PolitologInnen sind in der gegenwärtigen kontroversen Debatte zur Biomedizinpolitik sowohl mit wissenschaftlichen Analysen als auch als ExpertInnen in einschlägigen Beratungsgremien erstaunlich abwesend. Dabei könnte die Politikwissenschaft mit ihren unterschiedlichen Teildisziplinen wichtige Beiträge zur Erforschung von Biomedizinpolitik leisten. Für das Fehlen kann ein Bündel von Faktoren identifiziert werden, von der Spezifik des Politikfeldes über methodologische und theoretische Orientierungen der Politikwissenschaft bis hin zu wissenschaftspolitischen Motiven. Ein zentraler Grund ist die Überschneidung dreier Themen- und Problemfelder, die im politikwissenschaftlichen Mainstream tendenziell als außerpolitisch gelten und/ oder in unzureichender Weise theoretisch erfasst sind: Körper, Ethik und Naturwissenschaften/ Technologie. Feministische Politikwissenschaft ist in verschiedener Hinsicht für die Analyse von Biomedizinpolitik besser gerüstet, da sie mit der Analyse von Körperpolitik und mit normativen Fragen Erfahrungen hat.' (Autorenreferat)

This special issue advances feminist inquiry and theorizing of the politics of knowledge within our current, highly paradoxical societal landscape. It draws together feminist analyses of “expertise” with feminist epistemologies of situated knowledge, Black feminist thought, theory of affect and emotions, sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies (STS). As such, it enables a timely interdisciplinary engagement with current paradigmatic shifts in knowledge production and claims to expertise as well as an examination of the gendered and racialized epistemic authority.

For several decades, the study of “knowledge,” changing modes of knowledge production, and the dynamics shaping the recognition of expertise were largely confided to the specialized subfields of sociology of knowledge..

This special issue advances feminist inquiry and theorizing of the politics of knowledge within our current, highly paradoxical societal landscape. It draws together feminist analyses of “expertise” with feminist epistemologies of situated knowledge, Black feminist thought, theory of affect and emotions, sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies (STS). As such, it enables a timely interdisciplinary engagement with current paradigmatic shifts in knowledge production and claims to expertise as well as an examination of the gendered and racialized epistemic authority.

Bodily issues are, despite their central role for feminist politics and scholarship, strangely under-researched in a systematic way. We know fairly little about the relation between body politics and the formation of different national gender regimes. The paper seeks to unravel puzzling questions about the development of gender regimes in Germany, Poland and Sweden through the lens of body politics. Under special scrutiny are the different strategies of the women´s movements to politicize bodily issues. The perspective challenges linear notions of gender policy development. Contrary to what one might expect today, historically Germany has been a pioneer of reproductive rights and sexual reform. The demand to repeal the abortion paragraph from the penal code was raised as early as 1907. During the interwar period abortion law gave rise to mass mobilization and a fairly permissive legal regulation. Despite a rather restrictive abortion law in the 1970s German feminists mobilized on a mass scale against reproductive technologies. In Sweden they were barely politicized at all. This is in accordance with a historical pattern within which claims to an abortion on demand were not raised by women´s organizations before the 1970. In the debates of the 1930 the socalled social clause was rejected with the argument that it would imply an abdication from social reform. In Poland today debates about reproductive rights as well as IVF are highly polarized. Historically, Poland was in some respect more liberal than Sweden, it neither criminalized contraceptives nor homosexuality. The analytical framework applied in the study examines the three countries as spaces of articulation and institutional assemblies that embody certain “conditions of possibility” for thinking and acting. The framework of discursive institutionalism, outlined in earlier publications, is enhanced through including temporality.

The language of ethics has become a conspicuous feature of the politics of biomedical research and practice. The last two decades have seen the creation of governmental ethical advisory commissions, administrative bodies charged with ethical decision-making, and public funding for studying the ethical implications of new technologies. This paper analyses the  role of national ethical counsils as advisory bodies in national ethopolitical regimes. This paper addresses the question  wether the instituitonalsization of ethical expertise in  ethics councils as advisory bodies contributes to a limitation of political conflict concerning the biomedical issues. The paper compares two national cases, namely Germany’s National Ethics Council with the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics. Both countries represent contrasting cases of dominant ethical traditions and with regard to the time of emergence of such bodies. The Swedish council was a pioneer institution inaugurated in 1985, whereas Germany´s council  was a latecomer, established in 2001. This paper explores how such advisory institutions actually work from a double perspective. On the one hand, the paper examines the emergence and role of such bodies in political processes and thus how they have come to be understood as “political expertise”; on the other hand, the paper investigates the concrete working procedures of these councils and thus their modes of producing “ethical expertise”. Despite the differences the results of the study indicate similarities in the modes of producing “ethical expertise” and gives indicators, that such national ethics councils infact contributes to a depoliticization of biomedical issues.

The multifarious paths to modernity correspond with the various dramatizations of national narratives.  Sweden’s development has been composed as a linear success story. As the story goes: since the 1930s when the Social Democrats came into power, they had managed to lead the deprived smallish nation at the outskirts of Europe from the darkness of the poor house into the light of a prosperous welfare state combining a maximum of social security and equality with economic growth. In comparative perspective the Swedish welfare state was not only seen as outstanding in terms of class justice, but also in terms of gender equality.  Some scholars have there deemed it to be a “women-friendly welfare state”.[i] However, regardless of the importance of such narratives for the formation of national identity, success stories inevitably also produce distortions and omissions. The dark side of Sweden’s success story became most painfully apparent at the latest in autumn 1997. An article about forced sterilizations in the “peoples’ home” (folkhem), published in the country’s largest daily newspaper not only set off a heated national debate but it also caused an international sensation.[ii] Contrary to what the media suggested, knowledge of these practices was not a “recent” discovery.[iii] The new and challenging aspect, however, was that publicist Maciej Zaremba no longer attributed the sterilization policy to the zeitgeist or deemed it as a regrettable—although in the greater narrative as a negligible—episode but rather as an integral part of Sweden’s social democratic reform project. Through addressing the dark side of] the Swedish welfare state he broke a taboo that formed the quintessential core of Swedish identity. International reactions added insult to injury by comparing these sterilizations to practices of Nazi Germany.[iv]

The abundance of international attention, among other things, incited the Swedish government to install a commission to investigate the policies during that time and to draft a bill that would afford compensation to victims of forced sterilization. Compared to how victims of sterilization in other countries, particularly in Germany, [v] were dealt with, the Swedish investigative commission and compensation act were exemplary. Yet, for Swedish historians and social scientists it was no easy task to deal with these dark sides of modernity and statehood. A sense of loyalty toward the social democracy and the Swedish model has caused many scholars to oscillate—as some have self-critically admitted—between engaging in scholarship and ideology production.[vi] This might explain why outstanding feminist scholars such as Yvonne Hirdman, which has been a pioneer of a more critical stand on Swedes social and gender policies, has joined the chorus of the welfare state defenders in that debate. [vii]  The fact that Swedish politics have been highly successful in so many ways makes theories, which categorically establish the ambivalences of modernity and the welfare state, not exactly a Swedish specialty.

The same could be said about international comparative research that presents the development of the welfare state as a continuous extension of social rights. The establishment of a social democratic regime with universal benefits based on citizenship is often regarded the ultima ratio of this development.  This is not so surprising, as the power resources approach promoted by Scandinavian social scientists Walter Korpi and Gösta Esping-Andersen decisively contributed to establishing the Nordic state’s model status. Viewing Sweden in terms of a success story is not necessarily problematic because of what it says, but because of what it leaves out.  None of the common national or comparative interpretations can account for how the Swedish social democratic model’s supposedly inclusive welfare state and its universalistic programs could have been compatible with measures that classified people as “inferior” and propagated selection and institutionalization of their own people as well as sterilization as solutions to social problems.

This essay is committed to resolving this puzzle. It focuses on what, today, is subsumed under “family policies” and contains an analysis of the emergence of social benefits in the 1930s, which were geared toward subsidizing and encouraging child rearing, and were thus a forerunner of the universal child allowances introduced in Sweden in 1948. This case study will reveal that measures primarily aimed to meet the needs of women (as mothers)—and were therefore largely considered part of the “women-friendly” concept of social citizenship in Sweden— were actually characterized by an amalgamation of pro-natalism and anti-natalism. In effect, amalgamation meant that those classified as “inferior” or “unwanted” were barred from social benefits.

Schweden ist berühmt für seinen umfassenden Wohlfahrtsstaat und seine Gleichstellungspolitik. Es mag deshalb verwundern, dass es nicht nur zu den Vorreitern auf dem Gebiet der Biotechnologie zählt, sondern über besonders „liberale“ staatliche Regelungen verfügt. Verbrauchende Embryonenforschung ist erlaubt, ebenso die Präimplantationsdiagnostik. Dieser Artikel rekonstruiert zunächst die schwedische Rechtsentwicklung, untersucht dann im Kontext der Institutionen und Akteure, ob und wie Frauen an den Willensbildung- und Entscheidungsprozessen partizipierten und wendet sich abschließend den öffentlichen und politischen Diskursen zu. Dabei wird deutlich werden, dass Frauen zwar in hohem Maße an den politischen Prozessen beteiligt waren, dass sie jedoch keinen besonderen Standpunkt zur Biotechnologie vertreten. Sie teilen vielmehr den Beinahe-Konsensus, wonach Biotechnologien durch ihre guten Ziele, z.B. dem Leiden der Frauen/Eltern an „unfreiwilliger Kinderlosigkeit“ abzuhelfen, gerechtfertigt sind. Die Anwendung selektiver Praktiken, wie der Präimplantationsdiagnostik, wird als konsequente Fortsetzung der mit dem Abtreibungsrecht begründeten Selbstbestimmung aufgefasst.

Feminist scholars have provided us with an array of analytical perspectives on the comparative analysis of  welfare states. However despite the reachness of feminist scholarship in that field, it is also marked by a clear limitation. Feminist research focused, above all, on gender-specific contents and outputs of social policies. Much more widely neglected is the question of how country-specific differences may be explained, and whether gender contributed to the politics that created different welfare state regimes. There is one exeption however: scholars working within the tradition of historical institutionalism such as Theda Skocpol, Ann Orloff and Diane Sainsbury have made important efforts in order to explain the early formation of gendered welfare states.

The aim of this paper is both theoretical and empirical. First it explores the contribution of gender sensitive historical institutionalism for the explanation of gendered welfare states regimes. In contrast to the way that this approach has frequently been understood, I do not see institutionalism’s major contribution simply as adding on a new set of variables – the variables of state capacity and structure – as it suggested within the policy analysis aproach launched by Amy Mazur und Dorothy Stetson. Rather, the central new insight that institutionalism imparts to comparative politics comes from its reflexive perspective on  the political. This goes hand in hand with a concept of configurative causation acknowledging that political developments are contextual, relational, and process-oriented. A critical review of feminist historical institutionalism reveals one important limitation of its conceptual framwork however as it reduces “gender” to “women”,  to be more precise: to the impact of women´s movements on welfare state formation. I regard this reductionsm as the last vestige of determinism. Within institutionalism, to be sure, collective identities constitute an important point of reference, but since the processes of identity formation as such are not theorized any further, the precise connections linking institutions and the ability to act remain vague. In order to overcome this reductionism I propose to broaden institutionalism’s framework by formulating an approach based on interweaving historical institutionalism with discursive analysis. Such an integrated approach enables to conceptualize gender as relational and a relevant analytical category, even if womens agency might be deemed an irrelvant explanatory factor in specific national contexts.

The second aim of the paper is to demonstrate the fruitfulness of such an analytical approach in a comparative case study focusing on the emergence of gendered welfare state regime in Sweden and Germany. Sweden and Germany are ideal subjects for a comparative study of two countries. On the one hand, they present two similair cases of sociohistorical development. On the other hand, despite these similarities they produced quite different types of welfare states: Germany a conservative welfare state representing a strong male breadwinner and Sweden a social democratic, universalistic welfare state with a rather weak breadwinner model.

In contrast to issues concerning bodily integrity (abortion, violence) reproductive technologies represent a topic,which has been highly controversial among feminist activists and scholars. Some regard it as an expansion of power over women´s bodies through medical expertise. Especially reprogenetics - the fusion of assisted reproductive technics and genetical knowlege - is percieved as a new form of biopower, where life itself is becoming objectified through instrumental sociotechnologies. Others welcome reproductive technologies as an extension of women´s  autonomy and right to choose, with regard to their bodies. As such reproductive technologies challenge the liberal notion of selfdetermination. Related to the classical integrity issues selfdetermination meant a "negativ" liberty right as freedom from various forms of coersion or force, when it comes to reproductive technologies, selfdetermination is linkd to a "claim right, namely to have a healthy baby. But can there be a right to have a healthy baby? Should it be an issue of state concern to satisfy the poeples yearning for children? In addition to such challenging question, reproductive technolgies profoundly destabilize central categories of the political and cultural order, on which feminist demands for bodily citizenship have rested. Drawing on sholarship from governmentality studies this paper aims to rethink the concept of  bodily citizenship.  I will discuss the fruitfullness of such an approach drawing on empirical research covering Sweden, Germany and Poland

KOSTSAMT Sverige har lagt mycket prestige och pengar på att bli världsledande inom stamcellsforskning på embryon. Men redan nu har satsningarna visat sig felriktade. Forskningspolitiken styrs ofta av ett kortsiktigt nyttoperspektiv och en föråldrad syn på kunskapsutveckling.

Vetenskapen i dag liknar knappast den bild som fortfarande präglar våra vardagliga föreställningar. Den fria forskningen, som drivs av sanningssökande, är satt på undantag. Dagens vetenskap är en i hög grad styrd verksamhet. Detta är inte minst tydligt i diskussionerna inför regeringens kommande forskningsproposition.

Man hävdar att det gäller att placera Sverige i den ”kunskapsmässiga fronten”, samt, med Alfred Nobels berömda formulering, att åstadkomma ”största möjliga nytta”. Det är bara det att man lätt glömmer att Nobel avsåg nyttan för mänskligheten, inte för industrin. Det är långtifrån samma sak. Men i dagens argumentation blir kunskap liktydig med konkurrenskraft. Debatten som följt efter Astrazenecas besked att avveckla forskningsenheten i Södertälje är ett tydligt exempel på detta.

This paper examines the relevance of gender in accounting for the formation of different welfare state regimes in Sweden and Germany. Recent feminist scholarship has provided us with an array of approaches to the comparative analysis of social policies. However, it has not fully succeeded in conceptualizing gender as an analytic category. Concerning the welfare state, Joan W. Scott's a critique of feminist theorizing is substantially correct today. Gender is still often used as a substitute for »woman,« as for example in Skocpols work. Gender relations - here meaning gendered welfare state institutions - are  usually explained in terms of »non-gendered« causal relations. Thus Jane Lewis claims, referring among other countries to Sweden among other countries that gender was irrelevant to the formation of different welfare regimes.

      My hypothesis, by constrast is, that gender plays a constitutive role in the creation of the early welfare state in Sweden and Germany. The purpose of this paper is therefore twofold: first to develop a theoretical framework which moves beyond the conceptual limitations of feminist inquiry mentioned above; and second to demonstrate its empirical usefulness in a comparative case study focusing on the emergence of protective labour legislation in both countries.

      The research strategy I pursue includes three levels of analysis: 1) processes of social and economic change; 2) political forces and institutions; 3) discourses and interpretative frameworks. My aim is to explore the mutual and complex relations among these different levels, in order to avoid a slippage into a determinist epistemology, whether conceptualized in terms of discourses, institutions or social/economic structures.

      Sweden and Germany are extremely well suited to this comparison. From the perspective of social history, they share several similarities: the tradition of a strong bureaucratic state, a weak liberal bourgeoisie, and an early political mobilization of the labour movement. With regard to the subject of inquiry, they differ considerably. Germany passed numerous gendered regulations in the field of protective legislation before 1914-- such as maternal leave in 1878 (repeatedly extended), prohibition of night work, and limitation of daily working hours for women in 1891. The Swedish development was in contrast rather modest: the first protective law in 1889 did not include any gender distinctions, a maternal leave was enacted in 1900 and women's night work was prohibited in 1909. 

      This analysis shows that the policy differences between the two countries can not be adequately explained in terms of socioeconomic structures indicated, by e.g. women's employment rates. The legal differences correspond to variations in formations of national discourses. Demands for protective legislation in Germany were formulated in a gender specific way from the outsest. This was not the case in Sweden. Characteristic of the German debate was an early enmeshment of moral with scientific discourses defining women's factory work as undesirable and harmful for the female and social body, as well as an explicitly articulated masculine political interest. The interpretative  frameworks of the Swedish dabate were quite different. This is well illustrated by the strategies of the early labour movements in both countries. The close relations between the Swedish and German labour movements led Swedish social democracy to take over the Gotha programme though with one notable exeption however: the paragraph demanding special protective legislation for women was excluded.

This paper examines the paradoxes of maternalist politics in Sweden and Germany at the turn of the century. Feminist scholarship on maternalism has convincingly demonstrated the importance of policy measures directed to women and children as well as women’s political agency for the early welfarestate formation. It has also provided us with insights into the limitations and failures of maternalist strategies due to different political opportunity structures as well as conflicting concepts of maternalism within women’s movments itself.

In comparative historical perspective Sweden and Germany are usually portrayed as similair cases of well developed welfare states, with weak women’s movements however, and therefore strong paternalist policies, directed to women as dependents rather than in their own right as women and mothers. The difference between the two countries with regard to gender policies is considered to be a later phenomenon, due to the divergent paths of conservative and socialdemocratic welfarestate formation. This paper challanges such a view in several respects. The similairity of both countries refers to similair – as compared to the United States and Great Britain - trajectories of social development: the tradition of a strong bureaucratic state, a weak liberal bourgeoisie, and an early political mobilization of the labour movement. With regard to the early welfare state Sweden and Germany have produced quite divergend institutional solutions, which cannot be conflated into „paternalism“. From the outset both countries differed considerably, as will be argued in the paper, when it comes to gender. Inquiring maternalist policies and politics, no easy equatations – such as between „good“ policies and „strong“ women’s movments - can be made. The analysis of the struggle for a motherhood insurance in Sweden and Germany reveals a rather contradictory and paradox picture.

Germany was the first country to invent a paid maternity leave. The sickness insurance law of 1883 - introducing a mandatory insurance for factory workers – included a payment for the period of three weaks after delivery. This maternity benefit was extended in the following years in correspondance with the protective labor legislation, which regulated the maternity leave for female factory workers. The campaign for a motherhood insurance, which started after the turn of the century, was carried by a variety of political forces with quite different motives. In its most radical version the concept aimed at an comprehensive insurance plan, which would give benefits to all mothers, not only to factory workers and not just for a couple of weeks after delivery but for a much longer - up to one or three years –period of time. Such an insurance was not only considered fiscally utopian. The more moderate bourgeois women’s movment opposed such a motherhood endowment on more fundamental grounds. Enableing women to become mothers without depending on men, such an institution would lead to a dissolution of the family, or even, as Alice Salomon feared, to the distruction of loving relations between men and women. She favored therefore a more „practical“ solution, e.g. the extension of the benefits to other professional groups. The principle, that the benefit should be a replacement for the loss of wages and not a payment for motherhood was central to this concept. With the reformact of 1911 (Reichsversicherungsordnung) major improvments of the paid maternity leaves within the sickness insurance were enacted. At that time the German welfare state included the best maternity benefits - when measured as coveragae rate of the female population and the duration of payments – in the industrilized world. In the long run however benefits for mothers were locked in an institutional logic based on principles of solidarity, which were rather hostile to the rights of women as mothers. Not only was motherhood treated as a sickness, the benefits were constructed according to criteria – professional status groups, replacment of the loss of wages – which were external to the social conditions of motherhood, creating different categories of mothers.

The Swedish development took quite a different course. Compared to Germany, Sweden was a late comer with regard to regulations for mothers. A maternal leave was enacted in 1900. Because Sweden had no compulsory sickness insurance at that time, a law proposal for the introduction of an own motherhood insurance for female factory workers was elaborated in order to compensate for the loss of wages. In case the law would have been enacted in 1912, the motherhood insurance would have become the first branch of mandatory social insurance introduced in Sweden. However, the government never presented the law to the parliament. This was also due to an outspoken opposition of the different strands of the women’s movment. They rejected the plan because of its mode of finance. According to the proposal the insurance should be financed mainly with contributions from the employees and female factory workers in the age of 15 to 50. The women criticized the plan also because the benefits were restricted to women factory workers. They demanded payments for all mothers, but at least for all working women. The sharpest protests however were directed against the financing principles in which the fathers were left aside and women treated as en enforced community of solidarity. The Swedish debate on the motherhood insurance demonstrates the limitations of maternalism as a political strategy. Swedish women explicitly rejected the notion there can be solidarity among women based on the experience of maternity, which could give rise to redistributional policies. The failure of the motherhood insurance project finaly refers to structural limitations of justice within market society and social insurance institutions forged on this principles: Motherhood is simply not an insurable risk as sickness, accident or olde age. It has no „value“ and it is not a „damage“ to compensate for. The Swedish women were strong enough to prevent the institutionalization of a program which, as they percieved, was based on false solidarities. They had to wait for more than twenty years, until in 1931 a tax financed program was implemented, which - far from solving all problems of justice for mothers – laid the ground for much more mother friendlier policies, than in Germany

What makes Sweden especially relevant for this case study? At first, Sweden appears to have quite a puzzling policy pattern indeed. As a social democratic regime with an extensive statist governance system, Sweden stands out in its biomedical policy through remarkably liberal, lenient regulations which, in European comparison, are closest to those of Great Britain. Sweden's legislation allows for the use of so-called "spare" human embryos, resulting from IVF procedures, for research purpose, pre-implantation diagnosis, and egg donation. This country also has a considerable amount of embryonic stem cell lines at its disposal and has recently initiated an entire research program involving their use. Furthermore, legislative processes have been initiated, which could legalize the creation of – instead of the use of "spare" – human embryos for research purposes and so-called therapeutic cloning.  This policy-making process provoked only a moderate deal of controversy. Parliamentary resolutions concerning the issue were backed by a broad consensus among all parties in Parliament. To say the least, the politicization of biomedical issues has been quite limited. This corresponds well to the virtual lack of noticeable  mobilization of extra-parliamentary  groups.

Throughout the course of this essay I will de-riddle the puzzling features of Sweden's biopolitics through presenting the juncture between institutionalist and discursive approaches. In short, I argue that the Swedish model is based on a productivist paradigm, the institutional and discursive parameters of which have not been decisively extended through its "new politics." In this way, elitist policy-making structures within environmental and technology policies have remained intact. Ironically, this relative openness, which enabled the rapid integration of new issues and political actors, was what led to the blockage of extensive participatory rights (as a counter-concept to the elitist policy style) and hindered the development of oppositional public spaces and forms of knowledge. Sweden's heritage of utilitarian ethics and pragmatic legal tradition and its assertions make it even more difficult for leftist or feminist to formulate a critical stance. Therefore, the only anti-embryo research position taken in the political arena was by the Christian Democratic Party.

I will start providing an overview of policy regulations, then analyze the peculiar relation between the social democratic state, and the so-called new politics. I will then examine the institutions and actors in the biomedical policy field, and finally reconstruct the lines of argumentation within policy discourse.

The article examines the relevance of gender in accounting for the formation of different welfare state regimes in Sweden and Germany. The comparative case study is focussing on the emergence of protective labour legislation. Both countries differ considerably with regard to the subject of inquiry. Germany passed numerous gendered regulations before the Great War, the Swedish development was in contrast rather modest. These differences are not just important because of the unequal treatment of men and women within social policies. Gendering processes play an important role in the very interpretation of industrial social risks and thus in the emergence of different policy patterns: Priority of individual-oriented damage limitation in Germany and preventive safety protection in Sweden

There is a paradoxical development that characterizes the way modern societies deal with ethical problems. Issues concerning the good life are privatized and regarded as individual decisions. Simultaneously, there is a politicization of the ethical. The clearest expression may be the institutionalization of ethical expertise or public advisory bodies that act as consultants to political decision-makers. Public ethics bodies challenge conventional categorical ways of thinking about the distinctness of science, ethics and policy. Therefore, it is not surprising that this new type of institution is a contentious issue in both public and academic debates. The existing scholarly literature focusses largely on the relation between ethics advisory bodies and moral philosophy. This paper explores how such advisory institutions actually work from a double perspective. On the one hand, the paper examines the emergence and role of such bodies in political processes and thus how they have come to be understood as “political expertise”; on the other hand, the paper investigates the concrete working procedures of these councils and thus their modes of producing “ethical expertise”. The paper compares two national cases, namely Germany’s National Ethics Council with the Swedish National Council on Medical Ethics. Both countries represent contrasting cases of dominant ethical traditions and with regard to the time of emergence of such bodies. The Swedish council was a pioneer institution inaugurated in 1985, whereas Germany´s council  was a latecomer, established in 2001.  Despite the differences the results of the study indicate similarities in the modes of producing “ethical expertise” which in the longer run might lead to stronger convergence. For the most part, commission ethics proves to be a practical matter chiefly determined by pragmatism.

Der Wohlfahrtsstaat erlebt zur Zeit eine unerwartete Konjunktur.1 Nachdem er in den achtziger Jahren — krisengeschüttelt, „bürokratisiert” und „verrechtlicht” — seine realpolitische und akademische Attraktivität einbüßte und höchstens noch als Angelegenheit „Marginalisierter”, d.h. Armer und Frauen, verhandelt wurde, rückt er nun wieder im auslaufenden zwanzigsten Jahrhundert ins Zentrum des akademischen Interesses. Dabei stehen nicht mehr Wachstum, Grenzen oder Krisen zur Debatte. Wissenschaftlich wird gerade das finale Stadium des Wohlfahrtsstaates eingeläutet. Neue Wortschöpfungen künden vom „Danach”, in denen entweder die „Wohlfahrt” eliminiert, so in den pessimistischen Szenarien eines künftigen Konkurrenz-, Arbeits- und Wettbewerbsstaates, oder der „Staat” ausgemustert wurde, wie in den optimistischeren Optionen hin zur Wohlfahrtsgesellschaft und zum Wohlfahrtspluralismus (vgl. Jessop 1992: 716ff.; Hirsch 1995; Schmitthenner 1995: 5; Evers/Olk 1996).

Warum gibt es in Schweden feministische Minister, während die Deutschen nichts von Emanzen wissen wollen? Die Schwedinnen waren schon in den Dreißigern berufstätig. Und der Staat war für die Frauen immer ein Partner. In Deutschland dagegen war er Obrigkeit, Nazistaat und dann Männerbund

In recent decades, theorizing about societal and political transformations has been closely intertwined with claims about new modalities of knowledge production. A reflexive mode of knowledge has been identified hich assumes that science has lost its traditional status of relative autonomy and is thus becoming increasingly interwoven with other societal spheres. The shift of classical research universities towards a more application-oriented mode of scientific knowledge as well as the institutionalization of gender studies as an interdisciplinary field corresponds with this socially distributed system of knowledge production. 

These changes have profoundly reshaped political processes and public communication, yielding a novel style of governing through knowledge and resulting in both the scientification of politics and a heightened politicization of expertise. Contestation of the sharp distinction between academic and other forms of knowledge has created new possibilities for co-production and transgressive knowledge while also providing fuel for regressive politics. This seems to have taken many scholars by surprise, but a few, such as Donna Haraway and Ulrich Beck, foresaw it decades ago. 

The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it seeks to advance feminist theorizing about the politics of knowledge through a critical examination as well a recasting of different approaches circulating in current feminist debates. Second, it explores Germany, a country that has experienced major transformations with regard to both its gender policy and political knowledge regimes. I argue that a broader understanding of societal changes, and of the modalities of knowledge production accompanying them, provides an analytical lens that allows us to move beyond the linear imaginary prevalent in much feminist scholarship on knowledge and expertise, capturing ambiguities with a more nuanced perspective. Launching the concept of feminist political epistemology, the paper investigates the paradoxical constellation of democratization of expertise and anti-gender right-wing mobilization that challenges the epistemic credibility not only of gender studies, but of academic knowledge itself. 

The paper explores Germany, a country that has experienced major transformations with regard to both its gender policy and political knowledge regimes; the German context provides vital insight into the contradictory dynamics involved in new modalities of governing and epistemic authority. 

This article proposes the concept of feminist political epistemology to examine the changing modalities of knowledge production in Germany. The article examines how German gender equality policies have been embedded in and shaped by the shifting modalities of knowledge production and the remaking of the science expertise–politics nexus. The two formative time periods investigated—the 1960s–1970s and 1998 to the present—account for major shifts in the gender and political knowledge regime in Germany. The findings provide insights into the contradictory dynamics involved in transformations of political and epistemic authority.

Panel: Discourses and Epistemes in Gendered Policy-Making   full details Abstract: The aim of this paper is to explore the interaction between gender, knowledge and policymaking in Germany. The analysis will explore the changes in the legal and institutional framework since 2000 and the transformation from women towards intersectionality and diversity. In contrast to various approaches in policy analysis, the aim is not primarily to account for the policy outcome, but rather to explore the embedment of policy processes in the communication and authorization of “legitimate” knowledge. In what ways has scientific expertise contributed to the shape of these political fields? What roles does gender research play in political knowledge production? Which institutional and epistemic mechanisms can account for the detected knowledge regime? The study relates to two research fields: feminist policy analysis and studies of scientific expertise in political decision-making processes, which in turn draw on concepts from Science and Technology Studies. By combining these two perspectives, the paper, which is part of a larger comparative project, will provide an innovative contribution to the analysis of gender politics. Political knowledge regimes are conceived as cross-border configurations that influence the generation, dissemination and evaluation of politically relevant and legitimate knowledge. The aim is to analyze how different types of knowledge are negotiated and translated in communicative processes, ranging from scientific, popular to tacit, under conditions that are characterized by a kind of paradox. On the one hand, scientific knowledge is increasingly important within state governance on the other hand, as a site of objectivity, certainty and impartiality scholarly knowledge has come under siege and lost its traditional status of relative autonomy and authority. A new reflexive and transgressive mode of knowledge production is identified, and not least represented by feminist and gender studies.

In contrast to issues concerning bodily integrity (abortion, violence) reproductive technologies represent a topic,which has been highly controversial among feminist activists and scholars. Some regard it as an expansion of power over women´s bodies through medical expertise. Especially reprogenetics - the fusion of assisted reproductive technics and genetical knowlege - is percieved as a new form of biopower, where life itself is becoming objectified through instrumental sociotechnologies. Others welcome reproductive technologies as an extension of women´s  autonomy and right to choose, with regard to their bodies. As such reproductive technologies challenge the liberal notion of selfdetermination. Related to the classical integrity issues selfdetermination meant a "negativ" liberty right as freedom from various forms of coersion or force, when it comes to reproductive technologies, selfdetermination is linkd to a "claim right, namely to have a healthy baby. But can there be a right to have a healthy baby? Should it be an issue of state concern to satisfy the poeples yearning for children? In addition to such challenging question, reproductive technolgies profoundly destabilize central categories of the political and cultural order, on which feminist demands for bodily citizenship have rested. Drawing on sholarship from governmentality studies this paper aims to rethink the concept of  bodily citizenship.  I will discuss the fruitfullness of such an approach drawing on empirical research covering Sweden, Germany and Poland.

In contrast to issues concerning bodily integrity (abortion, violence) reproductive technologies represent a topic,which has been highly controversial among feminist activists and scholars. Some regard it as an expansion of power over women´s bodies through medical expertise. Especially reprogenetics - the fusion of assisted reproductive technics and genetical knowlege - is percieved as a new form of biopower, where life itself is becoming objectified through instrumental sociotechnologies. Others welcome reproductive technologies as an extension of women´s  autonomy and right to choose, with regard to their bodies. As such reproductive technologies challenge the liberal notion of selfdetermination. Related to the classical integrity issues selfdetermination meant a "negativ" liberty right as freedom from various forms of coersion or force, when it comes to reproductive technologies, selfdetermination is linkd to a "claim right, namely to have a healthy baby. But can there be a right to have a healthy baby? Should it be an issue of state concern to satisfy the poeples yearning for children? In addition to such challenging question, reproductive technolgies profoundly destabilize central categories of the political and cultural order, on which feminist demands for bodily citizenship have rested. Drawing on sholarship from governmentality studies this paper aims to rethink the concept of  bodily citizenship.  I will discuss the fruitfullness of such an approach drawing on empirical research covering Sweden, Germany and Poland.

This article examines how exercises of public involvement in science policy, which have been transported to the new member states via EU regulations, function in post-socialist democracies. Given Poland's agonistic and non-transparent policy style, the public consultation process in the case of embryonic stem-cell research stands out as an exemplary model of ensuring public awareness and high-quality communication. When taking a closer look at the applied accountability criteria, however, the overall assessment becomes more critical. Still, an important result of this case study is that deliberative exercises based on face-to-face forums facilitate communication and contribute to mutual understanding even within highly polarized and antagonistic constellations. The findings of the case study suggest that exercises of public involvement need more precise institutional rules to have an impact on advancing public accountability in consolidating democracies.

This essay proposes an integrated discursive institutionalism as a framework for feminist political analysis. Both historical institutionalism and discourse analysis have merits and limitations, and both perspectives complement each other and offer solutions to their respective deficiencies. Traditionally there has been a strong demarcation between the two perspectives. A common way to divide both approaches is between investigating “causal regularities” and “understanding meaning.” I argue that a feminist institutionalism needs to deconstruct the dichotomy of causal explanation versus meaning and description and to reformulate the concept of causality. There is no adequate explanation without “meaning,” and the stretching of institutionalism toward “ideas” exemplifies this inadequacy

In the last decades, theorizing about societal and political transforma­tions have been closely intertwined with claims about new modalities of knowledge production. The institutionalization of women´s and gender studies as post-academic interdisciplinary field corresponds with this so­cially distributed, system of knowledge production. Equally important has been the remaking of the policy-science nexus. Scientific claims in polit­ical processes have become increasingly publicly contested, not least in the field of gender policies. The traditional technocratic and hierarchical policy-making style has been reshaped by more horizontal participatory procedures which have been perceived as democratization of expertise. These developments implied a recognition of feminist knowledge and academia as politically relevant “gender expertise,” in many European countries. Parallel to this processes, since around 2005 public cam­paigns against the “ideology of gender” or “genderism” started to ques­tion the scientific character of gender research as a discipline.

This paper explores the interplay between gender, knowledge, and poli­cy-making in Germany and Sweden within the field of gender equality. This paper deploys a novel perspective. It launches the concept of polit­ical epistemologies drawing on insights from science and technology studies, which have been pioneering research focusing on the policy-sci­ence nexus and moving it from a linear “knowledge utilization approach” towards a notion of co-production and boundary-crossing configura­tions. It will pursue the following questions: In what ways has scientific expertise contributed to the shape of these political fields? What institu­tional and epistemic mechanisms can account for the detected knowl­edge regime? Which impact has the anti-genderist mobilization on the political epistemology?