Ad hoc advisory committees do not only deliberate collectively on joint policy proposals, they also often assemble a multiplicity of experts from different backgrounds, such as civil servants, stakeholders and academics to produce ‘negotiated, multi-source expertise’ (Krick 2015). Yet, some authors have recently made out indications of an ‘expertisation’ (Turner 2013) of ‘knowledge regimes’ (Campbell/Petersen 2014), i.e. an increasing authority of science-based claims and strong public demand for evidence-based policy-making that can be expected to affect policy advisory institutions.
On the grounds of debates about expert knowledge within Science and Technology Studies and Social Epistemology, the study will start out by characterising the nature and the epistemic quality of expertise that is generated by ad hoc advisory committees, and contrast it with ‘scientific knowledge’. It will then embed advisory committees within different knowledge regimes (Sweden, USA, UK, Germany, Norway, EU) and also trace shifts in the role and status of these institutions where such data is available.
Leading questions will be: How can the expertise of ad hoc advisory committees be characterised in distinction to ‘scientific knowledge’? Which role do ad hoc committees play in different knowledge regimes? Which shifts do we see with regard to numbers and patterns of participation? Which implications does this have for the governance functions as well as the epistemic and political authority of these institutions and the knowledge they provide?
