Expert knowledge and the administrative state

Over the past century, the administrative state has vastly expanded its power and political independence of Congress. Some prominent academic voices, such as Cass Sunstein and Joseph Heath, have argued that we should endorse the administrative state’s large and growing powers to reap the benefits of technical expertise. We introduce an important qualification to that claim by highlighting the contingency of expert knowledge. The reliability of expertise is institutionally sensitive, and the centralized administrative state is plagued by epistemic drawbacks. The contingency of expert knowledge means that, although experts supply crucial inputs into intelligent policy design, without the correct epistemic ecosystem, expert rule is likely to produce expert failure. After presenting that qualification, we show how introducing competition, contestation, and diversity into the bureaucracy’s epistemic ecosystem facilitates the discovery, communication, and implementation of useful knowledge. The institutional structure we prescribe therefore resembles the Ostromian idea of polycentric governance. Such an institutional structure, we argue, is better able to harness the benefits of expertise while mitigating the pathologies of the centralized administrative state. We argue that polycentric political systems can enhance the effectiveness of expertise.