Experts in a Turbulent World

From the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to the World Health Organization, the work of international organizations fundamentally depends on expertise. Even more so in turbulent times such as ours, when climate change, pandemics, food insecurity, and war intersect in mutually compounding ways. But bringing in the experts bears risks too. It can reduce accountability and the perceived legitimacy of institutions; and specialist input often compartmentalizes issues that are actually intertwined. Yet the challenges we face are not isolated problems-they are historically intertwined instances of turbulence. Addressing them as individual crises or unprecedented shocks emphasizes technical problems and solutions over longer-term inequalities and trajectories, which are often precisely what fuels backlash. This raises a pressing question: how does the work of experts in a turbulent world affect international organizations?

Bringing together leading historians and international relations scholars, Experts in a Turbulent World explores this question at length. It conceptualizes the work of experts as 'issue insulation': the compartmentalization of interconnected issues-whether temporally, by scale, or by type of expert-as an effect of the specialist viewpoint. In-depth case studies on biologists, lawyers, food scientists, security experts, farmers, citizen climate scientists, and others develop this lens by examining different ways of timing, seeing, and acting like an expert.

This edited collection not only speaks to scholars and students of international relations and international history but also reframes and advances the conversation on the promises and pitfalls of addressing the world's major challenges with the help of experts.