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This is an upper-level seminar examining the relationship between scientific expertise, economic behavior, and state authority. The course will explore and critique how, following World War II, scientific knowledge has become increasingly linked to different regulatory functions of the modern nation state, especially as a means of mediating negative spillovers of economic and administrative behavior on human health and the environment. Themes that will be of central interest include the institutionalization of "impact science" within different state agencies; the rise and role of expertise in science-related decision making; understanding how scientists secure and maintain credibility, salience and legitimacy in the face of scrutiny from skeptical publics and ideological adversaries; and the increasing challenges to regulatory sciences (what many call a “crisis of expertise”) posed by the organization and proliferation of misinformation, media echo-chambers, and corporate lobbying. The course will end by reviewing emerging models for how science-based decision making can be made more pluralistic and accountable to the publics in whose name it is often made.