Political science and the epistemic foundations of transnational governance

Abstract Arising from the 2024 European Political Science (EPS) annual debate, this article examines the role of expertise in transnational governance (TNG) with a focus on political science. It explores how transnational governance reconfigures the spaces and contexts for expert engagements in global policy making and transnational administration. In these evolving spaces of jurisdiction, the democratic potential, accountability, and legitimacy of expert knowledge are not only shrouded from the Global Majority but cannot be assumed to be inevitable. The article outlines some meanings attached to TNG and suggests democratic considerations cannot be conceived or operationalised in the same ways as at nation-state levels of governance. First, TNG is a series of overlapping but fragmented transnational spheres of public sector activity as well as hybrid public-private jurisdictions where democratic principles are yet to be normalised and embedded. Second, the accountability and legitimacy of sources of expertise in the policy sectors of TNG can be counter-swayed by latent features of ‘epistocracy’, or expert rule, in transnational policy communities.