Experts and Elites versus Laypeople

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This section brings together literature on the role of experts and elites in relationship to laypeople, that is, the broader public. This also includes the politics of expertise, that is, studies on the relationship between academia/experts and public policy and on the rise of think tanks. A recent point of reference for debating the relationship between experts/elites and laypeople of the broader public has been the rediscovery of an exchange between Walter Lippmann and John Dewey in the 1920s. See also the section on Academia and the Public Sphere.

  • Blank, Grant. 2006. Critics, Ratings, and Society: The Sociology of Reviews. Lanham (MD): Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
  • Boswell, Christina. 2009. The Political Uses of Expert Knowledge: Immigration Policy and Social Research. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge University Press.
  • Curran, James, Shanto Iyengar, Anker Brink Lund, and Inka Salovaara-Moring. 2009. “Media System, Public Knowledge and Democracy: A Comparative Study.” European Journal of Communication 24:5-26. Suggesting that public service requirements for media and the resulting ample supply of hard news help to narrow the knowledge gap induced by stratification in education.
  • Delli Carpini, Michael X., and Keeter Scott. 1996. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.
  • deLeon, Peter. 2006. “The Historical Roots of the Field.” Pp. 37-55 in The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, edited by Moran, Michael, Martin Rein, and Robert E. Goodin. New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Espeland, Wendy Nelson, and Michael Sauder. 2007. “Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds.” American Journal of Sociology 113:1-40.
  • Estlund, David M. 2008. Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press. On democracy as “epistemic proceduralism” without expertocracy.
  • Jerit, Jennifer, Jason Barabas, and Toby Bolsen. 2006. “Citizens, Knowledge, and the Information Environment.” American Journal of Political Science 50:266–82. Analyzing variation in the education-knowledge relationship, suggesting that a substantial part of the variation is due to the amount of information available in the mass media.
  • Mayhew, Leon H. 1997. The New Public: Professional Communication and the Means of Social Influence. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Mirowski, Philip, and Dieter Plehwe, eds. 2009. The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press.
  • Rein, Martin. 1976. Social Science and Public Policy. London: Penguin.
  • Schudson, Michael. 2006. “The Trouble with Experts – and why Democracies need them.” Theory and Society 35:491-506.
  • Turner, Stephen. 2003. Liberal Democracy 3.0: Civil Society in an Age of Experts. London: Sage.
  • —. 2005. “Expertise and Political Responsiblity: The Columbia Shuttle Catastrophe.” Sociology of the Sciences 24:101-121.
  • —. 2007. “Political Epistemology, Experts and the Aggregation of Knowledge.” Spontaneous Generations 1:36-47

Think Tanks (see also here)

  • Gellner, Winand. 1995. Ideenagentur für Politik und Öffentlichkeit: Think Tanks in den USA und Deutschland. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
  • Kandiah, Michael David, and Anthony Seldon, eds. 1996. Ideas and Think Tanks in Contemporary Britain. London: Cass.
  • McGann, James G., ed. 2009. Think Tanks and Policy Advice in the US: Academics, Advisors and Advocates. New York: Routledge.
  • Ricci, David M. 1993. The Transformation of American Politics: The New Washington and the Rise of Think Tanks. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.
  • Rich, Andrew. 2004. Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise. New York: Cambridge University Press.
  • Smith, James Allen. 1991. The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite. New York: Free Press.

Lippmann-Dewey Exchange
original:

  • Lippmann, Walter. 1922. Public Opinion. New York: Harcourt Brace & Co. Reprint: Lippmann, Walter. 1960 [1922]. Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan.
  • —. 1927 [1925]. The Phantom Public: A Sequel to “Public Opinion”. New York: Macmillan. Reprint: Lippmann, Walter. 1993 [1925]. The Phantom Public. New Brunswick (NJ): Transaction Publishers.
  • Dewey, John. 1983. “Review of Public Opinion.” [1922] Pp. 337-344 in 1921-1922. Series: The Middle Works, 1899-1924. Carbondale (IL): Southern Illinois University Press.
  • —. 1984. “Practical Democracy [Review of The Phantom Public].” Pp. 213-220 in 1925-1927. Series: The Later Works, 1925-1953. Carbondale (IL): Southern Illinois University Press.
  • —. 1954 [1927]. The Public and its Problems. Chicago: Swallow Press.

contemporary:

  • Carey, James W. 1982. “The Mass Media and Critical Theory: An American View.” Communication Yearbook 6:18-33. Reprint: Carey, James W. 1988. “Reconceiving ‘Mass’ and ‘Media’.” [1982] Pp. 69-88 in Communication as Culture: Essays on Media and Society. London: Routledge.
  • —. 1996. “The Chicago School and Mass Communication Research.” Pp. 21–38 in American Communication Research: The Remembered History, edited by Dennis, Everette E., and Ellen Wartella. Mahwah (NJ): Erlbaum.
  • Jansen, Sue Curry. 2009. “Phantom Conflict: Lippmann, Dewey and the Fate of the Public in Modern Society.” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6:221-245.
  • Rogers, Melvin. 2009. “Democracy, Elites and Power: John Dewey Reconsidered.” Contemporary Political Theory 8:68-89.
  • Schudson, Michael. 2008. “The “Lippmann-Dewey Debate” and the Invention of Walter Lippmann as an Anti-Democrat 1986-1996.” International Journal of Communication 2:1031-1042.
  • Westbrook, Robert B. 1991. “The Phantom Public.” Pp. 275-318 in John Dewey and American Democracy. Ithaca (NY): Cornell University Press.
  • Whipple, Mark. 2005. “The Dewey-Lippmann Debate Today: Communication Distortions, Reflective Agency, and Participatory Democracy.” Sociological Theory 23:156-178