Actor-centred approaches to knowledge and expertise in international politics

Abstract

This chapter gives a brief overview of actor-centred approaches, which foreground the agency of individuals, organizations, and other collective actors in the production, diffusion, and contestation of knowledge and expertise in (and on) international politics. Epistemic or knowledge actors seek to shape the discourses and practices that make up international politics by using increasingly globalized, though certainly unequal, patterns of knowledge production, communication, and transmission. In principle, this broad definition encompasses any actor that seeks to shape the discourses and practices that make up the international. In practice, however, being a knowledge actor in international politics presupposes the recognition of particular knowledges as expertise or, in other words, as delineated bodies of knowledge that are deemed relevant to understanding and practising international politics, while marginalizing or silencing others. The chapter gives an overview of some of the central approaches and debates pertaining to epistemic actors in international politics, before introducing the contributions to this section. These include studies of international organizations and international legal professionals as epistemic actors; explorations of the role of networks in the international politics of knowledge and how to study them; as well as studies that centre different forms of co-production between experts and policymakers, using the examples of human security, quantified expertise in global governance, and knowledge production by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).