Truth-Sensitive and Democratic? The Case of the European Commission Expert Groups

How must expert arrangements be organized to be legitimate within a democratic order? The problem that confronts us is primarily one of truth-sensitive institutional design: Which mechanisms can contribute to ensuring that experts are really experts and use their competencies in the right way? The challenge exceeds however that of producing epistemically optimal expert deliberations, since a legitimate political system must also fulfil ethical and democratic requirements of respect and inclusion. The paper is split in two, where the first part gives an outline of a set of expert accountability mechanisms, introduces possible additional measures aimed at making the use of expertise compatible with respect and inclusion requirements, and discusses how such requirements must be balanced with the epistemic concerns that justify expert arrangements in the first place. On this basis, the second part of the paper contributes to a discussion of the normative legitimacy of the European Commission expert group system. A first step is to identify and assess the efficiency or likely efficiency of a set of institutionalized expert accountability mechanisms, meant to target in part expert group experts’ behaviour and judgment directly, in part key conditions of their behaviour and judgment. The next step is to identify and assess different measures taken to ‘democratize expertise’ and to ensure respect for citizens. It is argued that expert accountability in the European Commission expert group system is less than fully institutionalized, and that the democratizing measures taken arguably are of the wrong kind; they seem to add little democracy, while being potentially costly epistemically speaking. Assessments are made on the basis of an available European Commission expert group data base, documentary sources and a recent detailed coding of meeting minutes from expert groups’ meetings.