The epistemic quality of expertise: contextualized criteria for the multi-source, negotiated policy advice of stakeholder fora

Abstract

This study focuses on the epistemic quality of the policy expertise that is generated by stakeholder advisory bodies. Bringing together science and technology studies, deliberative democratic theory and social epistemology, the study suggests contextualized quality criteria for this collectively negotiated and multi-source kind of knowledge that is in multiple ways socially embedded and differs substantially from ‘scientific’ knowledge, on which research has focused so far. The criteria cover not only the reliability of the advice itself within the respective institutional context, but also the competence and experience of the individual experts and the thoroughness of the collective epistemic practices and they capture three different perspectives on the validity of this expertise.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Critical Policy Studies.