same time the
only platform for negotiations.
One should note that the Czech participants
did not fully understand and appreciate the subtle
potential impact of RISCOM, simply because
they really could not do so – and the reason was
not (just) that RISCOM was badly explained to
them by its author, but rather that RISCOM had
substantially changed: it had lost some of its
specific contours and properties while relatively
new emphases emerged. Originally, RISCOM
was an avowedly laboratory experiment with
quite limited, specific and subtle relevance in
real-life politics. During the transport through two
European projects to the postcommunist context
it was translated into a universal technology that
raised high expectations, which were necessarily
betrayed later on. It came to be understood by
the implementers as a major tool that would help
them to obtain the consent of the concerned
municipalities in a democratic way. It was, in fact,
a matter of compromise on both sides: RISCOM
was adopted in the Czech Republic only at the
cost of becoming something else than originally
intended in Sweden; RISCOM-related projects
succeeded only due to betraying the strict version
of RISCOM. This transformation of RISCOM was
not an unanticipated side-effect of the travel but
rather a key element of what made the transfer
possible – only this new RISCOM could be interesting
to the main Czech stakeholders, practically
manageable and, in a specific way, successful. But,
let us stress once more, it cannot be said that the
Czech users simply mistook RISCOM for something
else. Its key original author and designer did not
leave RISCOM to its own destiny. He not only
actively participated in the translation of the
Swedish design of RISCOM into the Czech one, but
was also dependent on the fact that these translations
were (as successful interventions) part of the
EC-funded implementation projects. It has been,
after all, by means of these projects that RISCOM
was actually becoming internationally applied
“as a platform for decision making in [various]
complex issues”(Karita Research, undated).
Konopásek et al.
16
With all respect toward the complexity of the
above described movement we may therefore
talk about a failed translation, a treason. As Callon
(1991: 145) explains:“A successful process of translation
[…] generates a shared space, equivalence
and commensurability. It aligns. But an unsuccessful
translation means that the players are no
longer able to communicate. Through a process
of alignment they reconfigure themselves in
separate spaces with no common measure”. And
this is exactly what happened in our case. Not only
the identity of RISCOM was loosened and challenged,
so that one may doubt whether the model
actually was not transformed into something else
throughout the translation. The initial alignment
of dialogue, so promising right after the end of
moratorium, dissolved too: ultimately, RAWRA
survived the collapse of dialogue only by another
radical redefinition of itself; the Ministry ‘forgot’
its constitutive relationship to the WG, while the
WG started eroding and renegotiating its status;
RISCOM does not seem to have future in the Czech
Republic – after all, the authors of RISCOM partly
dissociated themselves from recent developments
in this country. It is hard to tell, clearly and unambiguously,
who was responsible for the betrayal.
The translation definitely could have been done
more faithfully, in collaboration with all participating
actors, but probably – given their partial
perspectives and the complexity of the situation
– not much better.
Several elements in the story of RISCOM fit
surprisingly well together, quite seductively: the
EU’s urge to strengthen democratic elements in
socio-technical decision making; the ambition
of a public deliberation professional to develop
RISCOM into a universally applicable technology
that can be transferred from case to case and from
country to country; pressures to succeed in this
kind of lab-participation projects;30
the complicated
situation of the Czech government which
wanted to overcome the resistance of concerned
municipalities as quickly as possible and yet in a
democratic way; mayors from concerned municipalities
and activists who desperately needed
allies authoritative enough to push the Czech
decision-makers to take their position seriously
- these are just a few key circumstances of this
complex case that have led to this understandable
misunderstanding and the resulting state of ‘lost-
in-translation’.
More generally, we can see the story of RISCOM
and of implementation projects such as ARGONA
and IPPA as an example of a rather strong
tendency toward technologization and specialization
of public involvement. This tendency is
based on a recent relative success of pressures
toward democratization of science and technology
(Felt et al., 2007; Liberatore, 2001). While
it is widely recognized that decision-making in
complex socio-technical arenas should be open to
concerned lay publics, the long-established power
practices are extremely resilient and it is difficult
to replace them with a less technocratic political
culture. Many therefore feel tempted to spread
democratic governance by means of controlled
and almost scientific implementation of readymade
procedures, models or techniques, firmly in
grasp of experienced professionals.
This temptation seems especially strong in
cases where a kind of democratic or deliberative
deficit is obvious. Here come genuine ‘technologies
of participation’: models of participative
procedures, carefully orchestrated from above for
those who are invited; but also, even more importantly,
models that are capable of travelling – i.e.,
that can be used, under specialized supervision,
repeatedly and outside their original contexts.The
technological nature of these political tools and
their transferability go hand in hand, constituting
each other. That is why we believe that paradoxes
of invited participation, addressed by Bogner
(2012) and many others, are particularly palpable
in cases such as ours, when participative models
are on the move. These are extreme and explicit
examples of technologizing democracy that
make it particularly visible how delicate and often
ambiguous democratization of science and technology
is. We are not critical of RISCOM or other
participative procedures per se. Rather, we have
used the story of RISCOM travelling from Sweden
to the Czech Republic to shed some light on the
practice that, while building upon reasonable
assumptions, often encourages too high expectations
from, and unreflective handling of such
political technologies.
Bogner’s (2012) analysis of ‘lab participation’
is of particular interest here. In his conclusions,
Science & Technology Studies 31(3)
17
Bogner asserts that “[w]hile society at large is
becoming a laboratory in which knowledge is
produced,” in the form of “real-life experiments”,
“public participation is retreating from society
into the lab”, taking place in seclusion and on a
small scale (Bogner, 2012: 522). This is a relevant
insight, indicating deeply paradoxical developments
in contemporary societies. The story of
RISCOM reminds us, however, that the tension
between the artificial world of laboratory and realworld
conditions keeps its importance. RISCOM
probably does make sense as a laboratory experiment
with certain impact in the real-world politics,
at least in theory. Secluded laboratory setting still
allows effects that cannot be achieved in the wild,
out-there. Artificial conditions remain productive,
even for experiments in participation, provided
we understand (and preserve) the distinction
between them and the real life. It was this distinction
which was lost in translating RISCOM from
Sweden to the Czech Republic.
Konopásek et al.
18
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Notes
1 The acronym RISCOM stands for‘Risk Communication’(Andersson et al., 1998: ii).
2 International socio-technical challenges for implementing geological disposal, INSOTEC (2011-2014)
was supported within the EC 7th framework program (FP7-Fission-2010, 269906). We thank all the
participants for fruitful discussions that helped us to shape arguments presented in this paper. We also
thank to two anonymous reviewers for careful reading of our paper and useful feedback.
3 “To say something is to say it in other words. In other words, it is to translate… If a message is transported,
then it is transformed. We never get a message that is simply spread”(Latour, 1988: 181).
4 One might be surprised seeing such a normative expression in an ANT-inspired study. But let us not be
mistaken. ANT – with all its emphasis on symmetry and relationality – has never tried to suggest that it
does not really matter what scientists (and other people) do in their efforts to ‘discover truths’. Failure
and success (e.g., good or bad science) have never been abolished words in this intellectual tradition. In
his recent attempt to correct misunderstandings about his approach, Latour (2013: 159) insists: “there
is a huge difference between making something well and making it badly”.
5 Blaming RISCOM itself for being an inappropriate, badly devised model for public involvement, deemed
to fail from the very beginning, would only be a mirror argument, similarly flat.
6 Such as in the ironic suggestion of a pneumatic parliament by Sloterdijk and Haegen (2003), by means
of which the political culture of the West could easily and quickly spread all over the planet.
7 See Callon et al. (2009). For a recent discussion of the participatory turn in the field of radioactive waste
management, see Bergmans et al. (2014).
8 See also Chilvers (2008), Kothari (2005), Sundqvist and Elam (2010) or Soneryd (2015) for discussion of
how public involvement is becoming increasingly technical or even technocratic.
9 These principles were in 2005 described as being (VALDOC group, undated): a multi-perspective
starting point; stretching capacity; impartiality and fairness and publicity.
10 For instance, who hosts meetings, where they take place, who moderates sessions, who writes the final
report, and so on (Andersson and Wene, 2006).
11 Currently, there are ten active nuclear reactors in Sweden, which accounts for 40-50% of national electricity
production (Daoud and Elam, 2012).
12 In this respect, RISCOM was introduced to the Czech Republic in a situation similar to the one in Sweden
in the 1980s, i.e., characterized by a technocratic approach and local protests. See Carter (1988) for how
the Czechoslovak government was committed to the nuclear energy program even before 1989, under
socialist era.
13 In contrast to Sweden, in the Czech Republic the state assumes the responsibility for radioactive waste
management, and therefore the state (not a company) is the implementer of geological disposal. The
state organization called Radioactive Waste Repository Authority (RAWRA) was established in 1997, as
a governmental organisation subordinate to the Ministry of Industry and Trade. See SURAO (undated).
14 The web sites related to RISCOM, i.e. online presentations of the two EC projects ARGONA and IPPA,
as well as of Karita, a Swedish consulting company, which coordinated these projects, recently ceased
to be available on the Internet – probably due to death of the RISCOM’s main author and proponent.
Former and incomplete versions of these presentations, however, are available via Wayback Machine at
https://web.archive.org/.
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15 The IPPA project aimed to take the results and experiences of the ARGONA project further, by means
of implementing RISCOM in several East European countries, and establishing ‘safe spaces’ for public
discussion within their national programs (cf. Andersson et al., 2011; see also IPPA, undated). The WG
was explicitly associated with the IPPA project and it was taken by the IPPA participants as a RISCOM
Reference Group.
16 Following De Laet (2000) we could say that the object of RISCOM became somewhat destabilized by
the travel.
17 More specifically, the Ministry of Industry and Trade gave mandate to a state-owned mining company
GEAM to apply for the site investigations, leaving RAWRA completely out for the moment.
18 In the beginning of 2015, the WG was officially changed into a working group of the Governmental
Council for energy and raw materials strategy of the Czech Republic. However, already during 2016,
mayors and NGO representatives started leaving the group and today the WG is “no longer existing”
(quoted from the leaflet published by RAWRA in July 2017). But that is already another story, not
directly related to the RISCOM era.
19 Our strategy was modified, we have to be more effective, writes the Director of RAWRA in a letter from
June 3, 2013 to mayors of concerned municipalities.
20 During 2012-2013 RAWRA was repeatedly criticised in governmental documents. It even appeared on a
list of useless institutions proposed for cancellation by the Government (Desítky bizarních úřadů zmizí,
ušetří se tak miliardy [Dozens of bizarre offices disappear, saving billions], Hospodářské noviny/iHned,
15. 2. 2013. Available at http://archiv.ihned.cz/c1-59325600-desitky-bizarnich-uradu-zmizi-usetri-se-
tak-miliardy).
21 In its Annual Report for the year 2012, the State Office for Nuclear Safety writes: “The entire program
[of siting the repository, for which RAWRA is fully responsible] is quite inefficient in parts that we feel
competent to comment.” The Deputy Director of a company newly responsible for site investigations
(against the will of concerned municipalities) says at a public meeting in Věžná, January 9, 2013:
“RAWRA has the budget of some 170 or 200 million per year, 47 employees, and it has been operating
here for twenty years. And the results? Zero, zero. Nothing”.
22 Above all, RAWRA people were – pretty much in line with so called ‘deficit model’ (Wynne 2007) – too
often mistaking ‘informing the public’ for public dialogue and participation in decision making. This
is clear for instance in RAWRA’s annual reports 2008-2013, which describe the relationship between
RAWRA and the concerned public in terms of “communication”, “public relations”, “providing regular
information on our activities and objectives”, and so on.
23 Images from the Äspö laboratory or of the Swedish copper containers have been routinely used by
RAWRA, for instance on its website, to promote deep geological repository as a viable and socially
acceptable solution. During the public debates in the Czech Republic, one could often hear from the
proponents of geological repository that in Sweden, people actually wanted the repository, and the
communities were even competing for it.
24 In reality, as indicated earlier, the voluntary approach of SKB had no relation to dialogic exercises of
RISCOM.
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25 A telling detail:The English programme for the“IPPA End Users Conference”held in Prague in September
2013 mentions a slot entitled “Stretching of IPPA results by the end users”. This is a clear hint by the
foreign organizers to the idea that stretching should apply to all the participants of RISCOM - not only
to the implementer of the repository (Andersson, 2009: 44), but in this case also to the implementer of
RISCOM. The Czech version of the programme, however, puts the title of this very section quite differently
and misleadingly – it says “spreading the IPPA results by their end users” (in Czech: “Rozšiřování
výsledků projektu IPPA jejich koncovými uživateli”). This indicates that the Czech participants simply
did not understand (and did not care about) the original meaning of the word at all. For them, it was an
unintelligible marginal notion.
26 It is worth to note that this shift, although originally related to the RISCOM activities in the Czech
Republic, does not concern this specific context only. ‘Safe space’ gains importance more generally.
While browsing related web pages and IPPA project reports, RISCOM sometimes seems to have become
practically equivalent to the notion of safe space.
27 It was unnoticed not only by the Czech participants, but even (deliberately or not, hard to tell) by the
Swedish partners, the authors of RISCOM.
28 As clarified by the author of RISCOM himself, in his comments on an earlier output from the InSOTEC
project: “[we] always emphasized that the model and the RISCOM process is for the clarification of
stakeholder arguments for the sake of quality decision making and not for any purpose of consensus
building leading to acceptance.”
29 For an account of similar logic in explaining the success or failure in scientific experiments, see Collins
(1985).
30 It has been argued that policy-related projects, even when framed by academic or research perspectives,
tend to prefer success stories to failure stories to prove their relevance and meaningfulness
(Epstein, 1990). Chilvers (2008: 3003) reminds that participatory practices nowadays have become a
“vibrant and diverse industry” characteristic by rivalry between participatory experts engaged in
intensive marketing of their own policy tools.
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