About the project
Public inquiry commissions are a core element of policy-making in the Nordic countries. Previous research suggests that these commissions function both as an extension of public administration, as a way of including interest groups in policy formulation, and as a channel for incorporating expert advice in decision-making.
However, ongoing changes in conditions for governance are challenging the traditional role of inquiry commissions. Both expertization, the increasing reliance on experts in politics and public administration, and Europeanization, the processes by which national governance systems adapt to European-wide norms and EU-level bodies, have put existing policy advice mechanisms under pressure. These processes raise fundamental questions about the continued functioning and legitimacy of inquiry commissions: Is the investigation of policy problems and solutions increasingly left to a small elite of national and international experts? Are processes of expertization and Europeanization eroding the democratic and governance credentials of inquiry commissions?
Objectives
EUREX will provide a study centered on the Norwegian system of public inquiry commissions, known as NOUs (Norges offentlige utredninger) where two main research questions will be examined:
- How has the NOU system changed in response to processes of expertization and Europeanization?
- What are the consequences of these changes for democracy and good governance?
These questions will be addressed within a multi-dimensional, multi-method research design that incorporates historical, comparative, European and normative dimensions. The project will analyze the transformation of the NOU system over time in light of expertization and Europeanization, across policy areas, in contrast to simultaneous changes in other countries, and from the perspective of competing normative goals.
User forum
The EUREX user forum consists of members with experience from different parts of the public enquiry system. Leaders of inquiry commissions as well as key persons from public administration, civil society, and academia are represented.
See members of the forum
- Professor Inge Lorange Backer,Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo
- Professor Grete Brochmann, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo
- Kristin Clemet, Head of Civita (former Minister of education and research)
- Ingunn E. Ulfsten, Norwegian Federation of Organizations of Disabled People
- Jacob Hanssen,Deputy Director General, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs
- Jon M. Hippe, Researcher, Fafo
- Ane Hansdatter Kismul, Senior advisor, Norwegian Farmers' Union (Bondelaget)
- Torill Lødemel, Senior advisor, Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO)
- Bård Nylund, Former president, National Association for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender persons
- Åshild Olaussen, Head of Social Affairs, Confederation of Unions for Professionals (Unio)
- Stein Reegård, Chief economist, Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO)
- Erling G. Rikheim, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Finance
- Tom Rådahl, Secretary General, Ministry of Climate and Environment
- Heidi Sørensen, Director, Climate Agency, The City of Oslo (Oslo kommune)
- Carlo Thomsen, Project leader Jernbanereformprosjektet, Ministry of Transport and Communications (on leave from the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation)
- Arnulf Tverberg, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Justice and Public Security
- Astri Tverstøl, Deputy Director General, Ministry of Finance
Previous events
Workshop: Expertise and policy-making – comparative perspectives
Time and place: – , The Hague, Netherlands
Keynote speakers
- Bo Rothstein (Professor, University of Gothenburg, Quality of Government Institute)
- Åse Gornitzka (Professor and Vice-Rector, University of Oslo)
About the workshop
The role of expert knowledge in politics and policy-making has attracted growing attention in recent decades. In the specialized and complex societies of today, policy-makers are increasingly reliant on academic and professional knowledge to understand and address societal problems. Even though expert knowledge can be used for political ends and is sometimes contested or outright rejected, a significant role for expertise has become a fact of modern-day policy-making.
Yet, the involvement of experts and use of expert knowledge in decision-making varies significantly across countries, governance levels, policy areas and expert disciplines. The workshop adopts an explicitly comparative perspective on the issue of expertise and policy-making, seeking to shed light on the differences and similarities in how specialized expertise is incorporated into political decisions.
The central questions that the workshop will address are: What institutions exist for incorporating specialized knowledge in decision-making, and what role do different types of experts and expert knowledge play within these institutions? What explains the differences in the institutional position of expert knowledge? How does the varying institutional role of experts affect policy-making and the content of public policies?
The workshop invites papers that compare the policy role of experts or expertise along one of the following dimensions: (1) across polities, including comparisons across countries and across governance levels (e.g. involving the EU or other international organizations); (2) across different government bodies (e.g. ministries, agencies); (3) across policy areas; (4) across expert professions, such as economics or law; and (5) between different knowledge providers, including academics, government research bodies, think tanks, consultancies, interest groups and citizens.
EUREX at ECPR: Tracing Expertization
Time:
EUREX at ECPR: Exploring Alternative Forms of Knowledge
Time: Aug. 23, 2018 3:50 PM
Panel: Exploring Alternative Forms of Knowledge
EUREX participants Eva Krick and Stine Hesstvedt are co-chairing a panel "Exploring Alternative Forms of Knowledge" at the ECPR General Conference in Hamburg 22-25 august 2018.
EUREX: Workshop on the role of expertise in policy-making
Time and place: – , Georg Sverdrups hus, Aud. 2
Keynote speakers:
- Simone Chambers, University of California, Irvine
- Melissa Lane, Princeton University
Outline
Contemporary governance relies extensively on academic expertise. Over the last decades, courts, agencies, central banks and other expert bodies inhabited by academics have been given substantive discretionary powers. Academics have also conquered high political and bureaucratic offices, such as in Latin-America during the 1990s or in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. Epistemic logics seem to have a growing significance in parliamentary processes and in the public sphere: civil society organizations and political parties feel the need to support their proposals with references to research. And governments and international organizations, including the European Union (EU), increasingly seek the advice of “expert groups and “expert committees” to formulate policies.
These developments form the backdrop for diagnoses of a rising “expertocracy” or “epistocracy of the educated”, that is, a rule of scientists and professionals. This is regarded by some as a tragedy for democracy, leaving us with a “façade democracy”, “disfigured democracy”, or “post-democracy”. Others welcome an increasing role for scientists and academics as a way of overcoming the ignorance of the citizenry and as a precondition for rational and knowledge-based policy-making.
To what extent and in what respects is policy-making characterized by expertization? To what extent does empirical scholarship confirm the grand diagnosis of a growing role of scientific knowledge in contemporary governance? How should different expressions of expertization be interpreted and assessed from a normative point of view? If experts are on the rise – is this “good” or bad”? How should expertization processes be operationalized, and on the basis of which normative parameters and indicators should we evaluate their merits and flaws?
The workshop aims to bridge empirical and normative discussions about the role of expertise in policy-making.
Papers
Paper session 1:
How to bridge the epistemic-democratic divide. Institutional innovations of coupling civil society, experts and the government in the phase of policy development
Eva Krick, ARENA, University of Oslo
Developing dialogue tools for science advisers
Andreas Brøgger Jensen and David Budtz Pedersen, Aalborg University
Paper session 2:
What do citizens know? – Struggles over and for experiential knowledge in participatory governance
Kanerva Kuokkanen, University of Helsinki, and Taina Meriluoto, University of Jyväskylä
EU trade policy between a narrow and a broad view of expertise
Diana Potjomkina, United Nations University – CRIS, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Ghent University
Paper session 3:
Criteria for assessing moral experts’ performance on governmental advisory commissions – exemplified by an analysis of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies (EGE)
Eilev Hegstad, University of Oslo
Paper session 4:
Democratizing the European Union's administrative powers. A case for institutionalizing a politics-administration dichotomy in EU governance
Jan Pieter Beetz, Radboud University Nijmegen
The role of experts in policy-making: Bridging the gap between normative theory and empirical analysis. Cathrine Holst, ARENA, University of Oslo, and Johan Christensen, Leiden University
Paper session 5:
Four models of democratic expertise
Alfred Moore, University of York
Political literacy of experts
Andreas Eriksen, ARENA, University of Oslo
Paper session 6:
Accountability of experts: What does it mean, why is it challenging – and is it what we need? Silje Aambø Langvatn and Cathrine Holst, University of Oslo
What characterises parliamentary responses to expertisation? A study of the European Parliament by Guri Rosén, ARENA, University of Oslo and Anne Elizabeth Stie, University of Agder
Paper session 7:
Controversies in EU impact assessment
Claudio M. Radaelli and Claire Dunlop, University of Exeter (presented by Claudio M. Radaelli)
Knowing the ropes: The role of experts and expertise in the making of the EU maritime policy by Ruxandra Bosilca, National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Romania
Paper session 8:
Data protection by design: promises and perils in crossing the Rubicon between law and engineering by Kjetil Rommetveit, University of Bergen
Show us the evidence: The use of expertise in parliamentary debates
Aron Buzogány, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna
Publications
2019
Who are appointed to public commissions and why? A study of four public commissions relating to the Norwegian Police Service by Simes Andreas Nefstad Grinden. ARENA report 8/19
Experts at networking? The constrained influence of experts in Norwegian policy-networks by Marte Lund Saga. ARENA report 7/19.
Between ‘Scientization’ and a ‘Participatory Turn’. Tracing shifts in the governance of policy advice by Eva Krick, Johan Christensen and Cathrine Holst. Science and Public Policy: DOI: doi.org/10.1093/scipol/scz040
2018
Economic knowledge and the scientization of policy advice by Johan Christensen. Policy Sciences, Volume 51, Issue 3, pp 291–311DOI: 10.1007/s11077-018-9316-6
2017
The Power of Economists within the State by Johan Christensen. Stanford University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9781503600492
