A Meeting of Minds: What Happens When Ppoliticians and Experts Use Science to Make and Sell Policy?

Abstract

Politicians, policy-makers, and civil servants have always relied on experts and expertise to suggest, make and implement evidence-based policies. But it was not until the Covid-19 crisis that this became obvious for everyone to see. Citizens became acutely aware just how influential scientists and experts could be on policy choices that defined their day-to-day lives. Scientists and experts saw how easily their work could become politicised, by both politicians and the general public alike. Civil servants, street-level bureaucrats were directly confronted with citizens defying rules and regulations during the height of the corona-containment measures. To understand how this shock to the system reverberates today, we are inviting political scientists and public administration scholars to share research on how three actors – politicians, civil servants, and scientific experts – deal with this marriage of politics and expertise. We also invite research on the public’s perception of this way of making policy. From a political-science point of view, the literature on technocracy covers everything from expert-informed to expert-led governance and its resulting effect on political trust by citizens. It is examined alongside populism and party decline, raising normative questions about representation, legitimacy and accountability. However, technocratic solutions can also raise political trust; incorporating more expert-based policy-making could be an answer to wicked issues such as climate change and stubborn social inequality. Public administration scholars tend to emphasize evidence-based policymaking, while international and European studies highlight technocratic features of supranational governance, particularly in the EU. At the same time, more micro-level studies focus on the role of experts in specific arenas such as parliaments, advisory councils, and crisis governance. Despite this growing body of work, a connection between these perspectives still lacks. This panel addresses that gap. We invite scholars from all disciplines to apply. We invite theoretical and empirical contributions on the following issues, among others: - Actors such as politicians, civil servants, and scientific experts and their changing role-perception when working together; - Comparing how this dynamic works at different governance levels: local, national, supra- or international; - The effect of expert-led policies on political trust; - The scientification of politics and/or the politicisation of science; - The normative implications of technocratic policy-making on democratic quality and legitimacy. NOTE TO SECTION CHAIRS: We currently have 3 papers, so we'd be open to include 2 more papers in our panel that go beyond our current networks. Based on that, we can select another discussant and have Janne Ingelbeen, our current discussant, act as co-chair. I can communicate this in due time when I have all the information about any other papers that could be added.

Title	Details
Economic Experts on Mute: The Politics of Expertise in Norway’s COVID-19 Economic Response	View Paper Details
Expertise on the Floor: When and Why Parties Invoke Science in Parliamentary Debate	View Paper Details
Legitimacy at Risk? Comparing Citizen and Expert Responses to Policy Adoption of Science	View Paper Details
A Technocratic Zeitgeist: How Do Elected Representatives Use Technocratic Legitimation in Parliamentary Speeches?	View Paper Details
Cultures of Expertise and Policy-Making in Germany and Poland: Narratives of Formal and Informal Access Channels of Expert Advisers to Policy-Makers.	View Paper Details