Experters inflytande över civilsamhällets demokratiaktörer – NGO:s. En studie av experters inflytande över två NGO:s policyutformningar

Sammanfattning: Over 2400 years ago, Plato discussed who is the most suitable to rule the society. The debate is still alive and some mean that experts are gaining stronger power over the democracies. NGO:s can be seen as important democratic actors, carrying the citizens’ voices. This thesis studies and describes experts influence over the creation of two NGO:s’ policies, i.e., working guidelines. Experts are being categorized into Citizen Experts, with expertise obtained from life experience, and Experts and Policy Experts, with expertise produced with more advanced methods. Experts’ knowledge is produced with no other aim than develop knowledge, and Policy Experts’ knowledge is produced for specific goals. The influences are studied through using Luke’s three forms of influence; influence over the decision making, influence over the agenda and influence over the thought. The results show that Citizen Experts had the greatest influence over NGO:s’ policy creation. However, the Experts and the Policy Experts also had a substantial influence over the policy creators’ thoughts, which affected the final policy. Seeing NGO:s as important democratic actors, the results confirm the validity of the theories stating that experts have an influence in the democratic society in the two studied cases.