Exploring the Significance of Epistemic Communities to the Development of Multi-Level Governance Arrangements

The role of experts and authoritative knowledge within public policymaking is increasingly being challenged in a changing political world. Similarly, the sustainability and desirability of multi-level governance arrangements have been contested, as Brexit and the rise of populist causes have begun to undermine the sharing of competencies and multilateral frameworks. This study links these fundamental issues by hypothesising that experts (conceptualised using the epistemic communities framework) significantly contribute to the initiation and prevalence of multi-level forms of governance. In order to achieve their policy goals, epistemic communities are hypothesised to stimulate multiple dimensions of learning, including policy, organisational, and governance learning, which promote and sustain the dispersal of political authority and policy competencies common to multi-level systems. Furthermore, it is suggested that epistemic communities can enhance policy legitimation, in the form of input and throughput legitimacy especially, within multi-level governance (MLG) systems. This would be achieved by encouraging participatory forms of governance and subsidiarity in cases of divergent policy preferences between two identity groupings. A comparative case study approach, employing a ‘most-similar’ cases model, is utilised to investigate these hypotheses and the causal mechanisms that underlie their assumptions. Extensive semi-structured interviews with a range of key participants, supported by process tracing methods, are conducted and preliminary results from these will be discussed. The case study areas considered are the subnational regions of Wales in the United Kingdom and Québec in Canada respectively. These regions, selected for their internal linguistic identity groups, form the context for an examination of the policy process that culminated in the passing and implementation of two examples of legislation within the policy field of cultural heritage: the Historic Environment (Wales) Act 2016 and Loi sur le Patrimoine Culturel 2011. This work is intended to contribute to the literature concerning epistemic communities by firmly embedding them in public policy discourse and demonstrating a key association with multi-level governance that offers the foundation for a reconceptualization of the significance of their relationship. Similarly, it is intended that this study inform contemporary debates on the role and value of experts in public policymaking, particularly by demonstrating the potential for deeper consequences of their engagement (or lack of) in the process. The possibility that experts may contribute to the establishment and maintenance of governance arrangements that disperse political authority and participatory opportunities more widely offer powerful normative and political arguments in favour of the importance of their position.