Ignoring Experts

Abstract

This chapter explores, and critiques, two ways in which experts are ignored. It is based upon an investigation of climate change experts in Australia, and Australian debates about renewable energy. First, this chapter argues, experts are constructed as icons of instrumental reason rather than socially situated actors like the rest of us. In such accounts we find experts constructed as tending toward dogmatism, authoritarianism, and an inability to be reflexive about their underlying practices and roles. Second, it argues that expertise is constructed as a danger to democracy that must be corralled into being nothing more than a servant to democracy. Such accounts trade too heavily on the tensions between authority relations and deliberative ideals. Based upon political responses to an electrical supply blackout in Australia in 2016, this chapter suggests the salience of delegation and disempowering tropes for understanding expertise can contribute to political institutions displaying callous disregard for technical advice.