Variables and Challenges in Assessing EU Experts’ Performance

Abstract

Expert advice in political processes is supposed to improve decisions. If expertise fails in this function, a legitimacy problem occurs: granting political power to experts may be defensible, but only on the grounds that it contributes to enlightening political processes and facilitate problem-solving. The paper provides a theoretical exploration of four variables that are key when assessing the epistemic quality of expert deliberations: the degree to which these deliberations are 1) informed by technical expertise, 2) regulated by epistemically optimal respect and inclusion norms, 3) focused on politically relevant and applicable knowledge, and 4) approaching questions involving moral judgment and standard setting competently. Previous research on the European Commission's use of expert advice has more or less overlooked the question of experts' epistemic performance, and this paper discusses the possible reasons for this in light of well-known methodological challenges in studies of elite behaviour; access and bias problems. A discussion of the merits and limitations of different available data on the Commission experts shows that the biggest obstacle in the study of experts' epistemic performance is rather the problem of epistemic asymmetry, i.e. of how researchers as non-experts can assess the epistemic quality of experts' contributions and behaviour. The paper offers, finally, a set of strategies to get research going despite this problem.

Public deliberation and the fact of expertise: making experts accountable

“…Our assessments are based on more extensive analyses published elsewhere(Holst and Moodie 2015;Holst and Tørnblad 2015). See in particular the overview of relevant documents and the section on findings inHolst and Moodie's (2015, 42-48) study.…”

The epistemic quality of expertise: contextualized criteria for the multi-source, negotiated policy advice of stakeholder fora

“…Third, we therefore suggest to complement an analysis of the epistemic quality of negotiated expertise with insights of Deliberative Democratic Theory, which has shown a keen eye for the collective dimension of decision-making by a multitude of agents (cf. for instance Bächtiger et al 2005;Beatty/Moore 2010;Fischer 2009;Holst/Tørnblad 2015;Mansbridge et al 2012;Young 2000) and thus provides the means to analyse group-internal processes. Yet, Deliberative Democracy does usually not consider the role of experts and knowledge in policy-making in any systematic way, as Fischer (2009) points out.…”

“…Within these three fields of research only very few approaches exist that aim at providing categories for assessing the value of expertise, actually spell out their categories and thus point to an application to the empirical world (cf. for interesting approaches Bächtiger et al 2009, Goldman 2001, Holst/Tørnblad 2015, Lentsch/Weingart 2011. Each of these approaches are, however, rooted within one of the above described research traditions.…”