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ABSTRACT
Few would doubt that economists have taken a prominent role as experts on policy issues [Maesse, J. 2015. Economic experts: A discursive political economy of economics. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 10, no.3: 279–305] and some contend that no other social science discipline has gained such prominence [Fourcade, M., E. Ollion, and Y. Algan. 2015. The superiority of economists. Journal of Economic Perspectives 29, no.1: 89–114]. This prominent societal role has long been evident and leans on their perceived objectivity with regard to the economy and policy advice. Yet, the Great Recession of 2008 put past understandings of the economy, and public confidence in economists, under significant strain [Colander, D., M. Goldberg, A. Haas, K. Juselius, T. Lux, and B. Sloth. 2009. The financial crisis and the systemic failure of the economics profession. Critical Review 21, no.2–3: 249–267]. Faced with this challenge of public confidence, the question of how economics experts, whose expertise on the economy was so dominant before the crisis, maintain their legitimacy in the face of this crisis is of interest. This paper draws on the work of Van Leeuwen [2007. Legitimation in discourse and communication. Discourse & Communication 1, no.1: 91–112] to analyse the legitimising strategies used by economics experts during radio interviews, and echoes the work of Maesse [2015. Economic experts: A discursive political economy of economics. Journal of Multicultural Discourses 10, no.3: 279–305] in arguing that economists benefit from the legitimacy of their profession that has been created in academia, but also acknowledging that economists still have to work for societal legitimacy.
Acknowledgements
We would like to acknowledge the valuable feedback from Shi-xu and the anonymous reviewers, which greatly assisted in the writing of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributors
Joseph Fitzgerald is a lecturer in Research Methods and International Business, and a PhD candidate at Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT), Ireland. His research focus is on discourse analysis, media discourse, elite formations of social actors, and the nature of expertise. His PhD looks at the discourses of economics experts during media interactions.
Brendan K. O’Rourke lectures in the College of Business at the DIT, where he focuses on learning in the area of discourses of the economy, in particular, examining discourses of enterprise, strategy and economists’ communication with non-experts. He is currently director of the Business, Society and Sustainability DIT research centre and is also the co-founder of the Discourse Analysis Group (DAG) within DIT.