AAI: 26th Annual Policy Conference - 'The State of the Antitrust Technocracy'
( May 15, 2025, 18:31 GMT | Conference) -- The debate over the proper role of technocratic experts in a modern democracy has taken on urgent, society-wide proportions. Many Americans have lost trust in institutions, believing that experts with specialized knowledge have smuggled political biases into policymaking under the guise of scientific neutrality. At the same time, many also recognize that jettisoning technical expertise from policymaking risks replacing an ethic of neutrality with rampant politicization. In antitrust as elsewhere, extreme views threaten the stability of democratic institutions.A consensus once held that antitrust had long ago evolved into a mature technocracy and left behind its democratic origins as a “movement.”[1] Today, that consensus has largely evaporated. Bipartisan, populist antipathy toward powerful corporations has reignited the public’s once “faded passion”[2] for antitrust law and competition policy. Industrial organization experts and economically sophisticated lawyers continue to shape law and policy, but their work is now heavily scrutinized and increasingly politicized. If antitrust is to “yield the best allocation of our economic resources … while at the same time providing an environment conductive to the preservation of our democratic political and social institutions,”[3] then the country will have to reconcile its technocratic and populist impulses.AAI’s 26th Annual Policy Conference will seek to advance this goal. Three panels of speakers will offer insights, analysis, and recommendations for applying the antitrust laws in a climate of political upheaval and skepticism of experts. Panelists will grapple with the risks and opportunities presented by recent efforts to (1) reduce or eliminate economic complexity from Sherman Act enforcement, (2) rethink or reinvent merger policy, and (3) apply political pressure to agency enforcement agendas.The debate over the proper role of technocratic experts in a modern democracy has taken on urgent, society-wide proportions. Many Americans have lost trust in institutions, believing that experts with specialized knowledge have smuggled political biases into policymaking under the guise of scientific neutrality. At the same time, many also recognize that jettisoning technical expertise from policymaking risks replacing an ethic of neutrality with rampant politicization. In antitrust as elsewhere, extreme views threaten the stability of democratic institutions....
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