https://theconversation.com/servant-or-p...racy-92026
EXCERPT: . . . We desire expert input into democratic deliberation and decision-making, but not so much as to dominate the discussion. As a result, most of us are tempted by the quest for a Goldilocks principle that establishes “just enough” expertise. But it can be unclear whether the servant or the partner role offers the best chance of achieving that Goldilocks principle. In our populist times, many are attracted to the servant role because it promises to keep a kind of watertight compartmentalisation between expertise and democracy, and thus safeguard democracy from technocracy. But I suggest only the partner role truly works to attain a serviceable Goldilocks principle of “just enough” expertise.
[...] One reason we all struggle to know how much is “just enough” expertise is that none of us is perfect. We tend to move from loathing to liking experts through the middle ground of admiring technical skill but not social application. Consider three stories about expertise in democracy that illustrate this ambivalence. [...] What we have in these stories is nothing new. Plato suggested we leave complex things to experts and Aristotle suggested we leave them to the people. That tension has carried through to debates about whether knowledge professions are sources for the common good or for monopoly power. Most of us intuitively grasp that experts might be dangerous because of the same autonomy that conditions their utility.
THE SERVANT ROLE
[...] If experts can be dangerous, we have good reasons for limiting their role in democracy, and none of those reasons rely on worrying that science cannot “know reality” with absolute certainty.
The first reason is because of the threat of the “scientisation” of politics. Too much expert input can narrow the scope of democratic discussion, because scientific analysis and technical planning take prominence in setting agendas and determining social choices. By this model, our mechanisms of political decision-making become mere agents of a scientific intelligentsia.
The second reason is that experts can endanger democratic civility because of information asymmetry. Experts can persuade other experts and non-experts. But non-experts struggle to persuade experts, leaving ordinary citizens susceptible to being the losers in the game of scientising politics.
The third reason is that experts disproportionately define what counts as reality for political purposes. Examples include the nature of hazards, the capacity of machines, and the relevant consensus about a technical question upon which political discussion might be grounded. This expert influence over “the real” is a source of power in democracies, and all power should be held accountable.
Unfortunately, it is just a short hop from there to a more radical and populist position. The radicalism relies on the insinuation that experts and citizens represent poles of a spectrum from technical to sociocultural reasoning. Experts are painted as limited to an abstract and impersonal kind of reasoning. In contrast, ordinary citizens are pictured as capable of much more communally sensitive reasoning – something that is better equipped to handle uncertainty, the unanticipated and value judgements. Experts are thus treated as a kind of class prone to infect any communicative exchange into which they enter, with their supposed dogmatism making experts like a disease of the body politic.
[...Populism is anti-elitist, anti-pluralist and appeals to the general will of the people. It is also a thin-centred ideology that inserts itself into more specific policy proposals. Anti-pluralism refers here to a strong challenge to the legitimacy of independent institutions within democracy...]
THE PARTNER ROLE FOR EXPERTS
Conceptions of a servant role for experts thus threaten to devolve into populism – if experts are treated as an infectious class, and/or the populist’s anti-pluralism is implicitly replicated, and if a reduction of democracy to just “opening up” also hitches along for the ride. if we are to treat experts as partners in democracy, we must of course avoid devolving into technocracy. [...] The risks of the scientisation of politics, and the incivility lurking in the information asymmetry between experts and citizens, must be always born in mind. But a partner role for experts differs from a servant role for experts in four crucial ways.
One, a partner role for experts explicitly resists the insinuation that experts are a dogmatic class [...] Failure to resist that insinuation is the path to populism.
Two, experts as partners commits us to thinking through the positive functions that expertise plays in democracy. [...]
Three, partner conceptions of expertise explicitly deny that authority relations trade-off against citizen autonomy. [...]
Fourth, whereas the servant role for experts is extremely anxious about the way authority relations can impact citizen autonomy (and thus hopes for some kind of watertight compartmentalisation between experts and citizens), the partner model adopts a complacent attitude. [...]
MORE: https://theconversation.com/servant-or-p...racy-92026
RELATED: The Death of Expertiese, by Tom Nichols
EXCERPT: . . . We desire expert input into democratic deliberation and decision-making, but not so much as to dominate the discussion. As a result, most of us are tempted by the quest for a Goldilocks principle that establishes “just enough” expertise. But it can be unclear whether the servant or the partner role offers the best chance of achieving that Goldilocks principle. In our populist times, many are attracted to the servant role because it promises to keep a kind of watertight compartmentalisation between expertise and democracy, and thus safeguard democracy from technocracy. But I suggest only the partner role truly works to attain a serviceable Goldilocks principle of “just enough” expertise.
[...] One reason we all struggle to know how much is “just enough” expertise is that none of us is perfect. We tend to move from loathing to liking experts through the middle ground of admiring technical skill but not social application. Consider three stories about expertise in democracy that illustrate this ambivalence. [...] What we have in these stories is nothing new. Plato suggested we leave complex things to experts and Aristotle suggested we leave them to the people. That tension has carried through to debates about whether knowledge professions are sources for the common good or for monopoly power. Most of us intuitively grasp that experts might be dangerous because of the same autonomy that conditions their utility.
THE SERVANT ROLE
[...] If experts can be dangerous, we have good reasons for limiting their role in democracy, and none of those reasons rely on worrying that science cannot “know reality” with absolute certainty.
The first reason is because of the threat of the “scientisation” of politics. Too much expert input can narrow the scope of democratic discussion, because scientific analysis and technical planning take prominence in setting agendas and determining social choices. By this model, our mechanisms of political decision-making become mere agents of a scientific intelligentsia.
The second reason is that experts can endanger democratic civility because of information asymmetry. Experts can persuade other experts and non-experts. But non-experts struggle to persuade experts, leaving ordinary citizens susceptible to being the losers in the game of scientising politics.
The third reason is that experts disproportionately define what counts as reality for political purposes. Examples include the nature of hazards, the capacity of machines, and the relevant consensus about a technical question upon which political discussion might be grounded. This expert influence over “the real” is a source of power in democracies, and all power should be held accountable.
Unfortunately, it is just a short hop from there to a more radical and populist position. The radicalism relies on the insinuation that experts and citizens represent poles of a spectrum from technical to sociocultural reasoning. Experts are painted as limited to an abstract and impersonal kind of reasoning. In contrast, ordinary citizens are pictured as capable of much more communally sensitive reasoning – something that is better equipped to handle uncertainty, the unanticipated and value judgements. Experts are thus treated as a kind of class prone to infect any communicative exchange into which they enter, with their supposed dogmatism making experts like a disease of the body politic.
[...Populism is anti-elitist, anti-pluralist and appeals to the general will of the people. It is also a thin-centred ideology that inserts itself into more specific policy proposals. Anti-pluralism refers here to a strong challenge to the legitimacy of independent institutions within democracy...]
THE PARTNER ROLE FOR EXPERTS
Conceptions of a servant role for experts thus threaten to devolve into populism – if experts are treated as an infectious class, and/or the populist’s anti-pluralism is implicitly replicated, and if a reduction of democracy to just “opening up” also hitches along for the ride. if we are to treat experts as partners in democracy, we must of course avoid devolving into technocracy. [...] The risks of the scientisation of politics, and the incivility lurking in the information asymmetry between experts and citizens, must be always born in mind. But a partner role for experts differs from a servant role for experts in four crucial ways.
One, a partner role for experts explicitly resists the insinuation that experts are a dogmatic class [...] Failure to resist that insinuation is the path to populism.
Two, experts as partners commits us to thinking through the positive functions that expertise plays in democracy. [...]
Three, partner conceptions of expertise explicitly deny that authority relations trade-off against citizen autonomy. [...]
Fourth, whereas the servant role for experts is extremely anxious about the way authority relations can impact citizen autonomy (and thus hopes for some kind of watertight compartmentalisation between experts and citizens), the partner model adopts a complacent attitude. [...]
MORE: https://theconversation.com/servant-or-p...racy-92026
RELATED: The Death of Expertiese, by Tom Nichols