Experts in Politics: Status, Legitimacy, and the Public (Virtual Session)

Session Submission Type: Virtual Full Paper Panel

Session Description

What is the proper place of expertise in politics? The Covid-19 pandemic has made the issue more urgent than usual, but the question is an old one. From Plato's philosopher-kings to Hannah Arendt's problem-solvers, the need for expert involvement in politics in general, and democracies in particular, has attracted much scholarly debate. In this debate some examine how the democratic process might be affected by the introduction of unelected actors; others have formulated various proposals for checks on the quality and range of knowledge made available; others have questioned whether expertise is ever immune from politicisation. While perhaps the most sustained conversation on this topic has taken place in political theory, of both analytical and historical persuasions, there is significant purchase for gaining clarity on the scope and limitations of expertise to the field of international relations (IR) too. Not least given the transnational nature of most challenges addressed by delegation to or with advice from technical and scientific experts, it seems crucial to bridge the disciplinary divide and share insights from both perspectives.

This panel therefore encourages a conversation across the 'big tent' on the relationship between expertise and politics in both domestic and global governance contexts. The panel's contributions aim to both theorise and concretise the meaning of expert authority and legitimacy, as well as the ways in which politics navigates expertise and, inversely, experts navigate politics. The goal is to examine, from different perspectives (some to vindicate expertise, others to challenge its use), the pragmatic limits of expertise in politics, and to understand what those mean for the general relationship between the two. Is the use of experts by definition undemocratic, or "extra-democratic"? Is expertise primarily about status or about knowledge? Do different criteria apply to different types of experts, and if so, is the generic category of 'expertise' helpful at all? These are the important questions addressed, in different and diverging ways, by the papers in this panel. In conjunction, they stimulate a conversation across disciplinary divides that brings up new answers and new questions.

Sub Unit

• Division 54: Ideas, Knowledge, and Politics

Individual Presentations

• Is Expert Authority Epistemic? - Jan Eijking, University of Oxford

• Diversity, Disagreement, and Contestation in Expert International Organizations - Alexandra Stafford, University of Oxford

• The Politics of Policy Expertise: Democratic Deference and Republican Resentment - Matt Grossmann, Michigan State University; David A. Hopkins, Boston College

Chair

• Samuel Ely Bagg University of South Carolina

Discussant

• Jeffrey Friedman Harvard University