Transparency in Expert Advisory Processes: How much, what kind, and to what end?
Alfred Moore
30 October 2025
There are widespread calls for greater transparency in expert advisory processes, both by expert advisors themselves (e.g. Farrar 2021) and critical observers (Elliott and Resnick 2014; Moore and MacKenzie 2020). In this paper I consider epistemic and political arguments both for and against transparency, in order to clarify the scope of realistic demands for transparency in expert advice. I will begin by considering discussions of transparency in the context of the values in science debate, which is framed by the concern that experts could unwittingly insert their values into properly political decision processes. In the face of important limitations on the possibility of individual scientists being open about their values and being able to separate and substitute them for other values, the demand for transparency has shifted toward demands for pluralisation of sources of expert claims and practices of contestation between them. I will then discuss political objections to transparency. These include the need to maintain relations of trust with political advisees over time, which in turn typically involves a bargain, in which frank advice in private is coupled with loyalty in public (e.g. Cairney 2021). This relates to broader debates about the value of deliberation 'behind closed doors' (Chambers 2004). In the final section of the talk I will consider the question how far it is possible to reconcile these arguments for and against transparency in expert advisory processes, and what implications this has for the ways in which we might seek to pluralise and introduce contestatory elements into expert advisory processes.
