The connection between (social science) knowledge and policy has been a longstanding debate in public policy. Sustainability indicators are at the same time a means to compile and structure knowledge and to express societal and political norms and priorities.
The analysis of the cases shows that in practice all allowed a number of actors from both domains (science and policy) to participate in indicator development. However, science and policies processes had a different bias: in science-led processes there was, by design, a bias towards the knowledge production dimension, and less explicit recognition and inclusion of the normative political dimension in the indicator development process, particularly also with regard to participation. Table 8 is partly due to the research project character of these processes.
With regard to merging different knowledge areas, all processes have tried to follow the idea of balancing economic, ecological and social dimensions but all processes were relatively weak regarding the participation of experts representing the social dimension. Thus, in science-led processes, participants may decide on indicators outside their specific domain as informed citizens, that is in a political role, expressing societal norms, rather than in their scientific capacity. This indicates the central importance of representation and participation in the indicator development process, which needs to be properly designed at the outset.
All cases studied the indicator sets developed are interim results of a continuous improvement process, particularly with regard to integrating emerging knowledge. There are also many indications of a broad recognition of a learning process that took place during development.
Science-led processes, contrary to government-led processes, have not explicitly provided for possible adaptation to changing social and political norms.
Are science-led sustainability development processes more accurate and comprehensive with regard to the knowledge they are able to embody in their indicator sets? Not necessarily, as government agency experts are also often technical experts with ‘‘scientist’’ standards, and not elected policy-makers. Neither do government-led sustainability development processes automatically achieve more policy relevance.
As the development process Indicators of Sustainability for the rules to determine the rules need to be more clearly recognized and given more weight by both scientists and policy makers; New types of selection procedures regarding participation and representation of the development process in order to achieve reliable and legitimacy in society. This may thus not be possible without a wider form of participation involving citizens or their representatives.