Dealing with the dual demands of expertise and democracy

Abstract

Abstract Credible expertise is no longer a given in our contemporary democracy: for knowledge to be authoritative, experts must take into account a wider audience than just scientific colleagues. This study uses conversation analysis and discursive psychology to investigate how experts deal with this role in practice. We show that experts in a Dutch public hearing on GM food orient to ‘speaking on behalf of the public’ without undermining their status as experts. They do this by (1) animating but not overlapping the voices of the public (2) speaking on behalf of ‘the consumer’ and (3) presenting hypothetical public opinions. In this way, experts reconcile what they treat as the dual requirement of distance to support an expert opinion and the proximity to the public required for good democracy. We further discuss what implications this research has for the role of experts in a modern democracy.