Technocracy and the Law (Foreword)

In the current times of profound distrust for science and the crisis in global governance institutions, it is fundamental to reevaluate the role of expert and expertise in the decision-making process. Whether or not experts should be held accountable is this book’s primary focus. The reliance on experts has been a fundamental trait of technical, but also more politically-driven international organizations, and, in several instances, experts have used their position to promote their agenda. The promotion of the ‘epistemic community’ agenda have had both, partially positive such as in the case of international standard settings, and negative outcomes. Amongst the negative ones, politics, in various instances, have shifted on experts the legitimacy of ‘purely’ political decisions while in other cases, a global shared experts agenda failed to consider or misinterpreted the impacts on particular groups, often the most vulnerable. Global governance institutions are, however, resilient and adapt to changes quickly. For instance, experts could: openly disagree with particular policies promoted by their organization, call for changes from the inside of a particular epistemic community, or recognize that expertise is not enough for ‘political’ changes. In selecting and appointing experts, the level of technicalities and technical rigidity is the pattern used to evaluate an expert’s professionalism. Ranging from law via economics to other social sciences, experts manage to find the most prominent place in driving political agenda across the globe. In addition to the expert’s background, the ideological affinity with the institution also plays a key role. As an example, the experts which ‘build’ the multilateral trading regime, proud supporters of free trade, gave little considerations in the past to the project’s broader effects. People and civil society organizations have been omitted from the policy debates. The financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the recent COVID-19 pandemic have a role in clarifying that reality is much more complex than what a simple unique vision or a dominant paradigm let us believe. Even if it is agreed that societies and human beings’ behavior could not be foreseen, experts attempt to fill in the gap amongst politics and decision making with tremendous and sometimes unnoticed consequences on society. The common wisdom on this topic is that, in light of the increasing interdependencies and difficulties of our world, experts and epistemic authority are the only reliable source for the betterment of society. This thought-provoking book manages to reopen this discussion to an unanswered question: Do we need to develop a normative and socially responsive accountability framework for experts? Even though it was coined at the beginning of the last century, the term technocracy and expertise-based forms of governance is not anew suggestion. From the needed expertise in politics of the Plato’s philosopher king via Classics knowledge for mandarins in Imperial China to specialized knowledge of consultors in the Roman Curia, governments have extensively relied on trusted advisors to guide and inform policies. Therefore, the relationship between politics and experts is a possible lens. While politics rests on values and normative judgements, technical knowledge requires positive policy analysis and lack of emotional attachment to the object of study. These two separate dimensions mutually influence and interfere with each other. Values and normative judgement in expert reasoning automatically eschew epistemic authority and biased decisions are taken by politicians resulting in a politicization of science. Value judgments are unavoidable in expert reasoning and they should be made explicit. Same goes for the opposite. Politics should stop being guided by ideology and should consistently use tools based on statistical modelling and expert judgment, even though it is clear that neither these instruments are totally neutral or impartial. In fact, the risk for advocating for neutrality is that real struggles are back-grounded and not openly disclosed to the public. To be effective for reducing the experts’ legitimacy deficit and the negative aspects that could arise from the relationship between the two dimensions, accountability should be reinforced under its legal dimension. The consequence in this case could be however problematic.