From Ethical Review to Responsible Research and Innovation

5Governance Devices and RRI Put to the Test

5.1. Introduction

To complete our line of reflection, we shall now offer several examples of participative and deliberative devices. The aim of this chapter is to put responsible research and innovation (RRI) to the test. First of all, we shall analyze four different technoscientific projects (from Europe and France), in light of the concepts developed in the previous chapters. Second, we shall take care to recall the institutional richness at work when thinking about participative devices used in forums made up of experts and citizens – such as citizen conferences – and from these extract certain options for institutional design. These options also present themselves in RRI, in particular in response to the foundations of participation, open science, scientific education, governance and even ethics debated in more inclusive ways than in expert or bioethical committees alone. These participation procedures mainly involve debates in small groups, sometimes as small as around 15 people. We shall therefore end with two examples that are participative, hybrid, more ambitious and open to a much greater number of participants. Moreover, they are used in various regional or international arenas. This is the case of a project involving, in particular, several consecutive citizen conferences, Les Etats généraux de la bioéthique (the French General Assembly for Bioethics), and a pan-European debate called the Meeting of Minds project. All of ...