The Advent of the Lay Expert in Policy-Making: Democratising or Pushing the Boundaries of Expertise?

Abstract

The panel focuses on the inclusion of lay people in the role of experts into policy-making through experiments such as ‘citizen science’ or the consultation of ‘experts by experience’. Against the background of the failings of representative democracy and a general distrust in elites, the involvement of ‘lay' or 'citizen experts’ has been discussed as a means to ‘democratise expertise’, but it has also been criticised for undermining the reliability of knowledge claims. This panel explores the democratic potential as well as the epistemic qualities of the rise of such experts. Key questions are: What do these experts’ authority and validity claims build on? Which democratic legitimacy norms do these practices link up to? Which empirical variations of lay or citizen expertise can be observed across political cultures?