The political impact of science: is tobacco control science- or policy-driven?

Lars Thorup Larsen

Science and Public Policy, 2008, vol. 35, issue 10, 757-769

Abstract: Tobacco control is often viewed as a clear example of how scientific knowledge can fundamentally change social norms. This article discusses the relationship between scientific knowledge and public policy on the basis of tobacco control and how its development is interpreted quite differently across disciplines. One literature tends to view the impact of science on politics as being almost automatic even in situations where this has clearly not happened. Another literature focuses on the internal obstacles of the political system to let science impact upon public policy. Unfortunately, this division lets each perspective reduce science and public policy to each other all too easily, which this article aims redeem through the use of a Foucauldian concept of the ‘will to knowledge’ as well as a discussion of how the case relates to the broader literature on science and public policy. Copyright , Beech Tree Publishing.

Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.3152/030234208X394697 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:35:y:2008:i:10:p:757-769

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().