Complex Problem Solving in the
Co-operation between Science and Politics?

The workings of the Enquête Commissions of the German Bundestag
in the fields of technological development and environmental policy

by Andreas Vierecke

Abstract

According to his rules of order the German Bundestag employs so called Enquête Commissions in cases, the members of parliament feel the need of scientific advice to bridge the gap between the knowledge necessary for important parliamentary decisions and the prevailing lack of it.

Given the enormous complexity of the challenges we are confronted with in the technologized world of our days the necessity of such Commissions is obvious: Being the heart of constitutional state and dealing with highly complex problems, the parliament is responsible to consider all possible ressources of knowledge. This applies, without doubt, to the ecological question in particular, the question as to whether and how we can survive on this planet.

Following some basic statements pertaining to the theory of the state on the explosive nature of parliamentary competence, a report is given on some experiences with the advisory instrument of the Enquête Commission as it is employed by the German Bundestag, taking the commissions “Protection of the earth’s atmosphere” and “Protection of man and environment” for example[1]. Finally the very basic question is asked, as to what in future must be changed from the point of view of the theory of the state and in terms of the theory of politics when it comes to the political processes of decision-making – and why.

These questions are taken as guidelines:

What are the achievements of these commissions until today? Which external and internal problems do exist? For what reasons who is regarded as an expert and asked for participation in an Enquête Commission? How does the parliament deal with the results and advices? What is to be expected from such commissions and other forms of scientific advice for societal problem solving in future?

And an other question follows – what consequences our political system will face, if parliament is not able to consider and transpose scientific advice in order to solve the ecological question which is a question of dealing with complexity on the highest level?

1. The ecological question and the state

In terms of their far-reaching implications, political decisions relating to technological development and the environment cannot be overestimated. Our survival, our very existence, depends on them. Our survival is already in the mid-term not just endangered in a metaphorical sense – similar to the often-cited, so-called “survival” as a competitor on the international business market – no, our physical survival, our naked life, is in danger.

In the theory of the state its claim to what we call its monopoly of power and the general binding effect of law is used to be justified in terms of a (fictitious) mutual, contractual obligation. The central motive of all models of states based on a social contract is the warding-off of danger, the safeguarding of life.

The duties which arise as a result of this are of vital significance for the state because their fulfilment or non-fulfilment decides on the legitimacy and the legality of its claim to jurisdiction. The citizen must be viewed as being released from his obligation to obey as soon as the state no longer complies with its basic function of safeguarding life and peace. Even in the philosophy of state propagated by Thomas Hobbes “the natural right of self-preservation” remains unaffected by any form of contractual submission: ‘In establishing the sovereign power it cannot be expected of anyone that he give up the right to preserve his own body, for the security of which the whole system of sovereignty was after all set up.’ (Hobbes, Leviathan) The social contract therefore pivots on the contractual fixing of the right to security, to the realization of which the state has committed itself. The state’s duty to afford protection and the corresponding right of the individual to receive protection constitute the legal basis of the parliamentary resolution. The implementation of this right is not just the task of the judicative (and the executive) powers, it is, together with the duty of representation, one of the absolutely elementary tasks of the legislature.

The weighing up of risks and chances – where technological development policy is for example concerned – must not be assigned to the realm of hopeful speculation! As soon as it has claimed for itself the monopoly of power and thus created the precondition for its very functioning, the state has always irrevocably recognized its duty of protecting its citizens from mutual and external perils under its regency. Once any state does not fulfil this obligation or no longer fulfils it, it has forfeited its claim to the allegiance of its citizens.

The state can only meet up to its responsibility when it disposes over an adequate degree of sovereignty. However the state itself is not therefore in any way less responsible for the actual provision of this sovereignty–as the sine qua non of its power to act and shape affairs. The supporting authority of the responsibility of the state is, in particular, the parliament, the central place of sovereignty and the constitutional centre of the state. The parliament is the place where the mediation and organization, the representation of the sovereign will, must be effected. A competent and capable parliament is, on the other hand, however, unthinkable without consultation with and advice from external experts.

2. Political advice by scientific experts within the framework of the Enquête Commission

Back in the Sixties the German Bundestag created an instrument which was intended to help bridge the gap between the knowledge necessary for important parliamentary decisions and the prevailing lack of it. According to Paragraph 56, subparagraph 1 of its rules of procedure, the German Bundestag employs the so-called Enquête Commissions for “the preparation of decisions on far-reaching complex matters of major significance”. For the last 15 years every German Bundestag has appointed at least one such Enquête Commission on questions relating to technological policy and/or environmental policy. Despite the fact that the “Büro für Technikfolgenabschätzung” (TAB, “Bureau for Technology Assessment”) has been institutionalised by the Bundestag, a scientific section responsible for assessing the possible effects of technological development, the instrument of the Enquête Commission still remains indispensable for internal parliamentary consultation in connection with technological development and environmental policy. One of its main features, in contrast to the TAB, is its particular proximity to parliament as reflected in the fact that, in addition to external experts, the parliamentarians themselves are involved in the entire advisory process. Each Enquête Commission consists of approximately one half members of parliament and one half officially appointed experts. The purpose of this is, on the one hand, to integrate the external expertise into parliamentary practice from the very beginning of deliberations, and, on the other hand, to enable the politicians, as acknowledged experts for all things political, to bring to bear the public interest in the subject under discussion and to couple the experts’ debate to this.

Subjects dealt with to date by such Commissions which had to do with technological development or environmental policy were: Future Atomic Energy Policy (twice); New Information and Communication Technologies; Chances and Risks of Genetic Engineering; twice The Protection of the Earth’s Atmosphere (in the 11th and 12th legislative periods) and, likewise twice (in the 12th and present 13th legislative period) The Protection of Man and the Environment–Assessment Criteria and Perspectives for Ecologically Friendly Materials Cycles in the Industrialized Society.

3. Climate and the environment as the subject of Enquête Commissions

3.1 Nuclear energy as a way out of the climate crisis?

The Enquête Commission appointed by the 11th German Bundestag (Provisions for the Protection of the Earth’s Atmosphere) rightly enjoys an excellent reputation – also internationally – for its scientific assessment of the anthropogenic aspects of changes in climate. The reputation of the German Bundestag was doubtless also enhanced as a result. However, if one takes a closer look at the workings of such commissions, then serious structural weaknesses of the instrument of the Enquête Commission and the political culture of our parliamentary system on which it is based become evident.

Not exactly commendable: the renaissance of the atomic energy controversy. Only a few years after Tschernobyl the demand for increasing the output of atomic energy is once again presentable – on grounds of the aggravation of the critical ecological situation of all things.

And, indeed, the figures put forward by the advocates of atomic energy in the Commission may, at first sight, convince some. Closing the supply gap which would come about in the event of a departure from atomic energy by employing conventional fuels, above all coal, would mean that “the present overall global emission figures of approximately 20 thousand million tons of carbon dioxide a year would be increased by about 2 thousand million tons (that is approximately 10%) and emission from German sources amounting to circa 750 million tons of carbon dioxide a year would go up by around 133 million tons, that is approximately 10 percent”. That such an increase is clearly not at all acceptable is irrefutable. But can one use these figures to actually justify assuming responsibility for the use of atomic energy? Is not the already existing consumption of energy simply irresponsible? In addition to the emission problems in the case of conventional power plants, it is, after all, also an irrebuttable fact that the whole question of disposal in connection with nuclear power technology is as yet still unsolved. Not to mention the ultimate unpredictability of all the elements of risk involved. Can one therefore really, as some of the members of the commission did, vote “out of concern for our future” for “the systematic development of atomic energy”? The argumentative airiness exemplified here is also evident in one of the governing principles on disposal put forward by the pro-atomic energy voters in connection with the continued use of atomic energy: “The disposal of nuclear waste must be guaranteed in connection with the continued employment of nuclear energy. We therefore call for the testing and the implementation of safe disposal through direct burial.”

3.2 Parliamentary self-censorship

The Commission did not just have as its concern atomic energy alone and there were also other opinions expressed on this subject. In particular as regards the causes and the risk potential of anthropogenic changes in climate, the Commission unquestionably did valuable work. It had after all a decisive influence on the German draft resolutions for the UN Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the work of which ended with the initialling of the World Climate Convention. In its second report it also demonstrated what responsibility the highly developed industrial nations in general and Germany in particular bore for the global alterations in climate.

The obvious world economic conclusions so unanimously drawn by the Commission were not, however, to so easily pass the mechanisms of parliamentary self-censorship: after an aide of the FDP parliamentary party had examined the section of the report dealing with the world economy, which had, in the main, been drawn up by the SPD Commissioner Michael Müller, he informed his boss, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, just what anti-business demands running contrary to liberal convictions people were here about to pledge themselves to. Lambsdorff, very annoyed about this, demanded in talks between the coalition partners that the relevant passages be watered down. And this was precisely what happened following on a heated discussion within the Commission in the course of which its chairman Bernd Schmidbauer (CDU) is even said to have thrown a pencil-case at Lambsdorff.

There are, however, also other means of ensuring that there are no nasty surprises when one reads the reports of the Commission: the careful selection of the experts involved. Thus, for example, Alfred-Herwig Fischer, a Daimler-Benz member of staff, was appointed to the second climate commission and commissioned with preparing the transport report.

3.3 Distress in the sea of data

It was, however, not just such slip-ups which cast a shadow on the work of the Commissions. Increasingly frequently the impression arose that they were no longer in control of the wealth of data, which they allowed to pile up in countless surveys. The vast quantities of printed paper which, for example, the second Climate Enquête Commission left in its wake, do not help to quell the suspicion that the thinking of the Commission was not being given wings by all the expert opinion which was sought, but instead paralysed. Just how is the individual Member of Parliament expected to cope with this flood of reading material?

The Enquête Commission Protection of Man and the Environment appointed by the 12th Bundestag was, on the other hand, exemplary in this respect. It only had half a legislative term at its disposal. But, supposedly for this very reason, it presented a noteworthy report, one which, also in terms of its scope – just over 300 pages as a Bundestag printed publication – deserves respect. By comparison: the third report of the first Climate Commission alone amounted to 1,690 pages in the retail edition, with the first two being each over 500 pages long. The second Climate Commission produced as its final report a work of over 1,500 pages, after having, likewise, in the three preceding reports of between 200 and 700 pages in length, provided plenty of material for the parliamentarians to read.

In what might be by comparison termed its brief final report the Commission Protection of Man and the Environment managed to analyse and assess in detail a whole series of complex matters. It had amongst other things more to offer on the problem of mobility than the “transport report” of the Climate Commission. And it also at least repeatedly took up to the basic question of the future viability of the industrial society and was able to trace the first contours of the guiding principles behind a sustainable materials policy. A deeper analysis of the socio-political components of this problem could not admittedly be expected at this stage and it is also rather unlikely in the coming future, not least because of the one-sided professional composition of the Commissions.

3.4 Dominance of natural scientists and engineers

In the Commission Protection of Man and the Environment of the 12th electoral period almost all the members – including the parliamentarians, all of them new and all of them new to the Bundestag into the bargain – were engineers or natural scientists. This tendency is one which has been continued in the present legislative period. Precisely this group, however, is characterized by the very fact that it believes the engineer’s method capable of finding the solution of all problems. Basic social and philosophical questions – relating for example to how we want to live or what we can (or must?) demand of future generations – do not have the practical character required for this kind of problem-solving approach and so are let drop. Or they are dealt with at a much lower intellectual level than the natural scientific issues. Basically the prevailing view is that the problems under discussion are essentially presumably somehow manageable from the technological point of view.

3.5 The Earth as a management project

The book cover of the report of the first Climate-Enquête, now in the third edition, with the title “Protection of the Earth’s Atmosphere” shows a section of the Earth as photographed from space. On the cover of the first report of the second Climate-Enquête the two hemispheres of the Earth in combination with a linear network signalize the model of technocratic ecology: the controlled planning of the “global development”.

For years now prominent representatives of ecological politics have been calling for a re-orientation of our perception of nature, away from the idea of a separate environment to the idea of a whole, from “Umwelt” to “Mitwelt”. The Managing-Planet-Earth-Movement, as Wolfgang Sachs called it, is, on the other hand, more concerned with the rationalization of intervention and therefore with “the transformation of the rule of man over nature into an epoch of enlightenment after an epoch of blindness ... Far from reducing the consumption of nature on the part of industrial society, it seeks salvation in the optimal steering of this recasting of nature” (Sachs 1993, p. 75).

3.6 Research, research, research – what for and what then?

For the sake of which social goals can which developments be looked upon as desirable or undesirable, which risks as tolerable, which as unacceptable? These are the perhaps decisive questions that Enquête Commissions would have to ask themselves when they are entrusted with looking into technological and environmental issues. And the function of the parliament would then be to use the reports presented by the Enquête Commissions for a really open reflection on these questions, a responsibility which cannot, in the final analysis, be delegated to any other body.

In actual fact, however, the employment of an Enquête Commission in the past has rarely been more than an act of symbolic politics. It is after all expected of the Enquête Commissions – the mere establishment of which straightaway serves as a justification for safely removing controversial topics from the daily political agenda–that they demonstrate ways and means of simply somehow proceeding on in the same fashion as has been the case to date. The fact that there are no such ways is not something that one can blame the Commissions for. In view of the heaps of knowledge which have been piled up in spite of this, “busy doing nothing (little)” is at best the way to describe the achievement of parliament in respect of environmental policy up to now. “We know almost everything, but we do almost nothing” was how Member of Parliament Liesel Hartenstein put it in the Bundestag in February 1995 during the reading of the final report of the Enquête Commission on the “Protection of the Earth’s Atmosphere”.

This says it all. Except perhaps that there are some signs that sometime in the next few years an Enquête Commission will have to busy itself with the following problem as it was summed up in three points by the experienced Enquête Commissioner Meyer-Abich a few years ago:

“(1) Things cannot go on like this.

(2) What should be done instead is long since known to all.

(3) Yet, in spite of this, nothing happens.” (Mayer-Abich 1988, p. 147)

The report of this Commission will be extensive, its adoption and its effect will be very limited. The reason for this will have to be looked into closely – presumably by an Enquête Commission.

4. On the way to “the total society”?

A quarter of a century ago in a study on the state in the industrial society, in which he viewed the Federal Republic of Germany as a paradigmatic example, Ernst Forsthoff came to the conclusion that the Federal Republic of Germany was no longer “a state in the customary sense of the word”. “The explicitly universal interest”, he felt, “had lost its representation” and so the “basis for political rule (...) had gone lost” (Forsthoff 1971, p. 158). The main emphasis of the overall political order had shifted, he believed, to what he called “the industrial society”, whereby the state had lost its evidence and the explicitly universal aspect no longer had any backing authority: “The protection of the interests of all extends as far as the respective majority consensus which comes about in the groupings of the organized interests” (Forsthoff 1971, p. 159).

The outcome of the parliamentary reception and adoption of the work of the Enquête Commissions support the above findings. And in view of the fact that we are here talking about the central defining factor in the state, the parliament, this is a matter of wide implications.

Even at Commission-level the reception of the research findings presented in the hearings is sometimes stamped by a grotesque lack of perception. And this reveals a picture of a state that sees itself obliged to make use of such findings in the interests of the organized needs in the industrial society. State institutions see themselves increasingly frequently as the managers of the social consensus. The central task of the state, that of being a medium of representation for the universal interest, is being completely lost sight of in the process.

Inasmuch as this attitude passes itself off as “realism”, another observation by Forsthoff can with good reason be applied to the situation as it is today. In Forsthoff’s work ideologies are described as the beneficiaries of the technological process “for they come up against a state which is unable to confront them with intellectual arguments and which therefore does not know how to make convincing use of the means of power over which it after all disposes and which has as a result made the hoisting of the white flag a ritual” (Forsthoff 1971, p. 163).

This diagnosis will have to be reassessed from the present-day point of view in as far as many protagonists who are duty-bound to the state have long since becomes turncoats and have espoused organized social interests in the process of “technical realization” (Forsthoff) with the very authority of the state, made them the cause of the state. On the one hand, reports and recommendations of commissions are of course filtered in advance and, on the other hand, and this is ultimately even more alarming, the latest trends in legislation contradict in such striking fashion the results of the Enquête consultations or the conclusions which arise out of the their reports on facts and circumstances that the very function of Enquête Commissions – to compile the knowledge necessary for taking key decisions in a manner which reflects independence of any partial interests and a proximity to parliament – must be basically called in doubt. Thus, for example, the extensive reports of the first Climate Commission together with the ten-volume series of books it published on energy and climate problems aroused the impression that the German parliament had recognized the scope of the danger and was firmly determined to take practical political measures in this respect. However, if one leaves aside certain clearly defined areas of politics and looks for relevant legislative application or pioneering steps and new perspectives in this direction, one will soon ascertain with some amazement that there are obviously considerable deficits in this connection – even in those fields where the intellectual transfer required for deducing the legislative reaction from the factual position is not very demanding.

The very perception of and, above all, the courage to demand what common sense calls for, are regularly sacrificed to an (anticipatory) “obedience” to what is a potential “total society” (Horkheimer/Adorno 1947, passim).

When it comes to deciding on the maximum range of fluctuation from the underlying assumptions on the central parameters in discussions on technological development and environmental policy – parameters which cannot be called in doubt – what is, in practice, decisive is the periphery drawn by the prevailing scientific and economic models themselves – i.e. by their protagonists in the political sphere. Within the prevailing economic target model – in connection with which scientific facts are also if necessary subordinately perceived – whose validity is admittedly basically in question but which nonetheless prevails, instruments of advisory service for politicians can only have effect within this framework. They are not capable of calling the framework itself in question, never mind shattering it. Yet for advisory bodies to work effectively in the political world – in the sense of the representation of universal welfare – precisely this would be necessary. As a condition for this the centre of political decision-making would have to be truly shifted to the “place of sovereignty” which the parliament is supposed to be because only then could parliament open up and engage in a really free and open discussion and permit such discussion even at the fringes, initiate them and utilize them in the decision-making process. All this would, however, presuppose the existence of a sufficiently strong will to strengthen the parliamentary auctoritas over and against the industrial society. Consolidating such auctoritas, that is something that expert scientific advisory bodies in politics, for which the institution of the Enquête Commission fundamentally affords a suitable framework, could doubtless contribute decisively.

Only if parliament gains the strength to assert itself as the place where politics are made and not just put through, only then will the question of the efficiency of individual (advisory) instruments be given a real meaning. It will, therefore, first be necessary to make parliament a real and central place of politics and to make parliamentarians a genuine community for debate and discussion.

Up to now, however, it seems as if Ernst Forsthoff was right when he stated that it was “certain that the state was not in a position to show the technical process its limits, something which humanity (understood in a literal, comprehensive, unsentimental sense) demands of us. For setting these limits would actually mean exercising ruling functions in relation to the industrial society”. And for this purpose, Forsthoff continues, what is required is “an independent degree of power which any state which owes its stability and its ability to function to the industrial society must be lacking in” (Forsthoff 1971, p. 168).

References

Forsthoff, Ernst (1971): Der Staat der Industriegesellschaft: dargestellt am Beispiel der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. München: Beck.

Hobbes, Thomas (1968): Leviathan. Edited by C. B. Macpherson. London: Pelican Books.

Horkheimer, Max / Theodor W. Adorno (1947): Dialektik der Aufklärung. Amsterdam: Querido.

Mayer-Tasch, Peter Cornelius (1965): Thomas Hobbes und das Widerstandsrecht. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).

Meyer-Abich Klaus Michael (1988): Von der Umwelt zur Mitwelt. Unterwegs zu einem neuen Selbstverständnis des Menschen im Ganzen der Natur. In: Scheidewege. Jahresschrift für skeptisches Denken, S.128-148.

Sachs, Wolfgang (1993): Die lebende Erde: ein technogener Mythos mit Folgen für Wissenschaft und Technik, in Hoffmann, Ute (ed.), Wunschträume – Technikträume. Veröffentlichungsreihe des Wissenschaftszentrums Berin für Sozialforschung, discussion paper FS II 93-101, S. 61-77.

Vierecke, Andreas (1995a): Die Beratung der Technologie- und Umweltpolitik durch Enquête-Kommissionen beim Deutschen Bundestag, Ziele – Praxis – Perspektiven. München: tuduv.

Vierecke, Andreas (1995b): Vermessene Zukunft – vertane Zeit. In: Altner, Günter / Mettler-Meibom, Barbara / Simonis, Udo E. / Weizsäcker, Ernst U. (eds.), Jahrbuch Ökologie 1996, München: Beck.

© Complex Problem Solving in the Co-operation Between Science and Politics? The workings of the Enquête Commissions of the German Bundestag in the fields of technological development and environmental politics. - in: Elmar A. Stuhler, Dorien J. DeTombe (Eds): Complex Problem Solving: Cognitive Psychological Aspects and Environment Policy Applications. München; Mering: Hampp 1999 (Research on cases and theories; Vol. 5), p. 110-118