Final published version
Licence: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Co-Design in Practice
T2 - Bringing STS to Post-Brexit Agricultural Policy
AU - Tsouvalis, Judith
AU - Burns, Charlotte
AU - Fajardo-Escoffié, José
AU - Rose, David Christian
AU - Hartley, Sue
AU - Little, Ruth
PY - 2025/2/2
Y1 - 2025/2/2
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
U2 - 10.1177/01622439241311973
DO - 10.1177/01622439241311973
M3 - Journal article
VL - 50
SP - 553
EP - 581
JO - Science, Technology, and Human Values
JF - Science, Technology, and Human Values
SN - 0162-2439
IS - 3
ER -