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Littoz-Monnet provides a fresh analysis of the enmeshment of expert knowledge with politics in global governance, through a unique investigation of bioethical expertise, an intriguing form of 'expert knowledge' which claims authority in the ethical analysis of issues that arise in relation to biomedicine, the life sciences and new fields of technological innovation. She makes the case that the mobilisation of ethics experts does not always arise from a motivation to rationalise governance. Instead, mobilising ethics experts - who are endowed with a unique double-edged authority, both 'democratic' and 'epistemic' - can help policy-makers manoeuvre policy conflicts on scientific and technological innovations and make their pro-science and innovation agendas possible. Bioethical expertise is indeed shaped in a political and iterative space between experts and those who do policy. The book reveals the mechanisms through which certain global governance narratives, as well as the types of expertise they rely on, remain stable even when they are contested.

"The book asks how the notion of ethics expertise has emerged, what functions its mobilisation plays in the governance of scientific and technological innovation and how such expertise is produced. It reveals that bioethics expertise is fundamentally political in three distinct but interrelated ways. First, its mobilisation in policy does not always arise from a motivation to rationalise governance. Mobilising experts can be a way of manoeuvring through political conflicts, because the mobilisation of expertise can hide the political component of public discussions, insulate policy-making and facilitate the fabric of policy compromises. Second, bioethical expertise and policy do not belong to impervious spheres; experts can be mobilised to such avail because iterations between knowledge and politics take place through tangible mechanisms, so that bioethical expertise ultimately makes policy possible, rather than provide it with oversight. Third, through a close-up on bioethics expertise, the book reveals that the delineation of what counts as expert knowledge fluctuates, reflecting specific political and social circumstances and the agendas which actors unfold in given contexts"--

This edited volume advances existing research on the production and use of expert knowledge by international bureaucracies. Given the complexity, technicality and apparent apolitical character of the issues dealt with in global governance arenas, 'evidence-based' policy-making has imposed itself as the best way to evaluate the risks and consequences of political action in global arenas. In the absence of alternative, democratic modes of legitimation, international organizations have adopted this approach to policy-making. By treating international bureaucracies as strategic actors, this volume address novel questions: why and how do international bureaucrats deploy knowledge in policy-making? Where does the knowledge they use come from, and how can we retrace pathways between the origins of certain ideas and their adoption by international administrations? What kind of evidence do international bureaucrats resort to, and with what implications? Which types of knowledge are seen as authoritative, and why? This volume makes a crucial contribution to our understanding of the way global policy agendas are shaped and propagated. It will be of great interest to scholars, policy-makers and practitioners in the fields of public policy, international relations, global governance and international organizations.

AbstractGlobal mental health expertise favors biomedical explanations of mental disorders that conceive such disorders as stable entities, which can be diagnosed according to universal categories. Following this logic, universal and standardized solutions can also be applied throughout the world, regardless of context. Despite its assumptions and data being contested within the field of psychiatry itself, global mental health expertise has been highly stable. How is such expertise produced? Through what mechanisms are its products, such as reports, studies, or numbers, made and replicated? The article proposes a model of expertise production in global governance that discloses specific mechanisms of circularity and exclusivity in knowledge-making processes, which result in the circular and exclusive character of expertise itself. These include the circulation of profesionals and data across spheres and organizations, as well as the role played by several sites such as boundary expert groups, influential research clusters, and "policy-scientific" journals, which operate as powerful centers of knowledge production at the intersection of the policy, scientific or private spheres. Such sites not only act as loci where people's circulation operates at its best but also as autonomous mechanisms that produce, cement, and perpetuate the circularity and exclusivity of expertise beyond the role of specific individuals.

This article asks how international secretariats can sometimes expand their authority in areas that relate neither to their mandate, nor to their sphere of expert authority. Existing explanations of mission creep assume that IOs act autonomously and expand in those areas that connect with their mandates, sense of organizational mission, and sphere of expert authority. The claim here is that entrepreneurial bureaucrats can succeed—in the absence of policy deadlock among states—in creating creep in unexpected issue domains through the mobilization of external expertise. The article examines this dynamic in the domain of bioethical standards. It shows that UNESCO acted as a first mover in the field, despite having no relevant expertise, and despite bioethics being more closely connected to the mandate of other organizations. Entrepreneurial bureaucrats within UNESCO were able to create creep in bioethics by mobilizing external experts in the field and capturing their skills. Working with external experts endowed their organization with the capacity to act, gave epistemic authority to their actions, and prevented the politicization of debates in a potentially controversial issue domain. In pointing to the strategic uses of expertise, the article challenges the commonly held view that expert knowledge acts as a means of solving problems and rationalizing global governance.

This article challenges the assumption that ethics committees introduce democratic control in policy areas where scientific expertise and ethical concerns collide. The claim is that politicians or bureaucrats are likely to resort to the use of ethical expertise when they face a specific type of dilemma: the impossibility, on the one hand, of yielding a consensus on controversial value-based issues via the democratic route and the need, on the other, to legitimize controversial policy choices in these areas. The article examines this dynamic with regard to the European Union's medical biotechnology policy, a contested policy domain where ethical specialists are awarded expert status. The article finds that establishing ethical experts as a new category of expertise alongside scientific experts actually bolsters the technocratic domain in areas where it is contested, thus reinforcing the authority of experts and bureaucrats in the policy process, rather than democratic control. Adapted from the source document.

This article addresses debates on the formulation of public policy, building upon a body of literature which has focused on the interconnectedness between the venues of policy action and the way issues are defined. It does so by focusing on the strategic role of policy actors in a policy subfield and their attempts at manipulating either frames or venues in order to shape policy. The novelty here consists in pointing to the involvement of regulators in such strategic action. An emerging body of research has indeed shown that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies and that they are increasingly engaged in policy-making activities. Thus, by resorting to the agenda-setting and framing literature, the article sheds light on novel pathways through which regulators intervene in policy-making activities, making a claim that they have very good 'tools' at their disposal in order to shape policy. These dynamics are examined in the case of the last piece of the EU's pharmaceutical framework -- the 2004 Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicines -- which provoked intense debate among manufacturers of herbals, retailers, consumers, and both EU-level and domestic-level regulatory authorities. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThis article addresses debates on the formulation of public policy, building upon a body of literature which has focused on the interconnectedness between the venues of policy action and the way issues are defined. It does so by focusing on the strategic role of policy actors in a policy subfield and their attempts at manipulating either frames or venues in order to shape policy. The novelty here consists in pointing to the involvement of regulators in such strategic action. An emerging body of research has indeed shown that the activity of formally independent regulators is not necessarily limited to the implementation of delegated regulatory competencies and that they are increasingly engaged in policy‐making activities. Thus, by resorting to the agenda‐setting and framing literature, the article sheds light on novel pathways through which regulators intervene in policy‐making activities, making a claim that they have very good 'tools' at their disposal in order to shape policy. These dynamics are examined in the case of the last piece of the EU's pharmaceutical framework – the 2004 Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicines – which provoked intense debate among manufacturers of herbals, retailers, consumers, and both EU‐level and domestic‐level regulatory authorities.

After the 2004 eastern enlargement, the European Union has become a terrain of competition between different memory narratives. At the core of the debate is the status of the Holocaust and its role in the identity-definition process of European societies. This article asks why similar memory debates have resulted in different policy outcomes when taking place in different institutional settings at the EU level. It finds, along with Schattschneider's analysis of policy conflicts, that the choice of the venue of the conflict determined what the conflict was about and how people were divided. Policy outcomes were determined by which of the different possible conflicts gained the dominant position and this, in turn, depended on 'losers' in the policy debate being able to choose the right venue for the defence of their concerns. Adapted from the source document.