Political and administrative control of expert groups—A mixed‐methods study

Abstract

Governments face a fundamental dilemma when asking expert groups for advice. Experts possess knowledge that can help governments design effective and legitimate policies. However, they can also propose different policies than those preferred by government.How do governments solve this conundrum? Through a mixed-methods study, the article examines politicoadministrative control with expert advisory commissions in Norway. Arguing that both politicians and bureaucrats can take interest in limiting the gap between political/administrative policy preferences and expert group output, the article examines by what means they seek to control expert groups and how control varies across policy portfolios. It finds that while politicians rely on control by design, bureaucrats use both design and interventions. Moreover, political and bureaucratic controls are stronger in the area of financial/economic policy than elsewhere. The article makes a novel contribution to scholarship at the intersection of public administration and knowledge and policymaking.

Expertise in EU policy-making

“…In other words, it is crucial to understand both what expert capacities executives possess in-house and the entire landscape of knowledge-producing institutions that executives draw on for research and advice. Key dimensions of a knowledge regime are thus how education and research are organized and financed, to what extent expertise is located within executive institutions versus provided by outside bodies (Craft and Howlett 2013) and the degree of executive control over expert bodies and policy research (Hesstvedt and Christensen 2021), and to what extent the production of policy knowledge is open to interest groups and citizens.…”

Partisanship and science advice: Do the right prefer economists and the left social scientists?

“…After the commission has been officially appointed, it works autonomously for its designated amount of time, usually a year or more, before submitting an advisory report with policy recommendations to the incumbent government. It is then dissolved (Hesstvedt and Christensen, 2021). Importantly, the commission system also offers a rare possibility of tracing a government’s consultation of academic experts in policymaking processes over time.…”

Governing through Expertise. The Politics of Bioethics. AnnabelleLittoz‐MonnetCambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press (2020), 161p., ISBN 978‐1‐108‐84392‐8

“…Littoz‐Monnet thereby highlights an important research agenda concerning the politics of expert advice . Studies of expertise and policy‐making constantly repeat the argument that expert knowledge can be used politically and strategically, yet they very rarely examine the specific mechanisms through which expert knowledge is controlled or used by policy‐makers (see Hesstvedt 2020; Hesstvedt and Christensen 2021). Littoz‐Monnet proposes three mechanisms through which expert advice is brought into line with the wishes of policy‐makers: ‘orchestration’, which entails that policy‐makers seek to influence the content of expert advice for instance by selecting specific experts or framing questions to advice bodies in narrow ways; ‘ideational alignment’, which refers to how policy‐makers and experts come to share the same ideas through repeated interaction in meetings and conferences; and ‘calibration’, namely that experts tailor their advice to what is politically feasible.…”

“…Given how central this mechanism is to the argument of the book, it could surely have been given a firmer theoretical basis. For instance, in a recent study conducted together with Stine Hesstvedt, we theorize the different ways in which politicians and bureaucrats seek to control expert advisory bodies from a principal‐agent perspective (Hesstvedt and Christensen 2021). Similarly, the argument about ideational alignment through interaction mirrors standard arguments in the literature about the diffusion of ideas and discourses.…”