Post-Factual Policy Analysis: Charting the Crisis of Expertise

Abstract

Post-factual politics poses a new set of challenges to both policy theory and practice. What is the function of scientific and technical knowledge under conditions of polarization, populism and politicization? How can the democratic process accommodate conflicting knowledge claims if the very notion of scientific expertise is eroding in many areas of policy? Policy scholars need to arrive at a better understanding of the effect of post-factual politics on the scope and nature of policy analysis. This panel invites papers that address both the normative and the empirical challenges of post-factual policy analysis. In normative terms, recent work in critical policy analysis and social studies of science has frequently criticized the unaccountability of scientific experts and the outsized influence of epistemic communities, and has advocated instead for an influx of lay knowledge and unaccredited expertise as part of a more open, participatory and deliberative form of policy analysis. These debates now need to be reevaluated in light of post-factual politics. Has the democratization of expertise gone too far? Are we witnessing a new technocratic turn in policy analysis? What are the alternatives? In empirical terms, we broadly invite papers that address the way in which the effects of post-factual politics on policy analysis manifest themselves. How can we conceptualize the effects of post-factual politics on the practice of knowledge construction and use? Can we identify new ways in which policy knowledge is (in)validated and (de)legitimatized? And have some institutional structures of policy advise proven more resilient to populisms and polarization than others?