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Co-Design in Practice: Bringing STS to Post-Brexit Agricultural Policy

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E-pub ahead of print
  • Judith Tsouvalis
  • Charlotte Burns
  • José Fajardo-Escoffié
  • David Christian Rose
  • Sue Hartley
  • Ruth Little
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<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2/02/2025
<mark>Journal</mark>Science, Technology, and Human Values
Number of pages29
Publication StatusE-pub ahead of print
Early online date2/02/25
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Following the Brexit referendum, the United Kingdom's Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra) began to "co-design" a new agri-environment policy for England with stakeholders: the environmental land management (ELM) scheme. ELM is the cornerstone of the most far-reaching agricultural policy reforms undertaken in the UK since the Second World War. This article provides the first empirically grounded assessment of the ELM co-design process. It uses a framework developed by science and technology studies (STS) scholars to help remake participation along constructivist lines to show where, how and why the co-design process was constrained by sociotechnical systems and constitutional relations between citizens, science and the state. Our analysis shows that while STS-informed interventions can help make government-orchestrated participation more experimental, reflexive, anticipatory and responsible, remaking it along constructivist lines requires a new constitutional moment in which major changes are made to the arrangement of epistemic and political authority. With the popularity of co-design rising with governments across the world, our article is relevant to a broad international readership wanting to know more about how co-design fares in the context of large-scale systemic transformations.