Is there a Place for Scientific Experts in Democracy?

Exploring the tensions between delegating tasks to scientific experts and democracy as self-government, we can revisit a century-old debate on the role of experts in America's democracy.

Coronavirus, climate change, artificial intelligence – our society is confronted with complex problems that only experts with specialised knowledge can fully understand or address. Yet, in a democracy, citizens are expected to take part in policy decisions regarding issues affecting their lives and well-being, either directly or through their elected representatives. That is, in a democracy, ultimate political power rests with the people. But as decision-making becomes increasingly dependent on scientific experts, what remains of democracy? 

In many respects, science and democracy are at odds with each other: democratic decision-making happens through voting, whereas scientists don’t vote on what is true. Science tells us, or at least aims to tell us, what is true, and truth is not up for debate. Philosopher Hannah Arendt wrote that facts are independent of ‘agreement, dispute, opinion, or consent.’

In contrast, democratic debate revolves around consensus, disagreement, and differing opinions.¹

Technocracy or Populism?

Democracy can be understood as an institutionalised system for making public decisions collectively and interdependently in which free citizens have equal opportunities to shape and contest these decisions through deliberative engagement.²

However, since we must make public decisions that concern complex questions, decision-makers often defer to experts.

When democracy becomes so heavily reliant on experts, we risk the “rise of the unelected”, where only experts make public decisions: a technocracy.

If experts know so much, why don’t we just let them make the decisions? Experts often already play a role in politics: for example, many expert advisory task forces guided countries through the pandemic, Nobel Prize laureate Steven Chu was US Secretary of Energy in Obama’s first cabinet and economist Mario Monti’s technocratic cabinet in Italy (2011-2013) had no elected representatives.

But experts are not always right and often disagree among themselves. Also, how could experts be made accountable to citizens who lack expertise in scientific data and arguments? Moreover, social and political values are often, consciously or unconsciously, embedded in scientific research. This can partly be attributed to the similar socioeconomic backgrounds of experts, who, therefore, often share similar norms and values.

At the other extreme, we see the rise of populism, which is often characterised by attacks on checks and balances, the rule of law and minority rights. Populism seems to leave little room for experts. They believe that citizens’ “common sense” is sufficient for solving complex political problems. 

But can we really do without experts? People who conduct “their own research” often don’t realize what crucial information they are missing – the unknown remains invisible to them.³

Lessons from a Century-Old Debate

Discussions about the role of experts within democracy are not new. A century ago, in the United States, the question was already raised as to whether citizens could still participate in public decision-making in a society becoming increasingly complex due to factors such as a globalising economy and new communication technologies (e.g., the radio).

Two American intellectuals engaged with this question were Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), an influential journalist who was friends with several U.S. presidents, and John Dewey (1859-1952), a towering figure in the Pragmatist philosophical tradition native to the U.S.

Lippmann criticized the democratic ideal that citizens must form opinions on everything. He believed that the complex nature of political issues made it impossible for citizens to be sufficiently informed about matters that were both geographically and intellectually distant from them, such as railway infrastructures or international trade agreements.⁴

Lippmann argued that the role of experts is to discover the facts and translate them for political representatives, who could then make better decisions. Indeed, according to Lippmann, experts make ‘the unseen facts intelligible’.⁵ Effectively, this made representatives accountable to experts, not to citizens.⁶

Lippmann’s books (such as Public Opinion) are provocative and remain relevant because they confront democracy with our dependence on experts and force us to reflect on the limits of our own knowledge.

Dewey agreed with Lippmann’s diagnosis that public opinion is often insufficiently informed, but he saw a different solution. Instead of granting a larger role to experts, Dewey advocated for greater citizen involvement in public decision-making.

Knowledge is a public good

Dewey thought that science begins with solving practical problems. These are often shared problems. Citizens, too, experience the challenges with which scientists grapple. Democracy works in similar ways to science: people come together to solve shared problems, where both citizens and experts must contribute to the common repository of knowledge and jointly strive to solve the problems we all face. 

His solution was to propose cooperative and experimental collaboration between citizens and experts. Cooperative because citizens, who experience the problems first-hand, have essential knowledge about their own situation – just as only the patient knows how the pain feels, and the doctor can provide a cure. And experimental because new problems can constantly arise, and current solutions may be inadequate for future challenges.

Dewey used the analogy that ‘the man who wears the shoe knows best where it pinches.’⁷ Only through collaboration between those experiencing the problems and the experts who can offer crucial knowledge can democracy function well.

Moreover, Dewey argued that experts should also make citizens aware of problems they have not yet recognised. A concrete example of this today is how medical experts have identified antibiotic resistance as potentially having detrimental consequences if left unaddressed.

Distrusting Citizens

The tension between technocracy and populism is central to the debate about the role of experts in democracy. Technocrats do not trust uninformed citizens to have a say in public decision-making, while populists distrust experts – they are often perceived as corrupt and unnecessary by populists.

Lippmann’s analysis raises the question of whether it is reasonable to entrust so much power to experts, while Dewey’s contribution leaves us wondering what relevant knowledge citizens can bring to the table. Personal experiences can differ. When do personal problems become public problems?⁸ The example of the shoe-wearer may be too simplistic, as public decision-making often involves highly complex issues that require interdisciplinary research. 

Both options seem to require that we first work on building trust in experts. This, in itself, is a cooperative effort between citizens and experts. After all, no sustainable collaboration can be based on naïve blind trust or irrational distrust.

Collaboration is a political matter

Ultimately, the question of whether there is a place for scientific experts in democracy is itself a political matter, dependent on the extent to which citizens are willing to delegate decision-making power to experts or, in other words, to trust in experts. But this seems to bring us back to the starting point of whether an act of trust in experts will deprive us of some of our democratic decision-making power.

Lucas Dijker

1. Disagreement is, of course, also regarded as a virtue in science, as continuous critical but productive critique pushes science forward. Nevertheless, there remain differences in how a good democracy and good science (ought to) operate.

2. Significant disagreement exists over how to define “democracy” and democratic legitimacy. Recently, deliberative approaches have gained popularity in democratic theory, particularly for bolstering democracy against contemporary crises, such as declining trust, the populist backlash and the cartelisation of electoral competition (see Katz & Mair (2009) “The Cartel Party Thesis: A Restatement”). However, deliberative democracy itself encompasses a wide range of interpretations. Others depart from viewing democracy as a structured model, instead seeing democracy as a way of life, inspired by Dewey. Democracy has also received critique by political realists, such as Jason Brennan in Against Democracy (2016), for generating low-quality output. Moreover, Herman Cappelen recently presented an interesting argument against the use of the concept of “democracy”. For a good overview of discussions about democratic theory, see Christiano & Bajaj. Here, rather than advocating for or against democracy, I take it as a given and operate within the proposed framework.

3. In reality, the discussions presented here are more complex. For example, the relationship between technocracy and democracy is difficult to capture due to the blurred boundaries between them. Also, contrary to much of the academic literature’s portrayal of populism’s relationship with experts and expertise, populists (both politicians and the electorate) do not reject or distrust all experts and expertise. I explore these questions in more detail in my PhD research. I hope to publish more about this on my blog in the near future, but I believe the discussions above offer a good sense of the tensions in which democracy, in the age of science, seems to be caught.

4. There are stark contrasts between Lippmann’s first two works and his later writings. However, it seems that after World War II, his scepticism of democracy remained. Lippmann’s writings are fuelled with interesting observations about topics related to epistemology – for example, I argue in my PhD research that Lippmann’s writings in Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925) contain elements of perspectivism.  

5. Lippmann in Public Opinion (1957 [1922]), p. 31.

6. See also Public Opinion, Chapter 27.   

7. Dewey in The Public and Its Problems (1957 [1927]), p. 207.

8. Dewey himself admitted that it is difficult to say when consequences of social action are “important enough” to become public problems: ‘Vagueness is not eliminated from the idea of importance’ (The Public and Its Problems, p. 64).