Technocratic law and governance is under fire. Not only populist movements have challenged experts. NGOs, public intellectuals and some academics have also criticized the too close relation between experts and power. While the amount of power gained by experts may be contested, it is unlikely and arguably undesirable that experts will cease to play an influential role in contemporary regulatory regimes. This book focuses on whether and how experts involved in policymaking can and should be held accountable.
The book, divided into four parts expounds the challenges of holding experts accountable in a multilevel setting. Part 1 offers new perspectives on accountability of experts, including a critical comparison between accountability and a virtue-ethical framework for experts, a reconceptualization of accountability through the rule of law prism and a discussion of different ways to operationalise expert accountability in legal contexts. Parts 2-4, organised around in-depth case studies, shed light on the accountability of experts in three high-profile areas for technocratic governance in a European and global context: economic and financial governance, environmental/health and safety governance, and the governance of digitisation and data protection. By combining theoretical analysis with insights from a wide variety of case studies, the book hints at ways for rethinking expert accountability within global and European Union (EU) governance.
Endorsements of the book:
Technocracy and the Law is almost preternaturally salient in terms of subject-matter in the contemporary pandemic era. This book attempts to decipher the world of expert technocracy and to explore who these experts are and the role they play in policy making. The challenge of making these ‘nobodies’ visible and accountable to politics and the law receives nuanced and broad ranging treatment. The link, or otherwise, with accountability is the central axis. The very detailed and often extremely perceptive analysis expands our vision of international and European law.
- Deirdre Curtin, European University Institute
This is a very timely volume. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, an analysis of the accountability of experts is more salient than ever. Elected officials can only govern with the help of experts, but the voters cannot throw the experts out. This well-crafted volume puts the spotlight on the power of experts and disentangles the complex relationships between democratic politics and meaningful expertise accountability.
- Mark Bovens, Utrecht University
Technocracy and the Law offers a novel and timely contribution to the study of accountability and expertise. The book succeeds in weaving together a high-level conceptual analysis of the meaning of accountability in the context of multi-level global governance, with a series of in-depth case studies that examine how accountability is realized in several expert domains, ranging from food safety, to radiological standards, pesticides and toxicology. The book is a must-read for people interested in philosophy of science, global governance, and the regulation of expertise.
- Oren Perez, Bar Ilan University
Populist efforts to unravel the administrative state (see President Trump), or to undermine the EU beacon of expert governance (Brexit), as well as the growing doubts around the management of the Covid crisis, meant I fell upon this book with an urgency I have not experienced in some time: expertise, governance and law have both been questioned as never before, the need for them never been more apparent. If I read the book in one sitting however, that was more due to the clarity of the questions posed and theses developed by Alessandra Arcuri and Florin Coman-Kund, and the care with which expert contributors to this volume have responded to them. Above all, our old friend ‘accountability’ makes its reappearance in this Volume, being tested for its resilience at theoretical level, as well as within individual sectors, and giving us a new hope where both technocracy and conventional governments have struggled, in particular in their response to crisis. Accountability can empower us citizens, even in these difficult circumstances, making clear the rationales for a complex mesh of political and expert-led decision-making which is indispensable in our modern world.
- Michelle Everson, School of Law Birkbeck College, University of London