Background National responses to the COVID-19 pandemic depend on national preparedness systems that must be understood as components of global public health emergency preparedness systems, governed and coordinated through the World Health Organization’s 2005 International Health Regulations. The pandemic has raised the question of why countries belonging to similar public health regimes, coordinated through the same global system, responded differently to the same threat. Comparing the responses of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, countries with similar public health regimes, the paper investigates to what degree national differences in COVID-19 policy response reflect significant differences in the policy preferences of national expert groups. Results We employ a structured case comparison of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden to analyze their’ politico-administrative pandemic preparedness systems and policy responses during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. We use the results of an interdisciplinary expert survey completed in 2020 to analyze expert perceptions in two ways. First, we analyze expert perceptions of COVID-19 responses while controlling for national COVID-19 trajectories and experts’ characteristics. Second, we analyze the distribution and effect of dominant global expert-held ideas across countries, showing the importance of dominant ideas for experts’ perceptions and preferences for COVID-19 response. Conclusion The study finds no evidence indicating that COVID-19 policy variation between the most similar cases of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden are the result of differences in the policy preferences of national expert groups. Instead, our study highlights the importance of other factors than cross-national expert dissensus for explaining variation in pandemic response such as the politico-administrative organization of pandemic preparedness systems. Further, we find that expert support for dominant ideas such as a ‘focused protection strategy’ is associated with consistent policy preferences across locational, disciplinary, and geographic affiliations. Recognition of the latter should be a part of future discussions about how global ideas of pandemic preparedness are diffused transnationally and embedded in national politico-administrative systems.

In this commentary we provide a selective overview of the kinds of insights that a sociology of expertise can provide in better articulating the stakes of current politico-epistemic conflicts catalysed by COVID-19. In doing so, we argue that one of the ways that sociology can fruitfully engage with the pre-, intra- and post-pandemic societal responses is through its distinctive perspective on expertise. To exemplify the potential of this perspective, we present three dimensions of the pandemic that a sociology of expertise opens up avenues for exploring: (a) the formation of expert publics; (b) transnational expert dynamics; and (c) expert moral authority. Together these three dimensions show how expertise constitutes a crucial nexus for understanding how contemporary societies respond to global crises.

This dissertation addresses the issue of expertise in climate change and pandemic preparedness. Economies and societies around the world are increasingly facing the consequences of a changing climate and more frequent infectious disease outbreaks. These problems are generally articulated as issues that require for their handling new forms of expertise and expert institutions that enable states to intervene in new ways. However, most existing research on climate and pandemic preparedness expertise tends to either focus solely on the transnational sphere or see the state and expertise as distinct. As a result, the role of the state in shaping climate and pandemic preparedness expertise remains underexplored.