Article ID: CBB659481305

Experts, Managerialism, and Democratic Theory (2022)

unapi

The revolt against expertise is a novel aspect of a larger and longer-standing discontent with the power of managerial elites within modern democracies. In the United States, scientific expertise is contested adversarially on the model of a public trial. In broadcast media, expert disagreement proceeds via staged debates with opposing sides (generally representing extremes of more complex debates) arguing scientific questions bearing on public policy. By the mid-20th century many observers agreed that this broadcast format had transformed the active ‘public’ – the target audience of these debates – into a passive ‘mass society’ that could listen to or view them, but had few or no means, outside of electoral politics, to engage with them. Two recent developments have challenged the traditional approach to public debates of scientific expertise, and challenged that expertise itself. The first is the rapid privatization of science since about 1980, changing public perception of scientists from disinterested servants of truth to spokespersons for government or economic interests. The second (since about 2007) is the combination of the universality of smartphones and direct access to internet discussion platforms not controlled by managerial elites, which have transformed the mute ‘mass’ into a highly vocal assortment of selforganizing publics (like those imagined in classical democratic theory) demanding to be heard directly on scientific questions. The matter of who now is a scientific expert, for whom, and under what circumstances, is a pressing question for historians, philosophers, and sociologists of science.

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Authors & Contributors
Kurtulmus, A Faik
Irzik, Gürol
Christian H. Ross
Eyal, Gil
Weinel, Martin
Evans, Robert
Concepts
Authority of science
Democracy
Expertise
Science and society
Science and politics
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century, early
Places
United States
Japan
India
Institutions
National Science Foundation (U.S.)
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