Enhancing Democratic Expertise Through Intra‐Party Deliberation

The role of experts in contemporary democracies has become one of the most politicized and pressing issues of our time and has been deeply debated within normative political theory. Given the technical complexity of current political challenges, we have witnessed a significant shift of power from governments and politicians to technocratic institutions and experts (Radaelli 1999; Bickerton and Accetti-Invernizzi 2015; Dargent 2015). In the view of proponents of epistocracy (Brennan 2016; López-Guerra 2014), this shift is not only inevitable but necessary. As democratic systems are characterized by structural epistemic distortions (polarization, bias, short-termism), they cannot make sound policy choices (McKenzie 2016) as confirmed by the spread of populist movements (Galston 2018; Müller 2016). Epistocracy argues for limiting the role of citizens and representative institutions, while granting more power to those who have the appropriate knowledge (Jeffrey 2018). However, this shift toward epistocracy faces substantial criticism from other scholars (Gunn 2019; Moraro 2018). They contend that it is not only incompatible with the democratic framework because of its failure to recognize citizens as equals but also the cause of rather than the solution to democratic distortions (Mouffe 2018; Friedman 2019). According to this perspective, when citizens lose control over decision-making, they can only expose this democratic failure by supporting anti-establishment movements (Berman 2019, 2021). The spread of populist movements in both Europe and the United States (Muirhead and Rosenblum 2019; Urbinati 2019) and their open skepticism toward expertise, which is seen as an expression of elite attempts to curb popular power, confirm this diagnosis. Even if we agree that the epistocratic view is incompatible with a democratic framework, this perspective is correct in claiming that current democratic systems need to provide not only procedurally fair but also epistemically sound answers to complex problems for which ordinary citizens do not have the appropriate expertise. While epistocracy might not offer the solution, a populist dismissal of expertise cannot serve as an alternative. A proper normative model of democracy, we thus contend, should rely on experts without undermining the control of citizens. To achieve this aim, it is crucial to delve into and gain a deeper understanding of how expertise can be best integrated into democratic systems while addressing the issue of how to enable ordinary citizens to evaluate and oversee expert claims. In a nutshell, it is necessary to reflect on the division of labor between experts and citizens. As recently highlighted by Moore (2021), there are three primary models for considering the relationship and the division of labor between experts and citizens in a democratic society: representative, participatory, and associational. The first model views the relationship between experts and citizens as being mediated through institutions of political representation. The second model advocates forms of engaged expertise, in which experts directly participate in public fora such as citizens’ juries and minipublics. The third model leverages expert knowledge to support and advance the goals of self-organized associations and social groups. In this paper, our contribution to this debate centers on the first model of the relation between experts and citizens, particularly emphasizing the role of political parties. The concept of representative expertise has traditionally been associated with parliaments, in line with Weber's (1994, 179) suggestion that legislative bodies should possess strong and independent epistemic resources. We seek to add another dimension by showing that a critical aspect of democratic expertise resides within political parties, operating in accordance with principles of intra-party deliberation. Indeed, when political parties are properly and normatively regulated, they can function as intermediaries between citizens and experts. Furthermore, we argue that, with intra-party deliberation involving party members and experts, citizens can exert control over expert proposals without needing to directly engage with experts, which can be excessively demanding. Scrutinizing expertise demands a level of knowledge, experience, and technical argumentation skills that are often lacking among ordinary citizens. Thus, our contribution aligns with recent theoretical attempts to expand the role that institutions can play in facilitating the discussion, evaluation, and contestation of science in the public sphere (Moore 2017; Pamuk 2021), albeit with a specific focus on political parties. In this sense, the paper aims to bridge the gap between two debates within normative political theory: the one about democratic expertise and the normative discussion concerning political parties, which has recently seen increased attention (Rosenblum 2008; Muirhead 2014; White and Ypi 2016; Bonotti 2017; Wolkenstein 2020). Indeed, scholars have advocated seeing political parties as not mere factions but vital organizations that organize regulated rivalry and facilitate citizens’ exercise of political agency. Moreover, they have considered the epistemic function that political parties can perform by mobilizing information and reducing both the complexity and the technical aspects of relevant policies and political projects (White and Ypi 2016; Biale and Ottonelli 2019). Yet this renewed normative interest in political parties has neglected the role they can play in fostering relations between experts and citizens and therefore their possible role as sites of democratic expertise. The normative requirements we propose, to which political parties can be subjected, can, in our view, both enhance the epistemic quality of political proposals and decisions and facilitate a of control by ordinary citizens. 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