The normative role of experts in policy development: a comparison of two Scandinavian cultural policy reports

ABSTRACT The article summarises a study of two Scandinavian cultural policy expert reports, namely Sweden’s SOU 2009:16 and Norway’s NOU 2013:4, comparing how strongly these reports focus on advice relating to overall policy objectives. The two reports were produced roughly during the same period and in culturally interconnected countries, so they might be expected to have many similarities. The study finds that they are similar in some ways. Both the reports show that the normative power of experts in Scandinavian cultural policy is significant, although this is shown in different ways. In the case of SOU 2009:16, the normative power of the experts is primarily demonstrated in the mandate of the report, which explicitly requests the experts to suggest changes in overall policy objectives. On the other hand, the discussions of overall policy objectives are significantly more elaborate in NOU 2013:4 than in SOU 2009:16. Also, in NOU 2013:4, the normative power of experts is confirmed by their suggestions of controversial overall policy objectives. Thus, although both the reports confirm the normative power of experts in cultural policy, the reports also differ in important ways. The article explores possible explanations for these differences.


Introduction
There is quite a lot of recent research available on the concept of expertise in policy-making. A substantial body of literature examines the general roles and functions of experts (e.g. Christensen and Holst 2020;Fischer 2013;Góra, Holst, and Warat 2019;Hesstvedt 2018;Holst and Molander 2017;Jasanoff 1994;Krick 2021;Krick and Holst 2020;May, Koski, and Stramp 2016;Rich 2004;Vibert 2007). So too a number of publications have investigated the relationship between expertise and policy-making in specific areas, including environmental policy (Gulbrandsen 2008;Lehtonen 2014;Pellizzoni 2011;Tangney 2019;Turnhout et al. 2015), health policy (Adekola, Fischbacher-Smith, and Fischbacher-Smith 2019;Cohen 2013;Lepont 2021), immigration policy (Boswell 2009), social policy (Duke and Thom 2014;Monaghan, Wincup, and Wicker 2018;Taylor 2016), economic policy (Christensen 2017;Eisner 1991;Schrefler 2013) and cultural policy (Flew 1998;Hylland and Mangset 2018;James and Winter 2017;Prince 2015). Still, essential questions remain unanswered: what are the proper and de facto democratic roles of experts when it comes to cultural policy? Do cultural experts know better than the general population what any given country's overall cultural policy objectives should be? Should politicians be the ones to define these objectives before turning to experts for advice as to how to achieve them? Or should the experts define and articulate the overall policy objectives themselves? Weber (1949) famously argued that subject matter expertise should be kept separate from any value judgments made about that subject matter. In other words, the person who is an expert in their field, e.g. the jurist or the physician, should not be privileged in deciding overall policy objectives for that particular field: The jurist is no more responsible for 'proving' the value of those cultural objects which are relevant to 'law' than the physician is responsible for demonstrating that the prolongation of life is desirable under all conditions. (Weber 1949, 7-8) It was Weber's contention that an anarchist would be perfectly suited to the study of law, precisely because an anarchist, by definition, disagrees with the value judgements embedded in the judicial system. Weber explained that 'fundamental doubt is the father of knowledge' (Weber 1949, 7) and given that an anarchist ipso facto has fundamental doubts about the legal system, we should expect the anarchist to be superior to non-anarchists in the study of law.
With reference to Weber, we might claim that experts within culture and the arts should have no responsibility for 'proving' the value of culture, nor should they have any say in the determination of cultural policy objectives. Moreover, if an anarchist has an advantage in the study of law, owing to his 'fundamental doubt' about the workings of the legal system, it follows that a philistine might well have an advantage in the study of art and culture. If we accept Weber's formulation, then, it should be left to elected politicians to define the overall cultural policy objectives, while experts in the realm of culture should explain to the politicians how those objectives could best be achieved.
Weber's view represents a sociological application of Hume's law (Hume [1739(Hume [ ] 2007, also known as 'Hume's Guillotine' (Black 1964, 166), which states that it is logically impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is', i.e. to draw normative conclusions from descriptive knowledge. In 1919, a committee appointed by the Swedish king asked Professor Nils Lithberg to 'compile those facts that are significant for the [Swedish] regions' cultural heritage' (SOU 1922: 11, preface, V). As an ethnologist and folklorist, Lithberg undoubtedly had more factual knowledge of cultural heritage than the average Swedish voter. And yet, if it is correct that an ought cannot be derived from an is, it would follow that professor Lithberg should not have more influence than the regular Swedish voter in the definition of overall cultural policy objectives relating to cultural heritage.
Several researchers, however, argue that Hume's Guillotine is fallacious, on the basis that knowledge and value judgements are inextricably linked (e.g . Douglas 2009;Gorski 2013;Putnam 2002;Reiss 2017). Douglas (2009), for instance, considers value judgements to be inherent to the work of scientists: . . . no convincing argument has been articulated to give scientists even an occasional moral exemption from the consideration of the consequences of their work. (Douglas 2009, 79) This view posits that if an expert could pinpoint a causal relationship between a cultural policy measure and an outcome, the expert should also provide an opinion as to whether that outcome was morally desirable or not. This means that instrumental inquiry into an area of cultural policy is considered inextricably linked to value judgements about the desirability of cultural policy objectives related to the same area. From this perspective, being a philistine is indeed incongruent with being an expert in cultural policy.
Regardless of these disputes about the relationship between fact and value, there is agreement that expertise comes in different forms. Experts who make recommendations on overall policy objectives have a different role from experts who only provide descriptive or prescriptive forms of advice. Moreover, the relative prominence of different forms of expertise in policy development tells us something about the power relationship between experts and regular voters. However, hardly any studies have examined the distinction between different forms of expertise in cultural policy. This article addresses two of the most prominent Scandinavian cultural policy expert reports, SOU 2009:16 and NOU 2014:3, and the article examines fundamental questions relating to forms of expertise: do experts involved in the process of cultural policy-making primarily 'compile facts', or do they also derive 'oughts' from these facts? Moreover, do contemporary politicians primarily ask experts to make 'compilations of facts' when it comes to culture (as they did in the case of Professor Lithberg in 1919), or do they also request that experts provide normative advice by suggesting overall policy objectives relating to those 'compilations of facts'?

Two Scandinavian expert reports
Two of the most extensive expert reports on Scandinavian cultural policy in recent decades are the 2009 Swedish report SOU 2009:16 and the 2013 Norwegian report NOU 2013:4. The first SOU report was published in 1922 (Professor Lithberg's 'compilation of facts', referred to above, was also commissioned during an SOU from that year). Norway's first NOU, on the other hand, was published as late as 1972. SOUs and NOUs are intended to ensure that politicians are well-informed in their cultural decision-making. The publications of SOUs and NOUs are often followed by processes of hearings and parliamentary debates before political decisions are made.
SOU 2009:16 and NOU 2013:4 were published by expert committees appointed by the Swedish and Norwegian governments, respectively. The committee behind SOU 2009:16 consisted of civil servants from various Swedish ministries, whereas the committee behind NOU 2013:4 comprised a more heterogeneous group of Norwegian academics and representatives from the cultural sector. Both committees also had secretarial staff, although it is unclear from the reports whether this staff contributed additional expertise.
In the context of cultural policy, many different stakeholders may be considered 'experts': civil servants, art critics, cultural managers, academics, and others. We are accepting here the basic premise, put forward in SOU 2009:16 and in the commissioning royal decree behind NOU 2013:4, that the individuals appointed to the committees were indeed experts. In the case of SOU 2009:16, this is thoroughly emphasised in the preface of the report: With respect to the Norwegian committee, terms such as 'expert' and 'expertise' are not used explicitly in NOU 2013:4 itself, but the expertise of the individual committee members is de facto expressed in the royal decree where the report was commissioned, by terms such as 'competence' and 'insight': The committee's chair and members have been appointed on the basis of their personal competence, and not as representatives for organisations or agencies. The composition of the committee reflects the need for extensive insights into the different aspects related to the work with the report, including cultural and economic competence. (Norwegian Ministry of Culture 2011, unpaginated, emphasis added)

A typology of cultural policy expertise
To examine the role of experts in determining overall cultural policy objectives, it was necessary to develop a typology of cultural policy expertise (see Table 1). The most helpful research typologies are those in which the constructed types are both collectively exhaustive, meaning they account for all possibilities, and mutually exclusive, meaning they don't overlap (Bailey 1994, 3). Classical typologies, such as Weber's typology of forms of social action (Weber [1922(Weber [ ] 1978, usually follow these rules implicitly. Weber declared, for instance, that 'social action, like all action, may be oriented in four different ways' (Weber [1922] 1978, 24) but provided no further elaboration. In the typology for the present study (Table 1), all forms of expertise needed to be captured, with each category of expertise being conceptually distinguishable from the others.
While previous studies have provided theoretical perspectives that attempt to gauge the influence of expertise in policy-making (e.g. Estlund 2003;Góra, Holst, and Warat 2019;Holst 2012;Vibert 2007), this influence can differ between policy areas. In the present study the focus was limited to the question of expertise as it pertains to cultural policy. Most notably, Hylland and Mangset's (2018) recent study helped in the development of the typology for this study. The resulting typology (Table 1) comprises five different types of cultural policy expertise.
First, there is a craftsmanship dimension to cultural policy expertise. Experts will have a certain degree of knowledge about 'facts' that are more or less value-neutral. As we saw earlier, it was this form of expertise that Professor Lithberg was asked to provide in the form of a 'compilation of facts' for the 1922 SOU on cultural heritage. This form of expertise is designated 'fact expertise' in Table 1.
Second, for coding purposes, it was necessary to distinguish between facts and interpretations of those facts. For instance, the statement in SOU 2009:16 that 'the significance of museums in society has increased during the recent decades' (SOU 2009:16, Part 3, 103, see also marked in Appendix A) is not just a 'fact' about museums. It is an interpretation of 'facts' relating to museums. The ability to interpret facts is designated 'interpretive expertise', which is type 2 in Table 1.
Third, experts will have, to varying degrees, the requisite knowledge to explain observed facts. This third type of expertise is classified in Table 1 as 'explanatory expertise'. Some experts might be more knowledgeable than others in certain aspects of culture and so, for instance, will be better able to explain why some ethnic groups are more or less likely to patronise or participate in major cultural institutions.
Types 4 and 5 are derived from the following suggestion by Hylland and Mangset (2018): In addition to having a potentially instrumental function, where knowledge creates better policy and better results, knowledge has at least as an important function either as legitimizing or substantiating preferences. (Hylland and Mangset 2018, 181, emphases added) The 'instrumental function' requires an understanding of 'what works' when it comes to policy measures. The term 'prescriptive expertise' is used for this kind of expertise in Table 1 (type 4) to denote the most efficient ways of achieving defined cultural-political goals. (To avoid conflating this category with issues relating to instrumentalism in the pursuit of non-cultural goals (see Vestheim 1994), the term 'prescriptive expertise' was preferred, even though Hylland and Mangset (2018) use the term 'instrumental' in the quote.) As shown in the quote above, Hylland and Mangset (2018) have also contended that an equally important function of expert knowledge is to 'legitimise' or 'substantiate' preferences. What this entails is that the objectives that cultural policy measures are designed to achieve, can be influenced by expert knowledge (i.e. the 'oughts' are derived from the 'is'). Let us imagine, by way of example, a researcher who believes that an overall policy goal should be to promote culture within a nationalist framework. After time spent acquiring expert knowledge within the cultural sector, however, the researcher then changes their views, concluding instead that cultural policy should aim to be diverse and multicultural. To use Hylland and Mangset's (2018) terminology, the researcher's newfound knowledge has contributed to the 'substantiation' of their political preferences. This form of expertise constitutes the fifth type in Table 1 and is referred to as 'normative expertise'.

Coding and analysis
SOU 2009:16 and NOU 2013:4 reports were coded according to the typological categories detailed in Table 1, a process that is referred to as 'directed content analysis' (Hsieh andShannon 2005, 1281-83). As Hsieh and Shannon (2005) explain, directed content analysis begins with theory and derives the categories accordingly. The empirical material is then coded in line with the categories that have been defined. Appendix A and B provide example pages of the coding as it was applied to SOU 2009:16 andNOU 2013:4. For the purposes of this article, the most important element of the report coding process was the identification of those parts that fit into the 'normative expertise' category, i.e. those relating to overall policy objective recommendations (type 5 in Table 1). We must note, however, that it was not always straightforward to determine which material should be assigned to which category: whether a stated objective, for instance, should be interpreted as an instrument for achieving a higher-order objective, or whether it should be counted as an intended intrinsically valuable cultural-political objective in and of itself. Consider the following quotations from SOU 2009:16 regarding the subject of international cooperation: (Quotation 1) State authorities and institutions should, depending on their roles and responsibilities, work to . . . promote diversity, cultural pluralism and international cooperation. (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 33) (Quotation 2) We believe it is reasonable to regard international cooperation as part of the diversity perspective of cultural policy. It is perhaps unnecessary to underline cultural developments to an increasing degree being influenced by information and contacts that are independent of national borders. Still, it is essential that cultural policy actively and in a multitude of ways enforces those developments. (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 43) Should these quotations be coded according to type 5, normative expertise? At first glance, Quotation 1 describes an overall cultural policy objective and, therefore, we might expect it to be classified as such. Quotation 2, however, describes one of the instruments, international cooperation, recommended by the committee to achieve the objective described in Quotation 1. Confusingly, then, international cooperation is mentioned in the same report as both an overall policy objective and an instrument for the 'diversity perspective'. It is, thus, unclear what SOU 2009:16 actually considers international cooperation to be. However, even in the face of these kinds of interpretive challenges, the typology in Table 1 allowed us to code the two reports as a directed form of content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon 2005, 1281-1283.
Notably, coding was necessary but not sufficient to meet the objectives of the study. The normative focus in the reports was assessed not only by identifying the amount of text concentrating on overall policy objectives but also by ascertaining the degree to which the reports suggested objectives that were contentious at the time of publication. If experts suggest overall objectives that they know are controversial, this confirms that they believe the overall normative aspect of their recommendations represents an important dimension of their mandate.

Summary of findings from SOU 2009:16
SOU 2009:16 was released in 2009 and is divided into three parts, each of which was published separately. The first part, which contains the first six chapters of the report, is largely a craftsmanship product corresponding to types 1 and 2 of Table 1. It focuses on facts and interpretations of facts. The second part contains the recommended cultural policy objectives; some of the contents in this section can be classified under type 5 of Table 1. The third part of the report gives significant attention to the instrumental function. It emphasises prescriptive suggestions (type 4) for how the Swedish state should organise cultural programmes and institutions to achieve politically predefined policy objectives. With regard to these objectives, SOU 2009:16 recommends the following: National cultural policy should, with democracy and freedom of speech as starting points, contribute to the development of society by promoting open communities and arenas that are available to everybody. It should enable communication between individuals and groups, creative possibilities for cultural experiences and education and enable everybody to develop their creative talents.

State authorities and institutions should, depending on their roles and responsibilities, work
• To promote diversity, cultural pluralism and international cooperation, • To support the creation of art and enable the art sectors to shape, break patterns and expand the space of possibilities, • To conserve, use and interpret cultural heritage, • To make use of cultural competence and creativity to contribute to a socially, environmental and economically sustainable development, • To disseminate information and knowledge. (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 33) Now, do these recommended policy objectives mirror the general consensus about values inherent in Swedish political life in 2009? Or do they reflect the views of a group of experts who were promoting their own opinions on normative issues in cultural policy?
At first glance, some of the suggested objectives appear to be contentious ones. For instance, we could possibly interpret the promotion of 'diversity, cultural pluralism and international cooperation' (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 33) as a controversial political objective in the Swedish context. But this is not a reasonable interpretation. SOU 2009:16 was published before the election of the nationalist Sweden Democrats party to parliament in 2010, which constituted a substantial change in the political landscape (see Lindsköld 2015). After that election, the objective 'to promote diversity' (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 33) has probably become more controversial, overall, in parliamentary Swedish politics. But in 2009, at the time of the publication of SOU 2009:16, and before the election of the Sweden Democrats to parliament, the concept of 'diversity' could still fit into a broad Swedish political consensus. SOU 2009:16 also has a strong focus on how to achieve politically pre-defined objectives, rather than on which cultural-political objectives the government should aim for. For instance, the committee makes several recommendations concerning Sweden's cultural-political relationship with the European Union. It focuses almost exclusively on how that relationship might be used to achieve higher-order objectives that are not in and of themselves discussed in the report. The committee behind SOU 2009:16 thereby prioritises prescriptive expertise (type 4 in Table 1). As one of the recommendations states: • A mapping of EU-related issues that influences the whole area of culture should be conducted to find models for further cultural cooperation and dissemination of knowledge.
• The institutions and organisations within the area of culture that currently lack a strategy [for international cooperation] should be requested to produce such strategies for their cooperation with EU and other international work.
• A manual for the authorities' work towards the EU [within the area of culture] should be produced. (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 235) This kind of bureaucratic advice was as unlikely to elicit tension or disagreement in 2009 as it would have been today. SOU 2009:16 also provides corresponding forms of instrumental bureaucratic advice for issues such as the relationship between cultural policy and other areas of policy (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 97-234), cultural-political cooperation between different levels of government (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 259-293), and the administrative organisation of institutions that provide grants for art and culture (SOU 2009:16, Part 2, 295-352). The committee's discussion of these technical areas is extensive, and a substantial proportion of part three of the report is dedicated to it. In contrast, the report barely offers any discussion at all of the committee's own overall recommended policy objectives (type 5). In other words, although the Minister of Culture's mandate to the committee explicitly emphasised 'the need for changes in the national objectives of cultural policy' (SOU 2009:16, Part 3, 191, author's emphasis), the committee significantly prioritised prescriptive forms of policy recommendations (type 4 in Table 1).

Summary of findings from NOU 2013:4
NOU 2013:4 was published in 2013 in response to a mandate issued by the Norwegian government in 2011. It contains a substantial discussion of the government's cultural policy objectives (NOU 2013:4, 51-89), and offers the following overall recommendations: The national goals for cultural policy should be: NOU 2013:4, 318) These three objectives might initially look like generic goals that any voter in a Western country could support. In the context of this specific report, however, it becomes increasingly clear that they are far from generic. The use of the term 'democracy' here is a de facto refutation of Kantian aesthetics (Kant 1914) as a foundation for cultural policy. More precisely, 'democracy' is used as a conceptual tool to rebut the argument that public funding of art can be legitimised by referring to art's intrinsic value (see Belfiore 2004, 200;Vuyk 2010, 174). As NOU 2013:4 states, 'To conclude that artistic and cultural expressions have intrinsic value does not answer the question of why society should support these areas at the expense of other areas' (NOU 2013:4, 71). The committee suggests instead that the public sector should support art and culture because they are ' . . . fundaments for democracy and a source of social communities' (NOU 2013:4, 71). The term 'democracy' thus represents an expert declaration that the Norwegian state should embrace the anthropological concept of culture (Williams 1989) in terms of its policy objectives. The committee states, for instance, that popular forms of art should be prioritised politically, presumably at the expense of more traditional art forms (NOU 2013:4, 60), because popular forms of art are more democratic. In this way, the seemingly generic concept of 'democracy' is used to promote a specific normative position on one of the most contested questions in Western cultural policy.
The term 'diversity' harbours a similar degree of cultural-political tension. The committee explains in the report that it understands diversity both as a ' . . . situation where different groups in society have the possibility of developing their cultures independently from each other' (NOU 2013:4, 14) and as a ' . . . situation where individual members of society are confronted by a rich variation of utterances and forms of expression' (NOU 2013:4, 14). This implies not only that the committee emphasised wide access to culture, broadly speaking, but also the promotion of the distinct cultures of various ethnic groups, as an overarching cultural policy goal. The committee thus took a specific normative stance on what was already in 2013 one of the most controversial questions in Norwegian political life, namely multiculturalism.
NOU 2013:4 treats certain complex areas of cultural policy in a somewhat perfunctory manner, thereby limiting the attention given to the first four types of expertise as defined in Table 1. The following quote can be used as illustration: The principled discussion for or against public support of cultural life will not receive a prominent position in the following chapters. On this issue, the committee views it as sufficient to refer to the argument about market failure that for a long time has legitimised the active role that the authorities in Norway and other European countries have taken in cultural policy. This argument has considerable validity in Norway, which is a small country where the market is not large enough to sustain a rich cultural life. (NOU 2013:4, 54) What is remarkable about this quote is that an expert committee declares that it wishes to abstain from discussing the overarching question of whether there should or should not be public funding of the arts. Moreover, the quotation only cursorily addresses fundamental problem areas of cultural policy and contains what appears to be an incorrect use of the term 'market failure'. The committee seems to conflate market failure and income failure, although these are two entirely different economic concepts. While it is obvious that most state-subsidised arts institutions have too low selfgenerated incomes to survive in the free market, this does not prove that there is 'market failure'. Thus, while the royal decree (Norwegian Ministry of Culture 2011) stated that the committee should have economic competence (see the quotation in section 2), NOU 2013:4 displays instead a degree of economic ignorance, i.e. a lack of interpretive expertise (type 2 in Table 1). This observation strengthens the conclusion that the committee prioritised the normative aspect of expertise (type 5). Both SOU 2009:16 andNOU 2013:4 contain large amounts of cultural-political facts, interpretations, and explanations of those facts, as well as prescriptive suggestions for how to achieve specific political objectives (types 1-4 in Table 1). In this regard, they have much in common. But, although the reports can be viewed as Scandinavian 'sisters' in terms of their scope and dates of publication, they differ significantly in one respect. Whereas SOU 2009:16 is limited, for the most part, to suggesting measures to facilitate achieving objectives that have already been defined at the political level, NOU 2013:4 more actively suggests what those overall cultural policy objectives should be.

Discussion
How do we account for this difference? In terms of their normative ambitions, why was SOU 2009:16 reticent where NOU 2013:4 was bold? Let us present and scrutinise some possible explanations: The mandates given to the committees, the composition of the committees and the context in which the reports were undertaken. Was the more prominent normative focus in NOU 2013:4 the result of a stronger request for such recommendations by the Norwegian government, as expressed in the mandate? If we consider the mandate, it states that 'In the culture report, [the committee should] evaluate cultural-political objectives and measures after 2005' (NOU 2013:4, 10) and 'assess the relevance of national cultural political objectives' (NOU 2013:4, 11). Whereas the Swedish government asked the committee of civil servants to consider 'the need for changes in the national objectives of cultural policy' (SOU 2009:16, Part 3, 191, author's emphasis), the Norwegian government asked its committee to assess the relevance of existing policy goals. In other words, the relationship between the mandates were opposite of what we should expect from reading the reports themselves. It is a paradox (see Table 2), given the nature of its mandate, that NOU 2013:4 offers more explicit recommendations relating to overall policy objectives than SOU 2009:16. Thus, in terms of our search for an explanation of differences in normative emphases between the two reports, we can conclude that the wordings in the mandates do not afford a reasonable explanation.
Regarding the composition of the two committees, as mentioned in section two, the Swedish committee comprised exclusively civil servants, whereas the Norwegian committee was made up of a heterogeneous group of artists, cultural managers, and academics. Perhaps the normative reticence of the Swedish report was attributable to the committee consisting exclusively of professional civil servants? We have been working on the assumption that both committees viewed themselves as comprising cultural policy experts, but perhaps this assumption is not applicable to the Norwegian committee? Did the Norwegian committee not perceive of themselves as experts, despite the emphasis on personal competence in the royal decree (Norwegian Ministry of Culture 2011) behind the appointment of the committee?
As mentioned, the members of the Norwegian committee behind NOU 2013:4 were from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Although they were formally appointed on the basis of their competence and experience (Norwegian Ministry of Culture 2011), and although it was explicitly stated that they were not appointed because of their institutional affiliations, some members may have viewed the report as an opportunity to promote their own personal cultural policy preferences. An observation that might support this interpretation is that NOU 2013:4 significantly relied on the outsourcing of 'fact-finders' that fed the committee with external reports (an overview of these separate reports is provided in NOU 2013:4, 12). Perhaps the Norwegian committee members viewed this outsourcing of the 'compilation of facts' function as an indication that the committee itself should concentrate on normative recommendations on overall cultural policy objectives, as a form of added value for the 'fact' reports that the committee itself did not produce. SOU 2009:16, on the other hand, did not build on externally provided fact-oriented sub-reports but was a stand-alone consisting of three parts. It is possible, therefore, that the difference between the two reports, in terms of focus on overall normative recommendations, can be explained by the structural differences in the compositions of the committees, as well as by the Norwegian committee's hiring of external 'fact finders'.
A final possible explanation for the differences in normative emphasis in the two reports is related to context. It is most notable here that the work on the Norwegian report was undertaken in extraordinary circumstances: the 2011 Utøya massacre and the bombing of government buildings in Oslo (Borchgrevink 2013) took place only four months after the committee had been appointed. Alongside the bombing and massacre, the attacker distributed an electronic document that expressed reactionary political values. The report states: 'The terror in Oslo and Utøya 22 July 2011 has also affected the work and considerations of the committee and has influenced the viewpoints on freedom of speech and cultural community that we express' (NOU 2013:4, 10). The collective trauma in Norway in July 2011 may very well have induced the Norwegian committee to focus more strongly on overall normative recommendations and overall policy objectives than had originally been planned. In this view, it is perhaps not surprising that NOU 2013:4 placed more attention on discussions regarding overall cultural policy objectives than SOU 2009:16.

Conclusion
Based on the two reports examined in this study, it is fair to say that cultural policy experts in Scandinavia hold considerable normative power. As we have seen, this power can be expressed in the mandates issued by politicians, as well as in the reports produced by the commissioned experts. NOU 2013:4 provided clear recommendations on overall objectives in contested areas of policy. Correspondingly, the mandate for SOU 2009:16 explicitly stated that the appointed Swedish committee should recommend changes to overall cultural policy goals. While the committee hardly recommended any controversial changes, the Swedish minister's mandate still represented an outsourcing of normative power to cultural policy experts.
Neither committee provided a meta-analysis of its role as a producer of normative cultural policy recommendations. This is somewhat surprising, considering the crucial distinction between descriptive and normative policy advice, as well as the significant number of individuals from academic backgrounds on the committees. Both committees, however, made a strong recommendation for the more extensive use of research in cultural policy (SOU 2009:16, Part 3, 229-230;NOU 2013:4, 295-296). As for the future, we should be continuing to investigate the relationship between political mandates and their corresponding expert reports, with due regard to the concomitant relationship between the descriptive and the normative. If politicians increasingly outsource the formulation of cultural policy objectives to expert committees, this will indicate a transition from a cultural democracy to what might be termed a cultural epistocracy or a 'rule by the knowledgeable' (Estlund 2003;Holst 2012). Such a potential transition is certainly sufficiently significant to warrant research attention. Moreover, in the case of the two reports examined here, it would be interesting to investigate their influence in practice, particularly in normative terms. After the reports were published, did politicians end up prioritising the overall political objectives recommended by the expert committees? Or did they pursue their own policy objectives, irrespective of those recommendations? Future studies should investigate these questions, thereby providing further insights into the normative role and power of experts in cultural policy.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor
Ådne Meling is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Science and History at Volda University College.