The expertise of politicians and their role in epistemic communities

Abstract

Existing studies often regard politicians as outside epistemic communities, owing to a lack of policy or technical expertise. In contrast, this article argues that politicians can also be experts, and can play a pivotal role within existing epistemic communities. Specifically, it finds that this expertise is acquired through two distinct, but interrelated, processes. First, politicians who work on an issue for a sustained period and have access to expert knowledge can be recruited to epistemic communities. Second, politicians with a relevant academic or professional background can become allies for such communities. This argument is developed through an analysis of pension reform in Norway. Drawing on interviews with key policy actors, we demonstrate that civil servants in the Ministry of Finance constituted an epistemic community which recruited key politicians through the Pension Commission and benefited from having an economist and ally as Prime Minister.

Attendance at the Interparliamentary Conference on the CFSP/CSDP: Fostering the Emergence of a Parliamentary Epistemic Community in the EU?

“…Much like diplomats who are generalists in nature, but then develop specialized knowledge through their postings, parliamentarians themselves over time become specialists not just in policy‐making per se, but also in specific subject areas through personal interest, party‐political positions or most importantly committee membership. Indeed, specialized parliamentarians have been identified as important parts of specific epistemic communities (Grødem and Hippe, 2019; Marier, 2008).…”

Mobilizing Policy (In)Capacity to Fight COVID-19: Understanding Variations in State Responses

“…This second issue – determining not only how national responses differed but also why different responses occurred in the first place – is also addressed in these case studies. How policymakers come to view a problem and the consequences of how it is portrayed to them by experts is critical to policy-making but is usually difficult to disentangle when issues arise over a long period of time and key aspects of decision-making are buried in the mists of time (Grødem & Hippe, 2019 ). With the COVID-19 case, however, policy scholars are presented with the highly unusual opportunity to study virtually simultaneous but different government responses to the same problem and thus tease out the key factors which drove those decisions and their implications for both policy success and future practice.…”

Tales and theories as levers of expert influence: A case study of the Norwegian Oil Fund

“…The expert actors in this context are the individuals influencing the policymaking process. While most studies of expert influence focus on state bureaucracies and knowledge regimes (e.g., Campbell and Pedersen 2015;Christensen 2017;Haas 1992;Quaglia 2005), elected or appointed politicians with formal economic training can be, or can become, experts (Grødem and Hippe 2019;Markoff and Montecinos 1993). Recent research illustrates how many European countries are dominated by technocratic governments and politicians with high-ranking academic qualifications (Bovens and Wille 2017;Pastorella 2016).…”