Fairly balanced: The politics of representation on government advisory committees. Political Research Quarterly 61(4): 547–560

The United States Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) requires advisory committees to be “fairly balanced. ” By examining legislative, judicial, and administrative interpretations of FACA’s balance requirement, this article identifies a prevailing double standard: public officials assess committee members classified as experts in terms of their profes-sional competence, while they assess those classified as representatives in terms of their political interests. Although the prevailing approach seeks to prevent the politicization of expert advice, it actually promotes it. Advisory committee bal-ance is better understood, this article suggests, in terms of social and professional perspectives. This approach avoids both naively apolitical and destructively partisan conceptions of advisory committee balance. It also suggests a promis-ing way to think about the role of technical expertise in public deliberation