The ‘independent expert’ – a classically modern form of authority
Political impartiality is the technocrat's way of being political
The ‘independent expert’ is a funny old role. I’ve been working around it lately and have started to consider it firstly in relation to the idea of ‘policy laundering’ and secondly to the practices of human resources administration in large organisations.
In ‘policy laundering’, political commitments and decisions are disguised rather like networks of shell companies disguise a corporation’s dirty liabilities. Meanwhile the HR department handles those difficult political situations in an organisation like hiring, firing and enforcing discipline – doing so at a distance from the people who run things, as if independent from them.
The ‘independent expert’ similarly offers their input at an ‘arm’s length’ from whoever is commissioning them, appearing as an impartial, irreproachable source of authority who acts only on the basis of ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ and cannot be accused of bias or political commitment. They exist to play a role in society, to do the dirty work of certain political players and/or a system which does not wish to reveal itself as a participant in political activity.
It’s a classically modern form of political authority. By claiming to be above politics, objective and distanced from power, you create a new type of power which oversees politics. The now-ubiquitous idea of the ‘independent commission’ comes from the same place as the notion that politics gets in the way of good decision-making by the right sort of people. It’s a way of insulating authority from the messy processes of democracy and the tawdry affairs of government by elected representatives.
From within British government circles, there seem to be more examples of this than anyone could possibly know: a proliferation of quangos, sometimes reporting to other quangos, which then report to other quangos which then, finally, might then have some sort of accountability to a government minister.
Among the most obvious examples of this is the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), a body created by George Osborne in 2010 “to provide independent and authoritative analysis of the UK’s public finances” at an arm’s length from the Treasury. Then there is the National Infrastructure Commission, founded again by George Osborne in 2015 with former Labour minister, now hard-core anti-Brexiteer Lord Adonis as first chairman, to provide “impartial, expert advice on major long term infrastructure challenges.”
Note the same language cropping up: ‘impartial’, ‘independent’, ‘authoritative’, ‘expert’ etc. Invoking all of these we find UK in a Changing Europe, which the state-funded Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has been funding lavishly in order to provide continuing ‘independent’ public comment on Brexit – thereby helping to keep it as a live political issue. UKICE reports to the ESRC, which reports to a body called UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which then serves at arm’s length to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), which Rishi Sunak recently decided would be broken up.
You don’t get much more insulated from Government accountability than this while remaining in the Government system and receiving Government funding.
From outside government, others have been trying the same ruse. The Financial Times’ former editor Lionel Barber, awarded a Légion d’Honneur by President Macron a few months after the Brexit referendum, his citation mentioning “the Financial Times’ positive role in the European debate”, set up an organisation called the ‘Independent Commission on UK-EU Relations’. This was “politically independent” he said. “We want to promote informed debate and find solutions - NOT refight the referendum.” If you believe that you’ll believe anything.
Then there was ‘Independent SAGE’, set up to oppose the Government on Covid policy, suggesting it was being negligent in not clamping down harder – and led by the anti-Brexit, anti-Tory activist-journalist Carole Cadwalladr.
A major political aim of all the bullshit about political independence and impartiality is to secure those ‘expert’ slots on TV, radio and in print for talking heads who provide the last word to a debate or a news story, commenting on it and summing it up in authoritative tones. The opening here, when exploited consistently (aided by compliant media), is not to participate in debates but to end them, winning them conclusively for one side. Obviously, it is a major attraction for anyone with an agenda, but it requires some sort of veneer of genuine impartiality: hence all the butchering of language.
However, I think you can see how many of these people genuinely come to believe their hype, getting high on their own supply. They indulge themselves in an ideal of ‘information’ in which their role is that of a policeman, stopping that which will do harm from getting through to ignorant populations and therefore protecting ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’ and the like.
In this way the independent expert takes on authority over reality itself, the world. Their self-image is that of the people who know, who must control information in order for correct decision-making to occur. It is more or less a function of existing power: the laundering of existing system interests and positioning into idioms of knowledge, of ‘facts’ and ‘evidence’ that are protected from contest. Many, attracted by the aura of authority around the role, try the same ruse from a position of little power and get nowhere with it.
Experts are the people modern technocratic power pays to justify itself. Indeed in a sense they are modern technocratic power: a preferred means to get around the constraints of democratic government and accountability.