Democracy and knowledge. Conflicting demands and up-and-coming institutional responses

The study takes as its starting point the tensions between epistemic and democratic demands in modern policy-making and seeks institutional solutions. It zooms in on the phase of policy development and asks: Which institutions of policy advice and consultation manage to involve all those affected by a policy issue in a substantive way and provide reliable, independent and policy-relevant expertise? The study first links up the perspectives of public administration, deliberative democracy and STS on the relationship of democracy and knowledge and refines the concepts of ‘expertise’ and ‘participation’ in such a way that the hard line between experts and citizens, and between epistemic and democratic norms, softens to some extent. It then contrasts two quite different, up-and-coming practices of policy advice and consultation in terms of their ability to reconcile epistemic and democratic demands. One merges the role of ‘citizen’ and ‘expert’ in the same individual, the other provides for a sophisticated and highly complex division of labour. In focus are: a) ‘Citizen’ or ‘lay experts’ that are involved into policy-making to bring in both the viewpoints of the general public as well as specialised, ‘local’ or ‘service user’ knowledge, and b) Multi-layered structures of policy deliberation that combine classic expert commissions with a diversity of public input channels, such as mini-publics, online consultations or surveys.