ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argues that aiming to establish the accountability of experts is, properly conceived, all but impossible, for a variety of reasons. One is that the notion of accountability is itself too unstable to be of much use; another is that the notion of expert defies easy definition and application; but the major reason is that it is precisely the point of governance by experts to be unaccountable. If accountability is a complex and under-conceptualized notion, it is likewise by no means self-evident what makes an expert. On one level, there needs to be some kind of expertise (whatever that may mean), but leaving it at this is casting the net rather too wide perhaps. There are at least two other factors at issue: the kind of expertise someone possesses, and whether that person occupies some kind of particular role in the exercise of governance.
