What Should be the Role of Experts in Governing?

In my ideal society there wouldn't be a need for such petty choices to be made.

Experts should be restricted to being experts, they should not make any decisions, that's why democracies have elected governments. Experts are there to advise politicians and something which is already abused in many democracies such as the UK where they provide "specialist advice" to inexperienced cabinet ministers (in this case the experts are senior civil servants with many years of experience of working in their departments) and often to a great degree influence the ministers. For military matter the questions are more difficult to answer as the need for secrecy must be balanced with the need for legitimacy of the divisions taken, a need that unelected officials fail to meet. The people themselves however cannot be asked what their opinion is on every matter of importance because not only is it very time consuming but civilians will most likely take the most moral division rather than the most practical one. Once again to use the UK as the example, 3 million demotivated against invading Iraq in 2003 (I am not saying I support the war) but if Tony Blair was certain that Iraq had WMD's then it was the most practical thing to invade Iraq and destroy the threat even if the public was against any more wars. However on other issues such as the independence of Scotland experts cannot be trusted (potential economic benefits, military matters etc) as it is a matter so important it can only be decided by the people. I am unsure as to which experts to ignore and which to trust so I will provide a silly answer, you would not seek the advice of agriculture experts on military matters or foreign policy. (please excuse any stupid points, I am very tired right now and this post interested me so had to "stick in my 10 cents" as I believe the Americans say).

Two cents. Not ten. Dumb brits.

That highly depends on what process you want to optimize. let me explain, a expert-commision will most likely find the best solution to their respective fields problem, how ever, the question in the czech-republic was not what is the best specific solution for national defense the question was if the people want to do it. Expertise and political will are not necessarily overlaping.
Also experts tend to disregard everything outside of their field. Militaricly this might be a solid choice but a political expert would maybe find that it is unwise to provoke Russia. Now we have two solid theories they have to be balanced against eachother. Ultimately the two experts could never agree with eachother because both theories are valid and each will find their field to be more relevant, so you need somebody to decide.
Experts should present their findings and give advise to the best of their knowledge, so that the public/government can make a solid decission.
I think the science community does a pretty good job in sorting out their bad eggs, the peer-review process is largely working. And for the fact that some people ignore science (aka ignorance) there is not much you can do against them..... it is important to have a well educated population if you want to have public referendums on complicated matters.

On a side note direct democracy and public votes don't necessarily work in all countries, just because it mostly works in switzerland doesn't mean it will work anywhere. And we need to be carefull with assesments of majoritys in opinions, just because a poll sugest it or because a faction claims to have the majority doesn't make it fact. But i find that a well educated and well advised public/government is capable of deciding.

We should ignore "scientists" who are disproven and wont back up. For the most part this works well in europe, the only part of the civilized world where this seams to be a problem is extremely conservative states in the USA (creationism etc.)

My opinion is that good advise should allways be taken into consideration no matter the decission, if the advise is scientificly proven then even better. Politicians should base their campaigns on facts and not on doctrine. But sadly reason is not allways enough for certain people.

Expert opinion on politics is more favored from a government controlled socialist state, but when the people wish to provide ideas or concerns it should be received and taken into account.

Democracies are prone to corruption.

And if "the experts" find the ideas silly/stupid they can just disgard them. So it basically doesn't matter what the people want... If the people don't have the power(without violence) to remove men from office there will be oppression.

And dictatorships are not?! If I remember correctly the USSR was one of the most corrupted countries in the world and if you look at dictatorships today corruption is widespread.

My apologies, I thought it might be 2 cents but it seemed a bit small and I am tired. Won't be repeated.

Allow it to the extent it can be argued, as we do in the status quo.

Yeah it better not be.

Experts should advise and nothing more. Experts are so inconsistent with each other it makes me cry.

Pussy. I haven't cried since I was 13.

Well I am 13 so suck it.

I'd say give it all to the experts. But my idea of an expert and the context in which the word expert is being used in this thread are probably two different things.

I'm pretty sure that's illegal. You can't tempt me.

Watch Clannad, dammit.

I once read something about a study where they asked a bunch of "experts" to make a simple prediction from which you could base policy on, their predictions had a failure rate of about 90% (il look up the study later). Also you need to take into account which discipline these experts work in (some disciplines have a general consensus on stuff, but others cant agree on anything), the fact that these people always have a tendency to self-justify themselves, and well that they can be wrong and that they often are.

I think these criticisms, especially the underlined portion, point out why it's best to allow it to the extent that it can be argued.

We have a whole house full of 'experts,' otherwise known as the House of Lords. I suppose they serve at least one purpose in keeping the silliness of our MPs to a minimum.

That's funny. A House full of people who aren't elected by the people on the basis that they are experts (when they decide who's an expert).