I uploaded a forthcoming book chapter to my Academia page. The chapter is part of Maximilian Mayer’s forthcoming grand edition on Science, Technology and International Relations which is expected to come out in autumn this year. In the chapter I review how IR has dealt with questions of expertise and I argue that there are three generations of research. Here is the abstract:

The role and functions of expertise in international politics is, since decades, a core research theme in IR. This chapter outlines a history of how the relation between science and international politics has been approached in IR through the lenses of expertise. My intention is to offer a heuristic device. I argue that the debate can be structure in three generations. A first generation is interested in experts as actors that have a causal influence on international politics. The second generation scrutinizes discourses of expertise and their constitutional role in making the international. And the third generation concentrates on practices of expertise and the way these perform the epistemic arrangements of the international. To think about the study of expertise in the frame of three generations each offering different insights and carrying advantages and problems provides not only a practical tool for sorting ideas, but clarifies what one ‘buys in’ by following a specific generation.

The chapter will be of interest for those working on expertise and the relation between science and politics in general, as well as those interest in how this plays out in an international environment in specific. I sample research from research fields including international organizations, security studies, international law and international environmental politics.