(No?) Accounting for expertise

Attempts to alter the range of expertise represented on some US advisory committees have raised questions of accountability in the selection and deployment of expert advice. Governments seem sometimes to adopt the relativist position that all expertise is biased, and that political considerations may therefore determine the official selection of experts; at other times, they endorse the elitist view of expertise as superior knowledge. This paper argues instead that experts exercise a form of delegated authority and should thus be held to norms of transparency and deliberative adequacy that are central to democratic governance. This theoretical perspective should inform the practices of expert deliberation.