Abstract
"The relationship between politics and expert work is a key issue for the study, management, and operation of government organizations. Governments employ expert workers to study social phenomena, collect and analyze information, design policies and regulations, and implement programs that affect the day-to-day lives of citizens. These workers bring specialized knowledge and practices—acquired through professional training and accumulated experience—necessary to fulfill organizational mandates. Yet, the use of expert knowledge, tools, and criteria in government work is conditioned by the public and political context in which it takes place. Workers practice their expertise amid tensions with changing political values and interests, incommensurable criteria and practices for policy and decision making, and diverse—and often conflicting—expectations on how government work should be conducted. As the current environmental crisis and the recent pandemic show, the relationship between politics and expert work is currently marked by an increased reliance on knowledge, technologies, and workers to address social problems and the intensification of anger and mistrust towards experts. This dissertation considers how work in government organizations is conditioned and configured by the sociopolitical context in which it takes place. Drawing on a 13-month ethnography of a government agency (the Agency), I examine the experiences of policy and regulatory analysts as they fulfill their techno-legal mandates in interaction with democratically elected leaders, political appointees, and other government actors. The Agency—tasked with supervising and improving the work of government regulators—offers the opportunity to study work in an organization that emphasizes neutrality, technical criteria, and evidence-based work within the highly political context of rule and policy making. Analysts apply expert knowledge, tools, and criteria to fulfill the organization’s mandate. At the same time, they face political intervention or lack of political support, both of which create challenges for their work. By analyzing analysts’ day-to-day actions, interactions, and experiences, I find that they go beyond the boundaries of their legal mandate and technical rationality and expand their expertise to include political knowledge and practices necessary to perform their work. Regulatory analysts, in charge of evaluating proposed government regulations, construct their expertise as procedural to simultaneously protect their work from political discussions over the content and implications of regulations and gain control over the framing and passing of regulations. Policy analysts, involved in designing and implementing better regulation practices, develop incremental practices that allow them to manage and minimize the necessary tradeoff between political support and control over projects. The work of policy and regulatory analysts occurs along a continuum formed between strict adherence to legal mandates, norms, and technical criteria on one side, and the interests and directives of powerful actors on the other. As the political context in their work changes, analysts must adapt their expertise to continue to achieve legally and politically acceptable compromises along the continuum. Rather than acknowledging or condemning the role of politics in government work, this dissertation looks at how political actors, interests, and dynamics configure expertise in this agency. In light of political polarization and the rise of populism, understanding the capacity of workers to navigate hostile political environments and fulfill their techno-legal mandates can help us understand more about government work and the resilience of public organizations. The findings help bridge the technical-political dichotomy and understand political dynamics as important for the configuration and practice of expertise. I show how the technical capabilities of government organizations are eroded in populist regimes but also how expert workers develop and adapt practices to protet core elements of their techno-legal mandate. This study aligns with recent research on expertise which highlights the importance of context for understanding how expertise is performed. It shows how expertise in political settings is configured in relation with democratically elected leaders, political appointees, and other government organizations. Lastly, I contribute to knowledge on what policy and regulatory analysts know and do, by providing insights into their everyday work."