I was prompted to write this entry by two things, first Suarez’s (2026) WPR application targeting “problematisations and reproblematisations in the making of formal mental health care in Chile”, with its questioning of “expertise” (discussed later), and second, by the commonly identified “core elements” in “populism” as “pitting the people in moral battle against elites” (Meyer 2023, p. 847). I wanted to ask if there were any connections between these propositions. Anticipating the argument, I ask: does a WPR position on expertise provide fuel for the fire of “populist” anti-elitism? This topic takes us down some unexpected but interesting pathways.

The topic allows us to pursue two theoretical positions introduced in the first of three entries on “populism” (29 August 2026). There, I raise questions about the limitations imposed by definitions in approaching “populism”. On that matter, I refer to Mol’s (2010) argument that definitions set constraints on understanding, that when you define something, you are henceforth compelled to see only what matches that definition. Second, there is the conviction that our selection of “methods” matters, that they have political effects (Mol 2002). I decided to ask: what are the political repercussions of defining “populism” as reflecting a tension between “the people” and “elites”? Put briefly: what do we miss by imposing a definition on “populism” that sets “the people” against “elites”?

Limitations of the “people” versus “elite” dichotomy

Sunnercrantz (2024, p. 551) raises a similar question in her comments on the operation of a “people” versus “the expert” dichotomy in understandings of “populism”. She points out that this characterisation of “populism” ignores the operation of similar contrasts in settings that would not be called “populist”.

“Media has often ‘ditched the (academic) expert for “the man in the street”’ (Mudde and Rovira Kaltwasser 2017: 108) and traditional politicians often allude to the lived experience of ‘common people’ (Atkins and Finlayson 2013).”

As Andor (2020, p. 24) notes, “even green and liberal parties in developing countries occasionally employ this rhetoric to combat entrenched elite corruption”. When you think about it, democracy itself invokes a form of “people” versus “corrupt” elements. Does that make adherents of democracy “populists”? I suspect not.

According to Sunnercrantz (2024, p. 551),

“It is debatable whether the opposition between a ‘people’ and ‘the expert’ is an intrinsic component of populism, as the uses of ‘experts’ vary between populist projects (see e.g. Bellolio 2022; Sunnercrantz and Yildirim 2022).”

From her study of political positions during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sunnercrantiz (2024, p. 555) offers some useful examples that complicate the dichotomy. She notes that “During the pandemic, many parties labelled as populist, when in positions of power, supported scientific elites and experts”. In Hungary, then Prime Minister Victor Orbán “publicly embraced expert advice and asserted that he was ‘no expert’ – despite relinquishing neither control nor media attention to ‘the expert’.”

Sunnercrantiz’s (2024, p. 554) post-foundational analysis “recognizes ‘the expert’ as a discursive, contextual practice or performance, rather than an individual possessing a certain experience or skill (Evetts et al. 2006; Fischer 2000)”. While she recognises that “populism is often said to valorize ‘common sense’ and ‘folk wisdom’”, this “does not necessarily imply an opposition to “experts” or “expertise” (Sunnercrantiz 2024, p. 560). Indeed, she believes that researchers who accept a people/elite dichotomy, “construct and reaffirm ‘the gap’ between experiential and scientific expertise”. In effect, she suggests, excluding the “popular masses” from the elite “might even be perceived as elitist, or anti-populist” (see Voutyras 2024).

Effects of the “people” versus “elites” dichotomy

In the first Research Hub entry on “populism” (29 August 2026) I draw attention to some of the political effects accompanying specific uses of “populism”. I stress the way in which the “false equivalence” between “right-wing” and “left-wing” populism tends to make insurgent politics of all kinds illegitimate. The flipside of this repercussion involves a “taming” of political action and a privileging of consensus. Voutyras (2024, p. 37) identifies a similar effect in what he calls the “horseshoe theory”, in which the two “extremes” are deemed to be similar by virtue of being “extremes”:

“The operation of this as a delegitimizing tactic is clear: since everyone else is labelled as ‘populist’, liberal anti-populists can effectively claim that there is no alternative to the centrist line – at least not a legitimate one (Rancière 2017).”

Meyer (2024) has another target in mind in his questioning of the people/elite dichotomy. He notes that “Scholars in both political science and science and technology studies (STS) often characterize populism as equating experts with ‘elites’ who are attacked in the name of ‘the people’.” The strength of this association, he argues, leads to the argument that “populism” is a key obstacle to climate change and to governing in pluralistic and democratic ways. Meyer counters this view by highlighting the role of other forms of knowledge, characterised as counterknowledge, within “science-related populism” (see below).

According to Meyer (2024), “it is important to consider challenges to the sovereignty of science with our eyes open”:

“In discussing science in relation to populism, Mette Marie Roslyng (2022: 212) notes that ‘debates about truth versus falsity are replaced by political struggles over who gets to define hegemonic science and knowledge’”.

The people/elite dichotomy leaves the impression that “populism” is simply “anti-science” whereas we need to “avoid the trap of anti-populist discourses that reify a vision of science and scientific advice that is dangerously misleading”.  Davies (2020) reinforces this view: “Science must abandon its claim to be politically autonomous, without this generating a wholesale legitimacy crisis for scientific expertise, of the sort that many populists seek to exploit.” Does “populism” cause a “legitimacy crisis” for science? Let’s see what our “experts” have to say.

Science and “populism”

Concerns about the relationship between “science” and “society” have a long history. So too do debates about the kind of “knowledge” science produces. Unsurprisingly, therefore, you can expect a large literature on the challenges “populism” poses for scientists. Two authors, Harry Collins and Robert Evans, have written extensively on the topic. Their publications provide an introduction to the controversies generated in the field (Collins and Evans 2002; Collins, Evans, Durant and Weinel 2020; Collins et al. 2023).

Collins and Evans identify three “waves” in the debates surrounding the nature of scientific evidence. The First Wave occurred pre 1970 and accepted an objectivist or positivist view (see entry 28 September 2026). The 1970s Second Wave was fraught with contention stimulated by STS (Science and Technology Studies) and SSK (sociology of scientific knowledge), which focused on science as a “social activity from which ideas of truth emerged via social agreement among scientists” (Collins et al., 2023, p. 53). Exchanges, dubbed the “science wars”, became heated due to concerns about climate denialism that purportedly accompanied this questioning of scientific objectivity. Bruno Latour, solidly located as a leading Second Wave theorist, famously abandoned his stance due to fear of a “legitimacy crisis” for scientific expertise (Bacchi 2026, pp. 162-163; see above).

Collins, also self-proclaimed as a Second Wave theorist, saw the need for a Third “Wave”, which continues to be the centre of contention. Basically, the “Third Wave” seeks to establish a special status for scientific knowledge without falling back into objectivism. There is a fear that the distinction between “experts” and “non experts” will disappear (Collins et al. 2023). To establish a legitimate status for “experts”, Collins refers to “specialist abilities”. The group associated with this new position (Third Wave) call themselves SEE (Studies of Expertise and Experience), which “replaces veritism with the idea that experts are people who have been socialized into an expert domain”.

The 2020 publication, titled Experts and the Will of the People (Collins et al., Palgrave Macmillan), indicates that the “science wars” are ongoing. The authors deserve to be quoted at length since they spell out their Third Wave stance clearly and how they position “populism” and STS:

“The rise of populism in the West has led to attacks on scientific expertise. We explain populism through its contrast with pluralist democracy and explain why populists attack scientific expertise. Populism treats the losers at the ballot box and anyone who stands in the way of the government, including scientific experts, as traitors. In contrast, pluralist democracy accommodates minority views by limiting the power of government with ‘checks and balances’. Contemporary science and technology studies (STS) erodes the cultural importance of scientific expertise and unwittingly supports the rise of populism. STS must re-think the justification of scientific expertise and its role in society without sacrificing its deep insights into the social nature of science; it should no longer simply celebrate the erosion of science’s cultural pre-eminence. (Collins et al. 2020, Chapter 1 Abstract; emphasis added)”.

In Collins et al., therefore, “populism” is equated with “anti-elitism” and is considered a threat to democratic traditions. Also clear is the questioning of the social studies of science position (STS), which is associated with post-foundational modes of inquiry (see 28 Sept 2026). Critics of the Third Wave argue that the framework is too technocratic (top down rather than bottom up), that it limits democratic participation and risks devaluing “lay” expertise.

As Davies (2020) points out, “many commentators claim to have spotted a thread linking ‘postmodern’ critique and contemporary populist rhetoric, in as much as both treat ‘facts’ as political constructs”. Caudill (2020) notes that “STS” can “easily be weaponized by the populist right wing in US politics”. And so we have arrived at the tricky spot I anticipated earlier, considering if the kind of analysis associated with poststructuralist theories plays into the hands of “populists” and, if this is the case, whether it may (or may not) be necessary to follow Latour and rethink our arguments.

Expertise in WPR: Suarez (2026) and welfare

You may recall that I started these reflections with a question about the possible relationship between WPR and “populism” through “expertise”. I asked: “Does a WPR position on expertise provide fuel for the fire of ‘populist’ anti-elitism?” I could think of no better way to tackle this question than to consider how Suarez (2026) uses WPR to examine the problematisations in mental health care in Chile.

Suarez produces a genealogical analysis of developments in Chilean mental health care (MHC). WPR is used “flexibly to scrutinize and interrogate problem representations within Chile’s MHC system over time” (Suarez 2026, p. 4). The expressed goal is to illuminate how

“top-down authoritative policy problematisations endorse particular ways of understanding and responding to mental illness, while simultaneously rendering alternative framings less visible or untenable”. (p. 4)

Usefully, Suarez suggests that this analytic strategy “brings into dialogue the conceptual (macro), institutional (meso), and interaction (micro) levels of medicalisation”. It also allows “political, normative and epistemological frameworks, institutions, key actors and medical practices to be analysed as intersecting dynamic dimensions that both shape MHC provision and configure people’s subjectivities”. Finally, Suarez recognised that such an approach also “foregrounds the broader social effects” of healthcare policies (p. 4).

I have provided this detailed description of Suarez’s approach to indicate the perils of simplistically summarizing his analysis and findings. This short entry aims to extract from his useful article comments relevant to the topic of “expertise”. I recommend reading the entire article to grasp fully the development of the argument.

Through the long history of psychiatric hospital care to more community-based approaches, Suarez (2026, p. 3) describes how “a neoliberal technocratic logic has emerged and come to dominate MHC provision”. The traditional hospital-centred model was “organised through a vertical structure dominated by experts and characterised by limited contact with community members and local environments” (p. 10). Suarez emphasises the innovation and significance of “Maroni’s Intercommunity psychiatric project”, which challenged the “top-down, expert-driven model that dominated hospital-based care” (p. 11).

Suarez carefully links changes in MHC to political developments. He stresses the importance of the return to democracy in Chile in the late 1980s, which led to three national health plans. These plans promoted primary care and centred on “relocating mental health services to community settings” (p. 18). Experts, it seems, oversaw this process. “Overall, MHC is largely organised from the top down, with interactions among experts exerting the greatest influence over what is medicalised, when, and where” (p. 17).

An alternative model of MHC is discussed in which “medicalised interpretations of distress were translated into, and incorporated within, a range of increasingly open institutions situated closer to communities” (p. 16). The prevailing “top-down, policy-driven framework” will, Suarez suggests, expand access to care but at the same time “depoliticizing mental suffering through an increasingly professionalised and bureaucratised biomedical rationale’” (p. 17).

Clearly, Suarez’s analysis sets out a contrast between expert-driven MHC and community alternatives. Does this interpretation support “populism” and its “core element” of “pitting the people in moral battle against elites’” (Meyer 2023, p. 847)? To describe Suarez’s account as supporting “populism” sadly misrepresents his detailed analysis of the “intersecting dynamic dimensions” that shape MHC provision. The analysis only looks like “populism” if you accept the dominant definition that populism is a “thin-centered ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’” (Mudde and Kaltwasser 2017). As noted in the first entry in this series of three on “populism” (28 Sept 2926), when you set a definition for something, you are then constrained to make things match the definition, a restricting exercise. Rather, we need to pluralise the terms we adopt and keep them in play, be it “experts” or “the people”.

Conclusion

So, have we had enough of experts? Hardly. Almost every item on a news broadcast quotes “an expert”. Our task is to query the forms of analysis that are produced. WPR offers a way to do this.

Does this form of criticism end up supporting “populist” claims about “corrupt elites”, adding fuel to the “populist” fire? Should we reign in analyses that question how expert knowledges legitimise “intervention into virtually any aspect of life” (Suarez 2026, p. 17). Hopefully, you will recognise here a version of the “three waves” debate introduced above where Collins and Evans (2020) express concern that questioning scientific objectivity could create a “legitimacy crisis” for scientific expertise. Alternatively, is “science” one of the terms that needs to be “pluralised”? Quoting Davies (2019, p. 3), “it is no longer adequate to claim that expert knowledge of nature is simply ‘objective’, and to leave it at that”.

References

Bacchi, C. 2026. What’s the Problem Represented to be? A new thinking paradigm. NY: Routledge.

Caudill, D. S. 2020. Expertise in Political Contexts: Latour Avec the Third Wave in Science and Technology Studies. Law, Technology and Humans, 2(2), https://doi.org/10.5204/lthj.v2i2.1413

Collins, H. M. and Evans, R. 2002. The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience. Social Studies of Science, 32: 235. DOI: 10.1177/0306312702032002003

Collins, H., Evans, R., Durant, D. and Weinel, M. 2020. Experts and the Will of the People. NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

Collins, H., Evans, R., Durant, D. and Weinel, M. 2023. The Third Wave and Populism: Scientific expertise as a check and balance. In G. Eyal and T. Medvetz (eds) Oxford Handbook of Expertise and Democratic Politics. Oxford: OUP.

Davies, W. 2020. Green Populism?: action and mortality in the anthropocene. Environmental Values, 29(6), 647–668. Retrieved from https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/27259/

Meyer, J. M. 2024. Power and Truth in Science-Related Populism: Rethinking the Role of Knowledge and Expertise in Climate Politics. Political Studies 72(3): 845-861, DOI: 10.1177/00323217231160370

Mol, A, Moser, I, Piras, EM, Turrini, M, Pols, J & Zanutto, A 2010, Care in practice: on normativity, concepts, and boundaries, Technoscienza, Italian Journal of Science and Technology Studies, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 73–86. DOI: 10.6092/issn. 2038-3460/16996.

Mol, A 2002, The body multiple: ontology in medical practice, Duke University Press, Durham, NC.

Mudde C and Kaltwasser C R 2017. Populism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Suarez, J. L. C. 2026. From the asylum to primary care: problematisation and re- problematisations in the making of formal mental health care in Chile. Social Theory & Health, 24(5), https://doi.org/10.1057/s41285-026-00252-1

Sunnercrantz, L. 2024. Experts and populism in the context of COVID-10. In Y. Stavrakakis and G. Katsambekis (eds) Research Handbook on Populism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 551-562. Available at: https://psi424.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Stavrakakis%20and%20Katsambekis%20%28eds%29%2C%20Research%20Handbook%20on%20Populism%20%282024%20–%20Edward%20Elgar%29.pdf

Voutyras, S. 2024. Anti-populism, meritocracy and (technocratic) elitism. In Y. Stavrakakis and G. Katsambekis (eds) Research Handbook on Populism. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 35-48.