Description
Recent work on transnational governance and expertise shows how professional groups attain and extend their various forms of authority to different “issue areas”. Building on specific types of knowledge, they establish professional juridictions over some problems at multiple levels, from international dispute resolution to the writing of international law. We build on this research agenda to show how social groups at multiple levels mobilise such expertise to redefine global, local and transnational orders. Employing empirical case studies in various “issue areas”, we illustrate how social groups can claim authority through their capacity to use expertise recognized at the global level. We do so by expanding existing theoretical understandings of expertise and by analysing the emergence of new forms of governmentalities in novel empirical settings which redefine power relations between different actors. Possible questions, but not limited to those, are: What are the social, political, legal processes by which social groups build authority and become ‘experts’? What role does knowledge play as a form of authority in imposing new orders? How are different forms of authority related, or in conflict with each other in claiming expertise? Can we expand our understanding of expertise through other political theoretical concepts, such as representation?
