Experts, networks and international law

In the early years of the current millennium, questions about the architecture of global governance occupied the attention of scholars of both international law and international relations. To many, it seemed as though the traditional approaches to international governance and the traditional institutions of international law would be ill-equipped to deal with the problems of a globalised world, including climate change, pandemics, migration, financial market instability and international crime. The problems are complex and transnational in nature. Identifying problems, interpreting data and charting paths of action require the expertise of specialists and technicians, while the implementation of solutions requires flexible and speedy responses from state and non-state actors working in concert across multiple borders. The Roles for Experts and Expertise The difficulty in identifying issues and interpreting their significance points to an increasingly significant role for experts. At the domestic level, over the past century, the increasing bureaucratisation of the state has shifted the locus of governance from politics to expertise. At the international level, in more recent times, a similar phenomenon has taken place. The conditions of uncertainty that characterise globalisation, where complex and interrelated variables heighten the unpredictability of policy choices, increase the authority and importance of experts as professionals with special knowledge and skills in given issue areas. Policy-makers and leaders increasingly rely upon experts to help them understand the nature of problems, identify relevant state interests, produce specialised information efficiently, frame issues for collective debate, chart the range of appropriate actions, propose specific policies and maintain the institutions necessary to implement policies. Experts become powerful, their power lying in their control over knowledge and information and their consequent capacity to determine policy. It is a power that David Kennedy has described as lying in ‘the capillaries of social and economic life’: the ‘background’ of world affairs. The net result is that patterns of global decision-making are not – or not solely – the result of interstate diplomacy reflecting the interests of sovereigns or legislators. They are also shaped by the work of specialists and technicians. These specialists and technicians are located inside international organisations and civil society groups, and within state bureaucracies where domestic experts engage with their foreign counterparts to implement policies of transnational reach.