What does it mean for representative democracies to rely on scientific expertise? Parliaments as producers of political knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic

With the increased executive dominance (e.g. Merkel 2020), the political decisions that have been taken during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in several European parliaments illustrate a clear paradox. While governments’ decisions have been largely de-politicised and rather legitimized as based on available scientific knowledge as a means of rushing them through parliaments to make decisions and laws with immediate effect, not so much knowledge is actually available and the tendency has been to politicise the available scientific knowledge of the COVID-19 illness. The current crisis, however, shows a longer trend of valuing scientific knowledge in political decision-making in European parliaments as well as the complexity and tensions it generates. This paper addresses these political dynamics by asking: What does it mean for parliamentary democracies to rely on scientific expertise? It shows a few examples of how scientific expertise and knowledge has been used to justify political decisions in European national parliaments, and analyses how the language of expertise relates to the rhetoric of democracy in parliamentary debates.