Fairly Balanced

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912907313076
• Date: 01 December 2008
• Published date: 01 December 2008
• Author: Mark B. Brown
• Subject Matter: Articles

Political Research Quarterly

Volume 61 Number 4

December 2008 547-560

© 2008 University of Utah

10.1177/1065912907313076

http://prq.sagepub.com

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547

Fairly Balanced

The Politics of Representation on Government

Advisory Committees

Mark B. Brown

California State University, Sacramento

The United States Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) requires advisory committees to be “fairly balanced.” By

examining legislative, judicial, and administrative interpretations of FACA’s balance requirement, this article identifies

a prevailing double standard: public officials assess committee members classified as experts in terms of their profes-

sional competence, while they assess those classified as representatives in terms of their political interests. Although the

prevailing approach seeks to prevent the politicization of expert advice, it actually promotes it. Advisory committee bal-

ance is better understood, this article suggests, in terms of social and professional perspectives. This approach avoids

both naively apolitical and destructively partisan conceptions of advisory committee balance. It also suggests a promis-

ing way to think about the role of technical expertise in public deliberation.

Keywords: Federal Advisory Committee Act; political representation; deliberative democracy; expertise

Government advisory committees are usually one

of the least noticed elements of American poli-

tics, but they have come under intense scrutiny in the

wake of their misuse by the administration of President

George W. Bush. Numerous reports have documented

instances in which Bush administration officials have

altered or suppressed research findings that conflict

with administration policy, vetted nominees to advisory

committees to ensure they support the president, and

replaced committee members with people more

amenable to the administration (United States House of

Representatives 2003; Union of Concerned Scientists

2004; Mooney 2005). These charges are often presented

as evidence of the “politicization” of science—or as the

editor of the prestigious journal Science put it, “an epi-

demic of politics” (Kennedy 2003). Although the Bush

administration’s distortion and suppression of science

advice has had disastrous consequences, the charge of

“politicization” mistakenly suggests the possibility of

science advice entirely free of politics. Numerous stud-

ies have shown how science advice inevitably combines

technical and political considerations (e.g., Jasanoff

1990; Sarewitz 2004; Pielke 2007). Sociotechnical

problems today are complex, multifaceted, and fraught

with both political and scientific uncertainties. As a

result, different scientific disciplines and methodologies

generate different assessments, often with conflicting

political implications. This means that, in many cases,

the composition of government advisory committees is

unavoidably political.

Moreover, those charging the Bush administration

with politicizing science rarely reveal or defend their

own value commitments and political interests,

instead presenting themselves as defenders of pure

science—as though global warming, sex education, or

teaching evolution in public schools have remained

controversial because of a lack of independent expertise

(Sarewitz 2006; Pielke 2007). Issues like these remain

controversial, not because science has been politicized

but because they involve ongoing conflicts over basic

values and interests. Although effectively addressing

such issues depends in part on science, efforts to elim-

inate politics from science advice inevitably lead to

conflicts over what is “political,” thus displacing the

political conflict onto science. Science becomes a

proxy battleground for politics. In this respect, those

Mark B. Brown, Assistant Professor of Government, California

State University-Sacramento; e-mail: mark.brown@csus.edu.

Author’s Note: For helpful suggestions on this research, I thank

David Guston, Kirsten Harjes, Summer Johnson, Roger Pielke,

Dan Sarewitz, and three anonymous reviewers. I am also grateful

for audience comments on presentations at the Consortium for

Science, Policy & Outcomes, Arizona State University, as well as

annual meetings of the Association for Practical and Professional

Ethics, the American Association for the Advancement of Science,

and the Western Political Science Association. This research was

supported in part by the National Science Foundation under award

number 0451289. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recom-

mendations are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect

the views of the National Science Foundation.