The pluralization of expertise: The good, the glamorous, and the political

Abstract

In the realm of global governance, the unique status and authority of expertise have traditionally been associated with its claims to rely on science and its often-associated qualities of ‘neutrality’, ‘impartiality’, and ‘objectivity’. Policymakers and technocratic experts have widely resorted to these attributes to render their knowledge credible and authoritative. While such claims to scientificity remain significant, we contend that contemporary global governance increasingly relies on alternative practices to confer knowledge its expert status. Global sites of governance are nowadays engaging in a broader set of practices of knowledge production and packaging, which include participatory experiments, aesthetic performances, calls to the imagination , and repertoires of benevolence . Such practices of knowledge pluralization have largely been seen as positive and unproblematic moves. Without contesting the need to pluralize expertise, we argue that such practices are not inherently democratizing, but part of an evolving technocratic repertoire of governing. Our introduction is structured around four sections: 1) a justification for the issue and contribution to the literature on expertise in International Relations; 2) the conditions of possibility or ‘context’ of the pluralization of expertise; 3) a discussion of novel practices of knowledge authorization and of their politics; and 4) an outline of our main contributions.