This book examines the role of knowledge in policy, showing how policymakers use research to establish authority in contentious areas of policy.

In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.

This edited volume advances existing research on the production and use of expert knowledge by international bureaucracies. Given the complexity, technicality and apparent apolitical character of the issues dealt with in global governance arenas, ‘evidence-based’ policy-making has imposed itself as the best way to evaluate the risks and consequences of political action in global arenas. In the absence of alternative, democratic modes of legitimation, international organizations have adopted this approach to policy-making. By treating international bureaucracies as strategic actors, this volume address novel questions: why and how do international bureaucrats deploy knowledge in policy-making? Where does the knowledge they use come from, and how can we retrace pathways between the origins of certain ideas and their adoption by international administrations? What kind of evidence do international bureaucrats resort to, and with what implications? Which types of knowledge are seen as authoritative, and why? This volume makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the way global policy agendas are shaped and propagated. It will be of great interest to scholars, policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of public policy, international relations, global governance and international organizations.

Since its original publication, Expert Political Judgment by New York Times bestselling author Philip Tetlock has established itself as a contemporary classic in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. Tetlock first discusses arguments about whether the world is too complex for people to find the tools to understand political phenomena, let alone predict the future. He evaluates predictions from experts in different fields, comparing them to predictions by well-informed laity or those based on simple extrapolation from current trends. He goes on to analyze which styles of thinking are more successful in forecasting. Classifying thinking styles using Isaiah Berlin's prototypes of the fox and the hedgehog, Tetlock contends that the fox--the thinker who knows many little things, draws from an eclectic array of traditions, and is better able to improvise in response to changing events--is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog, who knows one big thing, toils devotedly within one tradition, and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems. He notes a perversely inverse relationship between the best scientific indicators of good judgement and the qualities that the media most prizes in pundits--the single-minded determination required to prevail in ideological combat. Clearly written and impeccably researched, the book fills a huge void in the literature on evaluating expert opinion. It will appeal across many academic disciplines as well as to corporations seeking to develop standards for judging expert decision-making. Now with a new preface in which Tetlock discusses the latest research in the field, the book explores what constitutes good judgment in predicting future events and looks at why experts are often wrong in their forecasts.

Incorporating historical, sociological, and philosophical approaches, Changing the Atmosphere presents detailed empirical studies of climate science and its uptake into public policy.

Roger Koppl develops a theory of experts and expert failure, and illustrates his theory with wide-ranging examples, including that of state regulation of economic activity.

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