Interpretation Of The Concept Of Archipolitics In The Context Of Expert Management

Abstract

The paper discusses the concept of archipolitics, which is interpreted in the context of ideas about the expert management of society as an element of the modern system of political management. It demonstrates the fact that the concept of archipolitics can be interpreted as “politics by experts”, which establishes a special regime – expertocracy – that changes the power/knowledge relations model. The paper finds that the competitive struggle for power between expert communities causes an excess of expert proposals, thus reducing research-based thought, critical analysis and scientific objectivity. It also concludes that an emergency situation demonstrates the limit of expert management, since the only criterion for the effectiveness of emergency management is the speed of response, which requires practical skills of action rather than knowledge. If there is an emergency, the involvement of experts is used to substantiate decisions after they were made thereby legitimizing the actions of the authorities, so the expertise becomes formal and the results are predetermined. It is found that the technologies of power focused on creating a system of “management without managers” turn management into a subjectless process, in which neither the authorities nor experts are responsible for the consequences of decisions made. It is shown that the lack of responsibility of the authorities and expert communities provokes the effect of uncontrollability and unpredictability of social processes.

Keywords: Archipolitics, expertocracy, scientist/specialist, rationalism, intuitionism, state of emergency

Introduction

A distinctive feature of the late 20th - early 21st century was the transition from the system of political leadership (government) to the system of political management and administration (governance) (Žižek, 2008, p. 40). Politics, starting with the capital letter (Bauman, 2001), which presupposes the active participation of citizens, is being replaced by archipolitics (Ranciere, 1999, pp. 61-65). The concept of archipolitics becomes the “hermeneutic key” to understanding the system of political administration in the era of the global capitalist order (Paić, 2019, p. 2).

Problem Statement

Modern system of management makes ample use of expert knowledge in the political and management process (Fischer, 2000). Citizens voluntarily undertake the obligation to be governed, i.e. they agree to be ignorant and act as objects of government. The ignorant part of society, due to their incompetence, i.e. lack of special knowledge, is actually excluded from discussion and decision-making on vital social issues. Common knowledge is disqualified by a huge number of professional experts who establish a monopoly on knowledge as such, and citizens are deprived of the opportunity to take responsibility for themselves. There is an opposition between profane and expert knowledge, and expert knowledge functions within society according to the “black box” principle (Bryzgalina & Kiselev, 2020; Filatova, 2020; Shevchenko, 2020). In this sense, archipolitics abolishes the democratic principle of society organization (Ranciere, 1999, p. 100).

Research Questions

The need to use research-based expertise in the public administration system is explained, on the one hand, by the fact that it provides the authorities with the necessary knowledge when making managerial decisions, and on the other hand, the managerial decision becomes scientifically justified, which produces the effect of objectivity and scientific consistency of actions of the authorities. This leads to the establishment of a special regime – which refers to the society management regime based on knowledge (Ashkerov, 2009). While Foucault considered the process of having scientists involved in politics (Foucault, 1980), today the focus is on transferring power to experts and expert communities, which again raises the question of the subject of governance. as a bearer of special knowledge necessary for making managerial decisions in the field of economics, law, education, medicine, science, information technology, politics, etc. becomes the subject of archipolitics.

Purpose of the Study

The objective of this paper is a socio-philosophical analysis of the concept of archipolitics as politics of expert management that transforms traditional ideas about politics, power and the subject of governance.

Research Methods

Archipolitics, the concept introduced by J. Ranciere, is viewed by modern social philosophy as a neologism (as cited in Bosteels, 2010) by means of which social philosophy seeks to confine politics to matters of public administration (Ranciere, 2010, p. 34). Using the philosophical-hermeneutic research method helps, firstly, to reveal the transformation of the meaning of the concept of politics, which begins to be interpreted through the Greek prefix "άρχι" (Zhurbina, 2019, p. 170). In the Greek tradition, “ἀρχή” has two meanings: it can be translated as “beginning”, “source” on the one hand and “command”, “order” – on the other hand (Agamben, 2013). Secondly, this method will allow showing a change in perceptions about the beginning of politics. While in Greek philosophy, starting with the Plato’s doctrine, the highest principle of politics, its "ἀρχή", was philosophical knowledge, and the philosopher was an exemplary politician (Plato, 1976, pp. 175-178), today the highest principle of politics is the expert knowledge.

Findings

What makes the position of the scientist/expert special is that the scientist/expert is on the border of two spheres – politics and science. The expert belongs to the field of science since the expert is an authoritative scientist with individual scientific achievements in the appropriate field of knowledge. However, being an expert, the scientist/expert does not seek to find the truth, which presupposes the right to make a mistake. The expert must provide an unambiguous answer to the question posed by the authorities, thus having a limited choice of solutions. The scientist/expert turns out to be an engaged figure, existing on the basis of the “model of paid results”, which reduces the level of objectivity of the conclusions of the scientist/expert. The effect of the scientist’s engagement is directly related to the lower degree of autonomy of science and its greater dependence on politics. The engagement is an evidence of the politicization of scientists who are drawn in power relations as experts and consultants capable of not only rationalizing the dominance of the existing government, but also establishing their own power.

The scientist/expert does not fully belong to the sphere of politics either, since the scientist/expert does not make political decisions while being involved in public administration. The expertise is advisory. However, working for the existing government, the scientist/expert can use the potential of the state to fulfil own scientific ambitions. The expert’s position in science is strengthened by the external engagement with political power, which makes the expert superior (archi-) to other scientists who do not have such a resource. The experts possess a very special power: they are the people who give weight to politics and science (Filippov, 2003).

Governing the state with the help of scientists/experts transforms Foucault’s power/knowledge model, which is based on the idea of a scientist/specialist involved in politics. In his concept, Foucault shows the process of penetration of power into science. In this case, the scientist/specialist is opposed to the universal intellectual, who descended from a definite political figure – the legislator – and is ultimately expressed as writer, the bearer of universal knowledge. The traditional involvement of the intellectual in politics was due to the position in society, which provided the intellectual with the opportunity to “master the consciousness” of the masses, enlightening them. Foucault writes, “The intellectual spoke the truth to those who had yet to see it, in the name of those who were forbidden to speak the truth: he was conscience, consciousness and eloquence” (Foucault & Deleuze, 1980, p. 207). The universal intellectual is somehow opposed to such specialists as an engineer, a doctor, a civil servant, a teacher, who serve the state.

With the development of technological and scientific organizations in modern society, there is a new type of the scientist/specialist – e.g. an atomic scientist, geneticist or pharmacologist programmer – whose position in society is directly related to the political role of truth in society. Generation of scientific truths is based on mechanisms of power that make this generation of truths possible (Foucault, 1980). The claim of scientists to establish a certain regime of truth contributes to the emergence of power relations among intellectuals.

Today’s expert turns out to be a figure demonstrating the reverse process, i.e. the penetration of science into power, which ends with the emergence of expertocracy. Expert systems develop by identifying narrowly specialized expert groups dealing with specific issues of ecology, chemical and biotechnological production, nuclear energy, genetics, etc. This establishes a certain pattern: the narrower the specialization becomes, the more limited is the scope of application of expert knowledge, and the wider is the professional community of experts represented by advisory councils, think tanks, public expert councils, “thought factories” (state universities, academic institutions), public policy centers, etc. All this creates a competitive environment in the expert community, when various groups of experts come into confrontation with each other. The competitive struggle for the right to become part of power structures causes an excess of expert proposals, thus reducing research-based thought and critical analysis.

Expertise begins to be used at all stages of making a management decision from its preparation, when options for action are investigated, to assessing consequences of this decision. The expert opinion should ensure a high degree of predictability and controllability of natural, technological and social processes in general. However, different expert groups might give scientific evidence for different, sometimes mutually exclusive, actions. This leads to difficult questions, such as “Whose expert opinion is more consistent with the criterion of objectivity?” or “Which expert should be trusted and which one should not?” These questions suggest that there should be another agent between the authorities and the expert community – an expert on experts – whose competence is to select experts on expertise. Such an expert on experts should be able to assess the analytical and predictive abilities of a particular scientist.

Expert management: between rationalism and intuitionism

Speaking about expert systems, researchers categorize experts into rationalists and intuitionists (Bogaturov et al., 2002). The expert who is a rationalist has outstanding analytical skills and average predictive capabilities. Yet, the rationalist’s activity has a rational limit, which coincides with the information saturation threshold. After the limit is achieved, the analytical capabilities of the expert go down. The expert seeks to obtain the most complete information about the object. This is part of the elementary approach, according to which the object of research is divided into parts. The expert who is a rationalist begins to concentrate on small parts of the object; therefore a holistic view of the object is lost (Bogaturov et al., 2002, p. 93). On the other hand, the expert who is an intuitionist possesses average analytical skills and high predictive capabilities. In this case, the limit of the expert’s intuitive knowledge is logical justification, since the expert is unable to substantiate one’s own opinion, i.e. to answer the question: “Why do I think so?” In this sense, the intuitionist demonstrates the exhaustion of scientific objectivity, finds it extremely difficult to give a logical explanation of one’s point of view and is not always convincing (Bogaturov et al., 2002, p. 94). Therefore, in the context of a scientific discussion of an issue, neither a rationalist nor an intuitionist can give an unambiguous answer to the question of the long-term impact of any phenomena or events that have arisen as a result of a natural or man-made disaster, or assess the human factor leading to potential threat. At the same time, the intervention of experts can itself be a source of unforeseen and unintended consequences. There is always the possibility of the emergence of what the experts find impossible, i.e. of something “which cannot happen”.

At its core, an expert decision is a performative action of a scientist, which causes the effect of self-fulfilling prophecy, since such intervention has an impact on future processes, thereby increasing their unpredictability and uncertainty. This creates the “Oedipus effect”, which must be interpreted not only as the influence of the prediction on the predicted event, but also the influence of any information on the situation to which this information relates (Popper, 1986, p. 13). As a result, the scientific objectivity of expert assessments is reduced to zero and turns into its opposite, that is subjectivism and relativism, which, however, open up the opportunity for scientists to influence and intervene in social reality. Experts and consultants become part of the reality of politics, which gives rise to the effect of political conjuncture in the field of science, indicating a decrease in the level of research-based thought, critical analysis and scientific objectivity.

Effect of uncertainty in the era of expert management of society

The expert management system reaches its own limit in a state of emergency. A state of emergency is an exceptional situation featuring personification of the subject of power that gives the subject of power the right to make a decision (Schmitt, 2005, p. 6). However, in the era when expert management dominates, the state of emergency becomes a situation that demonstrates the limits of its effectiveness. This is because in a state of emergency, the authorities become unable to comprehend the options for solving the problem proposed by experts. In a state of emergency, the authorities’ actions are aimed at reducing the consequences of natural, anthropogenic and man-made disasters, economic or other crises. The only criterion for the effectiveness of managerial activity is the speed of response of the authorities, which requires practical skills of action in an exceptional situation rather than knowledge. The actions of the authorities acquire an anti-theoretical meaning, since the authorities must “” (Žižek, 2008, p. 6).

In this situation, the involvement of experts is used to substantiate the decisions after they were made, thereby legitimizing the actions of the authorities, so the expertise becomes formal and the results are predetermined. Such an expertise is, in fact, a pseudo-expert investigation, which is performed to substantiate the point of view of the organizers and sometimes to substantiate an earlier made political decision rather than to find out the opinion of experts. In case of an earlier made political decision, the investigation is formally considered to be research-based and supported by the authority of experts, who have to bear a significant part of responsibility (Bogaturov, et al., 2002, p. 97). The paradox of the situation is that the more urgent the actions of the authorities are, the less reasonable and well-thought-out management decisions become, and the more unpredictable consequences such actions produce. In this case, the main question is “Who is responsible for all this?”

This is when the ambiguity of relations between the authorities and the expert community manifests itself. Firstly, the expert opinions of scientists are of a recommendatory nature when making a decision. Therefore, experts are not obliged to bear responsibility for the actions of the authorities. The choice of a specific course of action remains with the authorities, and the expert has no opportunity to influence the implementation of the given recommendations. Secondly, the anonymous nature of the expert investigation, which pretends objectivity, removes personal responsibility from the expert. In turn, by having experts involved, the authorities are not responsible for the wrong decision, since their actions relied on the recommendations of the scientist/expert, which means they cannot be responsible for someone’s ill-considered assessments and conclusions.

Conclusion

The concept of archipolitics presents expert knowledge as an “archi-” beginning of modern politics, which contributes to the formation of ideas about a new form of power – expertocracy – that changes the power/knowledge model of relations. Archipolitics shows that the desire to make management decisions look objective turns into its opposite, i.e. extreme subjectivity and the appearance of pseudo-expert opinions of scientists who use their membership in expert communities to strengthen their own scientific positions. The technologies of power focused on creating a system of “management without managers” turn management into a subjectless process, in which neither the authorities nor experts are responsible for the consequences of decisions made. Such system of management creates a sustainable impression of the spontaneity of everything that happens.

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06 December 2021

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Zhurbina, I. V. (2021). Interpretation Of The Concept Of Archipolitics In The Context Of Expert Management. In E. Bakshutova, V. Dobrova, & Y. Lopukhova (Eds.), Humanity in the Era of Uncertainty, vol 119. European Proceedings of Social and Behavioural Sciences (pp. 180-186). European Publisher. https://doi.org/10.15405/epsbs.2021.12.02.23