Governing Nanotechnology through Stakeholder Dialogues: The Example of the German NanoKommission

New modes of scientific knowledge production and decision-making have been gaining societal importance. This is because science and politics became more open towards external expectations in the last decades. Features of this development are reflected by the way society is handling nanotechnology. In Germany, many stakeholder dialogues took place. According to social science concepts, they might influence relevant processes in economy or science. This assumption will be dealt with by the present paper, with the German NanoKommission being used as an example. By means of a sociology-ofknowledge approach, the conditions which gave the commission its influential position and the significance of its decisions will be analysed. The argumentation relies on documents from the German debate on nanotechnology and interviews conducted with important speakers. It becomes clear that the society refers to previous experience to give stakeholder dialogues their meaning. The paper will outline the normative and functional implications of these kinds of participatory settings. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]