About the project
The EU has recently taken unprecedented administrative and legal measures to address threats of terror, the euro crisis, and environmental challenges. Critics claim that the Union’s crises management contributes to pushing the EU further towards technocracy and expert-rule.
Is Europe abandoning democracy as we know it? And if so, is this a problem? Some would say no. To deal with the risks and hazards globalisation throws upon us, they would argue, the best available expertise must be mobilised and given the necessary power, even if we by doing so are challenging familiar ideas of democracy. If more power to the experts can help save the planet, the economy, health, security and other basic goods, we should not hesitate embracing it or worry so much about democratic standards. Why stick to ideas of 'rule of the people' that may turn out to be irrelevant and even dangerous in a world that is in urgent need of decisions based on our best knowledge? Why not opt for what political philosopher David Estlund refers to as 'epistocracy' – a 'rule of the knowers'?
EPISTO will elaborate on this and other arguments for expert-rule, test the soundness of their empirical assumptions, and develop a sophisticated and robust normative defense of democracy in Europe that specifies the legitimate role and scope of expert power.
Objectives
The EPISTO project will:
- elaborate on different dimensions of knowledge-based rule and develop an epistocracy-typology
- discuss and identify the proper standards for assessing the normative legitimacy of expertise arrangement based on recent contributions and debates in political philosophy and democratic theory
- map and analyse the European Commission’s expert group system, its composition and powers
- study expertise behaviour, deliberation and rationality in the context of this system, and discuss and assess this system’s normative legitimacy in light of its empirical characteristics
Previous events
2016: ECPR workshop on expert rule
Time and place: Apr. 24, 2016 – Apr. 28, 2016, Pisa, Italy
Cathrine Holst and Bo Rothstein will convene a workshop on expert rule at the 2016 ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Pisa, Italy.
The panel 'Was Plato Right? Should the Experts Rule?' will be part of the ECPR Joint Sessions 2016 to be held in Pisa on 24-28 April 2016.
Directors
- Cathrine Holst, ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo
- Bo Rothstein, Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg
A total of 19 papers will be presented and discussed over three full days. From ARENA, convener Cathrine Holst will present her work on the accountability of experts. Moreover, Silje H. Tørnblad and Guri Rosén will present 'How does knowledge travel in EU policy-making processes?' using the case of TTIP as an example, and guest researcher Eva Krick is to discuss her paper 'Reconciling epistemic and democratic legitimacy: a plea for the hand-picked selection of participants in policy formulation'.
2013: EPISTO Kick-off Conference
Time and place: Apr. 4, 2013 9:00 AM – Apr. 5, 2013 5:00 PM, Georg Sverdrup's House, Blindern Campus
The research project EPISTO (Why not epistocracy? Political legitimacy and 'the fact of expertise') will have its kick-off conference at the University of Oslo April 4 and 5 2013. Participation is limited to registered participants.
The EPISTO project
EPISTO is a 5 year research project directed by Senior Researcher Cathrine Holst, funded by The Research Council of Norway and hosted by ARENA - Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo. The kick-off conference will be the first of several international events in the project period.
Conference outline
EPISTO inquires into the role of knowledge and expertise in modern democracies with a particular focus on 'epistocratic' developments in the European Union (epistocracy = rule of the knowers). The conference will be organized around three main themes:
- Expert-rule and democratic legitimacy
- The role of knowledge and expertise in EU governance
- The European Commission's use of expertise
Discussions around theme 1 will concentrate on implications of modern democracies' knowledge and expertise dependence for political and democratic theory, with a particular focus on epistemic approaches to deliberative democracy.
Speeches and papers addressing theme 2 will discuss general trends and developments in the EU with regard to the role of expertise and experts in political decision-making, the implications for EU's democratic legitimacy, and analytical strategies for studying expertise and democratic legitimacy in an EU context.
Theme 3 will focus on the European Commission's use of expertise, and the Commission's expert group system in particular
