Citizen experts in participatory governance: Democratic and epistemic assets of service user involvement, local knowledge and citizen science

Abstract

Initiatives that attribute expert status to ‘ordinary citizens’ proliferate in a range of societal realms and are generally celebrated for ‘democratising expertise’. By tapping new sources of knowledge and participation simultaneously, such ‘citizen expertise’ practices seem to provide responses to the contemporary decline of trust in political elites and traditional experts that seriously challenges the legitimacy of democratic policy-making. This study distinguishes between three quintessential types of citizen expertise (‘local knowledge’, ‘service user involvement’ and ‘citizen science’) and, from an integrated perspective, critically discusses the value of citizen expertise for public knowledge production and democratic governance. Drawing on empirical insights and on theories of democracy and of expertise and knowledge, the concepts of expertise and participation are refined and quality conditions of citizen expertise are developed. The study argues that citizen expertise is epistemically particularly valuable when it is based on distinct, non-ubiquitous experiences and on collective, not just individual, insights. It contends that representativeness is key to the democratic legitimacy of citizen experts in the policy context and points to the key role of organised civil society in establishing the required accountability relationships.