Co-design in practice: bringing STS to post-Brexit agricultural policy.

Tsouvalis, J., Burns, C., Fajardo-Escoffié, J., Rose, D.C., Hartley, S. and Little, R. (2025) Co-design in practice: bringing STS to post-Brexit agricultural policy. Science, Technology and Human Values. ISSN 0162-2439

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Abstract

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.

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Brexit, Environmental Land Management, participation, policy co-design, system transformation
Divisions:	Agriculture and Environment (from 1.08.20)
Depositing User:	Mrs Susan Howe
Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2025 17:28
Last Modified:	24 Feb 2025 17:28
URI:	https://hau.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/18175

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