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Paper short abstract:

The COVID-19 crisis in Japan showed that beyond archetypal representations of “government of experts” or “experts instrumentalized by the government”, the relation between experts and politicians was one of cooperation and tension marked by a lack of transparency and a division of responsibilities.

Paper long abstract:

The outbreak of COVID-19 in Japan – the first country to officially report a case outside China – was an opportunity to revive the debate on the relationship between policymakers and scientific experts. The latter, selected and convened in a committee by the government, played a very important role in defining policy responses to coronavirus and in risk communication to the Japanese public (Yonemura 2020, Onai & Shirabe 2020, Kanō et al. 2021). Criticism then fluctuated between the denunciation of a so-called “government of experts” lacking democratic legitimacy (scientification of politics) and that of “experts at the mercy of the government” (goyō gakusha) whose scientific legitimacy had been manipulated (politicization of science) (Pielke 2007, Turner 2013).

In order to go beyond these two archetypal representations, this paper analyses in detail the ways in which experts and their opinions were integrated into the decision-making process, as well as the reactions of the actors involved in the Japanese political and media ecosystem during the COVID-19 pandemic. To do so, this study draws on the literature on knowledge brokers (e.g. Gluckmann et al. 2021) – intermediary actors between science and politics – and on official documents (reports, legal texts, etc.), press articles and testimonies of experts and political actors.

This study shows that the relationship between experts and policy-makers was built in a trial and error manner, with readjustments according to the balance of power, the perception of their respective roles, as well as the ambivalent and paradoxical reactions of the media, the public and some external specialists. In this context of uncertainty and high “social request for expertise” (Robert 2008), although political actors have relied on experts as an essential source of legitimacy for their decisions, the latter have not hesitated to express their disagreements with the government, as well as to demand a clearer division of responsibilities and more transparency, in order to create a decision-making process that would be both more attentive to scientific research and more democratic.