by Sarah Brown, Journals Manager
Policy & Politics highlights collection on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis: free to access from 1st May – 31 July 2024
Barely out of the media spotlight it seems, the role of experts in policymaking is as topical now as it was during the Covid-19 pandemic. So, we’re delighted to introduce our new special issue re-examining this hotly debated topic – Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis.
The Covid-19 pandemic increased the focus on the relationship between experts and politicians. For example, health experts globally became engaged in new ways of exchanging knowledge where they recommended strategies for coping with the pandemic and gave advice to governments and citizens. New institutional structures for exchanging knowledge came about, organised around communities of expertise, advisory committees, public campaigns and the crisis management operations of state agencies. These have also been evident during other crises, such as climate change and specific economic and political crises.
In Western liberal democracies, politics and expertise are, ideally at least, seen as preconditions for each other. Here, experts provide knowledge and advice based on the latest research and politicians make decisions based on that expert advice. Experts are, in this view, neutral and unbiased, providing legitimacy to the policy process.
However, during times of recurrent crises, this idealised model becomes entangled with the new institutional arrangements of knowledge exchange. These include increased institutional interdependency and increased pressure on decision-making due to pressures from media attention, as well as the increased speed of knowledge generation due to digitalisation. Such arrangements affect mechanisms of knowledge exchange significantly.
The aim of this special issue therefore, is to analyse and explore these new knowledge exchange arrangements and their impact across different regions of the world. It examines what consequences and dilemmas they pose for good, efficient governance, and investigates what impact they have on the distribution of power, democratic accountability and legitimacy.
To find out more, please read the special issue research articles via the links below, or alternatively our special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis.
Happy reading!
Table of contents for special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis
Policy expertise in times of crisis
Peter Aagaard, Marleen Easton, and Brian W. Head
Analysing expert advice on political decisions in times of crisis
Peter Aagaard, Sevasti Chatzopoulou, and Birgitte Poulsen
Mapping the changing role of expertise in COVID-19 politics in Europe
Kennet Lynggaard, Theofanis Exadaktylos, Mads Dagnis Jensen, and Michael Kluth
Expert perspectives on the changing dynamics of policy advisory systems: the COVID-19 crisis and policy learning in Belgium and Australia
Marleen Easton, Jennifer Yarnold, Valerie Vervaenen, Jasper De Paepe, and Brian W. Head
Investigating the scientific knowledge–policy interface in EU climate policy [Open access]
Claire Dupont, Jeffrey Rosamond, and Bishoy L. Zaki
The promise and performance of data ecosystems: Australia’s COVID-19 response [Open access]
Cosmo Howard and Bernadette Hyland-Wood
The challenges experts face during creeping crises: the curse of complacency
Ahmad Wesal Zaman, Olivier Rubin, and Reidar Staupe-Delgado
Policy & Politics Journal Blog 