Increasingly, Americans turn to academics, especially those with glittering credentials from prestige universities, to guide policy decisions. And that, argues Ben Goldhaber in today’s Martin Center commentary, is a serious mistake.
He writes, “There’s an increasing tendency in mature democracies to outsource policy decisions to ‘non-partisan experts’ from academia. This is often billed as ‘believing the science’ or ‘trusting the experts,’ but, in reality, it’s a means of taking power away from the voting public and its representatives and putting it in the hands of unaccountable third parties.”
We have, for example, turned legislative redistricting over to “experts” only to find that they are biased in favor of one political party.
Goldhaber explains the roots of this problem: “The increasing influence of academic experts in the political process is likely the result of multiple factors, but one of the largest and least acknowledged is the growth in the number of people who are instructed in the ways of academia. We turn out far more master’s degree-holders and PhDs than ever before. While more people with specialized education can help craft good policy, it often comes at the expense of democratic oversight.”
The solution? Don’t rely on just one expert, but solicit input from several and allow the marketplace of ideas to work.