Some texts are difficult to date based on their content alone. Harold Laski's essay from 1931, from which the above quote is drawn, is doubtless a striking case in point. It could easily be a voice in today's discussion on the idea and limits of democracy.

Laski claims that there is an irremovable tension between expertise and democracy. On the one hand, effective decision-making requires reliance on expertise. A policy based on intuition or ideology must be cost-effective. On the other hand, Laski warns against infinite trust in experts, and for two reasons. First, the pride of experts, who invariably think of themselves as infallible, all too often leads to bad decisions. Expertise, he states:

‘There is, in fact, no expert group which does not tend to deny that truth may possibly be found outside the boundary of its private Pyrenees.’ This attitude has a number of undesirable consequences. Above all, experts repeatedly overestimate their ability and fail to appreciate the importance of other disciplines and experts. The expert ‘unduly discounts experience which does not tally with his own’, ‘because he practices a mystery, he tends to assume that, within his allotted field, men must accept without question the conclusions at which he has arrived’.