Toward a Radical Democratic Theory of Expertise

This article proposes that radical democratic theory offers a unique angle for analyzing the role of expertise in politics. Recent literature on expertise and democracy has largely focused on deliberative and institutional perspectives. In contrast, I highlight the role of disruptive, performative action in shaping how the common world is perceived and interpreted. Drawing on contemporary ecological activism, I demonstrate how expertise is employed to articulate societal antagonisms, how activists enact epistemic equality, and how they reassemble democratic publics. The article further suggests approaching the expertise/activism interface in architectonic terms, focusing on the constitution of a common symbolic space within which adversarial relationships unfold. Understood in this way, expertise is not primarily a form of rule that stands in opposition to popular self-governance, though it can assume such a technocratic form. Rather, as architecture, it facilitates democratic dissensus while remaining open to popular input and redesign.