Some experts take on political mandates and simultaneously base their authority on a claim to independence: this balancing act enables international organisations (IOs) to incorporate ‘independent’ experts and generate ‘objective’ knowledge around their policies. However, how do these experts reconcile the contradictory roles of a mandated expert and an independent expert? I address this question by taking recourse to Goffman's sociology and two related concepts: sociological ambivalence refers to situations in which a person faces conflicting expectations. This conflict can be remedied through role distance, that is, behaviour that signals a degree of disaffection from the role one is currently performing while one simultaneously continues to perform that role. I conduct a case study of ‘independent’ experts hired by the UN Security Council to monitor sanctions, analysing how their position is sociologically ambivalent and how their knowledge practices are interlaced with performances of role distance. The findings have two implications for macro-phenomena: first, by keeping their contradictory role constellation functional, experts make it possible for IOs to mobilise ‘independent expertise’. Second, because experts perform role distance through the way they produce knowledge, role distance leaves traces in political knowledge.

How do political investigations affect relations of power? Earlier studies have focused on the empowering effects of political knowledge – in contrast, I analyse how the pursuit of such knowledge makes the investigator dependent on others. I hypothesize that where the will to know empowers others, ignorance becomes a strategic alternative. This mechanism should play out strongly at the intersection of global governance and local political crises: here, global governance actors lack knowledge, investigations often constitute the first direct interaction between actors from both sides, and solidification of power (instead of empowering others) should be a central interest of global governance actors. I first explore the hypothesized mechanisms theoretically and develop a framework to analyse dependencies between investigators and their interlocutors. This framework then facilitates a within‐case comparison of investigative approaches of United Nations Panels of Experts. The results support and elucidate the hypothesized mechanisms. The study shows how the analysis of social interaction can create new views of the much‐studied relationship between knowledge and power.

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