RELU programme – requires natural and social scientists to work together, government policy

Drivers for research on biopesticides:

  • Chemical pesticide availability being reduced, growing resistance problem
  • Consumer resistance to use of pesticides – both food residues and spray effects (recent RCEP reports)

Biopesticides are pest control agents based on living organisms

Effective collaboration is possible between political science and the bio sciences – may be more difficult with physics

Political science – social biology link

Scientific side of research:

  • Looking at insect pathogenic fungi, evaluating their diversity at DNA level in context of habitat diversity
  • Looking at effects of using a biopesticide on indigenous fungal populations
  • We are using control of an aphid that attacks lettuce roots as a model system

Political science side of research is concerned with regulation of biopesticides. Is the regulatory system unhelpful to them? To what extent does this reflect the power of the agro-chemical companies?

The ecological fallacy and the individualistic fallacy

If you draw a conclusion about individuals based on data about groups = ecological fallacy

Historical example, correlation between illiteracy and % black population in US at state level

In fact many poor whites were illiterate

Individualistic fallacy when one draws a conclusion based on groups using data collected at the individual level

Extreme example would be use of anecdote

Group behaviour may be more than sum of individual behaviour – literature on crowds

At first sight political science may be more likely to commit the individualistic fallacy and biology the ecological

Interesting similarity:

  • Huge advances in molecular genetics, proliferation of ‘bottom up’ science
  • Tendency in political science for micro level questions to be privileged over broader, ‘big’ questions

Political scientists can use comparative method – we are looking at Denmark and US where regulatory methods differ

Biologists can generalise on the basis of observations on an individual organism or species without committing an individualistic fallacy

Use model systems and organisms, Arabidopis thalan a non-commercial member of the mustard family:

  • It is easy and inexpensive to grow
  • It produces many seeds
  • It responds to stress and disease in the same way as most crop plants
  • It has a small genome facilitating genetic analysis

Complete sequencing of the genes of a single, representative plant will yield knowledge about all higher plants

Human behaviour is more diverse – we cannot identify a model citizen and generalise from them, although the temptation is there (‘Worcester woman’)

Biological systems are in one sense less complex than politics and so easier to explain and predict at a fundamental level

Do not face an ‘Oedipus effect’ problem

Biology does face a scaling up problem. There is a tendency to overlook the broader consequences if solutions that work at a micro level – pot plant, field

Lesson for natural scientists is that technology is socially and politically mediated

Good solutions may not be put into effect because of politics

RETAILERS AND CONSUMERS DO NOT LIKE PESTICIDE RESIDUES ON FRUIT AND VEGETABLES – hostile media framing

ALSO SET OF ISSUES RELATING TO POSSIBLE BIODIVERSITY LOSS (FLORA AND FAUNA)

EVIDENCE DOES NOT SUGGEST ANY SIGNIFICANT IMPACTS ON HUMAN OR ANIMAL HEALTH FROM RESIDUES

IMPACT ON RURAL ECOSYSTEMS: NOT A DIRECT LINK, MORE FROM INTENSIVE PRODUCTION SYSTEMS

NEVERTHELESS, THERE IS A PERCEPTION PROBLEM

PEOPLE ARE PREPARED IN QUESTIONNAIRES TO PAY A LOT MORE FOR PESTICIDE FREE FOOD

STATED BEHAVIOUR MAY NOT CORRESPOND TO REVEALED BEHAVIOUR – RETAILERS RELY A LOT ON THE LATTER (what economists call ‘revealed preferences’)

KEY RESEARCH PROBLEM:

  • Consumers want fewer chemical pesticide residues on food
  • Residues may deter them from consuming fruit and vegetables – a health policy objective
  • Bio-pesticides, making use of naturally occurring substances, have been around for 20+ years
  • There are very few commercial products on the market
  • Yet they are environmentally friendly – host specific, safe to humans and wildlife, and produce little or no toxic residue

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE ON SOCIAL SCIENCE SIDE

PARALLEL PROJECT AT ROTHAMSTEAD/IMPERIAL AT WYE LED BY ECONOMISTS SUGGESTS THAT MARKET FAILURE IS KEY PROBLEM: MARKET TOO SMALL TO PROVIDE RETURNS

POLITICAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE EMPHASISES GOVERNMENT FAILURE: ENTRY COSTS TO MARKET RAISED BY ONEROUS REGISTRATION PROCESS DESIGNED FOR CHEMICAL PESTICIDES

THEORIES OF REGULATION

AND OF REGULATORY STATE

SYSTEMS OF REGULATION CAN HAVE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES:

  • Bureaucratic theory suggests that there is a tendency for mechanisms to displace goals, for process to become more important than outcomes
  • Policy instruments are considered in isolation from their wider effects
  • Possible budget maximisation effects (Niskanen/Hood)

PARADIGM OF REGULATORY STATE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE DEVELOPED BY MORAN

CORE FEATURES:

  • Displacement of ‘command’ state (‘Keynesian welfare’ state) by regulatory state. Seen in ideal typical terms as progressive – displacement of ‘club’ government
  • Involves more indirect forms of state control (which do not, however, necessarily reduce state power – Wolfe)
  • Replacement of self-regulation which was seen to fail both in terms of economic efficiency and public accountability

In our case the regulatory system could offer a barrier to the adoption of bio-pesticides

It was established to deal with chemical pesticides

Bio-pesticides are produced by SMEs who lack the resources of big firms

Data for tests is also more difficult to gather

HOOD ET AL. – ‘THE GOVERNMENT OF RISK’

Explore and concern nine regulatory regimes, two concerned with pesticides

Central premise: risk regulation regimes can vary even within the same ‘regulatory state’

Scientific expertise is essential in pesticides but highly contested. Multiple interest groups and substantial media attention.

High (increasing) level of organisational complexity in regime because a form of multi-level governance involving EU

PSD example of budget maximisation?

Research questions:

  • How onerous is regulatory system?
  • Does retail led governance provide an alternative?
  • Does more govt. intervention using taxation instruments on the Danish model provide an alternative?

Research task: identify and explore interactions of major actors

Techniques used:

  • Elite interviewing
  • Use of public and private documents
  • Observation?

We also are developing a critique of the role of private retail governance in this area – effective but democratic?

Problem of how consumer is represented – essentially by proxy by retailers

Retailers are commercial entities, albeit enjoying a high level of trust from citizens (store cards v. identity cards)

Have considerable oligopolistic economic power and growing political power. Flow of power down the food chain raises normative issues.

To summarise features of our research design:

  • A problem which needs social and natural science solutions
  • Theoretical frameworks
  • Solutions to methodological issues – or at least awareness of them
  • Selection of research techniques
  • Specification of policy solutions – regulatory design principles