Special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis
Peter Aagaard, Sevasti Chatzopoulou, and Birgitte Poulsen
Crisis seems to be everywhere these days. Where there is crisis, there is crisis management. And where there is crisis management, there are experts that advise politicians in decision-making. However, how does this sustained pressure from crises affect relationships between experts and politicians? Has expertise increasingly become politicised? Or do we see more scientisation of politics? And do relationships between experts and politicians vary across different political systems? These are all central questions addressed in our recently published article on Analysing expert advice on political decisions in times of crisis. They are important questions, because they deal with the legitimacy of decision-making and public sense-making in the era of recurring crises.
In our article, we study how a crisis, like COVID-19, affected expert–politician relationships in Denmark, Greece, and the United States. Despite their differences, there were traces of the politicisation of expertise in all three cases. However, experts did not hold sway over elected politicians in any of the countries. In all three countries politicians relied on science selectively (also as partisan expertise) to publicly legitimise their strategies and decisions. The frontstage influence of experts played a minor but significant part across all three cases. Experts were aware of their role in the media during the crisis, often feeling a need to defend their science, perhaps even in opposition to their own government. (Perhaps you remember Fauci?)
However, we also found that the politicisation of expertise was connected to national governance characteristics, like the degree of centralisation, networking, unitary and consensus-oriented modes. Greece and Denmark were the most similar countries, but there were also slight differences. We suggest that this was due to differences in governance systems. Denmark prioritises networks, whereas Greece has a more command-and-control governance style. Donald Trump’s approach to crisis management (or lack of) in the US was certainly atypical and is perhaps an outlier in Western liberal democracies. (Nonetheless, depending on US elections (and courts), we might be revisiting Trump’s crisis management style soon).
We propose that these results are relevant well beyond Covid19, whether for financial crises, climate crises, pandemics or, most recently, a security crisis in Europe. Yes, national governance systems’ use of expertise is affected by the increased crisis pressure, but they are probably also affected in different ways.
Do you want to find out more? Read the special issue on crisis and policy expertise here.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Aagaard, P., Chatzopoulou, S., & Poulsen, B. (2024). Analysing expert advice on political decisions in times of crisis. Policy & Politics, 52(1), 24-43 from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000003
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
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