'COMMON SENSE GEOGRAPHY' AND THE ELECTED OFFICIAL: TECHNICAL EVIDENCE AND CONCEPTIONS OF 'TRUST' IN TORONTO'S GARDINER EXPRESSWAY DECISION

In fields such as Sociology and Political Science, there have been, over the course of three decades, attempts to engage elected officials in 'Evidence-Based Decision-Making'. Evidence is generally conceived as 'expert' advice provided to politicians. A question that has gained more centrality in recent years is 'why do elected officials not trust expert opinion or technical evidence?' and the answer to this question has been sought in historical or general terms (e.g. Irwin 2006; Weiss et al. 2008; Kraft et al. 2015). Here I will propose an alternative question: 'when politicians exhibit a lack of trust in expert advice, how is such skepticism publicly accounted for?' I will examine this question by utilizing a case study ethnographic approach to the City of Toronto's controversial decision to endorse the Hybrid alternative for the Gardiner expressway. By doing so, I intend to show that knowledge controversies are not inherently a form of deficiency on the part of the elected official--that they are ignorant to the implications of evidence--but rather the standard by which elected officials and appointed experts review and understand evidence can lead to very different (although both reasonably 'correct') conclusions. Keywords: Public Policy; Evidence; Knowledge Sociology; Ethnomethodology Des disciplines comme la sociologie et la science politique tentent depuis trois decennies de susciter l'interet de personnes elues pour la << prise de decisions fondee sur des donnees probantes >>. On entend generalement par donnees probantes des conseils d'experts fournis aux personnalites politiques. Ces dernieres annees, on accorde une place de plus en plus centrale a la question de savoir << pourquoi les personnes elues ne font-elles pas confiance aux opinions d'experts ou aux donnees probantes techniques ? >>, question a laquelle on a tente de repondre de maniere historique ou generale (p. ex., Irwin, 2006; Weiss et al. 2008; Kraft et al. 2015). Dans cet article, je propose une autre question : << quand les personnalites politiques font preuve d'un manque de confiance a l'egard des conseils d'experts, comment cette mefiance est-elle publiquement justifiee ? >> Je vais aborder cette question a l'aide d'une etude de cas ethnographique de la decision controversee par la Ville de Toronto d'appuyer la solution dite hybride pour l'autoroute Gardiner. Ainsi, je compte demontrer que des controverses des connaissances ne temoignent pas en soi d'une forme de lacune chez une personne elue--que celle-ci ignore ce que signifient les donnees probantes--mais plutot que les criteres selon lesquels les personnalites elues et les experts designes evaluent et comprennent les donnees probantes peuvent mener a des conclusions differentes (bien que toutes deux raisonnablement << justes >>). Mots cles: Politique publique; Preuve; Sociologie de la connaissance; Ethnomethodologie.
INTRODUCTION For over 30 years, sociologists of science and technology and political scientists have exhibited interest in integrating or understanding scientific and technical models of information evaluation and planning in [...]