Expertise at the intersection of technicality and ambiguity: international governance of gender and development

Abstract

This paper studies processes of expert authorisation in international institutions of governance. Based on interviews with gender experts, it focuses on discourses of women's empowerment to reveal two strategies that experts deploy: the production of technical frames and indicators for capturing empowerment while also generating ambiguity about its meaning. I argue that technicalisation and mystification are expert strategies used to navigate organisational priorities and diverse political convictions. I propose that we need to analyse expert knowledge production not just as the cause of depoliticisation of policy problems, but also as part of other institutional processes within which expertise has to be authorised. The ongoing nature of such contestations and negotiations bears on who is acknowledged as an expert and the extent of their authority. The problem is not always expert authority but rather its dependence on political processes devised by actors who retain power by remaining behind the scenes.