The Contestation of Expertise in the European Union

Vigjilenca Abazi, Johan Adriaensen, Thomas Christiansen, Vigjilenca Abazi, Johan Adriaensen, Thomas Christiansen

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030543662
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030543679
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the position and role of expertise in European policy-making and governance. At a time when the very notion of expertise and expert advice is increasingly losing authority, the book addresses these challenges by empirically examining specific administrative processes and institutional designs in the European Union. The first part of the volume theorizes expertise and its contestation by examining accounts of the legitimate institutional design of knowledge production processes and exploring the theoretical links of Europeanisation and expertise. The second part of the book delves into empirical institutionalist accounts of expertise and maps the role of experts in a variety of EU institutions but also explains the implications when EU bodies themselves are in an 'expert' position, such as agencies. The book offers insights into how individual experts deal with the challenge of producing reports that will be heard by policy-makers, while at the same time preserving their independence. Broadening its scope, the book then expands the analysis to the role of advisory committees in light of the shift from a reliance primarily on in-house expertise to including more external experts in advisory groups in the European Commission and European Parliament as well as at the European External Action. In the third part, the book opens the lens to developments beyond the EU by taking into account two highly pertinent fields: climate change and trade. These fields are highly complex, fast-developing, and politicised issues, and the book engages with them in order to provide an outside-in perspective on expertise.

Chapter 6 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

© The Author(s) 2021

V. Abazi et al. (eds.)The Contestation of Expertise in the European UnionEuropean Administrative Governancehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54367-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

The Role of Scientific Expertise in EU Policy-Making: Ever Greater Contestation?

Vigjilenca Abazi¹ , Johan Adriaensen¹ and Thomas Christiansen²

(1)

Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands

(2)

Luiss University, Rome, Italy

Vigjilenca Abazi (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Johan Adriaensen

Email: [email protected]

Thomas Christiansen

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

Introduction

“People … have had enough of experts” was one of the memorable quotes during the campaign for the British exit from the European Union (EU) (Mance 2016). Whilst this statement from a leading politician of the governing party was remarkable, and amplified by the outcome of the referendum, this contestation of expertise and the role of experts is not limited to this specific decision taken in the UK. In fact, it is symptomatic of a broader global trend in contesting, and even discounting, the role and information provided by experts. Climate change is a salient example of the latter, despite increasing number of scientific evidence showing its repercussions. In the EU context, the relationship between expert bodies and democratic decision-making is also contested on the account of lack of accountability of experts to majoritarian institutions and the public in general as well as the lack of participatory and representative elements of expert bodies (Brown 2009).

This growing hostility in the public debate about the role of expertise clashes with long-standing assumptions about the need for such expertise, especially, in the EU, where the reliance on technocratic expertise has traditionally been considered as a key factor legitimating an emerging polity. EU policy-making today, in an era of evidence-based decision-making and legal requirements for impact assessment studies, is impossible to imagine without the knowledge and involvement of experts. Even minor national policy decisions increasingly entail a high level of complexity but also interconnectedness with regional and global policies, which in turn require sophisticated knowledge and approaches that experts can offer.

The recent trend towards contestation of expertise in the policy-process therefore raises fundamental questions about the way in which the EU is being governed. This book examines the current role of expertise in EU decision-making and explores the factors leading to its contestation. In doing so, we start from the position that the nature of institutional arrangements and administrative procedures are essential, both to understand the contestation of expertise and to identify the means by which apparently opposing principles can be meaningfully reconciled. From this institutionalist starting-point, the book provides a multidisciplinary perspective on expertise and its contestation by looking at diverse policy fields including EU external relations, bioethics, and climate change.

The contributions to this volume come at an important time when it is increasingly urgent to study, in a scientific and rigorous manner, the position and role of expertise in EU policy-making and governance. Taking into account that a wealth of (often contradictory) information leads many to question expert advice, we observe that the very notion of expertise and expert advice is increasingly losing authority (Nichols 2017). This emerging political culture, frequently coined as ‘post-factual’ or ‘post-truth’ politics, risks undermining liberal values and the rule of law. Populism, in combination with a growing trend to rely on referendums founded or run on misinformation by political leaders, threatens a well-informed public debate, which is a foundational basis for the functionality of democratic mechanisms. These developments also question the role of judicial review and of independent agencies (such as central banks), and consequently undermine the notion of a separation of powers. This book addresses these conflicts and challenges by empirically examining specific administrative processes and institutional designs in the European Union.

The book draws from the considerable attention and rich discussions on the topic of expertise in the scholarly literature. Yet it expands on existing debates by focusing on the contestation of expertise by reflecting on the latest developments and trends in the field. Going beyond a singular focus on one discipline (Ambrus et al. 2014; Littoz-Monnet 2017; Edmond 2004; Kohlrausch and Trischler 2014; Schofield 2014), the book adopts a multidisciplinary approach and combines theoretical and empirical reflections on the topic. An additional contribution to the debates on expertise in the EU decision-making is that the book offers a deeper understanding of administrative practice and institutional responses to contestation of expertise by examining a wide variety of EU institutions, including the Commission, the European Parliament, and the European External Action Service. This sets the book apart from the many contributions that analyse singular institutions or bodies at the expense of a broader understanding of the role of experts in the EU (Metz 2015; Ossege 2016). Hence, a significant addition to existing literature is that the book will offer findings that are representative both across different EU policy fields, but also allow us to identify patterns common to various EU actors, and indeed to the EU’s institutional architecture as a whole. Furthermore, the book provides a contribution to wider debates on expertise by expanding the focus to decision-making on global governance issues such as climate change and trade (Fleck et al. 1998; Ericsson et al. 2006; Fischer 2009; Ahn et al. 2014; Stone 2013; Sending 2015).

Understanding ‘Contestation’ of Expertise

The Notion of ‘Contestation’ and the Approach of This Book

This book centres on the contestation of expertise. How is contestation of expertise understood? In his elaborate analysis on the role of legal experts, Kennedy remarks that it is even difficult to more adequately understand ‘what these experts do, the nature and limits of their vocabulary, and the possibilities for translating their work into politically contestable terms — or promoting the experience of responsible human freedom among the experts who govern our world’ (Kennedy 2004, p. 1). Indeed, expertise is often treated as a privileged kind of knowledge (Turner 2006). Contesting this privileged knowledge can arise due to democratic concerns for egalitarian access to the production of knowledge, but may also arise from an emerging political culture frequently coined as ‘post-factual’, we explain the logics of contestation below.

Based on the premise that institutions are a key forum where different principles are reconciled and translated into practices and procedures, this book focuses on the institutional approach to understand the growing contestation of expertise, its implications for policy-making and the legal order, as well as potential ways forward. It hence seeks not merely to understand the processes and actors in the expertise arena, but rather to focus on the factors and institutional setting that drive such contestation and map its implications. The book therefore furthers our understanding of the processes in which individuals or groups challenge the reliance on, or the participation of, experts in the decision-making process, or expertise as a foundation for governmental decision-making. Whilst acknowledging the growing literature addressing contestation in international relations (Wiener 2014), this book focuses on the institutional approach for contestation specifically of experts.

Actors, Aspects and Logics of Contestation

Contestation is an organising principle of both scientific and political life. Academics organise the contestation of their work through conferences and the creation of peer-review mechanisms prior to the publication of research. Politics itself is equally characterised by a clash of ideas and ideologies. The deliberative turn in democratic theory particularly, led to a growing appreciation of the need for a constructive exchange of (reasoned) opinions through public or parliamentary debate. Whereas the central focus of the academic critique lies on the qualities of the scientific process through which findings were obtained, political contestation is more concerned with the normative implications of the research for public policy and how it fits the political narrative. Can it be instrumentalised, annotated or should it be opposed? Beyond the epistemic and normative rationale for contestation, a third logic has become increasingly prominent.

Critical theory has drawn attention to the structural context through which facts and science are being constructed. Thomas Kuhn’s recognition that ruling scientific paradigms inevitably form the lens through which new facts are being interpreted, helped explain the disproportionate counter-evidence required to reconsider our assessment of scientific ‘facts’. This critique applied both to the exact sciences (e.g. the change from geocentrism to helio-centrism) as well as the social sciences (e.g. the paradigmatic change from Keynesian to Monetarist economic policies). By now, scholars in the Science, Technology and Society (STS) community have developed far more refined models to grasp the multitude of structural conditions that shape and construct our understanding of facts and findings. This represents a third logic of contestation (Table 1.1).

Table 1.1

Overview: Arenas of contestation

Actors of contestation	Contestation	Logic of contestation
Researchers	Process: Do the findings follow from the consulted data?	Epistemic
Elected officials	Results: What has been found?	Normative (political)
Civil society	Context: How were the facts constructed?	Structural

Source Authors

The main protagonists that contest expertise vary across the forums discussed. Within epistemic communities, it mostly concerns critique by academic peers focusing on the scientific process through which findings emerge. At a political level, the debate is funnelled through opposing ideological perspectives interpreting the policy implications of the new findings and how they may be used in the political narrative.

Finally, structural critiques are often voiced by organised interests in society. Environmental groups critiquing the privileged position of business interests in institutionalised decision-making, or groups that take issue with the use of privately funded research when assessing the carcinogenic risks of glyphosate are but two examples that spring to mind.

The existence of citizen science, the concepts of a socially engaged researcher, or a technically trained elected official make it obvious that the above overview is but a huge simplification of a more complex reality. Within each group there is a common vocabulary and a joint understanding of what constitutes a valid critique and -more importantly- the implications of such critique for the expertise of the concerned groups. While the composition of expert bodies judging the permissibility of a GMO field trial can be questioned and debated from a structural point of view, it does not necessarily say anything about the soundness of the research design proposed and their implications.

A Culmination of Critiques

Arenas of contestation have never been independent from one a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Conceptualising the Role of Expertise in EU Policy-Making
• 3. The Europeanization of National Knowledge Regimes
• 4. Winning Hearts, Losing Minds: Politicisation and the Contestation of Expertise in the Context of TTIP Negotiations
• 5. The European Commission’s Expert Groups: Adapting to the Contestation of Expertise
• 6. The Role of Expertise in the EU’s Emerging Diplomatic System
• 7. Climate Science in the Courts
• 8. Judicial Review of Science-Based Measures Under WTO Law
• 9. Contesting Concentrated Scientific Power: The Case of the European Commission’s Chief Scientific Adviser
• 10. Conclusion: The Contestation of Expertise in the EU
• Correction to: The Role of Expertise in the EU’s Emerging Diplomatic System
• Back Matter