Chapter 5 examines the case of EU nanotechnology policy, showing that the mobilisation of ethics experts acted as atool to check the rise of a potential political conflict on ‘nanos’. By showcasing that a new type of experts representing a diversity of voices had been consulted, EU policymakers ensured that policy remained formulated within a closed community ofactors. They also successfully framed other environmental and health safety concerns as technical, rather than ethical, issues, thus allowing for a compartmentalisation of ethics and a technicalisation of the debate. The mobilisation of ethics experts helped check the rise of conflict because expert knowledge was produced in an iterative process between experts and policymakers. Policymakers gave substantial information to the EGE experts, and informed them about the tenets of the policy debate as well as its policy preferences. But orchestration was facilitated by an embedding of experts into ongoing policy debates and narratives. EU policymakers and ethics experts worked together in various crossing points, such as conferences, workshops and roundtables, where a common way of looking at the issue was developed.

After briefly comparing the findings of the above cases, Chapter 7 considers their broader reach through a preliminary exploration of the mobilisation of ethics experts in the case of synthetic biology of the United States. It then connects the argument of the book to the literature on the politics of ethics in IR, making it clear that the expertisation of ethics has in fact allowed for a more efficient political mobilisation of ethics. It finally points to the relevance of the book’s findings to existing debates on the making of knowledge, agendas and policies in global governance.

Chapter 2 develops the analytical framing of the book. While informed by the concept of co-production in its focus on the tangled relationship between knowledge and politics, it also engages critically with it for its inability to capture phenomena of agency, conflict and change. The chapter argues that the co-legitimation of knowledge and politics is not given; rather it is stabilsed through specific mechanisms. Ideational alignment refers to the coming together of all actors around certain ways of seeing problems. Orchestration refers to the way some governance actors try to orchestrate the production of expert knowledge in order to make it more favourable to their agendas. Calibration refers to the way experts themselves may calibrate the knowledge they produce, in order to meet the needs of the policy process. In a final section it focuses on the specificities of bioethical expertise, shedding light on its double-edged authority and the way its mobilisation plays a unique role in the pre-emption or taming of conflicts on scientific and technological developments.