Expert assessment as a framing exercise : the controversy over green macroalgal blooms’ proliferation in France

Abstract

This article contributes to unraveling the ‘paradox of scientific authority’, that is, the fact that despite the loss of authority of scientific expertise, policymakers still resort to expert advice. Re-examining the role ascribed to expert assessment in the policy-making process in controversial contexts in particular, the article succeeds in demonstrating that one of the crucial roles of expert evaluation is to establish a more compelling definition of the problem to be dealt with by policymakers. Taking the scientific controversy surrounding the proliferation of green algal bloom on Brittany beaches (France) as a case in point, I show that expert assessment conceived as a framing exercise is, however, a two-way process: it is as much about framing for the sake of settling an expert dispute with sound scientific categories than about solving public problems in a sufficiently consensual way, taking into account the distribution of power more generally in society.