Experts and populism in the context of COVID-19

This chapter conceptualizes ‘the expert’ as a figure co-constituted in populist projects. By reappraising academic writings on the expert and expertise from the past century, the chapter demonstrates the uses of a performative-relational approach to study these entanglements. Using a broad range of international examples of populist discourse, the chapter illustrates how populist discourse employs the figure of the expert. The political character of ‘the expert’ was highlighted in the COVID-19 pandemic. The ensuing conjuncture of political, medical, economic and epistemic crises presents an opportunity for studying the function of ‘the expert’ in populist discourse. While ‘the expert’ is used to mobilize ‘the people’ against an inimical elite, populist discourse simultaneously mobilizes organic counterexperts of its own, something that mainstream academic approaches are arguably ill-equipped to deal with. The chapter problematizes academics’ complicity in needlessly reproducing anti-populist stereotypes that foment a self-fulfilling prophecy by automatically labelling populism as anti-expertise.