Scientific expertise as a basis for political administrative decisions – Challenges in times of disputed knowledge

Discourses about the future can only be successful if they are based on sound knowledge. Such knowledge must be scientifically solid and should be robust with regard to society. In practice, this turns out to be increasingly problematic because the validity of knowledge is more and more put into question (contested facts). This in particular creates problems for the decision-making and legitimation of the political-administrative system. The proposed project will initiate a discourse on how the functionality of the political-administrative system can be ensured under these conditions. For this purpose, different options on how to deal with the intensified questioning of scientifically sound knowledge and that provide a broader institutional repertoire are to be developed and tested. In an introductory session with practitioners and researchers, ideas for such options are collected. They are then developed in a paper and tested in the context of the final public meeting using concrete cases from the fields of energy and agriculture – two politically essential fields for the state of Lower Saxony.