Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Many studies focus on how political agents, such as elected politicians, social movement, media, etc., demand transparency and accountability of experts’ advice and advisory activities. The assumption is that experts are less willing to embrace the democratization of policy advisory processes, and they are not agents for democratizing expertise. We argue that experts can contribute to democratization of expertise but such contribution largely hinges upon their cognition of the relations between expertise and democracy.  

       Using Q-methodology to gauge how experts perceive the democratization of expertise, this study seeks to map a comprehensive picture of various role perception of experts in policy advisory processes. The 60 statements of Q-sort are developed from literature, local experts’ comments and interviews found in public domains, as well as pilot interviews. The P-set are 30 researchers and analysts working full-time or part-time in the government executive, legislative council, district council, government advisory bodies, think tanks, universities and civil society groups or organizations in environmental policy subsystem.  We conduct the study in Hong Kong, China because of its unique political context. In western democratic political systems, experts have to accept the argumentative turn of policy sciences and their less authoritative role in advising policy if they hope to contribute since there are established institutional venues to channel societal change of values and interests onto the political agenda. In a system where political institutions need not be swiftly responsive to societal pressures to survive, experts’ attitude towards democratizing expertise might be more varied. We choose to focus on environmental policy subsystem because the tension between scientific knowledge and local knowledge, between upholding the scientific norms and the need for public input, as well as between the interests of experts and other stakeholders are often hard to reconcile. Specific policy issues that sampled experts have worked on include pollution control such as air, water, noise and land, and biodiversity.