Nano: Governance Through Dialogue

Summary In the last years, dialogues have become increasingly important for politics and science as well as scientific communica tion. More and more, they serve as an important feature for the responsible handling of nanotechnology at the natio nal and European level. German speak ing states have therefore laid empha sis on dialogues as a tool for commu nication and information in their nano technology action plans. The projects described in the following were largely initiated by the respective authorities as implementation measures of the national nanotechnology action plans. With the exception of the informa tion meetings, these measures in gen eral took place between experts and de cision makers in camera . For example, with regard to Austria the experts’ group Nanotechnologie-Informations-Plattform is described. Very seldom have decision makers initi ated any public dialogues. One unique dialogue process with citizens is de scribed, namely publifocus events in Swit zerland, where the results had a direct influence on policy development. In ad dition to those dialogues which contrib uted to the national political process, oc casionally also smaller dialogue events took place in the context of research projects, for example the focus groups in Germany and Austria of the project NanoSafety for the EU Parliament.