Select committees are the principal mechanism of accountability in the House of Commons and act as information-gathering tools for Parliament. They are generally regarded as influential in the UK policy-making process (even if this is often informal), who enjoy widespread media coverage, and who have a generally positive reputation. Despite their importance, we know comparatively little about how they approach and use evidence to support their work (with some notable exceptions). In this blog, I want to explore precisely this topic.

Select committees are made up of small groups of MPs, elected as members by their colleagues. In order to hold governments to account, select committees rely on extensive evidence-gathering, including an open call for written evidence and oral evidence through invite-only committee hearings. Evidence is analysed and published in a report, which will include recommendations for change. What does ‘evidence’ mean in this context?

The formal meanings of ‘evidence’ are set out in Erskine May, the authoritative reference book on parliamentary procedure for the UK Parliament. It is expected that evidence is ‘truthful’ (para 38.31), which may otherwise be ‘treated as a contempt of the House and investigated and punished’ (para 38.55). Interestingly, evidence prepared for a committee becomes its ‘property’ (para 38.32) in order to be protected by parliamentary privilege (preventing evidence from being called into question by the courts).

Erskine May is an important starting point because it highlights a relationship with law that has percolated into MPs’ views of evidence. For example, one MP told me that ‘I think we act like a jury’ and another that the evidence-gathering process is similar to court proceedings.  However, and at the same time, the legalistic use of evidence means that what counts as evidence is extremely flexible. One official remarked that ‘when we say evidence, what we mean is testimony … someone’s told us something [and] we would call that evidence’.

The role of evidence in committee work is further akin to court proceedings in that the ‘for’ and ‘against’ notion is emphasised. Multiple research participants explained the importance of ‘balance’ in committee hearings, which contrasts with an ideal for the ostensible quality or truthfulness of evidence. This suggests that different claims to knowledge must be placed within the wider political context and especially the representative lens in which MPs represent diverse political opinions.

So far, this suggests that the evidence-gathering process is mediated by beliefs around its legal status, and through a need to be politically diverse. However, once written and oral evidence has been gathered, its function shifts from being openly scrutinised to being pulled together to write an authoritative report. Evidence is used to increase the legitimacy of the report’s claims and based exclusively on the evidence that they have gathered. Some have raised questions about the diversity of that evidence following findings that revealed the disproportionate number of men from southern England in committee hearings.

This discussion highlights the role of evidence in committees. But we also need to consider the practical issues that affect evidence use, and which might explain (though not justify) the types of evidence that are more prevalent along the committee corridor. First, committees work to tight timeframes and often in response to wider political issues, leading one official to conclude that committees are ‘essential reactive’. This means that organisations do not have enough time to prepare a report, and witnesses may be unable to attend hearings (especially if they are travelling from further afield). Second, officials rely on their professional networks to gather evidence. While evidence can come from many quarters, clerks need to get ‘stuck into the wider policy community’, and arguably often sustain them through word-of-mouth with different groups (such as academics recommending colleagues, etc.) as well as engagement through structured activities (such as academic engagement programmes). Third, evidence-gathering is affected by the nature of hearings themselves. Seen as the most important part of committee inquiries, hearings are often perceived as a ‘theatrical performance’, which means that witnesses need to present themselves and their evidence in certain ways that is accessible to political elites. So while we may think that, in theory, evidence-gathering is based on the best available evidence coming to Parliament to hold government to account, the process is, in practice, mediated by a number of factors.

Why does all this matter? Select committees are often praised for being ‘led’ by evidence. Yet the legalistic framework for evidence and the political nature in which it is placed means that the relationship between committee scrutiny and evidence is far more complex. This does not mean that evidence is not unimportant. Indeed, it is crucial in the construction of authoritative reports that have significant impact on decision-making. However, we need to think carefully about how the beliefs and practices around evidence use affect those reports. This raises questions about the specific uses of evidence, but also who is included and excluded from parliamentary processes, to ensure that the House of Commons relies on, and makes appropriate use of, the best available evidence.

Parliaments are the principal democratic arenas of most representative democracies, who juxtapose political ideas and different types of knowledge on a daily basis. This means that they are crucial arenas to understand the relationship between science, knowledge and politics. Historically, this has been understudied. And yet, given the widespread debates as a result of Coronavirus/Covid-19, studying the relationship between knowledge and politics in parliaments matters more than ever.

—

 Dr Marc Geddes is Senior Lecturer in Politics at the School of Social and Political Science, University of Edinburgh, and Co-Director of the Centre for Science, Knowledge and Policy (SKAPE). He has recently published a book about select committees in the UK House of Commons.

Kat Smith (Strathclyde), Sudeepa Abeysinghe (Social Policy, Edinburgh) and Christina Boswell (PIR, Edinburgh) presented three complementary perspectives on the on the impact of Covid-19 on the study of the relationship between science, knowledge and policy.

Christina Boswell noted the extent, and unprecedented level of granular coverage of science and the scientific debate around Covid-19 in the media and public debate. At the same time, there is a dependence on expert knowledge around the virus, in particular at the level of the UK government, that points to symbolic uses: government representatives are flanked by experts at daily press conference and the mantra is that any decision is “led by the science”. This goes beyond symbolic uses of science to bolster policy choices; with Covid-19, science has become an insurance policy for the government.

Two risks emerge from these observations. The first is that science will disappoint because of unrealistic expectations. In the medium to long term this could lead to an erosion of trust in science. This extends to individual scientists too. The second risk emerges from a paradox: science and scientists need to be independent to work as a resource and to ensure the credibility of science; science needs to retain its fallibility and can’t be responsible for prescribing courses of action. But in the context of Covid-19, science has appeared closer to political decision-making, and in support of policy and decision-making, it undermines the resource. There is a high degree of dependence in science to resolve the Covid related issues but, in the action of deploying this resource, it undermines the resource. This is a paradox that can be observed in other policy and decision-making areas, such as migration for instance. This led Christina Boswell to raise a central question: how can we build trust in these models to make sure they are relevant as a resource and without undermining their credibility and legitimacy? For Christina Boswell, there is a need to explore further governance models of the interface between science and policy and decision-making.

Kat Smith’s thinking and discussions with Justin Parkhurst and colleagues around Covid-19, has centred a lot around the role of legitimacy and the pressure on the evidence-advisory systems in the current times. Legitimacy of the evidence-advisory systems takes on three aspects: technical legitimacy, political legitimacy and process legitimacy. In terms of technical legitimacy, in pandemics, decision-makers appear to be naturally drawn towards epidemiologists and models that are future orientated, presenting quantified data, no doubt because it provides “something that they can hold onto”. But these models are very difficult to scrutinise. Kat Smith is particularly concerned about the way in which the absence of knowledge is recognised and made clear in these models and the way the results are being communicated more broadly. This leads to the second aspect of legitimacy: in terms of political legitimacy, more delineating should be done between evidence led decisions and politically motivated ones. Decision-makers focus strongly on modelling and it isn’t always clear that models are used as guidance only. This means that the assumptions about the environment intrinsic to these models, are not made explicit by decision-makers. This has serious implications, notably for broader socio-economic issues. And finally, in terms of process legitimacy, transparency is key to ensure that there is both scientific and public scrutiny around decision-making about pandemic responses (which tend to sit outside normal legitimacy processes, such as elections and party manifestos). Accountability systems in these pressured times of rapid and major policy developments cannot function without transparency. Both scientific and public scrutiny could be usefully strengthened in the UK and it was notable that the limitations of current arrangements were cited by Sir David King in explaining his decision to convene the Independent SAGE group.

Kat Smith provided a final reflection stemming from her conversations with colleagues working on COVID-19 responses in policy settings, which underlined once again her major concern around how evidence, and particularly modelling, is being portrayed in the public debate. Echoing Christina Boswell’s points, she noted many of the policy colleagues she had spoken to were concerned about the long-term implications for public trust in science.

Sudeepa Abeysinghe first reflected on how Covid-19 subverts expectations around how scientific uncertainty plays out in public health interventions. The virus and its impacts were, and to some extent continue to be, underpinned by scientific uncertainty. Epidemiological modelling was – at least initially – based upon analogous, anecdotal, theoretical and speculative evidence. Under such circumstances, we tend to see the blurring of boundaries between politics and knowledge under post-normal forms of science. This, for instance, played out in the case of the WHO and H1N1: Epidemiological uncertainty was reframed as a politically motivated decision. However, instead of scientific uncertainty providing a means of contestation, we instead experienced a consolidation of the ‘factiness’ of the case. For many, the science-based nature of interventions, as asserted in political messaging, was taken-for-granted. This is despite the messiness of the data and modelling as recounted by the scientists themselves. This prompts the question: why is this the case?

And secondly, Sudeepa Abeysinghe also reflected on the simplified packaging of scientific evidence in government guidance and publications. Drawing on some initial empirical work in relation to Covid-19 in Indonesia, Sudeepa Abeysinghe suggests that instead of a knowledge deficit, the public may be engaging in complex decision-making weighing different and aspects against each other, notably bringing in socio-economic concerns too. Sudeepa Abeysinghe concludes by raising the question: why and how are issues of public health intervention still framed and discussed as a deficit of knowledge of the public?

A number of points also arose from responses to questions during the seminar. A first question prompted reflections on science coming from China. Christina Boswell noted that there is a discourse that data coming from China is not trust worthy and suggested that there is a tendency to nationalisation of science advice in the public debate. National competiveness of science is remerging. In the UK, it also raises questions about funding research.

There was also a question on why there is such reluctance to admit to uncertainty. Kat Smith suggested that this is part an evidence-advisory systems issue, part an institutional issue. Do these systems look at broad types of knowledge, beyond epidemiology ? For instance, logistics were not taking into account in the delivery of PPE initially. Secondly, there is a fragmentation of governance; in Scotland for instance, there are many different groups of scientific advisers that have been set up and the entire civil services has been rearranged ass a resit of Covid-19. This creates a very fragmented decision-making landscape.

There was also a reflection on the way in which the role of experts has changed as a result of Covid-19. A much wider range of experts is now involved, with some having more influence and traction because of social media and salience. There may be an indirect effect on the institutionalisation of the use of science.

In relation to legitimacy, concerns were raised in view of the shift of the responsibility for risk onto the public and how this may feed into existing inequalities for instance. More broadly, it is important to note that we are only partially into this crisis.

Sudeepa Abeysinghe is Lecturer in Global Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh.

Christina Boswell is Dean of Research, College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. Follow Christina @Boswellpol

Kat Smith is Professor of Public Health Policy at the Strathclyde School of Social Work and Social Policy. Follow Kat @ProfKatSmith

Covid-19 has spread across the globe, upturning our personal lives and uprooting our routines; and led to significant health problems including, sadly, deaths. Across the globe, people have been forced into lockdown to prevent physical contact with others. Covid-19 has already, or is going to, impact all areas of our lives. It will challenge us in many as-yet unforeseen ways.

From the beginning of this crisis, we have witnessed a growing importance of the questions of the role of science, knowledge and expertise in politics and society. As the SKAPE community we have been exploring these themes from multiple perspectives for nearly a decade and during this challenging time, we would like to open up a discussion on potential impacts of COVID-19 on this field and offer a space for scholars working in different disciplines to engage in a debate. In this blog, we identify seven questions that emerge in this new reality and explain them in the UK context – though we are aware that our themes are not comprehensive nor that the UK is alone in this pandemic.

First, what does Covid-19 reveal about the relationship between experts and political decision-making? Covid-19 has renewed many questions that have long been studied about how scientists and experts interact with policy-makers. For example, we may raise questions about the role, transparency and independence of the Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies (SAGE), or the role of different institutional players in the wider network of scientific advice (e.g. Government Office for Science, Chief Medical Officer, etc.). Does Covid-19 confirm our previous scholarship on the role of evidence, or do we need to re-think it? One key issue here is the novel character of the virus and illness; how are scientific judgements made about responses to an infection which is not yet understood in detail?

Second, and closely related to the above, how are questions around how scientific advice and forms of expertise communicated? It has now become a familiar sight to see a government minister flanked by two scientific advisers at the Number 10 Press Briefing at 5pm each day. Politicians are keen to emphasise that they are following ‘The Science’. But how well has scientific advice been explained? What impact do different formats have on the public psyche? What is the role of identifying targets? And how well is the public receiving and interpreting scientific advice?

Third, who are our scientific advisers and from where does their expertise come? We ask this question to highlight the types of experts we see in public, the forms of expertise that are seen as authoritative and the impact of diversity on policy-making. For example, some have criticised the small number of social scientists on key advisory committees, whose knowledge and understanding of human behaviour to identify policy proposals post-lockdown are seen as crucial, while others believe that engineers and transport experts are missing.

Fourth, what is the global nature of this pandemic? We are keenly aware that the World Health Organisation plays a key role in identifying global challenges, yet policy responses to Covid-19 have been largely set by national (and devolved) governments across the world. This is rather different to other recent crises, such as the global financial crisis where world leaders were able to meet and discuss support packages. While the EU has recently agreed financial support for the looming economic consequences of Covid-19, what other lessons can we learn about the global nature of this pandemic? Will we see a reversal of globalising forces, as some have predicted?

Fifth, what is the impact of Covid-19 on different communities and social groups? We need to be aware of the emerging concerns that Covid-19 will have unequal impacts across society, and ask how these could be mitigated. We already know that caring responsibilities disproportionately affect women and, with the closure of nurseries and schools, this inequality may have been exacerbated by Coronavirus. We also know that many ‘key workers’ who have been essential in keeping our lives running for the past few weeks come from low-income backgrounds and therefore are likely to be more exposed to the virus. More recently, a survey has suggested that wealthier families are able to educate their children more than those from poorer backgrounds. Covid-19 is likely to also have a disproportionate impact on ethnic minorities. And finally, what of the digital divide?

Sixth, turning our minds to universities, what are the likely implications of Covid-19 for the study of evidence and policy? Across academic circles, many have reported that journal submissions has declined from certain groups, notably women. Opportunities for early-career academics have been frozen and we are at a difficult moment where the next generation of scholars could be pushed out and away from academia. What is the precise nature of the challenges that Covid-19 poses for us as scholars, and how can they be addressed equitably?

Seventh, and finally, what are the opportunities that Covid-19 may bring? The above themes have largely focused around problems and challenges, but we need to be aware that Covid-19 may also bring some changes that are beneficial. We have seen, for example, the arts opening up spaces for digital exhibitions or making plays and concerts more readily available. Elsewhere, many people – though facing the challenge of childcare and home-schooling – are able to spend more time with their loved ones. Others have re-imagined their working or personal lives, becoming aware of the joys of working from home or finding treasures in their local communities. It is also possible that people may have learned to live with less business travel (firms’ accountants may turn out to be keen on the savings from not-travelling), while many people may decide to restrict their commuting if employers allow. The environmental consequences of these changes should not be exaggerated, but they are likely to be positive.

We are sure that the themes that we have identified are not exhaustive – not having focused on, for example, changing practices of political organisation (e.g. virtual parliaments) or policy areas that are affected by Covid-19 (such as the environment or education). We believe this blog should serve as a starting point for a wider discussion: on what should researchers on Covid-19 focus? What contribution can existing research bring to debates about Covid-19? Understanding and answering these questions requires engagement across a range of scholars across the arts, humanities, and social sciences, as well as the natural sciences. SKAPE is one space where inter-disciplinary perspectives may come together and discuss this, with a membership across many disciplines.

The first step towards this goal was to hold an open discussion among our members on the 27^th of May. During the discussion, we identified two main themes for our future explorations on knowledge and policy during the COVID-19 crisis.

The first theme was of the key importance of the politics of knowledge production and expertise. The UK government time and again declares it follows The Science; however, it is not clear what such a declaration means in practice.  What counts as The Science – what disciplines and institutions are seen as credible and authoritative, how is data produced and translated into models and consequently – policy advice, how research, its uncertainties and ambiguities are communicated to the public? What emerges in this context is not lack of evidence but rather a multiplicity of different pools of evidence. Consequently, there is a need for a different form of scientific advice – focused not only on producing knowledge but also mediating and coordinating it.

The second theme discussed by the SKAPE members was the role of comparisons and analogies in decision-making. The boundaries between the global problem of the pandemic and the local solutions implemented by national governments are becoming increasingly blurred. Comparison across countries emerges as the central mode of both knowing and addressing the crisis. Consequently, we witness a powerful role of data visualisations as both performing ‘the global’ of the pandemic and evaluating governments’ performance. The question of what analogy to use in public decision-making (e.g. comparison to other countries or other crisis – is it like flu? Is it like the AIDS epidemic?) is in itself a political decision and a matter of science advice. In relation to the idea of the performance of data, SKAPE members raised how the introduction of metrics act to re-shape people’s actions and objectives, while also pointing out the limitations data comparison (e.g. comparing the UK to other countries despite different methods of recording the spread of Covid-19).

We want to provide the space for scholars to answer these questions, and welcome you to join us: follow us on Twitter, where we will be sharing insights and research around these topics (and the role of knowledge in policy more broadly); write for our blog – we are always looking for new contributors (get in touch); and/or join our discussions at virtual seminars that we have organised:

• 27 May, 11.30am-12.30pm: Open discussion based on this blog around issues studying science, knowledge and policy during Covid-19
• 24 June, 11.30am-12.30pm: Kat Smith, Sudeepa Abeysinghe and Christina Boswell offering reflections on the impact of Covid-19 from their area of expertise: the summary of the seminar is now on the SKAPE blogpage
• 15 July, 4pm-5pm: Alison Cohen offering reflections on community-based participatory research during Covid-19, based on current work-in-progress

We look forward to sharing ideas and knowledge, and to have debates and discussions, in the months and years that lie ahead!

This blog was amended following a SKAPE seminar discussion on the 27th of May where key issues were discussed; with thanks to Justyna Bandola-Gill for collating input and leading on this updated blog

—

Dr Marc Geddes is Lecturer in British Politics and Co-Director of SKAPE, University of Edinburgh. He has recently published a book on how MPs and officials interpret ‘scrutiny’ and ‘evidence’ in the UK Parliament. Follow Marc on Twitter: @marcgeddes.

 Professor Steve Yearley is the Professor of the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge and also Director of IASH, Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities.

 Dr Justyna Bandola-Gill is a Research Fellow in Social Policy and Deputy Director of SKAPE. Her recent publications include a book on the controversies, challenges and consequences of the ‘Impact Agenda. You can follow her on Twitter @justynabandola.

This blogpost based on a talk at the SKAPE seminar on 27 August 2019 

Time and practices of governing are intertwined in multiple ways. Political rule in general and its democratic form in particular are not possible without the temporalisation of processes and of institutional settings which constitute specific rhythms of political participation, deliberation, and decision-making. Political order can be seen as a complex configuration of stages, periods, intervals, cycles, and deadlines, which foster predictability and enable purposeful political action. At the same time, political strategies can be built on utilisations of time, for instance through an allocation of budgets, a sequencing of events, or an adjustment of the pace of processes. In recent years, research in political science and policy analysis has started to recognise how techniques and institutions of governing are characterised by these temporal features (cf. Pollitt 2008, Howlett and Goetz 2014).

However, the relationship of time and governing can also be grasped as an ontological and thus more fundamental one. In this sense, the very possibility of governing, understood as a specific social practice, both builds on and produces a certain notion of time and history. Time thus becomes de-naturalised, bringing to the fore the complex ways how (political) realities and temporalities emerge in mutual dependency (cf. Barbehön 2018).

In this SKAPE seminar, I will develop such a perspective on the basis of Michel Foucault’s lectures on the governmentalisation of the state (Foucault 2007, 2008). With this notion, Foucault has reconstructed the emergence of a specific kind of knowledge about how to govern (through) the state. Going back as far as to the 16^th century, Foucault traces the consolidation of a distinct political rationality that embraces beliefs about what governing is for, how it is to be practiced, and what kind of knowledge it depends on. Starting from this general perspective, I will argue that the genealogy of a modern governing rationality could also, and maybe even primarily, be captured as the construction of a specific understanding of time and history (cf. Hamilton 2018; Portschy 2019).

Central to the historical emergence of a political art of governing is the generalisation and transformation of pastoral power; the Christian idea that the guidance of souls is exerted by a shepherd who leads his herd to otherworldly salvation. From the 17^th century onwards, this notion of conduct becomes secularised, constituting the idea that governing is not the exercise of sovereignty over a territory, but, similarly to the pastorate, the guidance of individuals and, later in history, of the population. In the course of this fundamental transformation, the eschatological idea of an ultimate destiny is replaced by the notion of an “open historicity”: “we now find ourselves in a perspective in which historical time is indefinite, in a perspective of indefinite governmentality with no foreseeable term or final aim” (Foucault 2007, p. 260). The art of governing is thus not directed towards a fixed and ahistorical point in time which will inevitably arrive (Last Judgment), but a radically contemporary practice whose future is contingent upon current actions and events.

This transformation of time is fundamental to the emergence of a distinct political rationality, as an open future is the precondition for the conviction that the way worldly events develop in time can be influenced here and how. However, this notion of time and history is not external to governing practices which themselves yield time. This mutual relationship manifests in the (specific) temporal characteristics of the different forms of power/knowledge relations Foucault discerns. Disciplinary power, for instance, tries to dispose of the open future entirely in that it assumes that the unfolding of time can be controlled by an ever more far-reaching and fine-grained web of disciplining regulations. To be able to govern in every detail, the state starts capturing all that happens within its territory. A statistical knowledge emerges, a “knowledge of the state, of the forces and resources that characterize a state at a given moment” (Foucault 2007, p. 274). Disciplinary power thus both builds on and constitutes a time which is open and controllable through present interventions.

In contrast, the security dispositif observes the future not only as open, but also as a blind spot that can never be fully known. As societal dynamics result in “a never-ending generation of history” (Foucault 2008, p. 308), one can try to anticipate, though without being able to entirely control what will happen next. Governing according to the security dispositif thus means to establish institutions which are able to reduce future risks or which are, in today’s political semantics, resilient. For this purpose, a type of knowledge is needed which allows for prognoses or scenarios of possible futures. Based on knowledge of (assumed) nexuses and causalities, the security dispositif regulates probabilities which are calculated at the level of the population and, as a consequence, practices of governing erect a notion of time as contingent and inconsistent.

Finally, the disciplinary power over the human body and the regulation of collective life at the level of the population coalesce during the 19^th century into a biopolitics which “exerts a positive influence on life, that endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it” (Foucault 1978, p. 137). This kind of power establishes yet another notion of the general idea of an indefinite time, as it constructs the open future as a room for enhancement and optimisation.

A time-centred interpretation of Foucault’s genealogy thus allows to grasp the relationship between time and governing in a more nuanced way as compared to perspectives that reduce time to a matter of organising political procedures, institutions, and strategies. A governmentality perspective enables us to investigate how the modern art of governing is, on the one hand, bound to a specific understanding of time and history, while this very understanding is, on the other hand, enacted and reproduced in and through governing techniques. This sheds new light on both the temporal requirements and the temporal performativity of current rationales of governing, as manifest for instance in the semantics of risk, precaution, or resilience.

References

Barbehön, Marlon 2018: Ever more complex, uncertain and urging? ‘Wicked problems’ from the perspective of anti-naturalist conceptualizations of time. diskurs – Zeitschrift für innovative Analysen politischer Praxis 3, 1-20.

Foucault, Michel 1978: The History of Sexuality. Volume I: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books.

Foucault, Michel 2007: Security, Territory, Population. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Foucault, Michel 2008: The Birth of Biopolitics. Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hamilton, Scott 2018: Foucault’s End of History: The Temporality of Governmentality and its End in the Anthropocene. Millennium: Journal of International Studies 46 (3), 371-395.

Howlett, Michael and Klaus H. Goetz 2014: Introduction: time, temporality and timescapes in administration and policy. International Review of Administrative Sciences 80 (3), 477-492.

Pollitt, Christopher 2008: Time, Policy, Management. Governing with the Past. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Portschy, Jürgen 2019: Biopolitik der Zeit. In: Gerhards, Helene/Braun, Kathrin (eds.): Biopolitiken – Regierungen des Lebens heute. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 67-93.

This blogpost is based on a talk at the SKAPE seminar on 20 March 2019

In the SKAPE seminar, I would like to discuss a first outline of a research proposal that I am developing. It focuses on the involvement of ‘lay’ or ‘citizen experts’ in knowledge and advice production through practices such as citizen science, service user involvement and certain forms of citizen panels.

I have been working on the relationship between expertise and democracy for a while and, more particularly, on institutional solutions to the tensions between epistemic and democratic demands in the phase of policy development. For instance, I have assessed different modes of selecting participants of advisory rounds (such as expert committees or mini-publics) in terms of their potential to strike a balance between these two normative requirements. In this research, I have often come across forms of expertise production that claim to be participatory and democratic, to represent ‘citizens’, ‘the people’ or ‘the public’. One manifestation of such participatory expertise production that seems to be on the rise at present are forms that emphasise the involvement of ‘ordinary’, lay citizens into processes of generating expertise. These practices radiate understandings of participation that are more direct, open, non-mediated, and possibly more authentic and democratic than representative forms of participation by organised political elites (e.g. party politicians and interest groups).

On top of the ‘democratising’ promise that the framing of many of these endeavours bespeaks, some forms of participatory expertise creation also attribute expert status to the ‘lay citizens’ involved so that the roles of citizen and expert converge (and possibly blur). Participants’ input is then not only valued on the grounds of having a right to be heard, or being affected by the problem, but also on the grounds of their somehow specific knowledge, competence and insight. The idea is to use ‘local’ expertise and the resources of non-professionals, to open up input channels and to bring down barriers of institutionalised knowledge production. These practices thus hold a double normative promise: by involving citizens as experts, new sources of knowledge and new sources of participation can be tapped into simultaneously. Public policies that build on such input promise to be both ‘democratised’ as well as fact-based, substantiated and expert-approved and, therefore, to reconcile two potentially conflicting sources of political authority, i.e. the epistemic validity and democratic legitimacy of claims.

The EU’s White paper on citizen science, for instance, promotes collaborative research networks that involve non-scientists into data collection, question development and co-creation of scientific culture, “leading in turn to a more democratic research based on evidence and informed decision-making” (So-cientise 2014, 10).

Along similar lines, participants of citizen juries in Scottish health policy are expected to draw conclusions that are ‘representative of the wider public’ and to bring with them “the good sense and wisdom born of their own knowledge and experience” (Scottish Health Council 2014, 1).

This double normative promise can be a huge asset in times of dwindling levels of trust in both political and knowledge elites. Against the background of a declining commitment to traditional channels of participation (e.g. elections, political parties and interest groups) and disappointments with the closedness, biases, elitism and rigidity of science, these institutions can, in the ideal case, contribute to counter the failings of representative democracy as well as of the science system.

Yet, several problems may arise from these high hopes and the high normative standards associated with them: first, as we know from empirical studies, not every form of engagement is particularly democratic. Democratic theory has frequently underlined that political participation cannot be taken as a democratic good in itself but needs to be seen in context and to respond to certain standards of democratic worth, such as openness, inclusion or empowerment (Fung 2003; Warren 2002) – and this also goes for participatory expertise production. Second, democracy is a complex, contested and multi-dimensional concept. There are many, partly rivalling understandings of democracy and, accordingly, a plurality of (partly conflicting) standards of democratic legitimacy. Democratic dilemmas abound. There are tensions between core values of democracies, such as between system effectiveness and citizen participation (Dahl 1994) or between freedom and representation (Barber 1984). Third, although epistemic and democratic demands to policy-making are by no means irreconcilable, further tensions can occur between the specialisation logic of expertise and the equality imperative of democracy that essentially constitutes the ‘epistemic-democratic divide’ (Krick 2019; see also Moore 2017). The key epistemic standard of competence that qualifies an expert, for instance, in some respect runs counter to the democratic principle of equal access to power. The epistemic standard of expert independence, as another example, conflicts with accountability requirements. Instances of citizen expertise production need to deal with these challenges to develop their full potential.

Against the background of the frequently enthusiastic rhetoric around participatory expertise production and the challenges of achieving and reconciling the ambitious goals in reality, I would like to take a critical look at these practices and ask: does the involvement of ‘local’, ‘ordinary’ people as experts into policy-making help to democratise expertise?

Crucial questions from a democratic theory standpoint seem to be:

• Who are the ‘citizens’ in these endeavours?
• To what extent can they speak for others?
• Can they claim to represent the public, the common good or a more authentic, non-partisan perspective?
• How ‘lay’ or ‘ordinary’ are the involved perspectives and how direct and unmediated is participation?
• Which democratic legitimacy norms do these institutions link up to (e.g. inclusion, accountability, representation, self-determination etc.)?

Key questions from an epistemic perspective would be:

• Which validity standards do these practices refer to (e.g. personal experience, scientific methods, reasoning, independence, impartiality, closure etc.)?
• In what way are those in the role of experts qualified for their tasks?
• Do the roles of expert and citizen converge in the same individual(s)?
• Are there boundaries as to what counts as ‘expertise’?

In my talk, I would like to discuss ways of addressing these questions in terms of research design, data analysis and case selection. I am particularly interested in the conjunction of the expert role and the citizen role and the nexus of knowledge and democracy in policy-making processes. I would like to take a holistic and integrated perspective to shed light on – organisationally and ideologically quite different – phenomena that claim to produce expertise in participatory, democratic ways, and particularly those that claim to involve ‘citizens’. In my view, such an analysis promises insights into contemporary understandings, and possibly culturally specific shadings, of democratic legitimacy and the validity and reliability of expertise in politics.

References

Barber, B.R. (1984): Strong democracy: Participatory politics for a new age. University of California Press.

Dahl, R.A. (1994): A democratic dilemma. System effectiveness versus citizen participation, Political Science Quarterly 109(1), 23-34.

Fung, A. (2003): Survey article: Recipes for public spheres: Eight institutional design choices and their consequences, The Journal of Political Philosophy 11(3), 338–367.

Krick, E.K. (2019): Creating participatory expert bodies. How the targeted selection of policy advisers can bridge the epistemic-democratic divide, European Politics and Society 20(1), 101-116.

Moore, A. (2017): Critical elitism. Deliberation, democracy and the problem of expertise. Oxford University Press.

Scottish Health Council (2014): Why use citizen juries, URL: scottishhealthcouncil.org/ patient__public_participation/participation_toolkit/idoc.ashx?docid=0d0afa71-704f-4089-a635-de6541fdd8e3&version=-1 (accessed 04.03.2019).

So-cientise (2014): White paper on citizen science for Europe (commissioned by the EU Commission), URL:  https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/socientize_white _paper _on_citizen_science.pdf (accessed 04.03.2019).

Warren, M.E. (2002): What can democratic participation mean today?, Political Theory 30(5), 677–701.

More than ten years after Lehman Brothers’ file for bankruptcy, the economic and political fallout of the global economic crisis can still be felt. Its effects have not only been political and economic, but also epistemic: economists were suddenly and resoundly believed to have failed in preventing or predicting what they had, for decades, been seen to have undisputed authority over. Nevertheless, those seeking to be considered experts on economic matters became ever more visible, as explanations for what went wrong were urgently demanded by policymakers and the wider public. Furthermore, around the same time, social media was expanding rapidly. Technology companies that are household names today were still novelties at the time; but the avenues for communication that they opened had already begun to upend the way that information circulates in the public debate.

In such a context, think tanks are particularly fascinating organisations to observe in account of their multifarious character and their function as conduits between ideas and interests. Few other institutions can so unproblematically employ talking heads, aspiring politicians, scholars, and lobbyists, all in the service of making their brand known and respected and pushing their ideas among policymakers and the public domain. Hence, by necessity, think tanks are both actors and indexes of broader transformations in the fields of politics, economics, academia, and the media (see Medvetz, 2012). The SKAPE seminar presents the findings of my research on these questions that will be published  later this year in a book in the Palgrave Series in Science, Knowledge, and Policy that compares the parallel transformations of four British think tanks from across the political spectrum between 2007 and 2013.

Most research on think tanks tends to concentrate on how to define them, on whether they are in any sense independent, and on the extent of their influence on public policy. Worthwhile as those questions are, a focus on how they react to changing circumstances can reveal much about the environment in which they operate, and of the aids and obstacles policy ideas face. By analysing policy reports, annual accounts, and media presence, and informed by interviews with current and former members of staff, this presentation seeks to trace how these organisations changed both intellectually and institutionally.

We find that the demands for expert knowledge that arose after the crisis energised the work of think tanks, opening new avenues for funding, and increasing the attention their work received. However, the crisis also exposed important internal tensions, unsettled their organisational model, and confronted think tanks with a more mistrustful atmosphere. Foreshadowing current debates on ‘post-truth’ politics, fewer and fewer among their audiences seemed to be willing to be convinced by evidence alone.

More broadly, one of the most important function of think tanks was to become ‘moderators’ between unstable spheres of society whose clout was in flux. For instance, some of them were seminal for making a minority position within the discredited field of academic economics hugely influential in the public arena – i.e. the theory of expansionary fiscal contraction, which justified austerity.

References:

Medvetz, T. (2012) Think tanks in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

About Marcos: he is Affiliated Researcher at the University of Cambridge, Senior Researcher at Think Tank for Action on Social Change (FEPS-TASC), and Managing Editor at Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory. His research interests lie in the sociology of knowledge, particularly in what concerns the political role of experts and elites, the public understanding of economics, and intellectual and policy change.

@PickersgillM

The use of biological ideas and techniques in the study of mental ill-health and the practice of psychiatry is nothing new. But just because it isn’t new doesn’t mean that’s the only thing that’s going on in research and in the clinic: many other notions (psychological, sociological, and so on) interpolate with somatic emphases in psychiatry. One engine powering the late-twentieth century biological turn within US psychiatry was the 1980 launch of the third edition of the American Psychiatric Association (APA)’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-III. This texted helped to revivify attention to the bodily aspects of mental ill-health, although of course psychiatrists had to be attentive already to this ontological dimension for such a shift to be propelled. The DSM has come to be a major feature within the landscape of mental health research and practice, and not just in the US. Nevertheless, over the last few years criticism of this text has been growing within psychiatry itself.

A key locus of critique has been the former Director of the US National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): Thomas Insel. The NIMH has traditionally been a major supporter of studies conducted using the DSM – and, indeed, of the production of successive editions of the DSM itself. In 2010, Insel and colleagues launched the NIMH Research Doman Criteria (RDoC) initiative. This was supposed to be a framework for shaping thinking about specific characteristics of what were regarded as psychopathologies, and how these could be better interrogated within laboratory and related settings. The NIMH have called RDoC a “long-term project” that incorporates “genetics, imaging, cognitive science, and other levels of information to lay the foundation for a new mental disorders classification system” (NIMH, 2013). Through its promotion of RDoC, the NIMH has downplayed the import of the DSM. Insel himself wrote in one widely discussed blog post that: “Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not any objective laboratory measure” (Insel, 2013). Consequently, NIMH would “be re-orientating its research away from DSM categories” (ibid).

My ongoing research, supported by the Wellcome Trust, is examining epistemological debates such as the ones around RDoC and the DSM so as to generate a sharper image of the ways in which diagnoses are used in research and clinical practice, and with what ontological ramifications. Part of my research has involved interviewing key figures in US and UK psychiatry, and I have explored how they construct the purpose, nature, and implications of the ambiguous RDoC project. My intent is not to provide a broad-brush critique of RDoC as, for instance, biologically reductionist. As my data demonstrates, this is a criticism that psychiatrists themselves are often happy to make. Hence, the sociological focus of any analysis of RDoC needs to be positioned slightly differently. Accordingly, I use discussions about RDoC as a case study in what I have termed the sociology of novelty. In my upcoming SKAPE talk, I will explore how major institutional actors’ accounts of what is new, important, or (un)desirable about RDoC are constituted through institutional context and personal affects. In so doing, I aim to add empirical depth to current understandings about the bio-politics and psy-sociality of contemporary (US) psychiatry, and to contribute to sociological debates about ‘the new’ in technoscience.

Further Reading:

Cuthbert, B. N. and Insel, T. (2013) ‘Towards the future of psychiatric diagnosis: the seven pillars of RDoC’, BMC Medicine, 11, 126, https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-11-126.

Insel, T. (2013) ‘Transforming Diagnosis’, NIMH Director’s Blog, 29 April 2013, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/directors/thomas-insel/blog/2013/transforming-diagnosis.shtml.

NIMH (2013) ‘Introduction to RDoC’, NIMH Science Update, 9 August 2013, https://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2013/introduction-to-rdoc.shtml.

Pickersgill, M. (2013) ‘The social life of the brain: neuroscience in society’, Current Sociology, 61, 322-340.

Pickersgill, M. (2014) ‘Debating DSM-5: diagnosis and the sociology of critique’, Journal of Medical Ethics, 40, 521-525.

Pickersgill, M. (forthcoming) ‘Psychiatry and the sociology of novelty: negotiating the US National Institute of Mental Health ‘Research Domain Criteria’ (RDoC)’.

As already widely debated by academics and policy actors alike, the OECD has instigated a new era in education governance, primarily through its construction of a commensurable transnational education space. Given the vast policy implications for systems worldwide, the predominant idea is that it is OECD’s technical capacity to decontextualize and compare that became the primary force behind its success. Nevertheless, there are other aspects to OECD’s policy work that have been systematically ignored; for example, an examination of the OECD’s ‘Reviews of National Policies for Education’ shows that the latter are not simply a ‘side-show’, executed in parallel to the main PISA ‘protagonist’; rather, they have become indispensable tools in establishing the dominance of international statistical comparisons and in shaping the education policy debate.

The OECD has become a key knowledge producer, mediator and teacher not only because of PISA, but also through a great amount of local, national and face-to-face work. It is precisely OECD’s ability to work directly with member states that has allowed it to secure the brand of the unequivocal education policy player.

In order to pre-empt critique, I do not claim that numbers are not important, or that their spectacle through PISA’s naming and shaming is not an indispensable part of OECD’s success. Instead, it is suggested that the spectacle has a temporal dimension; it surprises and shocks. Thus, spectacles quickly come and go (think of the embargoed results for example, and the media attention PISA receives). Nonetheless, what follows the announcement of the results requires steadfast, diligent and zealous face-to-face policy work in order to carry the numbers deeper into the national imaginary and entrench them into the system. The OECD sustains and builds its policy work through the continuous crafting of its relationship with key education actors in other international organisations and within national contexts.

However, what do we know about these national education policy reviews? They proceed in several stages: initially there is preparation and completion of a background report by the country undergoing review, followed by a two-week mission by an external team of reviewers. For example, the Swedish OECD country review of 2015 was not the first one in the country; another one had preceded it in 2011. However, in light of the negative PISA 2012 results, as well as the general downward spiral of Swedish education performance, it quickly led the Ministry of Education and Research (MoER) to commission the OECD for yet another report of the country’s education system. For some of the actors involved in the Review, the commissioning of the review was not a surprise; they described the influence of the OECD in shaping the public and policy debate in Sweden as having started much earlier – in effect, as soon as the first negative PISA results were published.

Although they do not themselves use the term socialisation, all interviewees in their interpretation of the influence of PISA in Sweden, offered a similar story of staggered events that followed one another; of the involvement of an ever wider set of actors; of the importance of the OECD experts in offering suggestions; and of the central role of the establishment of the Swedish School Commission as a forum of meeting, debate and learning for all the actors involved. Indeed, the title of report of the Commission, ‘Samling för Skolan’ (Gustafsson et al. 2017), denotes precisely the notion of ‘congregation’ or ‘gathering’ – the meeting and consensus of different actors around the core of the commission’s study, which were the OECD numbers themselves. Numbers and data are central in the interviewees’ narratives, but so are the meetings, the debates, and the continuous coming together of actors in socialising and learning events.

Therefore, rather than simply offering what has been seen as fast policy solutions, the OECD painstakingly enters national sites and works with local actors to create conditions of belonging; that is, it creates conditions fruitful for socialization and policy translation. There could not have been a better example than the set-up of the Swedish School Commission with a remit to study the OECD report in detail and offer recommendations for reform. National actors are equally central in supporting and sustaining these processes. Indeed, some of the interviewees, even when critical of the OECD work, were ready to acknowledge that the OECD sparked a debate that would not have happened otherwise. However, it is important to also note that the debate was not as wide-ranging and diverse as it appears: the PISA data and the OECD review of 2015 have always been at the centre of all analysis. In fact, progressively since the mid-2000s the OECD became an undisputed expert organization and indeed, as couple of interviewees suggested, a ‘production force’. Close and sustained work with the Ministry, in combination with touching a nerve with the Swedish public (with quotes by Schleicher, such as ‘Swedish schools having lost their soul‘) were key ingredients of this success.

What is perhaps more interesting in policy analysis terms, is the progressive layering and imbrication of a number of OECD events and experts who have been coming back and forth to Sweden for the last decade. The meetings and exchanges go far beyond the limits of a small circle of elite policy makers and experts. The Swedish country review of 2015 sparked a debate that included not only policy makers, but also academics, teachers and the media. In the case of the OECD and Sweden then, ironically perhaps, ‘governing at a distance’ (Cooper 1998) appears to require a strange sense of proximity: arguably, these conditions of actors’ socialization and policy translation are necessary for the kind of paradigmatic policy shift we witness in Sweden today.

[1] For a full analysis and presentation of the findings and discussion, please read the published article at Grek, S. (2017) Socialisation, learning and the OECD’s Reviews of National Policies for Education: the case of Sweden, Critical Studies in Education, vol58, issue 3, 295-310

Sotiria Grek is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy, University of Edinburgh. She is currently Principal Investigator on the the ERC-funded METRO project, ‘International Organisations and the Rise of a Global Metrological Field’. Follow Sotiria @SotiriaGrek

At a time when trust in expertise is widely believed to be in decline, this lecture addressed three interrelated sets of questions, with particular reference to the role of expert advisors in the policy processes of modern democracies, and with some emphasis on the environmental domain.

I consider, first, how we think about expertise and its roles—how have expert advisors and their interactions with policy- and decision-making been conceptualised (in academic literatures and in public and political discourse)? I then turn to the important questions of trust in, and the trustworthiness of, expert advisors, asking why it is thought that such trust has become fragile and examining various sources of evidence for this claim. Finally, I attempt to draw out some of the attributes and practices that engender trust in expertise, and consider how and to what extent these might be nurtured and maintained in modern advisory institutions.

In addressing the question of how expertise is conceptualised, I shall begin by offering two contrasting but equally familiar representations—that of expert advisors as ‘rational analysts’, furnishing evidence and ‘the facts’ for the benefit of those who formulate policies; and that of experts as ‘political symbols’, in which advice is used selectively and strategically in the interplay of interests, institutions and power. Certainly, in the environmental field, we can identify elements of both of these models, but neither provides an adequate account of actual advisory practices. I shall argue that richer understandings are offered by conceptions of expert advisors as cognitive and discursive agents, and by attending to the roles that they play (particularly in the context of scientific advice) in ‘boundary work’ and co-production. I shall ask, in addition, whether we are now faced with another way of thinking about experts—that they are really not much use at all.

This will bring me to the question of trust in expertise, on which I shall briefly consider evidence from a range of sources that might tell us something about trust or mistrust. While people’s routine behaviours, regular opinion polls, and the manifest enthusiasm for science-based documentaries might suggest (with caveats) that reports of loss of trust have been exaggerated, there are also countervailing developments. One subject of increasing concern is the ease with which all kinds of information, some of it wilfully manipulated, are available via digital media, combined with the apparent readiness with which unverified claims or ‘fake truths’ are accepted in place of ‘traditional’ expertise. Loss of trust has also been inferred from uneasiness about, or active resistance to, certain techno-scientific developments; I shall argue, however, that any general inference about trust based on these phenomena would be unsafe. Before concluding this section, I shall also comment on reasons why it may be appropriate not to place (unquestioning) trust in experts.

In the final part of the lecture, where I shall seek to identify some of the conditions for trust in expert advice, I shall draw upon my own extended analysis of one of Britain’s longest-standing advisory bodies, the former Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution (of which I was also a member for 10 years). The Commission presents a very interesting case study, not only because it was influential, but also because (for the most part) it was seen as offering trustworthy advice over the four decades or so of its existence. I shall consider which attributes and practices were important in generating trust and influence—and further, in raising broader questions about institutional arrangements, identify some tensions between the characteristics that made the Commission effective and the practices that are increasingly urged on advisory bodies in the interests of ‘accountability’. Finally, I offer some thoughts on the political context for trust in, and trustworthy, advice, returning to the example of environmental controversies and arguing that, in such cases, the most effective advice has often involved the purposeful and constructive hybridisation of science and politics.

About the author

Susan Owens is Emeritus Professor of Environment and Policy at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of the British Academy. She has researched and published widely in the field of environmental governance, focusing on policy processes in modern democracies, relations between science and politics, and the role of knowledge, evidence, ideas and expertise in policy formation and change. Her most recent book, Knowledge, Policy, and Expertise (Oxford University Press 2015) provides an in-depth analysis of the practices and influence of one of Britain’s longest-standing environmental advisory bodies (the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution [RCEP], 1970–2011), as well as addressing wider questions about knowledge–policy interactions. She also has extensive experience of serving on advisory bodies: she was a member of the RCEP for ten years, currently serves on Defra’s Social Science Expert Group and Hazardous Substances Advisory Committee, and chairs the Science Advisory Council of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

A blogpost by Morten Jerven (University of Edinburgh)

This blog post is based on a talk at the SKAPE seminar on 2 May 2018

Perhaps one of the most challenging notion to take on board in the governance of today’s world is that not all that counts can be counted. We increasingly rely on numbers as shortcuts to information about the world that we do not have time to digest.

Unfortunately, we are being led down the wrong path by the United Nations and its experts. In 2014, the U.N. High-Level Panel delivered its report with recommendations for the Sustainable Development Goals, subsequently to be adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 2015. One small aspect of the report very soon caught everyone’s attention. Buried on page 8 was a call for a “data revolution” in development. It generated a frenzy of enthusiasm among the international development community.

Later the same year the secretary-general’s Independent Expert Advisory Group on a Data Revolution for Sustainable Development put forward its recommendation, titled “A world that counts.” The report laid out a grand ambition: It recognized that currently “whole groups of people are not being counted and important aspects of people’s lives and environmental conditions are still not measured.”

From that acknowledgement it took a surprising next step. From now onwards, the report declared, “Never again should it be possible to say, ‘We didn’t know.’ No one should be invisible. This is the world we want — a world that counts.”

The name of the game is governance “as if” the world counts. It might be a smart shortcut sometimes, but we are in deep trouble if we forget that we are doing it “as if” the world counts. Leadership should take making good decisions seriously. If the method by which we get knowledge and the method by which we make decisions is limited to what can be numbered, we are setting up a system of governance that’s systematically getting stuff that actually counts wrong.

Arguably, the most important things in this world are the things that we cannot count. The most marginalized issues are those issues that, willfully or not, remain and will remain uncounted. That should be first principle when it comes to making plans for global governance. Yet, on expert advice, the U.N. did exactly the opposite. In the year 2000 the world adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals, 18 targets and 60 indicators, and this year, intoxicated on what the establishment perceived as a ringing success, laid down the path for the next 15 years with 17 goals, 169 targets and so far 269 suggested indicators.