Comparing the Construction of Expert Authority of the British Food Standards Agency and the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR)

This paper compares how food safety agencies use a carefully designed interplay between “frontstage” and “backstage” practices to construct their expert authority. These practices are structured according to the distinct demands attributed to “boundary organizations”. To maintain and expand politico-epistemic authority, boundary organizations have to produce expertise that is deemed as both scientifically valid and objective as well as politically relevant and legitimate. The practices used to produce such an image are socially contingent: In both studied cases, new accountability, formalization and standardization practices were adopted. Yet, the two cases differ in how these “authorization practices” combine different criteria of rationality. Whereas the FSA, re-embedding British public interest culture, uses a strategy of public openness and transparency to construct expert authority, the BfR´s strategy of standardizing risk assessment is formed in Germany´s Rechtsstaatskultur. Yet, none of theses strategies is without its dilemmas leading to contestations and re-negotiations over time.