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J Eijking Experts Without Communities Experts without communities Internationality, impartiality, and the Suez Canal Abstract How and why has expertise become such a central component of modern global governance? Neither of two dominant IR takes on the topic—functionalist approaches to epistemic communities, and poststructuralist perspectives on governmentality—have offered satisfactory answers to this arguably urgent question. This is because, respectively, epistemic communities emphasise cohesion at the expense of disunity prior to formation; and because governmentality primarily applies to neoliberal polities. Neither travels well in time. To overcome these limitations and constructively bridge the two approaches, this paper suggests a conceptual rethinking based on a surprisingly neglected but pivotal case: the 1855 International Commission on the Isthmus of Suez. Based on original archival research, the paper showcases how modern expert-based global governance emerged in practice. It argues that expert-based global governance should be understood as a practice that constructs “internationality” as a categorical claim to impartiality. What made modern global governance possible was a notion of the international as a depoliticised category. This authorised experts as central agents of international order. Consequently, expert authority is not epistemic by default: the 1855 case shows that political favour can endow experts with authority, a nexus which internationality is then able to mask as impartiality. The nineteenth-century rise of the middle class, scientific internationalism, and informal empire made such masking more desirable than the open admission of political aims. The article thus offers a corrective to existing accounts and a new avenue toward historicising a central practice of modern global governance. Keywords expertise, global governance, epistemic communities, governmentality, Suez Canal Introduction It hardly needs pointing out today that global governance is rife with deference to experts. From the WHO to the World Bank to the IMF, most challenges of international politics are met, at some point in the process, with the help of experts. Today, this practice seems obvious. An ever more complex, globalised world requires specialists who can bring their knowledge to bear on global governance. This is the optimist view, stressing the positive potential of expertise for improving international cooperation on technical issues. A pessimist view sees experts as often unaccountable technocrats imbued with a blind faith in science—the legitimate targets of populist reaction. In the International Relations (IR) discipline, the optimist view has a rough equivalent in functionalist approaches such as the epistemic communities framework, whereas the pessimist view tends to be reflected more strongly among poststructuralists who study EXPERTS WITHOUT COMMUNITIES expertise through the lens of governmentality.1 Bueger suggests that across several generations that have studied expertise in global governance, two normative interpretations stand out: ‘A liberal-progressive narrative’ according to which ‘expertise leads to better futures and … enables cooperation’ and a ‘critical narrative’ where expertise ‘narrows down available policy options, stabilizes power relations, hinders emancipation or marginalizes actors.’ Given the centrality of expertise not only to global governance practices, but also to broader theoretical questions of authority in international politics, Bueger is right in urging scholars ‘to recognize that the Golem of expertise is neither the enemy of legitimate political orders, nor by necessity its friend.’2 And yet, the debate seems to have come no closer to bridging the divide between optimists and pessimists, instead continuing to talk past one another. In this paper, I argue that this is to a large extent due to a lack of engagement with history: failing to carefully historicise the idea and practice of expertise in international politics has led to two sets of assumptions that might actually be normative interpretations or unwarranted generalisations based on descriptions of the present.3 To improve the situation and develop a historically grounded shared vocabulary, this paper asks: how and why has expertise become such a central component of modern global governance? What is it about the idea and practice of expertise that has endowed it with such seemingly obvious purchase for IR? We think of expertise as a self-suggesting tool that helps us address international challenges—but what if it is instead the designation of challenges as “international” that allows some actors to claim international expert status? The paper introduces a surprisingly neglected case of expert-based international cooperation—the 1855 International Commission on the Isthmus of Suez—to help scholars rethink prevalent understandings of expertise. In doing so, the paper builds on contributions from Science and Technology Studies (STS), global history, and the IR practice turn. My analysis does not offer a causal explanation but identifies the structure, criteria, and agents of a budding global governance practice. Combining global histories of the Suez Canal with the methodological strengths of historical-sociological IR, the case study combines a membership analysis of the Commission with a narrative account of its creation, use, and subsequent role in the canal enterprise. The paper argues that expert-based global governance should be understood as a practice that deploys “internationality” as a categorical claim to impartiality. What made modern global governance possible, in an important sense, was a notion of the international as a 1 These are stylised ideal types, and of course there are “optimists” who indeed view expertise critically, and “pessimists” recognising the positive potentials of expertise. 2 Bueger 2014, 51; emphasis original. 3 Recent studies of expertise in global governance include Sending 2015; Kennedy 2016; Jones 2019; Carraro 2019. Draft · Please do not circulate 2! EXPERTS WITHOUT COMMUNITIES depoliticised category or field. This authorised experts as central agents of international order. Consequently, expert authority is not epistemic by default: the 1855 case shows instead that political favour can endow experts with authority, a nexus which internationality can then mask as impartiality. The rise of the middle classes, scientific internationalism, and informal empire in the nineteenth century made such masking more desirable than the open admission of political aims. This sheds new light on a central practice of modern global governance in ways that may allow optimists and pessimists to engage in more fruitful conversation. It also implies a shift from experts as successful “depoliticisers” to depoliticisation itself as a potentially politically desired, i.e. politicised, form of governance. To build the case, I first briefly discuss two prevalent accounts of modern expert-based global governance, epistemic communities and governmentality, highlighting to what extent their grasp of the role of experts remains unsatisfactory. I criticise both for their insufficient engagement with history, but also highlight important advances both bodies of scholarship have made. Second, I present a historical case study of the 1855 International Commission on the Isthmus of Suez as a key moment of modern expert- based global governance in the making. I show how this practice enabled a highly versatile legitimation of informal empire by constructing internationality as a categorical claim to impartiality. From this insight I then advance a historicised reconceptualisation of the place of experts in IR: what made modern global governance possible was a notion of the international as a depoliticised category, which authorised experts as central agents of international order. I close by summarising the theoretical ramifications of my findings and suggesting how we might better understand the relationship between expertise and global governance. Experts in global governance: two approaches Rather than attempt a full review of IR scholarship on expert-based global governance, this section will compare two particularly widely used approaches to the topic, epistemic communities and governmentality. To be sure, most standard accounts of global governance touch upon the role of experts. There is a wide array of voices on the role of experts that would exceed the scope of this paper: rational design scholars see experts as problem-solvers who mediate collective action problems.4 Liberal institutionalists, in turn, study them as bureaucratic or as private actors pulled in on an issue-by-issue basis.5 These accounts treat experts as a sub-class of transnational non-state actors, as a case of private authority, or as a channel for decision-making input. 4 E.g. Mattli and Woods 2009; Koremenos, Lipson, Snidal 2013. 5 Barnett and Finnemore 2012; Jinnah 2014; Voeten 2021, ch. 5. Draft · Please do not circulate 3! EXPERTS WITHOUT COMMUNITIES By contrast, epistemic communities and governmentality place central emphasis on experts as active participants and makers of global governance. Both, that is, highlight expert agency, and as such they have informed the largest portion of recent work on expertise in IR. In what follows, I outline and compare the frameworks on three dimensions: their assumptions about the relationship between politics and expertise; about the relationship between experts and other experts; and about the source of expert authority. I then
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