Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Impact of Work Practices on the Implementation of Science Policy

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

International agreements concerning science policy are bureaucratic infrastructures that rely on international professional staff who provide technical and organizational assistance to the national delegations. As the parties to these agreements demand flexibility in how policies are to be carried out in their countries, the international staff need to maintain a flexible mindset, being open to different approaches for implementing international agreements while at the same time providing impartial and politically neutral service to the delegations. This research investigates the ways that international civil servants establish and exercise this flexible mindset as they mediate between science, science policy, and international politics. This project is focused on the professional staff of the United Nations Secretariat charged with supporting operation of the UNFCCC. The research will employ ethnographic methods to uncover how the formal and informal work practices of UNFCCC staff impact the institutional environment in which policy is formed. In addition to its implications for the study of science policy, the results of this project will advance understanding of the anthropology of policy, the anthropology of bureaucratic cultures, and the role of international institutions in global governance. The doctoral student on this project, will intern and rotate among three UNFCCC staff units over a 12-month period. UNFCCC staff facilitate information flow from scientific bodies to diplomats, write technical reports on science and policy, meet with parties to the climate agreement, coordinate communication, oversee audit procedures, and provide procedural assistance to delegates during negotiation meetings, among other duties. Qualitative data will be collected via participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and review of internal documents, to understand and explain the ways that the UNFCCC staff work, their understanding of that work, and the ways in which their work practices affect the larger United Nations policy making and implementation processes. Qualitative analysis techniques including text analysis, descriptive and interpretational discourse analysis, and context analysis will be applied to the data to uncover meaningful concepts, categories, and relationships. The results of the study will provide conceptual frameworks and data with which to understand the micro-dynamics of international policy making on mitigation and sustainable development efforts. By illuminating the processes by which international agreements are formed and implemented, the findings will be of value to political actors, policy makers and their staffs, and policy researchers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.