Democracy and Expertise

Professor Fischer teaches Political Science at Rutgers University and is a member of the University's E. J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. He also teaches environmental policy and policy analysis at the Center for Global Change and Governance at Rutgers and is a senior faculty research fellow in the program in global political economy University of Kassel in Germany. His research interests center around American politics and public policy (domestic and foreign policy), environmental politics and policy (US and global), policy analysis, public administration and planning, theory, and methods of the social sciences, comparative public policy, science and technology policy, democratic political theory, and the theory of the state.

• PART I POLICY EXPERTISE AND CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN THE PUBLIC REALM ; 1. Between Technical Knowledge and Public Responsibility: Professional Expertise in Critical Perspective ; 2. Citizen Deliberation and Participatory Governance: Problems of Knowledge and Policy Complexity ; 3. Citizens and Experts in Deliberative Democracy: From Theory to Experimentation ; PART II SITUATING THE TECHNICAL IN THE SOCIAL: IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY DELIBERATION ; 4. The Deliberative-Analytic Policy Inquiry: Postempiricist Practice ; 5. Technical Knowledge in Public Deliberation: Toward a Constructivist Theory of Contributory Expertise ; 6. Public Policy as Social Construct: Multiple Meanings in Sustainable Development ; PART III POLICY EPISTEMICS FOR DELIBERATIVE EMPOWERMENT: STORYLINES, LEARNING, AND PASSIONATE REASON ; 7. Policy Advise as Storyline: Narrative Knowledge and Expert Practices ; 8. Transformative Learning Through Deliberation: Social Assumptions and the Tacit Dimension ; 9. Deliberative Empowerment: The Cultural Politics of Discursive Space ; 10. Passionate Participants: Rethinking Emotion in Public Deliberation ; Afterword

Today, the literature of deliberative and democratic theory is significant. Frank Fischer's recent book is innovative, exploring social epistemology as its key issue... This impressive work accurately illuminates the insights of a policy analyst moving into discursive, interpretive, narrative, or argumentative-based approaches... This book provides a good basis for engaging a critical debate about the interpretive research agenda, organized through seminars and networks that has spanned over two decades... Readers will certainly appreciate the author's effort in scrutinizing examples of literature throughout the book, and hence the discovering and rediscovering of authors, perspectives, and articles... I recommend that one read Democracy & Expertise precisely for this reason, namely, its vibrant ability to reinvigorate ways of thinking and stimulate new avenues as well.