Between Experts and Interests. On the Legitimacy of Public Committees

In this paper, I will discuss whether Norwegian public committees should be conceived as expert arrangements, and how recent trends concerning their composition as well as practice affects the legitimacy of this policy preparing venue. Public committees serve an important role on the input side of the Norwegian political system. They are non-majoritarian bodies, appointed by the government on a temporary basis in order to recommend solutions for given problems, and they bring together representatives of affected parts of the government, organized interests and experts from the academic sector. Public committees formed the center of attention in previous research on corporatism in Norway, as well as in other Scandinavian countries. The decline of organized interest participation on committees led however, several to conclude that corporatism is on decline in Norway, and so research on public committees declined. Yet committees are still in regular use, and there are about 30 temporary committees in work at any time. I will argue that public committees increasingly may be read as an expert arrangement rather than a corporatist arrangement within the Norwegian policy making system. Although committees still are significant arenas for the integration of organized interests into public policy making, academic experts are increasingly included on committees. Also, there is a trend towards participation of the public as well as affected parties through the use of reference groups, public meetings and blogs. These observations will lay the ground for a discussion on how these new practices may indicate a transformation of committees’ role in the policy process. In particular, I will relate these observations to a discussion on the legitimacy of public committees as non-majoritarian, policy advisory institution.