License to judge: fleshing out expertise in cultural policy

Abstract

This paper endeavours to examine different types of expertise in cultural policy. Unlike other conceptual studies, it focuses on the abstract notion of expertise i.e. the different forms of cognition and knowledge deployed in cultural policy, rather than the personage of an expert. The article proposes a distinction between arts expertise and technocratic expertise and employs five analytical categories within which they are discussed and compared with each other. Although a clear-cut differentiation seems impossible to achieve, the binary approach helps to shed light on how different forms of expert judgement in cultural policy can be framed and legitimised as well as how vulnerable they are to political influence and the concomitant pressure of the democratisation of policy-making.