Experts and Expertise in Science and Technology in Europe since the 1960s

Do the politicians actually take decisions, or rather the experts do it in their place? In other words, it is a matter of understanding whether the political stakeholders/representatives simply approve the final stage of a decision procedure led by the experts they have delegated, since they lack cognitive skills or because the experts do not try enough to explicit potentials and risks involved. Here lays the possible loss of democratic legitimacy in the decision-making process. This brings into question the responsibility of a ruling class to which the political representatives and secondarily the experts belong. This book analyses the interplay of these different actors in the political relations among States since the 1960s: this interaction capability becomes a key factor for the international accountability of a country, and above all for the democratic reliability of its decision-making process. Then we have to consider the role of the organized civil society. In that way, expertise provides the basis for the mediation among the States, and then expertise goes for the legitimacy of power practices in all parties engaged, and in the decision-making process inside the democratic arenas.

Christine Bouneau, Professor of Contemporary History at Bordeaux-Montaigne University and Director of the Centre d'Études des Mondes Moderne et Contemporain, is an historian of politics. David Burigana, Professor of History of International Relations at Padua University (Department of Political Sciences, Law and International Studies), member of the Board of the Center for Space Studies and Activities "Giuseppe Colombo" of Padua, is an historian of the interconnection between technology and foreign policy particularly in aerospace cooperation/competition.

Content: Christine Bouneau/David Burigana: Introduction - Federico Niglia: The Nexus Between Resilience and Foreign Policy in its Historical Development. A Research Agenda - Doubravka OlSáková: Expert Cultures and Infrastructural Globalism. Socialist Experts under Restricted Internationalism - Hitoshi Suzuki: How British Corporate Interests and Their Views on Japan Were Transferred to Brussels. The Case of Nissan Sunderland Plant and the Single European Act - Simone Selva: The Central Bank and the Governments in the Shaping of Italy's International Financial Policies from the End of Bretton Woods Through the Start of the 1980s - Andi Shehu: Economic Experts and International Economic Policy in the Late 1970s - Christine Bouneau: L'expertise aux Parlements français et européen. La question de l'énergie durant les années 1970 - Jordane Provost: Think tanks et participation à l'élaboration du politique. Enjeux européens et énergétiques pour un groupe particulier d'experts - Christophe Bouneau: À la recherche d'une société civile organisée. Le Comité économique et social européen et le projet d'une Union européenne de l'énergie - Elena Cesca: Factors Contributing to the Italian Position in the Years of the Establishment of Airbus Industrie - Anne de Floris: Réalité et illusions d'un consensus. L'itinéraire décisionnel du programme Hermès - Catherine Radtka: French People's Representatives Talk Outer Space. Two Decades of European Cooperation in Space Seen Through the Lenses of the Parliament (1970s-1980s) - Sara Venditti: 'Europeanization' of Technology. The Role of Trade Unions in the Aerospace Sector - David Burigana: Experts, Expertise, and Politicians in Science and Technology in Italy. The Case of Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Air and Space (1960s-1980s).