Abstract
The chapter discusses challenges arising from the growing role of experts and expert knowledge in policymaking. It identifies a series of distinguishable epistemic and democratic worries about “expertization.” Examples are drawn from EU governance, in particular economy policy and debates over EU’s democratic deficits. It is argued that worries about larger expert influence on EU policymaking should be taken seriously, and that several of the listed problems have become more urgent in a time when the Union faces multiple crises. Still, good governance requires significant amounts of expert input. The solution thus is not to debunk expertise, but to organize and institutionalize expert arrangements in better ways. The chapter suggests a reform approach and takes up implications for different scenarios of EU integration.
This chapter builds on three other co-authored articles by Holst and Molander (2018, 2019, 2020). Some sub-sections overlap across these pieces. The list and discussions of democratic worries over expertise are, however, unique to this chapter. The chapter is moreover framed specifically to address the role of experts in EU’s recent crises, and includes a novel section that proposes reforms to address both democratic and epistemic worries, and with examples drawn from the EU context.
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Notes
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See the introduction chapter to this handbook.
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See Alvin I. Goldman’s (2011: 14) influential definition.
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The reports can be found in the Register of Commission Expert Groups, see http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert.
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Holst, C., Molander, A. (2021). Responding to Crises—Worries About Expertization . In: Riddervold, M., Trondal, J., Newsome, A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51791-5_38
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