Time frames: Crisis expertise and rapid response mechanisms

Abstract Experts step into global governance most prominently in times of crisis. But if crisis governance at international organizations (IOs) involves the construction of specific temporal horizons, how do these horizons affect the constitution of expert authority? This article argues that expertise produced under such conditions – to meet a demand for ‘timely’ knowledge – differs substantively from other kinds of expertise. Crisis governance thus contributes in notable ways to the pluralization of expertise. The article examines this phenomenon in the case of the relatively recent proliferation of rapid response mechanisms (RRMs). By examining the making and implementation of RRMs at two major IOs – the World Health Organization and the World Food Programme – the article offers a new understanding for how RRMs have become part of institutional repertoires of expertise. Based on this, it contends that RRM-based timeliness claims a shift in expert knowledge production from credentialed individuals to infrastructures and standardized procedures; second, they prioritize large homogenous datasets over consultation and contestation among different experts; and third, they streamline expert selection such that experts are recruited from existing intra-institutional pools rather than third parties. Jointly, these shifts speed up monitoring and reaction capabilities, but also risk eroding important checks on expert overconfidence.