The Politicization of Expertise from a Historical Perspective: A Research Agenda and an Empirical Application

Today's democracies are confronted with two seemingly contradictory developments: The expertization of politics on the one hand and the politicization of expertise on the other. In practice, however, this dichotomy is not new. For decades and even centuries, experts and expert institutions have been an integral part of most political and administrative systems - the bureaucracy, commissions and central banks are some notable examples. As long as they exist, expert institutions may be subject to political manipulation. This paper addresses the question of how to better understand the two developments and how they align from a theoretical perspective, and how the politicization of expert institutions can be measured over time. Empirically, the paper examines the appointment of advisory commissions in Norway since the 1960s until 2023 and the political dynamics underlying the appointment of academics to commissions. The paper uses a novel dataset of more than 1500 appointments of academic experts in Norway between 1972 and 2023 using a time-series cross-sectional research design.