Governance of Emerging Technologies

The projected study focuses on the legal governance of emerging technologies from a constitutional and democratic point of view, particularly in the field of nanotechnology. The overall study researches three legal sample fields in Austria with the aim to analyze their different governance models, their respective democratic and constitutional deficits and to elaborate alternative governance models. The study consists of five parts and is organized around a scheme which was developed by the author. It constitutes a legal life-cycle analysis (product development and market introduction, usage as well as storage and disposal) of three important, technically and legally diverse fields within nanotechnology: i) Pharmaceuticals and medical devices shall serve as an example for governance in life sciences; ii) ubiquitous computing shall serve as an example for electronics and information technologies and iii) construction materials shall serve as an example for the industries involved. As a next step, four fundamental political interests connected with the governance of emerging technologies have been chosen: Risk governance; innovation; ethical and responsible development; balance of interest and equity within society. For each legal sample field, the author analyzes, through which institutions, instruments and procedures these four goals are realized. The governance models discovered by this study differ very much from each other and by analyzing these governance models different constitutional and democratic deficits become apparent. The disclosure of the governance models and their constitutional and democratic deficits are an important and indispensable step for elaborating alternative governance models. Existing governance models that lack of constitutional and democratic deficits will be used for developing alternative and optimized governance models. The results of the research will be evaluated within different research and legal systems. With regard to that the U.S. and German legal systems have been chosen as comparative study sites. The research enabled by the Erwin Schrödinger Post Doctoral Research Fellowship will be carried out at the STS program at Harvard`s John F. Kennedy School of Government and at the Institute of Political Science and Philosophy of Law at the University of Freiburg and is part of the author`s postdoctoral thesis, which is primarily written at the Institute of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Vienna University and is scheduled for completion in two years (December 2009).