Two points, but I want to start with praise. You noticed something important and provided a very useful writeup. I agree that this is an important issue to take seriously.
While aiming to be the person available when policymakers want expert opinion does not favour more technocratic decision-making, actively seeking to influence policymakers does favour more technocratic decision-making
I don’t think that this is an accurate representation of how policymakers operate, either for elected officials or bureaucrats. My view comes from a gestalt of years of talking with congressional aides, bureaucrats in and around DC, and working at a think tank that does policy research. Simply put, there are so many people trying to make their point in any rich democracy that being “available” is largely equivalent to being ignored.
There are exceptions, particularly academics who publish extensively on a topic and gain publicity for it, but most people who don’t actively attempt to participate in governance simply won’t. Nobody has enough spare time, and nobody has enough spare energy, to actively seek out points of view and ideas reliably.
More importantly, I think that marginal expert influence mostly crowds out other expert influence, and does not crowd out populist impulses. Here I am more speculative, but my sense is that elected officials get a sense of what the expert/academic view is, as one input in a decision making process that also includes stakeholders, public opinion (based on polling, voting, and focus groups), and party attitudes (activists, other elected officials, aligned media, etc). Hence an EA org that attempts to change views mostly displaces others occupying a similar social / epistemic / political role, not any sense of public opinion.
On the bureaucracy side, expert input, lawmaker input, and stakeholder input are typically the primary influences when considering policy change. Occasionally public pressure will be able to notice something, but the federal registry is very boring, and as the punctuated equilibrium model of politics suggests, most of the time the public isn’t paying attention. And bureaucrats usually don’t have extra time and energy to go out and find people whose work might be relevant, but they don’t have anyone actively presenting. Add that most exciting claims are false, so decisionmakers would really have to read through entire literatures to be confident in a claim, and experts ceding influence goes primarily not to populist impulses but existing stakeholders.
Assuming you’re right and experts who seek to influence policy do mostly just replace other expert opinion, then the “let’s use our expertise to influence policymakers” aspect of EA does not meaningfully make decision-making more technocratic, making the debate between technocracy vs populism only be relevant to EA in the context of ‘promoting evidence based policy’, but not to the major EA cause areas. That changes my mind and makes me think the technocracy vs populism debate is not a crucial consideration for EA, since it is only important for a minor EA cause area.
If you anyone else reading this has also worked in government and has an opinion on whether experts seeking to influence policymakers mostly replace the opinion of other experts, I’d be interested to hear it!
Two points, but I want to start with praise. You noticed something important and provided a very useful writeup. I agree that this is an important issue to take seriously.
I don’t think that this is an accurate representation of how policymakers operate, either for elected officials or bureaucrats. My view comes from a gestalt of years of talking with congressional aides, bureaucrats in and around DC, and working at a think tank that does policy research. Simply put, there are so many people trying to make their point in any rich democracy that being “available” is largely equivalent to being ignored.
There are exceptions, particularly academics who publish extensively on a topic and gain publicity for it, but most people who don’t actively attempt to participate in governance simply won’t. Nobody has enough spare time, and nobody has enough spare energy, to actively seek out points of view and ideas reliably.
More importantly, I think that marginal expert influence mostly crowds out other expert influence, and does not crowd out populist impulses. Here I am more speculative, but my sense is that elected officials get a sense of what the expert/academic view is, as one input in a decision making process that also includes stakeholders, public opinion (based on polling, voting, and focus groups), and party attitudes (activists, other elected officials, aligned media, etc). Hence an EA org that attempts to change views mostly displaces others occupying a similar social / epistemic / political role, not any sense of public opinion.
On the bureaucracy side, expert input, lawmaker input, and stakeholder input are typically the primary influences when considering policy change. Occasionally public pressure will be able to notice something, but the federal registry is very boring, and as the punctuated equilibrium model of politics suggests, most of the time the public isn’t paying attention. And bureaucrats usually don’t have extra time and energy to go out and find people whose work might be relevant, but they don’t have anyone actively presenting. Add that most exciting claims are false, so decisionmakers would really have to read through entire literatures to be confident in a claim, and experts ceding influence goes primarily not to populist impulses but existing stakeholders.
Thanks for your insight.
Assuming you’re right and experts who seek to influence policy do mostly just replace other expert opinion, then the “let’s use our expertise to influence policymakers” aspect of EA does not meaningfully make decision-making more technocratic, making the debate between technocracy vs populism only be relevant to EA in the context of ‘promoting evidence based policy’, but not to the major EA cause areas. That changes my mind and makes me think the technocracy vs populism debate is not a crucial consideration for EA, since it is only important for a minor EA cause area.
If you anyone else reading this has also worked in government and has an opinion on whether experts seeking to influence policymakers mostly replace the opinion of other experts, I’d be interested to hear it!