Local steps in an international career: a Danish-style consensus conference in Austria

Abstract

The article gives an account of the first Austrian nationwide Danish-style consensus conference, held in the summer of 2003, treating policy issues related to genetic data. Consensus conferences are currently widely discussed for their promise to democratize fields of technological decision-making which are both crucial to the fate of modern society and inaccessible to public involvement. Instead of evaluating the “democratic efficiency” of the deliberative exercise, the essay will contextualize the event in local, as well as international developments comprising discursive, institutional and political elements. Rather than offering definitive claims about the normative significance of the rapidly diffusing deliberative technique, the discussion of a local experience with it will arrive at ambivalent conclusions.