Politicizing Expertise for Dutch Broad Wellbeing: Knowledge Accountability for Transformative Change

Abstract

Despite lamentations to the contrary, expertise continues to play an important role in contemporary societies. In the context of pressing sustainability challenges, calls for so-called transformative change are emerging, with concomitant expectations that knowledge and expertise can contribute to such change. One area in which such expertise is being developed is in the context of alternative concepts of wellbeing to replace the dominance of gross domestic product (GDP), yielding an ongoing co-production of modes of expertise with modes of policymaking. In this paper, we explore this ongoing co-production in the context of what is called “Dutch Broad Wellbeing.” We introduce the concept of knowledge accountability to refer to what knowledge is mobilized and how it is expected to feature in policymaking. We identify two different logics of knowledge accountability, a technocratic and a political logic, and discuss how they interrelate with transformative change. We suggest that the analysis of logics of knowledge accountability not only supports understanding how knowledge features in policymaking but also underscores the need to make fit-for-purpose modes of expertise explicit. We contend that, for the benefit of both transformative change and democracy, these modes should yield expertise that politicizes.