The Challenges of Nanotechnology Policy-Making - Part 2: Discussing Voluntary Frameworks and Options

Abstract

In the context of the development of nanotechnologies policy-making faces specific challenges, because of the nature of the technologies themselves, and because of the evolution of international governance. Policymakers need to integrate these parameters, but their task is made difficult by the number of coexisting different frameworks and by the way stakeholders use them. This survey outlines these frameworks and draws from new institutional theory as well as from the policy and innovation literatures to discuss the challenges of nano policy-making. In a first part, the survey introduced nano policy-making and the reasons for its complexity, and offered a panorama of mandatory tools used to regulate nanotechnologies. In this second part, the focus is on the additional governance devices that some stakeholders decide to adopt on a voluntary basis. This outline is followed by a discussion of the use of all these tools – mandatory and voluntary – by the different stakeholders. The paper concludes by debating two major directions which nano policy-making may follow.

Keywords: nanotechnology, policy-making, risk management, regulation, governance