EXPERTISE AND POLICY‐MAKING: LEGAL PROFESSIONALS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
| Author | NICHOLAS VIVYAN,ALEXANDER PHUA,EDWARD C. PAGE,CHRISTOPHER WILSON,GREGORY PAUL,LARA CORREIA,LAURENCE KAVANAGH,ELLA BATTEN,HANNAH HEDGES |
| Date | 01 August 2006 |
| Published date | 01 August 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00611.x |
Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 3, 2006 (771–781)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
RESEARCH NOTES
EXPERTISE AND POLICY-MAKING: LEGAL
PROFESSIONALS IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
ELLA BATTEN , LARA CORREIA , HANNAH HEDGES , LAURENCE
KAVANAGH , EDWARD C . PAGE , GREGORY PAUL , ALEXANDER
PHUA , NICHOLAS VIVYAN AND CHRISTOPHER WILSON
Professional infl uence in policy-making is generally believed to rest on professionals
successfully laying claim to access to expertise – knowledge, understanding or expe-
rience – not available to others, above all politicians. On the basis of a 2005 survey
of nearly 800 lawyers serving in local authorities in England and Wales, this article
explores the relationship between specialization and political infl uence. Lawyers
who shape policy use conventional routes for political infl uence, establish contacts
with political offi ceholders, tend to identify less with the profession at large and are
less likely to see themselves as specialists in any fi eld of law. This means that the
relationship between expertise and political power is complex and that the notion
that professionals use their expertise to shape policy should be treated with some
caution.
PROFESSIONALS AND POWER
How do professionals shape policy? Professional infl uence in policy-making
is generally believed to rest on professionals successfully laying claim to
access to expertise – knowledge, understanding or experience – not available
to others, above all politicians (see, for example, Weber 1972; Laffi n 1986,
1998 ; Exworthy and Halford 1999). Professionals shape policy because they
have a form of specialized knowledge that non-specialist decision makers
require and this gives professionals power. However, this widely accepted
insight clashes with another: that specialists qua specialists rarely achieve
positions of formal power within organizations. While this is an easy point
The authors were participants in a fi nal year undergraduate course, GV314, at the London School of
Economics in 2004/5 led by Edward C. Page, Sidney and Beatrice Webb Professor of Public Policy at
the London School of Economics.
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