# **The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe**

## Comparing Engagements in Policy Advisory Systems

Edited by **Marleen Brans Arco Timmermans**

## The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe

"How do academic experts try to infuence public policy in an anti-intellectual age? This landmark study identifes four key approaches and reveals how one group of experts—political scientists—navigate their particular national contexts to promote evidence-based policy and enlarge public debates. The book spotlights key differences across European nations (as well as sadly predictable differences by gender), with important implications for democratic voice and governance." —Kristin A. Goss, *Duke University, USA*

"Political scientists are concerned with the exercise of power, with special attention to responsibility, accountability and equitable outcomes. This systematic comparative study, based on detailed surveys, shows that political scientists are actively concerned to infuence decision-makers and the general public. But their motivations, opportunities and constraints vary greatly across institutions and countries. This path-breaking book will ignite the debates about relevance and impact." —Brian Head, *University of Queensland, Australia*

"Do political scientists matter? The policy advisory systems of many countries have now become quite structured and sophisticated providing many opening points for scientifc advice. This volume shows how, when and why political scientist engagements with the political sphere can have ramifcations for the direction of development of democracy and power. The boundary lines between experts and policy makers are not clearly marked out for all to see. Instead, not only do these lines move from political culture to another, the contributors also reveal that when these lines are drawn this is inherently normative. The advice of political scientists emanates not only from personal conviction but is also shaped by the character of policy advisory system and broader developments in politics and society. This volume provides solid evidence that few political scientists are sequestered in the 'ivory tower' and that most do matter with their motivations to challenge power, shape society and change policy through their 'entrepreneurial relevance' and advice."

> —Diane Stone, *School of Transnational Governance, European University Institute, Italy*

"This remarkable volume shows the diversity of social and public contributions made by political scientists across Europe. The range of advisory roles is impressive and encouraging for colleagues concerned about the difference they can make in the world. It deserves to be used by academics and practitioners who seek to praise and defend the importance of political science research."

ii

—Claire A. Dunlop, *University of Exeter, UK*

"This book provides unique insights into how political scientists engage in policy advice and how their advisory roles vary across Europe. This variation refects variations and trends in European policy advisory systems—a must-read for every political scientist and anyone interested in better understanding policy advisory systems."

—Thurid Hustedt, *Hertie School of Governance, Berlin*

"Political scientists usually observe policymaking, but this book demonstrates that they also become involved in that process. Using qualitative and quantitative data the authors provide an interesting and timely account of the role of political scientists in advising governments and shaping policy. This is a very welcome addition to the literature on policy advice."

—B. Guy Peters*, University of Pittsburgh, USA*

Marleen Brans • Arco Timmermans Editors

# The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe

Comparing Engagements in Policy Advisory Systems

This publication is based upon work from COST Action ProSEPS CA 15207, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology). COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is a funding agency for research and innovation networks. Our Actions help connect research initiatives across Europe and enable scientists to grow their ideas by sharing them with their peers. This boosts their research, career and innovation. www.cost.eu

*Editors* Marleen Brans Public Governance Institute KU Leuven Leuven, Belgium

Arco Timmermans Institute of Public Administration Leiden University Leiden, The Netherlands

#### ISBN 978-3-030-86004-2 ISBN 978-3-030-86005-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2022. This book is an open access publication.

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*To all political scientists whose academic freedom is under threat*

## Foreword: The Special Character of Political Science

Of all the characteristics of political science, the most remarkable is that the key role of this discipline developed recently—mainly since the 1970s and 1980s.

The study of plants and animals has taken place for centuries. The same can be said for the study of materials, the study of medicine, and the study of law, admittedly on the basis of increasingly complex analyses in recent decades. As an academic discipline, political science did not become consolidated until the late decades of the twentieth century. In history it was rare to see a marked role of the discipline, except for a period in a few Greek cities before the Christian era, especially in Athens, and indeed with diffculty.

There is a reason why political science has only rarely affected mankind profoundly. This is so when the 'government' and the 'political rule' becomes highly controversial. When the few men and even fewer women in the 'government' become agents of change, they also become the object of strong opposition. An example is the political call for economic and social nationalization. Due to controversy and thresholds, such fundamental change does not occur frequently. 'Ordinary regimes' may not provide the basis for such major demands for change, as such demands can indeed be so serious that the whole 'regime' may not survive, and violence may occur on both sides of the issues at stake.

It follows that only regimes which are 'open' and 'liberal' may be able to tolerate the kind of discussion and opposition that political science generates on fundamental issues of the organization and functioning of the state. This is indeed why only in a few Greek cities, Athens in particular, fundamental divergence of this type was possible. Rome was to be a republic for hundreds of years, political decision-making did take place, to some extent violently, and was the cause of serious problems, with famously reported intrigues in the Senate. With the end of the Republic and its replacement by an 'Empire', the freedoms relating to broader decisionmaking were reduced drastically. And outside the Roman Empire, meanwhile, the appointment of political offcials typically developed without a basis for agreement on divisive issues.

After the end of the Roman Empire, under the infuence of the development of liberal ideas in Britain from the seventeenth century in particular, it took until the eighteenth century for key changes to occur in the political domain. The only truly successful development in this respect took place in the second part of the century with the American constitution. Attempts made in France to establish a liberal polity from 1789 onwards ended in the Napoleonic dictatorship from 1799 to 1814.

The First and Second World War brought profoundly new visions of politics on the agenda across the world, in particular as a result of the decline of colonization from the end of the twentieth century onwards. It then became possible for leaders at all continents to achieve power and propose and enforce changes in the nature and processes of political leadership. In most countries, the broadening of the state apparatus and ongoing reforms of political institutions took off. Since then, the rise of behavioural approaches to political science and the further development of the discipline sparked a rapprochement between political scientists and policy-makers.

This book shows how in contemporary Europe this rapprochement has resulted in a variety of advisory roles of political scientists. The comparative study also shows that while the limitations to engagement of political scientists in the architecture of the state and policy-making processes have mostly been overcome, regime changes and politicization of science may still attenuate such engagement.

European University Institute, Florence, Italy Jean Blondel

## Preface

Many scholars pursuing an academic career in any given country must deal with two forces that often create tension in the daily business of their work. One is the academic push factor. Academics must produce a steady fow of publications, preferably in high-ranked journals and funded by prestigious research grants. They must also balance educational tasks in such a way that effciency is maximized and students remain inspired.

The other force is the pull from the environment of academia, where demand for knowledge is articulated, calls are made for advice and sense making, and public accountability of academic work is becoming more important. This external pull factor has entered the academic arena via the route of societal impact criteria that play a part in funding programmes and output evaluation. Scholarly work must now be excellent and relevant at the same time.

Political scientists are not exempt from these forces. They must publish in an ever expanding volume of specialized journals and with consideration to their impact factor. They must be, or learn to be, skilled lecturers to attract students into competitive bachelor and master programmes of their university departments, and they are expected to have a strong narrative available about their research topic, fndings and the lessons we can draw from them.

Young political scientists making their frst steps on the academic career path are particularly exposed to the tensions all this involves. They may want to engage with their political and social environment about the topics of study, but they face internal accountability at their department for achieving high academic standards. Conversely, when dedicated to the core business of academic work, they may also be called upon to improve their outreach and communication with a wider audience. There may be dreams about writing a best seller on the state of democracy, on creative solutions to bureaucratic failure, or on building coalitions for dealing with climate change or migration crises. But the incentives often drive young scholars to produce specialized work and seek for what is called 'the least publishable unit' in the collected empirical material.

This book is entirely about the engagement of university-based political scientists in Europe with their political and social environment. While politics and policymaking are in most countries as a matter of principle open to anyone and not a licensed business, the analysis of politics, public administration and policy by academic political scientists requires a high level of training and professional qualifcations. Political scientists are expected to speak 'truth' about power. But do they also speak truth *to* power?

This central question and the different versions of it for enquiry into the relationship between scientists and stakeholders in the policy process is in a sense reflective for the group of 23 authors in this book project. All contributors work as political scientists at a university department somewhere on the European continent. Thus, our shared perspective is the community of peers and colleagues around us—a community that has been growing in size in Europe and in other parts of the world. From the start, the book project was a collective enterprise in which all contributing authors were involved. As editors, we feel like *primi inter pares*, building together on all parts from the inception of the idea to development of theory and further to the design of the comparative empirical project and all the work that came with it. In a series of meetings facilitated by the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) we contributed to the broader COST Action CA15207 on the Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science, the international survey as a central part of it, and we discussed and coordinated the contributions to this volume. Both the journeys and this final product were made together.

We hope this book will not only provide an informative comparative perspective on the advisory roles of political scientists, but also stir the discussion on the professionalization of political science. By 'professionalization' we mean not only consolidation of the discipline in the academic arena wherever steps are still desirable and possible, but also how in countries where political science is vested and widely acknowledged, its further development may involve more emphasis on impact and help in preparing our students for their professional career. Mostly, that is a career outside the university.

Leuven, Belgium Marleen Brans Leiden, The Netherlands Arco Timmermans April 2021

## Acknowledgements

We would also like to make some acknowledgements. First, on behalf of all authors, we thank the COST Association in Brussels for their fnancial support and facilitation of the Cost Action CA15207, from which this book is a result.

We thank the teams of the universities of Malta, Lisbon, Siena, Sarajevo, Leuven, Athens, Sheffeld, Varna, Hagen and Leiden for organizing annual Cost meetings and working group sessions. We are grateful to the codirectors of the Cost Action CA 15207 ProSEPS Vladimira Dvoráková ̌ and Giliberto Capano for having guided us through our work during four years. We are particularly thankful for the collaboration with members of Working Group 3 and their leaders, Luca Verzichelli and José Real-Dato, in designing the survey questions. Without the work of the survey specialists in the network, Ioanis Andreadis and Giulia Vicentini, and José Real-Dato's relentless methodological support throughout the book project, this volume could not have been produced. Equally indispensable was the anonymous group of nearly 2500 political scientists who responded to the ProSEPS survey.

Morten Kallestrup, author of the chapter on Denmark, likes to thank the following colleagues for valuable contributions and inputs to the manuscript: Sune Welling-Hansen, Erik Albæk, Peter Munk Christiansen, Robert Klemmensen. Pierre Squevin and David Aubin, authors of the chapter on France, like to thank Charlotte Halpern for her support with this study. They also would like to thank their colleagues from the Center of European Studies (CEE) at Sciences Po Paris, for their intellectual support and assistance.

The authors of the chapter on Belgium wish to thank the Flemish (Vlaamse Vereniging Politieke Wetenschappen) and francophone political science (Association Belge Francophone de Science Politique) associations for their support to the ProSEPS survey. They are also grateful to Heath Pickering (KU Leuven), Arthur Meert (KU Leuven) and Pierre Squevin (UCLouvain) for their contribution to the Belgian data collection.

We are also thankful to Inge Vermeulen (KU Leuven) for her graphical assistance, to Patrick Barr for helping with language editing, and to the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan for making the book happen.

Finally, on a personal note and considering our work-life balance, we are grateful for the patience and support of our families: Stefaan, Tyl and Rosemarie De Coninck in Brussels, and Leticia, Noury and Ozra in the Hague.

## Contents




## Notes on Contributors

**Alexandra Anderson** is a postdoctoral research associate in the Sheffeld Methods Institute at the University of Sheffeld. Before joining the SMI, Anderson was a research associate at the Crick Centre in the University's Department of Politics and International Relations. Anderson's interdisciplinary research is conducted at the intersection of history and politics.

**David Aubin** is Associate Professor of Political Science at UCLouvain, where he teaches policy analysis and evaluation as well as environmental governance. He is conducting comparative research on policy advice, environmental management and collaborative governance. His articles have appeared in journals such as *Policy Sciences*, *Journal of Public Policy*, and *European Policy Analysis,* and he has also edited *Policy Analysis in Belgium* in 2017.

**Caner Bak**ı**r** is Professor of Political Science with particular emphasis on international and comparative economy, and public policy and administration of the College of Administrative Sciences and Economics at Koç University. He is the director of the Center for Globalization, Peace and Democratic Governance (GLODEM). He is an associate editor of *Policy Sciences*, and editorial board member of *Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice*, *Journal of Economic Policy Reform* and *International Journal of Emerging Markets*.

**Justyna Bandola-Gill** is a research fellow in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh. Her research explores the intersection of science and policy, in particular, production and use of evidence in policymaking and the role of experts in decision-making.

**Blerjana Bino** is the Co-Founder of the Centre of Science and Innovation for Development, working closely with academia, civil society and media. She is a researcher in social sciences with a particular focus on media, democracy and participation, with extensive experience in designing and coordinating research and development projects at national and regional level. She has a PhD in Communication Sciences and a Master of Science from the London School of Economics and Political Science—LSE. She is a former Swedish Institute Fellow at the Department of Media and Informatics, Uppsala University.

**Ivar Bleiklie** is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Bergen. He focuses on comparative studies of public policies and public sector reforms in Western European countries.

**Sonja Blum** is a researcher and lecturer at the University of Hagen and Fellow at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute. She obtained her PhD in Political Science from the University of Münster. Blum specializes in public policy and comparative social policy. She has authored several books—including *Policy Analysis in Germany* (with K Schubert) and her articles have appeared in journals such as *Policy and Society*, *International Review of Administrative Sciences*, *Social Politics*, *Social Policy & Administration* and *European Policy Analysis*. Her work focuses on issues of policy design, eligibility and target populations, narratives, and evidence use for policy-making.

**H. Tolga Bolukbasi** is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Bilkent University. His research focuses on comparative public policy, comparative political economy, Europeanization and comparative welfare state reform. He is the author of *Euro-Austerity and Welfare States* (2021) and co-editor of *Europeanization of Public Policy in Southern Europe* (2014). His recent work appeared in *Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Social Policy, Social Policy & Administration, Comparative European Politics, European Political Science, South European Society and Politics* and in edited volumes on public policy*.*

**Marleen Brans** is full professor at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute and guest professor at the Université catholique de Louvain. At KU Leuven she is the Director of the Advanced Master in European Politics and Policies. Her research interests include policy work, policy advisory systems, ministerial advisers and the use of policy advice. Her articles have appeared in journals such as *Public Administration*, *West European Politics*, *Governance*, *Policy and Society*, and *Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis,* and she has co-edited the following books: *Policy Analysis in Belgium* and the *Routledge Handbook of Comparative Policy Analysis*. She is founding past Vice-President and Treasurer of the International Public Policy Association.

**Matthew Flinders** is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre at the University of Sheffeld. He is Vice-Chair of the Political Studies Association of the UK and Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network. He has authored over 150 articles which have appeared in various journals and books, and he wrote or edited 14 books, including *Multi-Level Governance* (2004), *Walking Without Order* (2009), *The Oxford Handbook of British Politics* (2009), *Democratic Drift* (2009), *Defending Politics* (2012) and *Anti-Politics, Depoliticization and Governance* (2017). He has won several prizes such as the Harrison Prize (2002) and the Sam Aaronovitch Memorial Prize (2012). In addition to his academic work, Flinders has written and presented documentaries for BBC Radio 4 and has served as a special adviser in both the House of Lords and House of Commons.

**Ellen Fobé** is researcher at the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute. She concluded her doctoral dissertation on the policy analytical capacity of civil servants in Belgium. Her research relates to policy analysis, policy work and policy analytical capacity by bureaucrats. In addition, her other research interests include policy advice and advisory systems, policy instruments and nudging. Her articles have appeared in leading journals such as *Evidence and Policy*, *Policy and Society* and the *International Review of Administrative Sciences*.

**Maria Tullia Galanti** is an assistant professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Milan (Italy), where she teaches Public Policy and Evaluation. Her research recently focuses on the theories of the policy process, policy entrepreneurship, policy leadership and policy advice. She has worked on urban planning, social housing and social assistance at the local level, and on the reforms of local public services in Italy. Her recent work appeared in *Social Policy and Administration*, *Policy and Society* and *European Policy Analysis*. She is editorial manager of the *Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche*.

**Athanassios Gouglas** is Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy. His research and teaching falls within the felds of comparative politics, comparative public policy, European and global governance. He is also an external research fellow at KU Leuven, Belgium, as well as Associate Director for International Partnerships, Membership & Media for the *Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice (JCPA)*.

**Jens Jungblut** works as an associate professor at the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral research fellow at the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR) at Stanford University and a postdoctoral researcher at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) at the University of Kassel. He received his PhD from the University of Oslo. His main research interests include party politics, policy-making, and public governance in the knowledge policy domain (higher education & research), organizational change in higher education and the role of (academic) expertise in policy advice.

**Morten Kallestrup** is Associate Professor of Public Administration at the Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark. His research interests include public administration, policy-making, and decision-making processes, Europeanization of national politics and policies, and strategic negotiation. He is a former government offcial and national representative in EU negotiations.

**Svein Michelsen** is Professor of Political Science at the Department of Administration and Organization Theory at the University of Bergen. His main interests are focused on Higher Education and Vocational Education and Training systems and policies in Western European countries.

**Gábor Tamás Molnár** is PhD candidate of Political Science and an assistant lecturer at the Department for Public Policy and Management at Corvinus University of Budapest. His research is in public policy and institutional economics, with a special focus on the institutionalization and governance roles of professional communities.

**Valérie Pattyn** is Assistant Professor in Public Policy at the Institute of Public Administration of Leiden University, The Netherlands, and is partially affliated to the KU Leuven Public Governance Institute, Belgium. Her research programme examines the demands for knowledge and advice of policy-makers under conditions of uncertainty, the conditions fostering and impeding evidence-informed policy-making, and the politics of policy evaluation. In addition, she is involved in research projects about policy advice production and use within and outside the civil service (including parliaments, think tanks and consultants).

**Andrea Pritoni** is Associate Professor of Political Science in the Department of Cultures, Politics and Society at the University of Turin (Italy). His main research interests are Italian politics, comparative interest group politics and public policy analysis (with a particular focus on higher education policy). His articles have appeared in *Regulation and Governance* (2019), *Journal of Public Policy* (2019), *European Union Politics* (2019) and *Comparative European Politics* (2017); he has authored books on the Italian Association of Banks (2015), on the recent Italian constitutional referendum (2017) and on the Italian interest system between the First and the Second Republic (2018).

**José Real-Dato** is an associate professor at the University of Almería (Spain). His research is on the policy process, political elites, political representation in the European Union and the professional development of political science. His articles have appeared in journals such as *Party Politics*, *South European Society and Politics*, *Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis*, *Acta Politica*, *European Political Science*, *Europe-Asia Studies* and *Historical Social Research*. He has also co-edited (with Nicolò Conti and Borbála Göncz) the book *National Political Elites, European Integration and the Eurozone Crisis*. He is coordinator of a research project funded by the Spanish Research Agency on the role of politicoadministrative elites in incorporating knowledge and expertise in the policy process.

**Pierre Squevin** studied at the European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL) at the Catholic University of Lille and the Grenoble Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po Grenoble). He is researcher at the Institute of Political Science Louvain-Europe, Catholic University of Louvain (UCLouvain). His research is on policy formulation, policy advice and policy learning. He participates in the project 'In and out the centre of executive power: a prosopographic study of career patterns of ministerial advisers in Belgium'. He also analyses political science in France and contributed (with Raul Magni-Berton) to Eisfeld, R. and Flinders, M. (eds.), *Political Science in the Shadow of the State: Research, Relevance & Deference*. London: Macmillan.

**Arco Timmermans** is Endowed Professor of Public Affairs at Leiden University. He obtained his PhD in the Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. His feld is public affairs and public policy, with a focus on agenda setting, coalition building and the professionalization of public affairs. His articles have appeared in journals such as *Comparative Political Studies*, *Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis*, the *European Journal of Political Research* and the *Journal of Public Affairs*, and he wrote *High Politics in the Low Countries* and, in Dutch, *Public Affairs in Maatschappelijk Perspectief* (*Public affairs in a societal perspective*), as well as many professional contributions and columns for a broader audience.

**Nevila Xhindi** has 28 years of experience in lecturing, research and publications in the academic sphere. She holds two PhDs, one in Human Geography from the University of Tirana in migration, planning a development and a second PhD Degree in Regional Development from Potsdam University in Germany. She was awarded a Fulbright/Humphrey scholarship to pursue her postgraduate studies at the Pennsylvania State University in the United States in the programme: Education Policy and Comparative Studies. Xhindi is experienced in conducting qualitative research and is the author of various publications. She has actively participated in the public sphere in Albania through social, political and public activism.

## List of Figures


#### xxvi List of Figures


## List of Tables





## From Theory to Empirical Analysis of Advisory Roles

## Introduction

## *Arco Timmermans and Marleen Brans*

### 1.1 The Matter of Research

From time to time, international conferences bringing scholars together pose the existential question: 'Does our research matter, do we make a difference to the world'? (see Goss, 2017). Usually, the answers coming from the scholarly community are confrmative, or at least display mildly optimistic views. Few will make statements of self-denial; some may not care at all. If academics believe their work is relevant, it is one justifcation for ongoing knowledge production and proliferation.

But self-evaluations by scientists of their knowledge entering different spheres of society and policy-making arenas are not necessarily true. Estimations of knowledge 'uptake' may be too high and exaggerated, or sometimes too low and modest. Another factor is behavioral: do scholars actually engage in interaction, dialogue, or confrontation with stakeholders in politics and society? One view is that scholars should not engage. Or

M. Brans

A. Timmermans (\*)

Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: a.timmermans@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: marleen.brans@kuleuven.be

the experience may be that scholars do not know how to work on the boundary of research and politics and society. It also may be that disincentives pull them back. If it does not pay off in career advancement, or if scholars even are told not to drift away from their academic core business of publishing and teaching, why bother about external engagement? But another perspective is that, indeed, going into policy advising or public debate and opinionating is a professional obligation, does good to policy problem solving, augments the functioning of government, and as such, is rewarding, and helps developing academic competencies in new directions.

In all academic felds, those successfully completing a masters or a PhD program will enter the professional world, or be already employed during the time of their study. Some university based programs are even accredited and state protected as exclusive entry routes for a particular profession, such as in the felds of medicine, law, or engineering (Abbott, 1988). Scholars employed by universities also have such a professional environment and after some period of socialization most of them know all about the structure and culture setting the stage for their work. And anyone posing the question whether that work matters outside the university will need to take a better and more systematic look in order to fnd an answer.

In this book the team of authors takes such a systematic look. The focus is entirely on scholars in one academic discipline: political science. What advisory activities and roles do academic political scientists take? How do they see any work at the intersection of their university home basis and the social and political environment? How do they operate in the spheres where choices must be made about facts, evidence, normative beliefs, and advocacy? What are driving factors for such engagement, or conversely for abstention? And how do background variables such as gender, age, and status of employment affect the views and activities of political scientists? These are the central questions in this book. They are contained in a large scale cross-national project on the Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science (ProSEPS), with scholars from more than 30 countries involved and organized under auspices of the European COST Association in the period 2017–2020. The geography is Europe, from North to South, East to West and from traditional democracies to countries with more recent transitions towards it. This makes for diversity between countries. Also the label of political science as a discipline contains variation, including public administration and public policy analysis which in some countries have institutionalized in departments and teaching programs next to political science.

## 1.2 Genealogy and Diffusion of the Discipline of Political Science in Europe

The still expanding scholarly community of political science in Europe has seen several waves of institutionalization that stretch from the early nineteenth century on to the recent past years (Ilonszki & Roux, 2021). A genealogy of university chair positions in political science in Europe, with some tolerance for what entails such a chair position when looking over a long time period, takes us back to the early seventeenth century (1613 in the Netherlands, 1622 in Sweden). We must distinguish these initiatives from much earlier treatises in political philosophy by Plato, Aristotle and others, but still political science scholarship can be seen in a long term evolutionary perspective.

Historically, the institutionalization of academic political science corresponds to democratization and development of national political systems. After the initial pioneering work in the seventeenth to the nineteenth century, the frst main wave of institutionalization came after World War II and lasted until the late 1960s (ProSEPS WG1 Report, 2019; Ilonszki & Roux, 2021). Countries of this frst generation of establishing political science were not only in North-Western Europe, but also in the Mediterranean and the Eastern regions. The second wave came in the 1970s and 1980s and further into the 1990s with regime changes in Southern (transition away from authoritarianism) and Eastern Europe (transition away from communism). Earlier attempts in these regions were reinforced during this second wave. Institutionalization meant that political science became embedded in the formal higher education system, either incorporated in existing disciplines such as sociology, law etc., or by creating new university departments (ProSEPS WG 1 Report, 2019: 7; Ilonszki & Roux, 2021). Indicative of this staged expansion is that in no countries, large of small, political science after its investiture at the university was abolished later on. This however comes with a caveat: after the turn of the millennium and particularly in the 2010s, political science, and social sciences more generally have come under pressure in countries where a degeneration of democracy is visible and populist-authoritarian tendencies have forced their ways into the governance of academia. In Hungary, for example, the number of university students in political science went down in the 2010s, compared to steadily rising numbers in other countries (ProSEPS WG 1 Report, 2019: 11–12).

#### 6 A. TIMMERMANS AND M. BRANS

Another development important to the status and features of the political science community is internationalization. A majority of university based political scientists not only participates in international conferences, but also has experience with stays abroad for research or teaching purposes, and believes that knowledge exchange and creating a global community is highly valuable (ProSEPS WG 2 Report, 2019). By and large, political scientists working in EU member states make higher estimations of relevance and opportunities of cross-national academic traffc than those in other European countries (not least because of funding opportunities), but all testify that internationalization is important to their work and career advancement (ProSEPS WG 2 Report, 2019: 12).

These observations on ongoing internationalization may hide some differences between countries. And they do not include political science on other continents. In some countries, the degree and enthusiasm for internationalization may be more one-sided, in that political scientists as nationals 'fy' out much more often than that their foreign colleagues 'fy in'. And the generational element in institutionalization also signifes variation to date in the state of the art between countries on the European continent. None the less, consolidation of political science as a state or a process in most countries, rising numbers of university students, and a widening perspective on developments and opportunities in the scholarly communities abroad make that political science knowledge production is increasing. Knowledge dissemination not only happens via expanding routes of *open access*, but also may serve policy makers and all kinds of other actors with stakes in the political representation and the policy process. Political science knowledge transfer beyond the academic sphere itself can come in different forms and content, and it can be solicited or happen at the initiative of political scientists themselves. 'Serving' policy makers thus not always means advising and speaking the truth that aids them, it also can come as enlightenment, alarm, contestation, or fervent advocacy. What makes political science knowledge and advice special, and often delicate at the same time, is that recipients, targets of this knowledge transfer are themselves also the objects of research. Knowledge *of* the policy process and knowledge *for* the policy process are the two sides of the same coin in political science.

## 1.3 A Consolidated Academic Discipline, a Focus on External Engagement

The point of departure of this book not only is the somewhat rhetorical conference question about the relevance of science posed at the opening paragraph of this chapter. The 'does it matter'-question is essentially an evaluative question. But there are also other questions to be asked that can help us obtaining a better picture of the roles that political science scholars may play in the environment of their universities. Both viewpoints and actual behavior must be covered when considering the roles of political scientists in interaction with external stakeholders and the general public. The phrase 'speaking truth to power' (Wildavsky, 1979) is particularly relevant when that 'truth' relates to the organization of political power itself.

The orientation of political scientists teaching and investigating political phenomena, policy problems and the structures of government and administrative organization can vary from country to country, university to university, and also between scholars of different age, gender and status of their contract of employment. Some may be motivated intrinsically by normative viewpoints to engage, contributing to improvements on the objects of their research. Others may be called on for their expertise or stay at distance and speak *about* power rather than *to* or *with* it. National and international political science communities may organize themselves not only for scholarly events but also for addressing political and public issues in practice. They may set the discussion agenda, take a role as public intellectual, or become active backstage in delivering knowledge to policymakers. Goss (2017) for example describes how the Scholars Strategy Network (SSN) in the United States consisting of over 800 political scientists representing some 200 universities is reaching out to policymakers, civil society, and the media. This initiative refects major concerns among the scholarly community in the U.S. about their role in contemporary debates. At one location, the European University Institute in Florence has an extensive calendar of activities for connecting to policy makers across Europe (https://www.eui.eu/events?type=CONF,DGRP,ETS,EXTRA, FAD), and the transatlantic Council for European Studies launched a policy forum to help bringing academic knowledge to practice. Likewise, in several European countries political scientists aim to reach out, such as the National Association for Applied Political Science in the Netherlands. In short, knowledge messages of political scientists may be delivered via the outside or inside route, with emphasis on scientifc evidence or more on the normative beliefs they hold. These messages not only come at their own initiative; often they will be solicited by actors in the political and social environment seeking policy-relevant information, strategic advice, or external help for depoliticizing complex issues.

### 1.4 Academics Taking Advisory Roles

There is a rich literature on policy advising. It stretches from the organization of in-house expertise within government to think tanks, and from institutional and cultural analysis of policy advisory systems to specifc cases of boundary work between science and public policy. The institutional context in which views and advising or opinionating activities are developed by political scientists is the national or regional policy advisory system, usually defned as systems 'of interlocking actors, with a unique confguration in each sector and jurisdiction, who provide information, knowledge and recommendations for action to policy makers' (Craft & Howlett, 2012). Advice in such systems is seen as fowing from multiple sources, at times in intense competition with each other, with decision makers sitting in the middle of a complex horizontal web of advisory actors. Craft and Halligan (2020: 3) stress that such policy advisory systems are best seen as constellations with some coherence, but are not static and may vary within countries between sectors and jurisdictions.

If the policy advisory system is conceived as a spatial model containing the different domains or arenas of academia, government and public and media, scholars may sit somewhere in this model. Hence authors also refer to this as a locational model. The central perspective in the analysis in this book is the academic domain and the crossing of boundaries towards government and society. To be more complete, this locational model must also include the domain of business and commerce. In the literature, these domains also are referred to as 'sectors' or 'spheres' used for demarcation. In this book, we will speak of *arenas* to express that within them there is interaction and often also tension and confict. Scientifc felds may vary in proximity to these arenas of government, interest-groups, media, business and the general public, but also within one scholarly community variation will exist in the extent to which scholars move close to other arenas or stay at a distance. This possible variation within one scholarly community is precisely the empirical focus of this book. It builds on recent and more general work on the fow of knowledge done for example by Krick (2015) in her analysis of advisory committees of mixed composition, Makkar et al. (2015) on the multiple uses of knowledge, Drezner (2017) who speaks of an 'ideas industry', and Stein and Daniels (2017) who address the challenges for social scientists of going public.

Systematic attention to a specifc scientifc feld where scholars engage in matters external to their academic home basis is scarce. Lawyers and economists seem the most studied population. Miller calls lawyers the 'high priests' of American politics (1995), and Johnston has examined lawyers as advisors on the foundation of world order (2008). Likewise, Hamilton (1992) considers economists as policy advisers and Hirschman and Berman (2014), Christensen (2017) and Brunetti (2018) have analyzed how economists entered policymaking institutions and infuenced public policy. But even in these studies, the focus is not exclusively on scholars based at universities. Comparatively, political scientists are still less investigated. At the same time, given the object of study, the knowledge of political scientists always is close to the border of actual processes of policymaking and institutional design. In some countries, as in Germany in the years after 1945, political science served for establishing a democratic watchdog function. More generally, monitoring the state of democracy is a role that political scientists are expected to perform.

### 1.5 Advisory Roles and Empirical Data

The goal of this book is to empirically map the community of academic political scientists across European countries in their external activities related to the practice of policy process, the structures and functions of government, and the informed views and opinions of the general public. The empirical basis is a large scale survey conducted among some 2400 political scientists working at universities across countries in Europe. This is a representative sample of a total population of 12,500 academic political scientists in 39 countries. The survey designed and used for this empirical cross-country analysis is part of a more comprehensive survey research project on the Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science (ProSEPS) (COST Action CA15207), which also includes questions to academic political scientists on institutionalization of the discipline, their views and experiences with internationalization, and their activities and aims in media and public arenas. The basis of this book is a part of this broader survey project. The unique dataset constructed with this survey provides information on the extent of advisory activities and the types of such activity.

The country analyzes presented in this volume may have a frst time mirror function to the academic community of political scientists in Europe. For reasons of space and feasibility of a single book project, the number of countries is limited to twelve, with variation in geography and size, but including the two countries in Europe with the largest academic communities of political scientists: Germany and the United Kingdom. During the period of the survey, nine countries were EU member states and three were from outside the EU: Albania, Norway, and Turkey, while Brexit negotiations were going on. Some of the included countries have a small community of political scientists, as the country is small (Albania, Hungary) or as a proportion of the total population size (France, Italy, Turkey and to a lesser extent Spain). Other countries have a higher density of political scientists relative to the population size, such as in Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway.

The conceptual point of departure of this book is a distinction between types of advisory and engaging roles used to map patterns and characterize political scientists. These scholars may work as pure academics, be more or less active experts, give opinions and interpretation on demand or on their own initiative, or be genuine public intellectuals. These role types are based on the more general theory of boundary work between experts and policymakers, where the relationship and interaction can show differences in primacy and culture. In this book we present a conceptualization of distinct role types and also develop a simple model for measurement. By 'simple', we mean that we focus on a central dimension of advisory work that has analytical leverage and can help us in mapping the occurrence of role types within the academic community of political scientists, and compare countries with each other. Advice in reality is a multi-faceted phenomenon, and for this reason we also present and use additional dimensions of advising. These can help coloring the picture of engaging activities of political scientists within the policy advisory systems of countries. Thus in exploring the repertoire and encounters of advising political scientists we also look at channels of advice used, modes of communication, at recipients or targets, and at the topics of advice. These topics are not just about political representation or the functioning of policy-making institutions on which political scientists usually produce knowledge, but also on policy problems that feature on the political agenda—or for some reason are denied access. Advice and outreach towards public and media arenas may also vary in the extent to which this involves 'technical' evidence and information, or is more normatively committed. On all these dimensions, we generate empirical data to obtain a better understanding of advisory orientations and activities of political scientists in Europe.

One expectation of the external roles of political scientists may be that they vary according to national or subnational institutional variables, types of incentives in academic career development and more personal views and convictions on what university based political scientists should and should not engage with their political, social, and economic environment. Election experts for example may differ in their advisory repertoire from experts on administrative organization or experts of substantive policies such as migration, climate change, or public budgeting. The collection of countries included in this book makes it possible to consider such variations and commonalities and place the patterns observed in an institutional and cultural context. In presenting the survey and methods in a following chapter, we also consider the representativeness of the groups of respondents across the studied countries. The chapters in the frst part of the book present the conceptual framework and our joint strategy of data collection.

## 1.6 Looking Into Countries: A Systematic Approach

Part II of the book consists of twelve country chapters, each applying the conceptual and analytical framework. The countries represent a broad geographical range in Europe, in alphabetical order beginning with Albania and ending with the United Kingdom. The country chapters all present the main fndings, but also place emphasis on specifc fndings and factors that help understand the domestic views and behavior of political scientists on external advising and opinionating activities. Small countries have a different topography of political science compared to large ones the number of respondents completing the survey in countries in this study varies from below 10 to some 300. Informal and not clearly demarcated boundaries between academic and policy-making institutions contrast with a formal culture of distance and academic autonomy. As we will see in this book, in some countries the community of political scientists at universities includes institutionalized variation with separate departments of public administration or public policy co-existing next to departments that themselves are labeled political science. In order to provide the context of understanding the variation in roles in these parts of the discipline, each country chapter begins with a consideration of the domestic policy advisory system.

The fnal Part III of the book presents the overall pattern for all countries and a comparison of important features that help understand how and why countries vary, as well as how and why there are differences and similarities on factors such as age, gender and institutional incentives or disincentives for engagement by scholars. One point to address in the conclusive chapter is also how political scientists are placed in the overall domestic policy advisory system, and what this means for the state and direction of development of democracy and power. The boundary work between experts and policy makers is not just 'out there' but is inherently normative. The case of advisory roles of political scientists even underscores this normativity, given that power and the organization and allocation of it are their central object of study. If science more generally is used for problem solving and containment, or is exposed to politicization or even disqualifcation by populist tendencies, this certainly has implications for a social science like political science. Diagnoses of such developments will feed back to the perceptions and activities of political scientists, and impact on their orientation on professional career paths. Transversal themes of comparison, in turn, may inform routes for further research and education at universities. They may, and, as we will argue in this book, also should help in formulating the objectives of research and teaching programs in political science.

#### References


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## A Theoretical Perspective on the Roles of Political Scientists in Policy Advisory Systems

*Marleen Brans, Arco Timmermans, and Athanassios Gouglas*

## 2.1 Introduction

In this chapter we present a theoretical perspective for studying the policy advisory roles of political scientists. This is based on the concept of boundary work as developed originally by Gieryn (1983). Building on this and other conceptual work (Halligan, 1995; Weiss, 1979; Tenbensel, 2008),

A. Gouglas University of Essex, Essex, UK e-mail: A.Gouglas@exeter.ac.uk

M. Brans (\*)

Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: marleen.brans@kuleuven.be

A. Timmermans Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: a.timmermans@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

we propose a locational model of policy advisory systems, as a heuristic tool for mapping different actors within the policy advisory system of a country. The locational model consists of three spheres or *arenas*: the academic arena, the government arena, and the societal arena of external stakeholders and the wider public. Academic political scientists may be active at the intersections of the two arenas outside their own community. We also distinguish the main characteristics of policy advisory systems as the context of advisory relationships and activities.

In order to distinguish relationships and activities of individual academics engaging in advisory work, we construct a typology of advisory roles. This typology subsequently is used in a large pan-European survey among academic political scientists, of which the design will be presented in the next chapter. In Part II of this book, the contributors to this volume will analyse and discuss fndings for their specifc country and place these fndings in the context of the policy advisory system. Political scientists may be located at different intersections between academia and the arenas of government and external stakeholders. They also may show caution in engaging in boundary work with these arenas. Section 2.2 introduces the policy advisory system as a context of orientation and activities of political scientists. The transfer of knowledge and advice within this policy advisory system is conceptualized in Sect. 2.3, and on this basis a typology of four different roles is presented in Sect. 2.4.

#### 2.2 Policy Advisory Systems

To analyse and compare the advisory role of political scientists in policy making, it is necessary to understand what advice actually is, its nature and content, what are the underlying aspirations, aims and incentives for engaging in advising, and, as a context, which are the main properties of the policy advisory system in a country. While these elements of policy advising have not all been brought together in one theoretical or analytical framework, there are advances made in the literature that can help build such a comprehensive framework.

One body of knowledge focuses on 'policy advisory systems'. As Hustedt and Veit (2017) point out, the concept of 'policy advisory system' was frst coined by Seymour-Ure (1987) and further developed by Halligan (1995) as an "interlocking set of advisory actors with a particular confguration that provides information, knowledge and recommendations for action to policymakers" (Halligan, 1995; Craft & Howlett, 2012). Advice in such systems fows from multiple sources, at times in intense competition with each other, with decision makers sitting in the middle of a complex web of advisory actors. Subsequent research on policy advice has focused attention on both the policy advisory system as a unit of analysis and on the activities of various actors involved in advising. Research focusing on actors shows growing attention to the specifc activities they undertake, but most importantly looks at what determines the infuence of advising actors within policy advisory systems (Colebatch et al., 2010; Craft & Howlett, 2012). According to the starting hypothesis, infuence in such systems is seen primarily as a combination of proximity to the policy maker and control of the advice delivered (Halligan, 1995). Increasingly it is also seen as contingent on the content of advice. What really matters in this perspective is not only location but primarily whether advice is 'cold', long term and anticipatory, or 'hot', short term and reactive (Craft & Howlett, 2012). Furthermore, the idea is that it matters whether or not advice produces problem-solving statements (Hassenteufel & Zittoun, 2017) suited to the views of policy makers on policy problems and solutions through the different stages of the policy cycle. Finally, the confguration of actors within the system itself is considered important.

Though research on this is still limited (Bossens et al., 2014), it appears that the confguration of actors in policy advisory systems varies between different institutional, political and epistemological traditions. Compared to other jurisdictions, Westminster policy advisory systems are seen to share a traditionally strong advisory role for the civil service, the expert composition of advisory bodies, and more receptiveness to management consultancy frms and think tank advocacy (Brans et al., 2017: 4–5). Some continental European countries as for instance the Netherlands may have come to share some of these features. Yet, the confguration of actors in the policy advisory systems in continental European countries generally displays more complex advisory relations, such as for instance in consensus style advisory bodies with mixed memberships of academics and representatives from civil society organizations. Also, management consultancy frms are seen to play a smaller role in advising governments, and think tanks are still an emerging discursive force in continental Europe (Ibid.). In some countries, especially of the Napoleonic administrative tradition, the policy advisory system is 'colonized' (Gouglas, 2018: 98) by ministerial cabinets that act as 'shadow administrations' (Brans & Steen, 2007: 67). The work by Craft and Wilder (2017) on policy advisory networks within policy advisory systems is instructive to capture both differences between and within advisory systems. One example of this is variations of neo-corporatist advisory arrangements where civil society actors are prominent in advising government with or without the involvement of academics (Pattyn et al., 2019).

Another body of literature is on knowledge utilization. This literature originally had a narrower focus on relevant actors, in that it deals mainly with the science–policy-making nexus, and takes academic research as one source of advice in policy making. As Gieryn (1983) argued, demarcating science (research utilization) from non-science (more general knowledge utilization) is often diffcult, and this demarcation and the 'boundary work between the two sides is a central part of these processes. This literature departed from a linear and direct model of knowledge utilization for policy making and moved towards the identifcation of different forms of knowledge utilization, including indirect and also symbolic ones (Weiss, 1979; for an overview see Blum & Brans, 2017). The utilization of policy relevant information is seen as "a complex phenomenon involving environmental, organisational, and attitudinal components as well as the specifc characteristics of information" (Oh, 1997: 6).

Inspired by the policy advisory system literature and extended to input from knowledge utilization research, Fig. 2.1 presents a revised locational model (Blum & Brans, 2017) as a heuristic tool for studying variations in the advisory positions of academics. The model is composed of three arenas in which policy advisory actors are located and where policy advice is produced and fows towards other actors: the government arena, the academic arena, and the societal arena, in the latter of which also the wider public is located.

First, the three spheres are conceived as arenas, not as communities. The concept of arenas expresses that the production and consumption of policy advice is a process involving both 'puzzling' and 'powering' (Heclo, 1978). Earlier conceptualizations of policy advisory systems suggested a congruent relationship between advisory actors, by stating that sets of actors were interlocked. The concept of arenas as places where advisory actors may compete with each other and where advisory content may get contested serves not only to capture ideological and interest-based discordance within government and society; contestability is also more true to the nature of academic competition for claims to the truth.

Second, building on studies of knowledge utilization, the model is tweaked to study the advisory roles of academics, who have been largely

**Fig. 2.1** Locational model of the policy advisory system. (*Source*: Adapted from Blum and Brans et al. (2017); *Note*: In its original conception the arenas were termed 'internal government arena', 'external academic arena', and 'external lay arena')

ignored in the literature on policy advisory systems, as for instance in Halligan's seminal article (1995) and in his work with Craft (Craft & Halligan, 2020). The arrows indicate activity, noting that advisers working from the academic arena also have their basis of employment in it. This is to distinguish academics as advisers from all advisers in other arenas who have an academic degree but their actual employment within government or in any (semi)professional organization or group elsewhere. While this model may suggest that the academic arena is very prominent in volume and numbers, even equal in size to the other two arenas, this is done merely for stylistic reasons when visualizing the three arenas. In this model, within the government arena, the civil service is not the central actor, even though it is still both a producer and receiver of policy advice. Likewise, in the societal arena, in many professional organizations, knowledge and advice are both supplied and demanded. This may particularly be the case when institutionalized arrangements of governance exist that involve both government and public or semipublic organizations in policy making, as in (neo-)corporatist systems. Thus, the model can help to identify and pin down where, how, and why academic advisory activity occurs and is delivered in the other two arenas.

Third, the Venn diagram design of the model displays intersections of arenas as (often institutionalized) spaces for boundary work (Gieryn, 1983), in which advisory actors from two or more arenas produce advice that is meaningful to themselves and to actors in other arenas. The presentation permits us to conceive of differences between advisory locations where academics exchange knowledge and policy relevant information with government actors only, and other places where academics may be less involved or even excluded from advisory exchanges, such as in interestbased advisory bodies to government.

The locational model thus helps to characterize and analyse the policy advisory system of countries as a "confguration of advisory actors who exchange knowledge, information and recommendations for policymaking". In such a model, it can be indicated how access from advisory actors to the political-administrative and public spheres is institutionalized, to what degree interactions are channelled through structural interfaces linking research to governmental policy making. 'Locational' thus refers to the more or less structural positions and linkages of advising actors in the different arenas of the political-administrative-social system. While their home basis is the university, academics can and do enter the other locations where knowledge and advice is produced and used. This model enables analysts to compare and show similarities and differences between the policy advisory systems of countries. For the purpose of this book, it provides analytical leverage for presenting the positions of political scientists in the national advisory system, and considering for example the specifc population density of political scientists within it compared to other kinds of actors (and academic disciplines) in advisory roles. It can help show how in some countries political scientists remain at a distance from other actors in the policy process, while in other countries the government and societal arenas are generally more open and accessible to input from political scientists working in academia. In some cases we fnd that political scientists populate the academic arena only and rarely venture into other arenas. In other cases, political scientists take up positions more numerously and structurally in other arenas, or are active at the intersections such as in think tanks or in policy advisory bodies and applied research institutes. They may even team up with consultants for contracted advisory work. Still in other cases, political scientists may stay away from civil society actors and focus their engagements mostly on political and administrative actors. Below, we deal with this variation when presenting different advisory roles.

Although it offers a useful start to map advisory actors and the locations for advisory exchange, the model is still a simplifcation. A policy advisory system is not static, certainly not in times when new actors make their way to the public arena, and knowledge and facts sometimes are discredited. The model offers a structural perspective of locating actors, but as is done here by the arrows drawn from the academic arena, the essence of it in practice is the dynamics taking place across the arenas. Moreover, the arenas and dynamics between them need not—and often are not—limited to the domestic level. As many processes in the social and economic reality, also policy making shows globalization—with tighter interlinkages between actors in governance, and also because policy problems became globalized (Pal, 2020).

In short, the reality of a domestic policy advisory system is dynamic, evolves, and is exposed to (or inviting) processes of internationalization of knowledge fows. For different purposes, the locational model can be adapted to include such advisory actors as in-house think tanks of international organizations such as the OECD, UN, or WHO, the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission or the European Parliament's Research Services, as well as international NGOs and think tanks operating at the global stage. Another use with wider geographical scope of the locational model would be to track and trace advisory activities of international academics whose policy relevant engagement travels far beyond the borders of the domestic policy advisory system of the country where their university is based. Such analysis could show an outside—transnational route towards the domestic advisory scene, where academic advice frst reaches international organizations or NGOs and then trickles down to national arenas (Pal, 2020). One factor that may reinforce this territorial boundary crossing in policy advice is the internationalization of the scientifc community itself. Political scientists have a strong international academic orientation.

While such dynamic forces are at work, the policy advisory system in any country refects the broader and deeper political-administrative social system within that country. At the macro level, a policy advisory system can, as the overall domestic system, be more (neo-)corporatist or pluralistic, show features of consensus or adversarial democracy, display moderate or intense partisan competition, have centralized or centralizing features, or rather tendencies of decentralization. Civic epistemologies, defned by Jasanoff (2011) as "institutionalized practices by which members of a given society test and deploy knowledge claims used as a basis for making collective choices" will also have explanatory power. These affect cultures of knowledge utilization and uptake, and will favour or disfavour instrumental rationality over political rationality. At the meso level, sectoral advisory systems are infuenced by policy advisory styles (Aubin & Brans, 2021), based on standard operating procedures for garnering policy advice within specifc sectors. Policy advisory styles as they are rooted in a system may be open or closed to advisory input from non-governmental actors, or display short term reactive approaches to problem solving or be oriented on a long term and be more anticipatory. When looking at the specifc advisory roles of academics, their place and activities within the advisory system will depend also on the self-understanding of disciplines and subdisciplines, more or less mediated by incentives and micro-level differences in motivations.

Two trends mentioned in the literature are externalization and politicization. While externalization as a concept used in the recent literature carries some bias as it takes the Westminster perspective of a prominent and neutral advisory role of the civil service as its point of departure (Hustedt & Veit, 2017), it is a phenomenon visible in different types of political systems. Research done specifcally on Westminster systems shows that, against the backdrop of declining civil service policy capacity, new advisory actors have come to populate advisory systems. Coupled with marketization, the externalization of policy advice has created fertile grounds for commercial consultant companies, particularly in countries such as the UK, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia (Saint-Martin, 2017). Furthermore, analysts see an entrenchment of partisan advisers in interfaces between ministers and their traditionally neutral civil servants (Diamond, 2020; Shaw & Eichbaum, 2018). But also in consensus style democracies and variations of neo-corporatist systems, advice since long is produced by more external to government organizations, or in interfaces between government and civil society actors, with an involvement of interest-based organizations with representational monopolies in specifc policy sectors. In such systems, the externalization trend is more towards a pluralistic advisory landscape in which new interest and advocacy groups enter the arena. Advice accordingly has become more competitive; regularly the value of academic expertise is contested against the value of socalled 'experience-based expertise', or lay expertise, or even against the 'wisdom of crowds' (Surrowiecki, 2004, quoted in Bekkers, 2014: 239).

Politicization is nothing new in countries where political advisers are since long frmly entrenched in ministerial offces that gatekeep policy advice from arenas internal and external to the government, thus maintaining the democratic chain of delegation. But as a contemporary trend, politicization is understood as a negative trend, signifying on the one hand the political instrumentalization of academic advice such as policy-based evidence-making (Straßheim & Kettunen, 2014) and on the other hand 'fact-free policy-making' (Bekkers, 2014). Against this trend, but occurring more in professional, specialized and less public settings, is the rise of evidence-based policy-making. Here the call is actually resonating the scientifcation of politics which came in earlier decades with the growth of government to understand and address complex problems entering the agenda (Weingart, 1999). In the face of these trends of externalization, pluralization, and politicization, policy making thus is at best scienceinformed, with academic evidence as one source of advice next to experience-based practices and political judgement and opportunity that may take strong priority over knowledge and truth. With such a dynamic and changing context of advisory work, and forces that may also infringe on the nature of scientifc advice itself, this is a point to consider more in depth the meaning of policy advice.

#### 2.3 What Is Policy Advice?

Policy advising can be conceptualized as a communication process with four key elements: sender, message, channel, and receiver (Bossens et al., 2014: 3). Thus conceived, there are many types of senders, there also is a range of different receivers, and the message and channel can vary between institutional contexts, policy domains, and types of issue. Academics may take a role of sender of advice, but they are only one type of advisory actor within the policy advisory system. And political scientists are one group of academics that may engage in advisory activities or those whose work may have infuence on policy making. The message is the policy advice itself, with specifc content and form, and the channel pertains to publication and convocation modes. The recipients of policy advice are policymakers and other advisory actors in different arenas and intersections of arenas.

#### *2.3.1 Scope of Policy Advice*

Policy advice is about information that is considered policy relevant (Peters & Barker, 1993). Depending on how much this information is processed by the sender, and on the interaction between the sender and receiver, this information is structured and presented more or less fully as advice about choice options for policymakers. Hence advice is usually described 'as aiming to support policy-makers' decision making by analysing policy problems and proposing solutions" (Halligan, 1998: 1686; Veselý 2017: 141). For this reason, policy advice often is related to the policy process, and largely, to policy formulation with an emphasis on the analysis of problems and the choice of feasible and acceptable solutions to these problems. Yet, policy advice not necessarily always provides a linkage or narrative between a problem and its solution: "Some advice defnes a problem; some recommends a course of action to solve it" (Althaus, 2013: 5; quoted in Aubin & Brans, 2021).While some advice evaluates ongoing policy piloting or considers past policies, other advice may be about setting the agenda or seek to demonstrate or downplay the urgency of a problem. Policy advice thus is not limited to the policy formulation and design stage. And importantly, advice can also refer to structures, procedures and rules, and even cultures of political and administrative organizations or the design of key elements of a political system, in what Sartori (1994) calls constitutional engineering. Specifcally in political science, the object of advice may be what in other felds of social science (and moving also into the private sector) is called organization design (Mintzberg, 1983).

It can be hard to draw a clear line between a piece of advice and any type and portion of information that serves as input brought by knowledge producers into the policy process. Neither is advice, even when sent by researchers, always backed by scientifc expertise: "Some advice is 'expert' expertise; most is not" (Althaus, 2013: 5). Advice often also has an experiential element, and much of what advisers do also can be driven by other motivations and beliefs. Further, a piece of advice can come in many formats. Policy advice be delivered as written statements in a research report, but it also can be a simple (but effective) text message, a communication in the social media, or a sentence spoken out in a conversation (Jones, 2003: 90). For this reason of variety in form, policy advice should not be defned by its form but by its function to give statements, proposals, arguments, frames and evidence that can contribute to solving problems (or to coping with them) at any stage of the policy cycle.

#### *2.3.2 Content of Advice*

Given the essential characteristics of the function of advice, the content can vary even more than the form. This is because, naturally, content of advice is specifc to the matter or issue. With this endless variation in empirical content, it is useful to categorize content according to the type of knowledge contained in it. Drawing on Tenbensel's (2008) Aristotlebased typology of knowledge, we distinguish between three types of advice: (a) scientifc advice (*episteme*) is about 'what is objectively true', (b) experiential advice (*techne*) is about what works in practice, and (c) practical value rationality (*phronesis*) is about what must be done (see also Flyvbjerg, 2001). These three types may include knowledge statements about facts, causal statements, predictive information, normative directions, evaluation of options, as well as technical and tactical advice (Hassenteufel & Zittoun, 2017). With this range, advice produced by academics need not be limited to factual, causal, evaluative, and predictive knowledge statements, or in Tenbensel's terminology, *episteme*. It also can be technical (*techne*, 'what works') or normative (*phronesis*, 'what must be done'). This may lead to different types of advice, such as the provision of data and facts, analysis and explanations of causes and consequences of policy problems, evaluation of existing policies and functioning of institutions, giving recommendations on alternatives, forecasting and polling, and presenting value judgements and normative arguments.

This repertoire of advisory engagement can apply to any policy topic on the agenda. Advice can follow the political or public agenda, but the thrust of advice is also that it contributes to agenda setting (Timmermans & Scholten, 2006). The notion of 'alarmed discovery' of an issue by scientists presented by Downs (1972) in his model of the issue attention cycle speaks to this effect. And it also is contained in the 'enlightenment' function of knowledge in Wittrock's (1991) models of interaction between social knowledge and public policy. As the design and evaluation of public policy (Lynn, 1981; Hall, 1993; Fischer, 1995), policy advice may happen at different levels, from the fundaments of a programme and its underlying paradigm to instrumental and operational aspects. Whatever is the causal direction between topics of advice and the policy agenda, the analysis of agenda setting over time shows clear differences in salience of policy topics and their sensitivity to drastic change. Comparative work on national executive agendas for example reveals that even despite wide differences between political systems, some topics such as the economy, international relations and the structure and operation of government often press heavily on the national political agenda, conditioning the space for topics such as the environment, migration, technology and education (Jennings et al., 2011). This conditionality of space for topics on the policy agenda also applies to the relationship between countries and international or supranational institutions, such as the EU (Breeman & Timmermans, 2019). In short, the distribution of attention to topics in policy advising mostly is uneven, and large shifts can occur between topics over time.

#### *2.3.3 Channels of Advice*

While the content of advice may be its most distinguishing feature, it is also important to consider the channels through which advice is expressed and delivered. Lindquist (1990) suggests four main ways of communicating advice, building on distinctions in the direct or indirect nature of publication activities and convocation (or interaction) activities. He mentions (a) direct convocation activities, where advising actors discuss advice directly with the user, (b) indirect convocation activities, where the advice is transmitted indirectly through symposia or workshops, (c) direct publication activities such as memos and reports disseminated directly to the user, and (d) indirect publication activities, where advice is disseminated in intermediary bodies with the aim of infuencing policy makers. To the traditional convocation activities social media may be added as a new and infuential channel of communication. Given exposure levels, social media channels also are a new area of theoretical and empirical investigation.

Existing research indicates that it matters whether the nature of exchange is formal or informal (commissioned research, positions on advisory bodies or committee of inquiry, invitations to parliamentary committees versus informal networking, telephone calls). Further, it may be useful to distinguish between what Van Egmond et al. (2011) call 'front-stage presentation' and 'background processes'. While on the front-stage, academic policy advice may be expressed as objective and instrumental, in the background scientists and policy makers may be interacting informally, even about political-strategic issues.

Defning policy advising as an exchange of knowledge, information and recommendations with policy makers and other stakeholders in the policy process implies a broad view on recipients of policy advice. Early conceptualizations of policy advisory systems placed civil servants at the receiving end of policy advice. While civil servants still are important recipients of academic advice, other recipients must be included, as they may be strongly involved or even be more important. Recipients of advice containing all kinds of knowledge statements are actors within specifc arenas, and they also can be actors at the intersection of arenas: executive politicians, legislators, partisan advisers, civil servants, political parties, advisory bodies, think tanks, organizations with interests from the private, corporate sector, non-proft organizations, NGOs, civil society organizations, citizen groups, as well as international organizations. While the existing policy advisory system literature often focuses exclusively on the national level, it is useful to distinguish advisory activities also at the subnational and international or supranational level of governance.

## 2.4 Advisory Roles of Academic Political Scientists

The locational model is an analytical aid to capture a policy advisory system and place specifc types of advising actors within it. In this book we focus entirely on political scientists as a community of academics. While advisers often have an academic background, those based at a university and thus belonging to a scholarly community must be distinguished from all other advisers with an academic degree but based in a different type of organization. It may be too drastic to call those other advisers professionals and academics amateurs in advising, but a key element is the locus of employment and primary affliation. And when focusing on a scholarly community such as political scientists, the advisory roles seen and performed by them can vary.

The contributors to this volume together developed a typology of advisory roles, which is applied to the population of political scientists identifed in the ProSEPS project. For this typology, we build on the relevant conceptual literature on scientists' policy roles. Pielke (2007) identifed four types: the 'pure scientist', 'the science arbiter', the 'issue advocate', and the 'honest broker of policy alternatives'. The 'pure scientist' may share broad scientifc knowledge and interpretations with policy makers, but takes no interest in the decision-making process. 'Science arbiters' provide consultancy services and stand by to answer factual questions, but do not tell decision makers what choices they should make. By contrast, 'issue advocates' lobby with decision makers for one alternative over others—they thus have more substantive stakes themselves. Finally, 'honest brokers of policy alternatives' supply comprehensive information about alternative choices for enabling decision makers to make their choices on better, evidence-based grounds. Another classifcation is suggested by Head (2015), who mentions four different groups of policy interested academics. The largest group consists of mainstream academics who, much like Pielke's pure scientists, if engaged, deliver broad interpretations and commentaries on policy and governance trends, but who generally stay at distance from practitioners. The second group is labelled expertcritics. They specialize in evidence-informed critiques of government policies in a particular policy sector. A third and small group—we may call them consultants—are those available for applied research services (such as programme evaluation) and technical advice (such as econometric modelling). Finally, academics may take secondments into advisory roles within public agencies or ministerial offces, and thereby become 'insiders' through their part-time roles in giving advice on policy options that meet the current needs of decision makers.

The various roles presented in the literature are a good starting point, but they lack elaboration. While the mainstream academic and the insider are useful and mutually exclusive types, the lines between the other types are harder to draw. Moreover, the criteria behind the construction of these types are not clear. What makes the difference? Is it the level of engagement, the type of advice or perhaps the specifc location in the advisory system? Moreover, in the existing classifcations, the pure and mainstream academic types do engage in an exchange of some kind of another, even when not very committing. For empirical research, we need one type that completely refrains from interaction with policy makers, and engages exclusively with colleagues within the scholarly community. If this group of scholars is visible professionally outside the academic arena at all, it will be in coverage of their research work by media taking an interest in their fndings. In many countries, demonstrating relevance and impact potential after all also has become a criterion for fundamental scientifc research funding (see Bandola-Gill et al., 2021).

For this reason, we distinguish four possible and generic roles that political scientists as a category of scholars may take. These are roles distinguished on the two most central dimensions of advising: (1) the type of advisory activity with its underlying knowledge orientation on *episteme*, *techne* or *phronesis* (Tenbensel, 2008), and (2) the frequency (or intensity) of this activity. They may co-vary, but they also may appear in different combinations. The two central dimensions we identify represent a chosen orientation and repertoire of activities in the policy advisory system of a country. We distinguish the *pure academic*, the *expert*, the *opinionating scholar*, and the *public intellectual*. Figure 2.2 presents these roles and their properties.

The pure academic is mostly dealing with fundamental science and does not engage with advice giving activities. If exposure happens, it is through media interest in the work of a scholar. But this exposure is not directly related to policy or institutional design for which advice is solicited or offered. It will more usually be placed as an item in the science sections or pages of newspapers, or be taken up when a major issue is displayed in the media and in its portrayal there is journalistic interest in scientifc evidence for any claims made by stakeholders and policy entrepreneurs. Such media coverage is not frequent for most pure academics, and the content typically is limited to scientifc expertise.

**Fig. 2.2** A two-dimensional model of advisory roles. (*Source*: Author)

A next step towards disclosure of knowledge and delivery would signify a scholar becomes an expert adviser, which is the second main type. The expert offers advice on a variable basis, formally and usually when requested by a recipient, most often one more directly involved in policy making. While we do not assume a very specifc dedication here, expert advice will be provided to policy makers in the administration, committees, think tanks, and the content usually is based on empirical or applied research. Thus the knowledge types open up, involving *techne*, and consider what may work in practice. *Episteme* still underlies the evidence basis for the expert. As with pure academics, experts also may be visible in media and public arenas, and whenever this happens there is a stronger and more explicit connection made by the political scientist between a problem, what causes it and what ways appear for solving it. The expert role also may include interpretative work on demand in the media.

In our conceptualization and later on in this book when measuring the advisory role types, we consider advisory work and media exposure different spheres of activity. To some extent, media coverage of knowledge produced by academic political scientists may be related to the repertoire used for advising, but they also can appear separately. Hence media exposure as such is not included in the theoretically informed two-dimensional model of advisory roles. Whether busy advisory work of a scholar also comes often via media channels is an empirical question. This also depends on the media system (and the public sphere) of the country itself, and its place in relation to government and society. Expert advice usually will come in research papers, memos, reports, and so on. As with media exposure, we present our model of advisory types with no expectations on the channels and formats of delivery. They may be determined by strategy and technology as much as by the institutional set-up of policy advising.

The opinionating scholar displays a different orientation, with a stronger emphasis on interpretations, own viewpoints and normative positions next to facts as such. The opinionating scholar also takes the initiative for forwarding the advice or viewpoint. A strong opinionator has a high frequency and intensity of opinion giving. This may involve strong advocacy about a problem or solution, a way to go or conversely a disadvice brought with fervour. But opinionating scholars mostly are not pundits. The opinionating scholar is not per se more involved in advising compared to the expert, nor necessarily always more passionate about it, but is oriented more on the *phronesis* type of knowledge, about what should or should not be done. The role type includes cases where there is less deep engagement. It is the orientation and manifest activity of opinionating that distinguishes this role from a pure academic and an expert. While also the opinionating scholar has, as an academic, a basis in *episteme*, scientifc knowledge often is not upfront in the opinionating activities.

Other dimensions of advising and engagement must be explored in how they become visible with the opinionating scholar. The various types of media are likely to be prominent in this role, and political science opinions may be delivered more often there than behind the closed doors of an advisory body. So the opinionator may use direct convocation activities, talk directly to targets or pursue a strategy of publishing op-ed articles, columns, blogs, and so on. We do not want to argue a priori that there are exclusive relationships between the opinionating role type and the exact channels, formal or informal ways and targets of this kind of activity. An expressive political scientist hired part time as a devil's advocate by the board of a government ministry to deliver strong viewpoints may be considered an opinionating scholar.

The fourth type of advising role is the public intellectual. This is a type, likely to be more exceptional to fnd, with a profle like a hybrid between the expert and the opinionator, and acting on both fronts with higher frequency. The public intellectual thus has the broadest combined repertoire of advisory and advocacy activities. With the university home basis and all related work as the epistemic fundament of the public intellectual, she or he may be also an opinion leader or a celebrated writer with a broader audience than colleagues who publish their fndings only in peer reviewed journals. A true public intellectual political scientist may have one or more national or international bestsellers. In terms of name and fame, public intellectuals may be the ones at the top of the pyramid of engagement. They dispose of the skills and access points to deliver authoritative advice and opinions on political matters, and this is visible in the combination of types of activity developed with considerable frequency. Compared to very active experts or opinionating scholars, a public intellectual may not display the same intensity as either of these other roles types, but she or he generates external work in the two directions together more than any other type.

For using the typology of advisory roles of political scientists, it is crucial that the analyst takes a neutral stance towards any of the roles. This of course is generally important when linking theory and concepts to empirical inquiry, but it is particularly relevant here because the research project presented in this book is introspective: an international group of political scientists collaborating within the ProSEPS project analyses the policy advisory viewpoints and activities of their own peers in the scientifc community. Thus, there is no normative point of departure in the study of advisory activities of political scientists in which one type would be preferred. This empirical study does not employ implicit or explicit evaluative standards of 'good' advice, 'appropriate channels' or 'justifed positions and content', or conversely points to activities and content that bring political scientists into hazard or confict of interest. Thus, more advisory activities are not a norm set against fewer or no such activities. The analysis focuses on the different roles and role perceptions of political scientists as they appear from the results of a large scale survey. They refect viewpoints and behaviours reported by the respondents in the survey. Also a 'pure academic' has a role, while not in a direct entrepreneurial and politically or publicly serviceable way, but by more generally providing validated knowledge to the system at large rather than to any specifc recipient or user. In Sweden and Germany for example, this autonomous, independent position is an important norm within the academic institutional arena. Also the often-made distinction between applied and fundamental knowledge does not separate utilized from non-utilized knowledge. Fundamental knowledge may be used, even if indirectly. Conversely, applied knowledge may remain unutilized, even when targeted to a specifc user and or when a recipient solicited the advice in order to deal with an imminent problem.

Figure 2.3 places the four ideal types according to the arena in which they typically occur. Clearly, the public intellectual is the type mostly working across the boundaries of arenas—this type is a typical active boundary worker. The pure academic is the type least crossing boundaries. The academic arena not only is the home basis but also the 'comfort zone' of this type of political scientist. This model is locational and simplifed, and it must be appreciated that, as argued above, pure academics may receive media coverage for their work, experts also may be orientated in part on the media and public arena, and opinionating scholars sometimes may be active within politics and the administration. Thus, the locations of the ideal types are not fully exclusive. When pure academics are visible in the media, however, they do not profle as advisers. Hence their remit is the academic arena.

The extent to which the four ideal role types occur is the central point of attention in the empirical analysis. The more or less institutionalized policy advisory system may facilitate one type more than another. Tenbensel (2008: 11) argues that knowledge orientations on *episteme*, *techne*, or

**Fig. 2.3** Role types in the policy advisory system: political scientists as boundary workers. (*Source*: Author)

*phronesis* are likely to depend on the policy-making context, with emphasis either on hierarchy or on market forces or networked structures. Such variation may be observable between policy domains and particularly between countries, and it will become visible also in the types of advisory activities (or abstention from them). The policy advisory system itself also may be challenged and be in a process of alteration or even transition to which, in their various roles, political scientists may or may not contribute. Also the basic mode of governance within countries is not static. Hierarchies move to networked structures or to mechanisms of the market, or vice versa. Further, there are institutional factors within the university and within departments that may induce or impede political scientists to assume active roles bringing them into arenas outside academia. Finally, at the level of the individual political science scholar, normative views also may drive to advisory engagement or lead to abstention. For some, it is the way towards relevance and impact, but for others it may be a no-go area.

In moving to empirical and comparative analysis of advisory roles in the next chapters, it is important to appreciate that this is done on the basis of the simple two-dimensional model of advising for categorizing political scientists. But as we saw, there are more dimensions of advice relating to channels, recipients, and subject matter. These are also analysed, supplementary to the categorization itself. The country chapters all employ this wide perspective on advising, while applying the simple model for comparative purposes. Further, to deepen the view on external roles played by political scientists, their individual characteristics are considered. Advisory role types not only may vary along the orientations on types of knowledge and frequency of engagement. They also may to a smaller or larger extent co-vary with gender, age, employment status, feld of specialization and experience in practice oriented affliations prior or during their academic appointment. In the fnal chapter of this book, we will draw together the main fndings on these dimensions of advising and revisit the simple model. In this way, it is possible to progress from a theory-informed starting point to empirical comparative analysis and then back to the implications for theorizing on advisory roles of academics within the political science community.

#### 2.5 Conclusion

This chapter presented the context in which academics as one—and special—group of policy advisers may take different roles towards policy makers and other stakeholders in the policy process. The institutional context in which interactions between academics and actors involved in the policy process happen is the policy advisory system. Thus far, the literature on policy advisory systems puts emphasis on institutional structures and design, and looks at trends at the macro level that may produce the fow of advice or alter it and bring new players into the arenas. Work on a specifc group of advisers is more scare and focuses mostly on lawyers and economists (Christensen, 2015). Even rarer is analysis of academics and how they may perceive and take up advisory roles.

The perspective on policy advisory activities taken in this chapter and book is developed from the supply side. It looks at the way in which academics as one group of knowledge and information providers may see, behave, and experience incentives or impediments to taking an advisory role. We moved on to distinguishing four ideal typical roles of political scientists—generic ideal types based on a combination of concepts from the existing literature, with an empirical focus on political scientists. We have set a point of departure for empirically investigating advisory roles by constructing a simple two-dimensional model of advisory engagement. The idea here is that different orientations and activities, with their underlying knowledge types involved, must be linked to the frequency of activities in order to distinguish and identify the role types in practice.

A special feature of the scholarly community of political science is that the actors central in its object of study—politics and the policy process also are the main recipient of advice. This gives Wildavksy's adagium 'speaking truth to power (1979)' a special meaning. In this book, the focus is entirely on the advisory part of the story. Whether 'power' takes and accepts this 'truth', uses it selectively or ignores it, is not part of our study. The extent to which knowledge or normative statements of political scientists get coupled to policy-making statements on what constitutes a policy problem, on how it should be solved, and in what possible direction (Blum, 2018) is a subject of study in its own right. Advice uptake is by no means a straightforward process, and however factual or scientifc knowledge statements maybe, the very process of coupling these statements to policy action may range from instrumental use, to illumination and enlightenment to symbolic and political uses (Weiss, 1979; Head, 2017). For these reasons, we must be cautious with the distinction between supply and demand for advice, as political science advice may not always be solicited. While the role type of expert may signify demand, the role type of opinionating also may involve initiative or even advocacy from the side of political scientists. The distinction sender-receiver better captures the role situations in advising.

The contribution we make with this book and the perspective presented in this chapter directs the focus to a category of advisers, academic political scientists, which was not studied before in a systematic comparative way. We move on to presenting the way in which the simple two-dimensional model of advisory roles can be operationalized and measured in empirical research. Other dimensions of advisory work are included to produce a truly comprehensive view on advising routes and activities of political scientists. The design and criteria used for empirically mapping and characterizing advising roles of political scientists are the central theme of the next chapter. The contributors to the country chapters in Part II will apply the indicators and criteria and place advisory roles in their domestic context of the academic and policy advisory systems. In the fnal chapter we revisit the ideal types on the basis of country fndings and overall patterns of advising.

#### References


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## Strategy of Data Collection and Analysis for Comparing Policy Advisory Roles

*Marleen Brans, Arco Timmermans, and José Real-Dato*

### 3.1 Introduction

Given the mostly unknown status of the professional viewpoints and behavioral repertoire of political scientists outside their university home basis, the best approach to acquire a better understanding is a systematic empirical analysis across countries. In this chapter we present the structure and questions included in a large scale survey to assess whether, how and why political scientists take up advisory roles. Empirically measuring attitudes and behavior with regard to the different possible roles of academics in their political and social environment not only requires good coverage of the types of activities and push or pull factors related to them, but also that relevant and valid indicators are used. Our strategy of data collection

M. Brans (\*)

A. Timmermans Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

J. Real-Dato University of Almería, Almería, Spain

© The Author(s) 2022 41 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_3

Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: marleen.brans@kuleuven.be

and analysis in this comparative project builds directly on the conceptualization of policy advisory systems and the boundary work roles performed by academic political scientists.

Linking theoretical elegance and empirical relevance is crucial for coming to grips with a reality we want to assess and for drawing lessons about the theoretical lens used. The focus taken in this book is on how political scientists as a category of academics move in the policy advisory system. This is an empirical enterprise not undertaken thus far within political science as a discipline. In other felds such as economics and law, engagement of academics has received some attention, but by and large, the boundary work between scholars based at universities and policy makers is still a mostly unknown territory in comparative research. The typology of advisory roles developed here may apply to other scientifc felds, not only in the social sciences, but also in other disciplines for which one central question is tabled: do academics engage in policy advisory work? In this chapter, we turn the simple model of advisory roles into measurement in order to enable empirical investigation of the occurrence, reasons, and various forms and content of advising.

In Sect. 3.2 we frst present our survey design and the underlying purposes developed within the broader COST Action on the Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science (ProSEPS) (COST Action CA15207). This project including 39 countries has organized the most complete and ambitious survey ever realized among political scientists in Europe, dealing with viewpoints on and experiences with advisory roles, media outreach (Real Dato & Verzichelli, 2021), institutionalization of the discipline of political science (Ilonszki & Roux, 2021), and internationalization of scholars. By Europe, we mean countries of the European Union and other countries such as Norway and Turkey. The dimensions of advising and advisory roles are covered by survey questions presented in this part of the chapter.

Next, we present our indicators in Sect. 3.3. How can we, when observing the daily reality of academic political scientists at work, distinguish pure academics from experts, opinionating scholars and public intellectuals? What makes a typical expert or a public intellectual, what thresholds must be used for classifying scholars in each of these roles? In Sect. 3.4 of this chapter we move on to presenting some basic elements of the response to the survey, such as the size of the scholarly community in the countries included, the level of participation in the survey, and implications of response for fndings and conclusions to be drawn. Section 3.5 presents more features of the sample of respondents that form the basis of the twelve country chapters in this book and the comparative analysis following after it. These general features thus set the stage for part II of this book with the in-depth analysis of twelve countries, from Albania to the United Kingdom. Section 3.6 concludes the chapter.

## 3.2 A Large Scale Survey for Comparable Data Across Countries

While political scientists use surveys extensively in empirical research, it is rarer to see this method applied for mapping of and refecting on the scholarly community itself. Political science is no exception here—enquiry into state of the art of the own discipline is no daily business in most academic felds. In fact, in political science, research on the state of the discipline and the community of scholars does happen. A prominent example is the cross-national survey *The World of Political Science* (WPS) organized by Professor Pippa Norris and a team of leading scholars on the opinions on and experiences with career development of political scientists. This survey conducted in 2019 in conjunction with the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) and the International Political Science Association (IPSA) provides an up to date mapping of the scholarly community, focusing on academic career paths and perspectives. The WPS survey addresses activities and underlying motivations of political scientists, but not engagement outside the university, such as advisory work. The COST Action on the Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science was developed synchronously to the WPS, but with a different focus. It deals with the institutionalization and internationalization of the discipline, but also with advisory work and media exposure. This pan-European survey is the most complete enquiry into external visibility and activity of political scientists employed at universities in European countries ever organized (ProSEPS 2019). The survey questions central to this book deal with the content of advice, frequency of advice, recipients of advice at different levels of government, the formality or informality of advice, channels and modes of advice, as well as with the normative views on engagements of political scientists and intrinsic and extrinsic incentives for policy advice, such as the professional world view, career perspective and incentives or disincentives for engagement.

The design of the survey took place at several meetings between February and December 2017 (La Valetta, January 2017; Siena, March 2017; Leuven and Florence, September 2017; Brussels, December 2017). During 2017, the country experts collected the respective lists of political scientists who would constitute the population of the survey. The general criteria used to select the population were individuals working at academic research institutions (universities, research centers), who (a) held a PhD in political science *or* were affliated to formal organizational units within universities (departments, areas, etc.) where the main specialization was political science or a related feld (public administration, international relations, government, or public policy); *and* (b) individuals included in the list should mostly do research on topics directly related to political science *or* most of their teaching should be on political science subjects. Besides these general criteria, country experts could use alternative criteria in accordance with the demarcation of the discipline within their country. For instance, in Italy, country experts used the offcial list of political scientists compiled by the Ministry of University and Research. Similarly, in France were included in the population (i) those full and associate professors affliated to the legally recognized 'section' of political science at the National Council of Universities of the French ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, (ii) political scientists at the National Center for Scientifc Research (CNRS) pertaining to the 'politics, power, organization' section', plus (iii) other individuals with a PhD in political science or/and a publication track in political science affliated to private bodies (such as private universities or the National Foundation of Political Science [FNSP]) or public ones with a status different from (i) and (ii).

The survey structure and questions on advisory and related activities external to the university is based on the dimensions of advice presented and discussed in the previous chapter. In order to map views and activities of political scientists within and across countries, indicators for the four main roles types on each of the dimensions were identifed and included in a set of survey questions. Thus, the questions in the survey cover variables on types of advice, frequency of advice-giving, the degree of formality of advice, the recipients (targets) of advice, and the channels used for dissemination of advice. Moreover, the survey questions include variables on the perception of the position of political scientists at the science-policy nexus and their normative views on professional (academic) role performance. Below we present and discuss the specifc survey questions, moving from motivational factors to the dimensions of advice and further to background variables to create analytical and comparative leverage for understanding patterns of advice by academic political scientists within and across countries. The survey in which these questions are included contains a larger number of items, a total of 37 questions dealing also with developments in the discipline of political science and internationalization of the scholarly community. For this reason, the question numbers do not count simply from 1 onwards, but sometimes jump between parts of the ProSEPS survey relevant to the analysis in this book.

#### *3.2.1 Survey Questions on Professional Role Perception and Visibility*

First, a set of questions in the survey was formulated for mapping underlying viewpoints on professional view and 'duty'. Respondents were asked (Q14) whether or not they agree with a number of statements on involvement, professional obligation, working on basis of evidence, and distancing from practice. The normative views were supplemented by some statements also touching on motivations and incentives (Q5d, Q17). Career advancement as a driving factor was examined separately by asking political scientists whether they are experiencing recognition (within the country or within their own university organization) for any external professional activity. And fnally, a survey question (Q1) was included for assessing visibility in the public arena: is the work of political scientists visible, and does it seem to matter? Table 3.1 presents the questions. Appendix 1 in this book contains all survey questions with the answer categories in detail.

#### *3.2.2 Survey Questions on Dimensions of Advising*

The previous chapter contained a discussion on the relevant dimensions of advising and on how these can be distinguished conceptually. Here we present the way in which these dimensions were turned into a set of survey questions. Table 3.2 presents the dimensions of advising.

We follow a sequence that begins with mapping frequency of different advisory activities and then moves on to topic content, recipients, and so on. Naturally, frequency of advisory activity comes with a specifc kind of activity. Thus, survey question Q8 captures the repertoire of advising. For each of these activities, a frequency range was set between never and at least once a week. This combined question on types of advice and frequency addresses the central dimension of policy advising. Recall from the discussion of underlying types of knowledge in Chap. 2 that the diverse


**Table 3.1** ProSEPS survey: questions on views about roles and visibility of political scientists

advisory activities can be about what 'is' (*episteme*), what 'works' (*techne*), and what 'must be done' (*phronesis*) (Flyvbjerg 2001; Tenbensel 2008).

Next, a second central dimension of advising is the channel used for it. Here we based our conceptualization on work of Lindquist (1990), who distinguishes between direct and indirect convocational (interactive group or presentation) settings and between direct and indirect publications, to which dissemination modes social media may be added as a new and infuential channel. Thus, possible channels of advising range from the more traditional publications to reports, blogs, and training courses. We extended the question on channels of advice to ask about specifc communication modes, from organized settings such as conferences, workshops and so on, to face-to-face personal contacts. These possibilities are a secondary aspect of the advisory channel dimension. Related to these forms is the distinction between formal and informal advice. This distinction captures also the extent to which political scientists based at the university occupy structural positions in advisory bodies, councils and so on,


**Table 3.2** ProSEPS survey: Questions on dimensions of advising

Question

*Q8 In advising, I provide*

Data and facts about politics and political phenomena.

(a) Analysis and explanations of causes and consequences of policy problems.

(b) Evaluation of existing policies and institutions.

(c) Recommendations for policy alternatives.

(d) Forecasts and polls.

(e) Value judgments and normative arguments.

*Q13 How frequently have you used any of the channels below?*

(a) Publications, (b) Research reports, (c) Policy briefs, memos, (d) Traditional media

articles, (e) Blogs or entries in social media, (f) Training courses for practitioners.

*Q12 How frequently have you used these communication modes?*

(a) Face to face, (b) Phone, (c) Email or post, (d) Workshop or conference.

*Q2 Did you contribute to public debates in*

(a) TV programs. (b) Radio programs. (c) Newspapers. (d) Online social media.

*Q3 Did you make such contributions in*

(a) Subnational, (b) National, or (c) Foreign outlets

*Q4 What type of contributions did you make?*

(a) Editorials or regular columns (b) Comments, opinion pieces (c) Interviews given (d) Letters or other interventions.

*Q5 Did you participate in discussions about political issues through Twitter, Facebook, or professional/personal blogs?*

*Q11 Was your engagement in advising formal or informal, or some combination?*

*Q9 With what actors did you engage when advising?*

(a) Executive politicians, (b) Legislative politicians, (c) Political parties, (d) Civil servants, (e) Advisory

bodies, (f) Think tanks, (g) Interest groups in the private sector, (h) Civil society organizations and citizen groups, (i) International organizations.

*Q10 At which level of governance do you mostly engage?*

(a) Subnational, (b) National, (c) European Union (d) International.

*Q15 With which substantive policy areas is your advice concerned?*

Choose all that apply from the list of main topics.


**Table 3.3** ProSEPS survey: questions on background variables

or rather do advisory work in ad hoc, unregulated, and off-the-record ways. In reality, political scientists may, when engaging, not only sit on the formal side or entirely on the informal side, but also practice both ways.

Another extension of the question on channels of advice is specifcally on exposure in the media. While this is a category of activity that may not be strictly speaking about delivering advice to policy makers, media exposure, certainly when initiated by political scientists, is a relevant part of visibility. It can belong to advisory role performance. But scholars also need visibility for more purely academic activities, such as ability to demonstrate impact and relevance when submitting fundamental research proposals. For this reason, we consider the frequency and nature of activity in media, from public debates to news interpretations, and from television to social online media forums such as Twitter and Facebook. We also tap whether such activity is in national, subnational, or international media.

A next dimension is the receiving end of advisory work. We argued in Chap. 2 that better than the dichotomy of supply and demand is to speak of sender and receiver. This not only follows the terminology of communication, but it also expresses that initiative for advisory activity can lay at either side. Particularly when engaging in advisory activities with a strong normative message and aiming for advocacy, political scientists are not just moving on the supply side, but also organize their own calls for knowledge transfer and dissemination. Receivers, or targets, have their own position and usually also their specifc responsibilities in the policy advisory process. When orienting on categories of receivers, it is important to distinguish those with often formal competencies for policy making and delivery from actors involved in the policy process, but with an infuence role rather than decision-making responsibilities. Thus, receivers of political science advice may be inside political and administrative institutions, or outside them. In Chap. 2 this was represented in the locational model of the policy advisory system. Next to executive and legislative politicians and civil servants within administrative organizations, also advisory bodies and think tanks can sit at the receiving end, as well as political party organizations, NGOs, corporate interest organizations or individual businesses, civil society organizations and grassroots citizen groups, and international or supranational organizations and institutions. Along with these different categories comes the level of governance, capturing also geographical scope: this may be national, but also subnational or international.

The fnal dimension of advising we include in the survey is the content, the topic on which political science scholars deliver advice. The question on topics of advice is extended to the specifc area of research and expertise of respondents. Within the discipline of political science several subfelds can be distinguished, both related to a substantive domain (social welfare, migration, environment, etc.) and to a broader subdisciplinary orientation and object of study, such as public administration and public policy, which themselves may have institutionalized as a feld of research and education.

In categorizing the substantive content of advice, we use the topic classifcation system of the Comparative Agendas Project (www.comparativeagendas.net), an ongoing international research program with scholars from different continents (see for example Baumgartner et al., 2019). The topic classifcation system consists of 21 main categories, from macroeconomics to civil rights, agriculture and food, public works and water management and cultural issues. The structure and operation of government and international affairs including the EU also are main topic categories. The survey includes a question on which of these substantive policy area(s) academic political scientists deliver advice. Given the central object of research in this scholarly community, the general expectation is that the structure and operation of government and international or EU affairs are prominent topics.

#### *3.2.3 Background Variables for Analytical Leverage*

In order to further analyze patterns of activity within the scholarly community, also background variables are included in the survey design. Thus, respondents are asked to indicate their feld of specialization within the broader discipline of political science (Q16), gender (Q18), age (Q21), the status of employment (Q23), and (Q22) experience in past or present with political or administrative offce outside academia.

## 3.3 Connecting Dimensions of Advice to Measuring Role Types

To reiterate from Chap. 2, the pure academic does not engage with advicegiving activities, and thus this role type barely touches any of the dimensions of advice. The pure academic thus also is the easiest to recognize empirically. It will go with rejective or ignorant viewpoints on engagement of political scientists in the political or social environment of the university. The only exposure factor of the pure academic may be some visibility in the media to research fndings and discoveries made—but not connected to engagement with stakeholders.

Our next task is to operationalize the relevant dimensions of advice and relate these to the typology of advisory roles for distinguishing experts from opinionating scholars and public intellectuals. Given the explorative nature of this comparative project on engagement of political scientists outside their university home basis, we apply a simplifed two-dimensional model for measurement and for linking respondents to one of the ideal types of advisers. The central dimension of advising we use are the various kinds of advisory activity and their frequency of use, as presented in Chap. 2 when conceptualizing advisory work.

At this point, we stress that for empirical measurement of the role types, we thus also delimit the operationalization of dimensions of advising and determine how respondents to the survey ft any of the four role types, from the pure academic to the public intellectual. This is important for two reasons. First, as the number of analytical dimensions and, therefore, variables, increases, there will be more missing observations, since one missing value in one variable implies that one observation cannot be classifed. For instance, combining the variables in Q8, the main dimension in our analysis indicating type and frequency of advice, with the variables in Q13 on channels of advice would already lead to a signifcant loss of observations needed to determine the role type of respondents. A second and related reason is, as the number of dimensions increases, the greater likelihood of fnding 'orphan cases'—that is, those that do not meet all the requirements for inclusion in one of the theorized typologies. In order to avoid these complexities and loss of observations, we follow a simpler model and use a strategy of operationalization that allows us to link respondents to any of the four role types. Then, the information on the other dimensions contained in responses to the survey questions connected to them serve to draw up the empirical picture of orientations and activities of academic political scientists, enabling the authors of country chapters to provide a more specifc analysis of all aspects of advising by political scientists within their country.

Having decided to use the central dimension of advising—corresponding to the six Q8 options in the ProSEPS survey presented in Table 3.2—we must now establish thresholds for measuring and determining whether the political scientists responding to the survey can be qualifed as a pure academic, an expert, an opinionating scholar or a public intellectual. First, in order to maximize the number of usable observations, non-responses to any Q8 variable on advisory activities are considered equivalent to never offering the respective type of advice.1 Second, we develop the frst type of the pure academic including in this category the respondents who had no advisory activity in the last three years ('never' to all Q8 variables). Third, the other three types are elaborated taking into account both the frequency and type of advisory tasks respondents say they have been involved in the last three years before the survey. The public intellectual type has been constructed considering the all-round nature of their involvement in advisory activities. It includes those individuals participating very frequently (at least once per month) in at least four different types of advisory activities, one of them being 'making value judgements or normative arguments' (Q8\_f).


**Table 3.4** Measurement of types of advisory roles in ProSEPS survey questions

*Note*: See Table 3.2 for the specifc content of the different types of activities (Q8 questions).

1A Kruskal-Wallis test can be used to compare the effect of including and not including missing cases in the composition of the typologies. The test result is notstatistically signifcant at the conventional level of p.

The two remaining types include those respondents with a degree of involvement in advisory activities in between those of the pure academic and the public intellectual. Therefore, experts and opinionating scholars may participate in a great variety of activities, but at a lower frequency than public intellectuals; or, they may simply participate in a more limited set of activities. The difference between experts and opinionating scholars is set by the participation of the latter in activities involving the delivery of normative arguments or value judgments. This is made under the assumption that this kind of normative activity trespasses the usually admitted boundaries of purely technical experts (who focus only on facts and evidence).

## 3.4 The Political Science Community in the Survey

The population list of potential respondents to the ProSEPS survey was initially formed by more than 12,600 individuals from 37 European countries plus Israel and Turkey, so in total 39 countries. This population was depurated during the survey, excluding those individuals not active in academia anymore (some of them were deceased), those who did not work in European academic or research institutions during the survey period as well as those who had been misclassifed as political scientists (in most of these cases, the individuals themselves communicated this to the survey managers). At the end of the survey, the population list was formed by 12,442 individuals (34.5 percent of whom women).

The questionnaire originally was formulated and edited in English, but in several countries (France, Greece, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain, and Turkey) it was translated into the main offcial language in order to enhance access to the survey. Respondents also were given the choice to fll out the questionnaire in English or their national language. The questionnaire was administered online using the *Limesurvey* software (limesurvey.org) and hosted at the Epolls.eu website (epolls.eu), and responses were collected from March to December 2018 (some late responses were received up until February 2019), with specifc timings varying across countries. Everyone in the population list was invited to participate up to four times (one initial invitation plus three reminders).

A total of 2,403 completed questionnaires were received. The resulting dataset was subject to quality control, identifying problematic cases (Andreadis, 2014)—those with very short response times (below 50 percent of the average), a high number of missing responses (above 50 percent) or systematic 'fatliners', that is, repeating the same response across blocks of questions. After quality control, the fnal number of completed questionnaires was 2,354. Of the respondents, 33 percent selfidentifed as women, 63.9 percent as men, and 3.1 percent either preferred not to disclose their gender or did not answer the corresponding question.

As Fig. 3.1 shows, the average response rate was almost 26 percent, though this varied widely between countries, from 7 percent in Turkey to 70 percent in Albania. Due to this highly differentiated response rate among countries and given the inevitable risk of self-selection in the responses by more publicly involved political scientists, some caution applies to presenting the survey fndings as fully representative of the policy advisory activities and views of the population of political scientists. Note also that in most countries, targeted respondents were not in their earliest career stage, given the selection criteria of an obtained PhD or at least a position involving substantive research and education tasks within the department of employment. Below we will see that the average age of respondents in almost all countries is above 40 years, which increases the likelihood of some level of orientation and activity in advising compared to younger scholars who often are still underway in their PhD project.

**Fig. 3.1** ProSEPS survey response rate in European countries. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

Figure 3.1 not only displays response rates, but also the weight of the country in the total population of political scientists. This is a factor taken into account when analyzing patterns across countries.

## 3.5 Towards Country Analysis

In order to provide a background for the analyses in the subsequent chapters, in this fnal section we offer some basic information about the subsample of political scientists responding to the ProSEPS survey in the twelve countries analyzed in the book. We also show that information in the context of the general sample of the survey.

Figure 3.2 shows the distribution of respondents to the ProSEPS survey by declared gender, including those respondents that preferred not to disclose it. We observe that there is very little variation in the distribution of responses between the average for the 12 countries subsample analyzed in the book (hereafter called 'the book 12-country subsample') and the average for all countries.

Female Male Prefer not to disclose

**Fig. 3.2** Distribution of responses by gender. *Note*: In parentheses, the total number of valid responses. The total missing responses in the survey were 25. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

Thus, the corresponding proportions of those ticking the answer 'female' were 32.2 and 35.2 percent, while those responding to the 'male' option were 65.7 and 63.5 percent. Regarding the countries in the subsample, the only country where proportions differ signifcantly2 is Denmark, were the percentages of women (21.3) and men (75.4) are substantially below and above, respectively, of the general averages. In this respect, the analyses in the following chapters will explore to what extent gender constitutes a factor affecting variance across different degrees and types of involvement in advisory activities.

Given that advice-seeking actors would probably resort to experienced scholars, it can be presumed that these are found more frequently among those admitting having participated in any advisory activities. Since experience is correlated with seniority, the relationship between age and advisory activities will be also explored in some of the chapters to come. In this respect, Figure 3.3 shows the information concerning the age of the respondents.

The average age of the book's subsample (45.6 years-old) is quite similar to that for all countries (46.1). Nevertheless, for the twelve countries analyzed in the book, we observe some differences, visible in Fig. 3.3. There does not seem to be any geographical impact on this variable, as the relatively older respondents are in Norway, France, Denmark, and Spain, and countries with on average somewhat younger respondents are Albania, Germany, and Hungary. The other countries are in the middle.

There also is a clear association in our data between the gender and age variables. As Fig. 3.4 shows, a signifcantly higher proportion of women are concentrated in the younger cohorts (under 45 years of age) compared to men. Therefore, in case there is a 'gender bias' in advisory activities, it may reinforce the presumed age bias mentioned above. We note that for the 12-country subsample the young age category was somewhat larger compared to the whole sample in the survey. Given the likelihood of a career effect on advising, this means that our fndings on advisory activities for the countries presented in this book may somewhat underrepresent the whole sample from all 39 countries.

<sup>2</sup> In the rest of the chapter, when we refer to a 'signifcant difference', we mean a statistically signifcant difference based on either (1) for nominal variables, adjusted standardised residuals of the cross tabulations equal or higher to 2 standard deviations or equal or lower than -2 standard deviations; or (2) for continuous variables, ANOVA F-test and post-hoc additional tests (Games-Howell and Hochberg's GT2 tests).

**Fig. 3.3** Age of respondents. *Note*: In parentheses, the total number of valid responses. The total missing responses in the survey is 39. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

The job position occupied by the respondents also can affect their participation in advisory activities. Younger scholars aiming at building an academic career and stabilizing their positions in universities or public research centers might prioritize those outputs that best contribute to such goal, such as publishing their research in peer reviewed journals, teaching or participating in research networks with other colleagues, while neglecting policy advisory work, which might be not so valued for academic purposes.3

Figure 3.5 reveals that most respondents in both the book's 12-country subsample and the general sample hold a permanent contract, with no signifcant differences between both groups (the proportion of permanent contracts were for the frst group 75.4 percent, while the country average

<sup>3</sup>However, we must note that in the recent years, the 'impact agenda' in research funding and evaluation set into motion in many countries by public authorities might be changing this view of policy advisory work (see Bandola-Gill et al., 2021).

**Fig. 3.4** Respondent age groups by gender. *Note*: In parentheses, the total number of valid responses. The total missing responses in the survey is 58. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

**Fig. 3.5** Respondents job status. *Note*: In parentheses, the total number of valid responses. The total missing responses in the survey is 108. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

for the whole sample was 74.3). However, the fgure also reveals remarkable differences between the countries analyzed in this book. Some of these differences are presumably attributable to the specifc defnition of the population used in some countries (see above), as in France, where the national experts used a legal criterion to identify most of the survey population (see above). And in other countries, such as Germany, country experts included PhD researchers in the sample since they have a formal employment relationship with the university.

In other cases, differences may to some extent refect the underlying characteristics of the country's academic labor market. Thus, we observe the highest proportion of temporal contracts in Germany (65.9 percent), a country where doctoral graduates experience 'a potentially long period of insecure employment following the PhD' (Afonso, 2016: 817). In contrast, the same proportion amounts to just 7.3 percent in the United Kingdom, a country with higher levels of job security for junior academics (ibid: 818). The same applies to other countries in the book, such as Denmark, Hungary, Norway, and the Netherlands (Eurydice\_ Network, 2020).

The feld of specialization is another characteristic that may affect the propensity of academic political scientists to participate in policy advisory tasks. In this respect, we could expect that the involvement in this type of activities is more frequent among those scholars whose feld of specialization is somehow related to a specifc policy feld or to the operations of actors involved in the policy process (governments, public administration, political parties, interest groups, etc.).

Figure 3.6 shows that the felds of specialization of respondents in the 12-country subsample and the whole sample again are quite similar, with the exception of political theory (included in the 'other felds' category in Fig. 3.6), public policy, and public administration. The most frequent category of specialization is comparative politics, where the average country percentage of respondents claiming this specialization is 27.3 for the book's subsample and 29 percent for the whole sample. It is followed by the feld of international relations (18.3 and 20.7 percent, respectively). The other felds with important representation in the 12-country subsample (above 10 percent) are public policy (15.7 percent), public administration (15.3), EU studies (13.3), and political institutions (12.6 percent). Political theory is lower key in the 12-country subsample, with 9.6 percent against 15 percent for all countries.

**Fig. 3.6** Respondents felds of specialization. *Note*: In parentheses, the total number of valid responses. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

When looking at variation between the twelve countries, some differences in prevalence of felds of specialization occur. For instance, in Italy, 42 percent of the respondents are specialized in comparative politics, while this is below 20 percent in Denmark. In public administration, there is a stark contrast between on the one hand Denmark, Norway, and The Netherlands, where some 30 percent of respondents are specialized in this feld, and on the other hand countries with only a small fraction of the respondents declaring such specialization, as in the cases of United Kingdom (3.1 percent), France (4.5 percent), Italy (4.6 percent) and Germany (6.2 percent). Another point of difference is international relations, where the prevalence of this feld in Turkey and the United Kingdom (30.9 and 27.8 percent, respectively) signifcantly contrasts with Spain (only 5.7 percent). In Spain, the difference mostly is a refection of the traditional estrangement of international relations studies from political science in favor of international law scholars (Jerez Mir, 2010). The country chapters present these specifc national developments in the broad discipline of political science and in this way, they provide the context of advisory activities of political scientists.

The last characteristic in the book's subsample we examine is whether respondents have ever held any position outside academia. This is a variable that is also considered in some of the following country chapters in this book. This kind of experience may be related to or have impact on the advisory activities of political scientists—these positions may act as a nexus linking respondents more tightly to policy-making networks.

Figure 3.7 shows that, on average, 43.5 percent of the respondents in the book's subsample occupies any position or has worked outside academia at any moment. This average is clearly marked by the outlier case of Albania, also the smallest of the countries in this book. Without this country, the average is 39.7 percent, which is below the average for all countries in the ProSEPS survey with 47.9 percent. The proportions are above 50 percent in Hungary and Norway, but only some 30 percent in Italy and France. Most countries in this book are somewhere between 35 and 45 percent.

**Fig. 3.7** Respondents holding positions outside academia (%). *Note*: In parentheses, the total number of respondents. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

**Fig. 3.8** Types of positions outside academia (%). *Note*: In parentheses, the total number of respondents. Percentages amount to more than 100, since respondents could declare positions in more than one sector. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

With respect to the specifcities of these positions, Figure 3.8 shows that, on average, they tend to be evenly distributed between positions in the public sector—either in government, parliament or public administration (22.8 percent in the book's subsample) and organizations or groups externally to government, such as interest groups or frms, including those owned by academics themselves (23.6 percent).

In counties where a relatively high proportion of respondents have experience in an external position, this position often is some affliation to civil society organizations or groups, interest groups, or the private sector. There is some tendency for such affliations in civil society to become relatively more frequent when countries have a high proportion of external positions. We have considered separately the experiences of those having occupied any position in political party organizations, which amounts to an average of 9.1 percent in the book's subsample—clearly only a small proportion of all external affliations of academic political scientists.

### 3.6 Conclusion

This chapter presented the research design of this comparative project. Targeting the scientifc political science community in Europe with temporary or permanent employment in research and education in this feld, a large scale survey allows for data collection on advisory activities. Such an extensive empirical assessment of viewpoints and activities was not carried out before, and it makes it possible to place scholars in the feld within the policy advisory system of their country of employment. Advisory work and the role of scientifc knowledge in it have become a debated phenomenon. The focus in this project can help better understand the nature of boundary work between knowledge producers and stakeholders in the policy process. Thus, the questions included in the survey cover the relevant dimensions and indicators of advising and a number of background variables to make sense of the patterns within and across countries. With the simple model of four advisory role types as the basis, thresholds were set in order to empirically distinguish each of the advisory roles.

Overall, the respondents from the countries included in this book show background characteristics that are similar to the larger sample of respondents in the ProSEPS survey project. Most of the fndings on gender, age, and academic job status are representative of the overall sample. Respondents are mostly not in the earliest stage of their academic career, with almost twice as many men than women, and a vast majority have a permanent position. There are two exceptions. The frst is that respondents working in any of the twelve countries analyzed more in-depth in this book are more often specialized in public administration and public policy analysis, and less in political theory compared to the overall sample. If this difference has any effect on advisory roles, it may be that this leads to some over-representation of advisory activities in the twelve countries compared to the other countries, as public administration and public policy may be at a shorter distance from the advisory 'demand' side than political theory.

The second exception is that the respondents from the countries in this book have previous or ongoing positions outside the university less often than in the broader sample. While the effect of this could be contrary to the prevalent types of specialization, in that fewer external positions may go with less engagement in advising, this is frst and foremost an empirical question. Engagement in advising may also be initiated and organized without any previous or ongoing position outside the university; it may even be a substitute for it. Hence, we have no strong reasons a priori to think that the book sample misrepresents the overall sample of 39 countries in the ProSEPS project.

The set of countries in this book is quite diverse—about as diverse as the complete number of 39 countries in the ProSEPS project. And this diversity is both important and necessary for the analyses that follow. Differences between the countries in this book in the properties of the scientifc community may have impact on how much and how advisory roles are perceived and taken up. In fact, our general expectation is that patterns of advising vary between countries. This will be examined in the country analyses in the next part II of this book.

#### References


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## Country Studies of Advisory Roles

## Removing Political Barriers to Engagement: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Albania

*Nevila Xhindi and Blerjana Bino*

### 4.1 Introduction

There is no systematic research into the key features of the Policy Advisory System in Albania that shows and discusses analytical capacities at local and central governmental levels. The majority of existing reports explore broad participation in decision-making processes and the interaction of civil society and government. Furthermore, most studies concern disciplines such as economics, fnance and law rather than political science and its impact on policy. Some more recent studies have focused on public administration, but with no particular focus on political science per se, and its impact on policy.

This chapter aims to bridge this gap by analyzing Albania's policy advisory system, focusing on the advisory roles that political scientists see for themselves and engage in. The chapter starts by outlining the discipline of

N. Xhindi

B. Bino (\*)

Centre of Science and Innovation for Development, Tirana, Albania

© The Author(s) 2022 67 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_4

Mediterranean University of Albania, Tirana, Albania

political science in Albania, which is relatively new having developed for the best part since the turn of the century. It then analyzes the process of policy development and how different factors may hinder demand for policy advice in that country. The chapter's fnal section considers the role of political scientists within the national context. Political barriers limit the role of political scientists in the policy process. Political scientists themselves are not normally committed to engaging in policy advisory activities. In the Albanian system, they have little incentive for such engagement outside of their own universities.

## 4.2 Political Science as an Emerging Discipline in Albania's Academia

After World War II, Albania entered what was to be a 45-year-long period of communist dictatorship, considered one of the harshest of its kind in terms of limitations on political freedom and human rights. After breaking strategic alliances with Yugoslavia frst, then with the Soviet Union, and lastly with China, in the late 1970s the country became extremely isolated. This period signifcantly impacted the country's political and economic standards, making it the poorest and least democratic country in Europe by 2011, when communism collapsed. The regime's legacies, in terms of its impact on political culture, are still present. This is also refected in the political approach leaders have within their own party and how they make decisions.

During communism, social sciences became a crucial instrument with which to thoroughly politicize the education of young Albanians, with their frst priority being declared as that of defending Marxist-Leninist principles (Bowers, 1989, p. 445). The propagation of communist ideology and the political indoctrination of youth constituted the fundamental purpose of higher education as well. Against this backdrop, in 1965 the Faculty of Political and Juridical Sciences was established within the State University of Tirana. Its two central departments were Political Science and Law. In 1967, a Department of Journalism was also established in this Faculty. In the 1970s, philosophy replaced political science. During the communist regime, the social sciences, and particularly political science, public policy and public administration, had been "eradicated by 'scientifc socialism' and Marxism-Leninism" (Eisfeld, 2012, p. 85). It was only after the 1990s that contemporary political science was re-introduced into Albanian higher education. In 1991, the aforesaid Faculty was split and a separate Faculty of Law established, offering law courses only, while journalism was incorporated into the Faculty of Philology and History.

Tirana's Faculty of Social Sciences was established in 1991, in the aftermath of the transition from communism to a democratic political system. Initially, the faculty was labeled the Faculty of Social Work, and it operated in conjunction with Gran Valley University in the USA. In 1992, it became the Faculty of Social Sciences and comprised three departments: Social Work, Psychology–Pedagogy, and Philosophy–Sociology. The Faculty only began to offer a study program in political science in 2000, and the Department of Political Science, Philosophy and Sociology was established some years later, in 2009. Currently, the Department of Political Science is the country's largest political science department. The University of New York Tirana (UNYT) was founded in 2002 as part of the New York College (NYC) Network of Educational Institutions, and was the frst private University in Albania to introduce a new Department of Political Science. There are now fve private universities in the country offering political science programs. Currently, there is one joint master's degree program in political science on offer—Integration and Governance—run jointly by the University of Salzburg, the University of Ljubljana, and universities in the 6 Western Balkan countries, including two universities from Albania as part of the consortium: the University of Tirana and the European University of Tirana.

With the fall of the communist regime, changes were also witnessed in the academic feld. The international community played a crucial role in aligning higher education reforms with the European Education Area. The United States played an active role in Albania during the 1990s by providing pedagogical support for modernizing higher education and institutionalizing political science as a discipline within the University of Tirana (Eisfeld, 2012, p. 86). The European approach to political science was introduced mainly through the EU's curricula development programs, such as Tempus (Trans-European Mobility Programme for University Studies) and more recently Erasmus+ program. Another catalyst in the development of political science in Albania has been the Open Society Foundations of George Soros, particularly in the teaching and training of academic staff. In Albania's case, the Open Society Foundation has sponsored research in political science and provided foreign scholarships to the best students. Furthermore, private research institutes, such as think tanks, were established with the support of foreign donors. These initiatives all increased the demand for political scientists.

The original academic background of teachers of political science was mainly law and philosophy. When the new political science program was introduced in 2000, most professors and lecturers were trained in philosophy, while some had a background in sociology, law, journalism, or communication science. Some professors trained in political science came from abroad, or were Albanian scholars who did a master or PhD in another country. There was a certain tension between the 'old generation' of philosophers now engaging in political science, and the 'new generation' of political scientists, in terms of how a new political science curriculum should be developed, and what its core elements and objectives should be. From 2007 onward, a new generation of political scientists who had graduated in Albania or abroad started to establish chairs and build departments in political science in Albania's private universities. The University of Tirana's Faculty of Social Sciences offered a PhD in Political Science in 2011.

The scholarly community in Albania divulges its work via three main academic journals: the Albanian Journal of Politics (established in 2005), and Polis (2006), both peer-reviewed journals that publish in English; and Politics and Society (2000) which publishes in Albanian. Albania also has an Association of Political Science, which was established in 2000, but has yet to join the International Association of Political Science (IPSA). According to the Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth, about 50% of university-based researchers in the country work in the felds of the social sciences and humanities, economics and business studies. Some 15% of staff operate in economics, fnance, and business, compared with 3% in political science and international relations. About 70% of all scholars have tenure.

### 4.3 The Policy Advisory System

The policy cycle including the choice of processes and tools, while the presence of, and competition among, actors and stakeholders constitutes a complex area of research and practice. Firstly, Albania's cycle of policy development is framed by a free-market economy and a representative democracy that have faced a great many challenges and undergone a series of signifcant transformations. Secondly, democratization processes and European integration ambitions have had a profound impact on policy design and decision making within the country (Xheneti & Kitching, 2011, p. 1019). Furthermore, policy transfer is an integral part of the democratization processes that transform ideas into policy, in which international actors such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission, play a key role. What is more, a political landscape characterized by adversity, power struggles, and polarization has had profound implications for all aspects of policy development in the country.

Thus, an increasingly varied range of actors is involved in the policy cycle in Albania through interlinked processes both within the country and between the domestic area and international arenas. These interconnections are evident in legislative activities, executive policymaking and local policymaking. The judiciary also plays a key role in ensuring the compatibility of legislation with Albania's Constitution and with international treaties. Other actors from civil society include interest groups, trade unions, and advocacy groups on all kinds of issues, the media, and academia. In the country's democratic system, political parties have achieved representation among these actors.

Albania's main national decision-making system for the drafting of policies and strategies is the Integrated Planning System (IPS). The IPS provides a comprehensive planning framework whereby all government policies and fnancial planning function in a coherent, effcient, integrated manner. Moreover, the IPS is supported by the Integrated Policy Management Groups (IPMGs) to "develop, implement and monitor sectoral reforms in Albania" (MIAP & DAP, 2015). The IPMGs serve as the main forum for policy dialog between government representatives, partners for development and integration, and civil society within the country. Albania has only recently been building the systems and culture required for evidence-informed policymaking, which in turn requires high-quality knowledge production, knowledge intermediaries, and a regulatory framework that creates incentives for doing (policy) research as well as using research results in policy decisions (Pellini, 2018).

External political advisors, who are only allowed to advise the Prime Minister, also play a strategic part in public policy development. Although they are not in charge of actual decision making, they participate in the process, they possess information, they have networks, they can request further information and communicate with different institutions; consequently, they may be deemed to be infuential as well. Examples include Tony Blair's consulting company, in 2013 and 2017, the Harvard Kennedy School of Governance, and a Swedish team of political consultants. These external political advisors to the Prime Minister, who have provided political policy advice on key reforms, are of an international character, being either foreigners or Albanian political scientists living abroad. This would seem to indicate that policy makers generally place more trust in advice from foreign sources than that provided by advisers operating in Albania.

### 4.4 Evidence-Based Policy Making in Albania

Since 2014, Albania has had an improved legal framework governing the policy advisory system, with a law on the right to information—Law No. 119/2014—and a law on the public consultation of policy and legislative acts—Law No. 146/2014. This legal framework provides formal mechanisms and spaces for various actors to participate in policy making, with the primary goal of increasing the effciency, transparency, and public accountability of state institutions. However, the practical implementation of these changes to policy-making procedures appears to be limited still (Dauti & Bejko, 2015). Despite recent achievements, several important challenges remain, such as the risk of a fragmentation of the process, a lack of transparency, the greater need for genuine consultation with stakeholders, and the need for evidence-based decision-making processes (Dauti & Bejko, 2015). The policy advisory system lacks specifc mechanisms, processes and incentives for evidence-based policy making, with the attention focused more on consultation with various interest groups. The political agenda prevails even when policy makers are presented with evidence (Bejko & Dauti, 2019). Although there is increased interest in evidencebased policy making, in practice there is a limited degree of uptake of research into the policy development process.

A recent study of think tanks and evidence-based policy making in Albania (Xhindi & Włoch, 2018) found that Albania's genuine think tanks are limited in number. The think tank sector has grown since 2010. There are some NGOs that have shifted from community mobilization and advocacy organizations to a more think-tank profle. The Albanian think tanks are willing to cooperate with the government in the feld of policy advice, but the demand, funding and access points for doing so are limited. The same study reports that in the Albanian context, while think tanks may contribute to the growth of civil society and democracy, on the other hand they are at a constant risk of being hijacked by the political agendas of interest groups and political parties. Cooperating with think tanks stimulates the development of young social science researchers. According to Xhindi and Włoch (2018), many staff in their organizations are current or former academics. Most importantly, think tanks offer young researchers access to their "social capital", that is, networks enabling future cooperation, crucial for building their professional portfolios and accessing new opportunities.

The power-knowledge nexus in Albania is defcient on the demand side (Xhindi & Włoch, 2018). In a purely instrumental way, the government uses NGOs and think tanks to uphold the façade of the participatory decision-making process. Even though civil society organizations take part in the consultation process, they are rarely given adequate time to offer scholarly expertise based on reliable studies. Not only is think tank expertise very rarely utilized by the authorities, but it also fails to attract the interest of the business sector in Albania. All in all, this means that for the time being, there are virtually no other substitutes for foreign donor fnancial support and foreign grants will have to act as a life-line for Albania's think tanks and for the political scientists they appoint as experts, for the foreseeable future.

Another study (Bino et al., 2020) argues that the appropriate steps required for tangible cooperation to be established between academia, civil society and public institutions, are not being taken. Governmental institutions seem to lack those mechanisms that operationalize policies into practices, and those processes that permit the soliciting of advice. The partnership between civil society and public institutions must be understood as uninterrupted continuous circular process of assessment, planning, execution, monitoring, evaluation, and feedback.1 For instance, although the law on public consultation is clear in terms of its signifcant expectations, institutions have not developed specifc procedures to ensure any signifcant applicability. Part of the reason why these practices are not in place is that institutions have not developed binding procedures for the structures for ensuring the effective implementation of the law on public consultation, its outcomes, and implications for policy decisions.

<sup>1</sup> Interview with civil society representative 1.

## 4.5 Political Scientists: Types of Advisory Role, Activities and Viewpoints

Based on the operational defnition of the ideal types of political scientists outlined in Chaps. 2 and 3 of this book, most political scientists in Albania (44%) can be classifed as pure academics who do not engage in any advisory activity. A smaller group (28%) of political scientists are experts who offer advice on a variable basis, often formally and upon request. They usually provide advice based on policy-oriented and applied research. Just behind the experts lies the group of opinionating scholars (23%): these are political scientists who provide more informal, opinionated advice often combining normative positions with factual knowledge. Very few political scientists can be classifed as public intellectuals—only 5% (or just two out of the 43 political scientists included in the Albanian population of respondents) (Table 4.1).

Compared to the average for all countries, female political scientists take a larger share in Albania, with 44% against 56% male colleagues. As Fig. 4.1 shows, most female political scientists in Albania are pure academics (53%), followed by experts (32%) and opinion makers (16%).

There are no women in the public intellectual category; however, in the category of experts, there are more women than there are men. While the largest group of both male and female political scientists is that of the pure academics, this predominance is more marked in the case of female scholars. Compared to their female colleagues, male political scientists are clearly more active as opinion makers. To sum up this analysis of gender


**Table 4.1** Types of advisory role—Albania

**Fig. 4.1** Gender of advisory role types—Albania. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

differences among Albania's political scientists: male scholars appear more active in the public sphere (opinionating and public intellectual roles), while female scholars are either inactive or operate as experts, often in arenas that are less publicly visible.

The vast majority of political scientists in universities, both public and private, are employed on permanent contracts (tenured positions). Seven universities in Albania have a political science department serving as a basis for full-time political scientists. Two of them are public universities (in Tirana and Durres), while fve are private institutions all located in Tirana. Advisory activities are conducted on the basis of temporary service contracts, primarily in Tirana. All 43 of the political scientists comprising the population of respondents are under 50 years of age, which is not surprising considering the relatively new status of political science as an academic discipline in Albania.

It follows from the distribution of role types that Albanian political scientists display a relatively low degree of engagement with policymakers. Primarily, political scientists engage with societal actors such as think tanks and NGOs to provide their expertise in policy-oriented and applied research. This provision of advice is based on service contracts, usually within the framework of donor-funded projects. In Albania, political scientists provide advice to policymakers mainly through the advocacy and lobbying performed by societal actors and facilitated by international organizations. In this sense, the primary benefciaries, that is, the actors receiving the advice, are civil society organizations, NGOs, think tanks and international organizations. Legislative and executive politicians are less frequently the direct recipients of advice, while the least targeted groups are political parties and interest groups operating in the private sector, as shown in Table 4.2.

Political scientists occasionally provide informal political advice to publicly-elected offcials such as parliament members, local government council members, or mayors, although this is done on an ad hoc basis through personal connections and networks. Some political scientists



#### *Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Notes*: Question: "How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?" including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year' 'once per month' or 'once per week'

utilize a formal mode of engagement with policy advice, in regard to electoral reform, the election process, and the party system, and on matters of transparency and accountability, policy reform, public administration reform and European integration. These areas have been a key priority for the Albanian government over the past decade, in view of its position on the EU. Albania's international donors have pushed for engagement and the provision of evidence in policymaking, thus facilitating access points for the political scientist as advisors. Albania's Parliament recently engaged in activities designed to bolster its links to academia and societal actors by improving the existing consultancy mechanisms. Since 2020, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation has been funding a project for the creation of a Parliamentary Research Unit. This may in turn permit greater interaction between political scientists and political actors.

Albanian political scientists utilize various channels to provide policy advice and consultancy services, including publications, research reports, policy papers, and also media articles such as editorials. Blogs and social media have been less frequently used in the past, and have only recently gained popularity, and mostly among young political scientists. The frequency of policy advice provision varies. For instance, publications and research reports are usually produced once a year, while policy papers tend to be published twice a year. Media articles and other forms of communication through online social media are more frequent. Training courses for policymakers are a rarer form of service provision offered by political scientists, and they are usually provided with the help of international organizations and in projects funded by donors.

The most popular type of advisory activity is policy analysis and consultancy, generally through societal actors such as think tanks, NGOs, and international organizations; this is followed by the provision of data and facts. Table 4.3 summarizes the fndings regarding the types of advice provided. Furthermore, political scientists reported that they engage less in policy evaluation, forecasts and polls, while both opinionating scholars and public intellectuals confrm that they offer value-judgments and normative arguments, albeit to differing degrees. Only one small group of political scientists offers various forms of advice very frequently; this group comprises political scientists employed by the country's universities and those who are working part-time or on a contract basis in the civil society sector.

There appear to be high expectations for Albania's political scientists to become engaged in policy making, and particularly in public debate.


**Table 4.3** Types of advice—Albania

*Notes*: Question: "How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?" including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year' 'once per month' or 'once per week'

Universities themselves are reforming their performance indicators by focusing on the impact on, and links with policymakers, civil society, the media, and the private sector. National higher education and research reforms since 2016 have acknowledged the importance of applied and policy-oriented research and its impact on policymaking. Promotion systems and academic career path procedures now recognize and reward impact-related research and the engagement of academics in policy advice, albeit not necessarily fnancially. Most of the surveyed political scientists consider engagement to be their professional responsibility to the public, and most of them think that contributing to society is very important. Still, in Albania, moving from a role as a pure academic to become an expert, opinionating scholar or public intellectual is diffcult and scholars doing this encounter many hazards.

### 4.6 Discussion

The fndings show that political scientists fnd it very challenging to engage with policymakers and act effectively from the supply side of knowledge production. Individual researchers motivation to engage with policy research and policymakers is determined by various factors (Shaxson, 2017). Through six in-depth interviews with political scientists for the purpose of this chapter, we found that political scientists who have had previous personal connections to, and experience of, policymakers and practitioners either at central or local level, tend to engage more in policyoriented research and fnd it easier to do so. As one senior researcher pointed out, "My experience serving as a Member of Parliament and advisor Prime Minister Offce and my work with the Bank of Albania, has helped me to understand the underlying logic of how policy and decisionmaking work and it has helped my research too".2

Second, political scientists vary in their desire to engage with the public and in the rate of engagement. Some political scientists are not interested in policy-oriented or applicable research, and prefer to do work on fundamentally scientifc topics—they see themselves as the pure academic type. Third, political scientists also have other priorities that do not necessarily coincide with those of agenda/policy-driven research. One researcher emphasized, "My research area is particular and mainly theory-driven, it requires a lot of data collection and thus funding, before I can produce any meaningful results and my priority is the quality of the research and not its potential link to certain policy action".3 Fourth, the resources and personal skills needed to engage with policymakers are developed at different levels among political scientists. As such, the common denominator of all the in-depth interviews with researchers regarding their engagement in policy research was the *"*lack of availability of funds and the adequate competences to carry out policy-oriented research with meaningful and applicable results for policymakers".4

Another challenging aspect of the science-to-policy dialectic is the disconnection between supply and demand, meaning that while demand is changing rapidly in policy-making institutions and arenas, the supply side is moving more slowly since funding for solicited knowledge production for policymaking purposes is scarce. Another challenging aspect is the mutual distrust that characterizes the relationship between policymakers and researchers, where reputations and levels of legitimacy are perceived very differently. Researchers do not have much trust in policymakers, whose actions are perceived as driven by political aims, EU rules or vested

<sup>2</sup> In-depth interview with researcher in political science, September 2019.

<sup>3</sup> In-depth interview with researcher in political science, September 2019.

<sup>4</sup> In-depth interview with researcher in political science, September 2019.

economic interests. On the other hand, policymakers frequently cast doubt on the quality of research and the reliability of social science researchers' data and facts in Albania. Such mutual distrust is also fueled by Albania's unclear policy processes and the nation's issues linked to corruption and the lack of transparency. This mutual distrust also refects the low quality of research produced in Albania, and the willingness of policy makers to bridge this communication and trust gap.

The analysis of the in-depth interviews shows that researchers consider certain fundamental factors to be key to bridging the gap between researchers and policymakers and to providing incentives for engagement in policy-oriented research. Those incentives suggested are not only of a fnancial nature, but also include policy-oriented research as part of academics' offcial credentials and career path development, or that it should be offset against their teaching requirements. In addition to researchers' willingness to engage with knowledge and advice in the policy process, another key factor is the support provided by institutions for those researchers who engage with the policy domain. Some researchers have suggested that universities develop specifc forms of cooperation with the policy and private sectors.

The political environment in Albania shapes the attitudes of government offcials toward evidence, and even when scientifc evidence is presented, they tend to preserve their political agenda (Bejko & Dauti, 2019). As a result of the often heavily contested political goals and policy options in policy-making arenas, multiple political crises and deadlocks, the window for scientifc policy advice is quite narrow. Paradoxically, while political and social changes in the country over the past two decades have given rise to an increase in the number of political scientists working in academia, this has not been accompanied by a more prominent role in the policy advisory system. This has also led many political science graduates to look for employment in areas unrelated to their studies, as there is limited demand for political scientists.

#### 4.7 Conclusion

This chapter provides the frst systematic account of the policy-advisory role of Albanian political scientists, which for various reasons they often decide not to undertake. It offers an empirical insight into a thus far rather neglected subject, while at the same time it hopes to contribute to the debate among Albanian political scientists regarding the relevance of their discipline and its role in contemporary political and social developments. In general, Albanian political scientists do engage in policy advisory activities, but not in a structured, well-organized way. Such activities tend to be informal and based on a network of connections. However, political scientists engage in policy advice more with societal actors than directly with legislative or executive institutions and offcials. The role-type of the largest group of Albanian political scientists is that of the pure academic, followed by the expert, the opinion maker, and the public intellectual. Almost half (44%—19 out of 43) of all respondents in the survey conducted for this project have remained in the university area, where they primarily teach and focus on the research publications necessary for the development of their academic careers, without engaging in external advisory activities. Nonetheless, an emerging group of political scientists now see themselves more as experts engaged in policy advisory roles with societal actors such as think tanks, NGOs, and international organizations. These political scientists in expert roles do not provide advice very often. More frequent are the activities of opinionating scholars. They "sit" closer to the political debates in the country.

The most common means of advice provision are workshops, conferences, and face-to-face contact with actors or organizations, particularly in parliamentary committee hearings or in consultancy services offered to think tanks and international organizations. The most popular channels for the provision of policy advice are publications, articles, research reports, and policy papers. However, these channels are typically rooted in the peer-to-peer communication mode of academic tradition. Communicating political scientifc knowledge and fndings in ways that are suitable for different audiences with different capacities to absorb the advice, remains limited. There is a smaller group of political scientists categorized as opinion makers who utilize mass media: traditional media articles, appearances in TV debates or shows, and more recently, opinion pieces and blogs written for online media. Despite these activities, the advisory work done by political scientists in Albania is still very much rooted in academic tradition.

Albanian political scientists generally agree with the statement that political scientists should engage in public debate, since this is part of their role as social scientists. However, few of them do so in reality, and they tend to stick to the traditional modes of academic knowledge exchange. Future research may include the demand side of policy advice, in order to better understand the role of political scientists and provide clues to their future engagement.

#### References


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## Resisting Devolution? The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Belgium

*Marleen Brans, David Aubin, and Ellen Fobé*

### 5.1 Introduction

The Belgian policy advisory system (PAS) is traditionally characterized by federalism, neo-corporatist consociationalism, and a hegemony of political parties referred to as partitocracy (Vandeleene et al., 2019). This chapter frst describes these features and their implications for the production and use of policy advice by political scientists. It also considers the impact of observed trends of pluralization, professionalization, and politicization on the policy advisory system, as well as the outcome of a more recent move in the PAS towards evidence-free policy-making (Brans & Blum, 2020). The chapter then examines the position and operation of policy advisors, including political scientists, within the Belgian advisory system's arenas. The third section analyses the types of advice provided by political

Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: marleen.brans@kuleuven.be; ellen.fobe@kuleuven.be

D. Aubin

© The Author(s) 2022 85 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_5

M. Brans (\*) • E. Fobé

UCLouvain, Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium e-mail: david.aubin@uclouvain.be

scientists. The fourth section then presents the survey data and considers whether the policy advisory activities of political scientists in Francophone and Dutch-speaking universities have followed, or resisted the bipolar, centrifugal devolution that characterizes the Belgian federal state. Are advisory activities consistent with what would be expected from a devolved policy advisory system on both sides of the language border? One of the most salient cases of policy advice offered by political scientists in Belgium, was meant to reinforce a federal space in the face of bipolar devolution, by advocating the creation of a federal electoral district. The last section of this chapter presents and discusses this particular case. The concluding section revisits the features of the Belgian policy advisory system and the position of political scientists within it.

## 5.2 Features of the Belgian Policy Advisory System: Tradition and Trends

Three features of the Belgian political system condition the confguration of advisory actors and the possible space and roles taken by political scientists. The system is characterized by federalism, consensualism, and partitocracy (Vandeleene et al., 2019). What do these features mean for the advisory roles of political scientists? Furthermore, are there any notable trends that run counter to the traditional legacies of the Belgian policy advisory system? The pluralization and professionalization of policy advice need to be considered, as does the simultaneous move towards its politicization.

#### *5.2.1 Federalism*

Belgian federalism today is the outcome of a long process of state reform. The federated entities are not only territorial regions, but also linguistic communities: the Flemish Region, the Walloon Region, the Frenchspeaking community, the German speaking community, the Bilingual Region of Brussels-Capital. Belgium has a total of nine parliaments and governments. Moreover, there is no hierarchy of norms among the federal laws and decrees of the nation's communities and regions. Needless to say, Belgian federalism is particularly complex, and political scientists are often called on to help explain these complex features to a broader audience.

Following the reform of the Belgian State, Belgium's bilingual universities no longer exist, and higher education in Flanders and in Francophone Belgium are each governed by a corresponding minister and ministry. "This has led to a clear division in political science as a discipline, with two political science organizations, separate curricula, recruitment procedures, and different adaptation patterns to the Bologna reforms" (De Winter et al., 2007, p. 57). As an example of the latter, the Bologna Process led to the establishment of master's degree programmes of differing durations, namely two years in Francophone Belgium and one year in Flanders.

Belgian federalism has parcelled up the advisory system as well as public debate. For example, few political scientists will speak to both the Francophone and Flemish media. Nor are there many applied research consortia operating across the language border, particularly after the devolution of science policy to the federated entities.

#### *5.2.2 Consensualism*

A second characteristic of Belgium is its consociationalist tradition (Lijphart, 2012; Swenden et al., 2006), which permeats both community levels and societal pillars. Consociationalism organizes, through elections with proportional representation, a distribution of power along three societal cleavages: linguistic, religious, and class-based (Mabille, 1997). The catholic, liberal, and socialist pillars provide public services to the population (social security, education, health, sports and youth services) in alignment with their corresponding political parties. Moreover, the universities in Belgium are also split along denominational lines: freethinking universities, Catholic universities, and State universities. Even though Belgium has undergone a process of de-pillarization, and the link between society and political parties has weakened, the pillars are still present, are powerful, and contribute towards political stability (Fraussen & Beyers, 2016). One consequence of the consensual policy advisory style associated with pillarized politics is the representative sampling of experts across linguistic, partisan and denominational lines. This is the case in applied research consortia for example, which include universities from different denominations. Also in expert hearings of Parliament, the selection of speakers representing different ideologies and languages is evident (Van Gasse, 2018).

Belgian pillarization has been termed a moderate neo-corporatism (Fraussen & Beyers, 2016). This form of neo-corporatism goes hand-inhand with the dominant position of representative interest groups in a strongly institutionalised system of advisory bodies (Fobé et al., 2013). The majority of these advisory bodies prioritize lay representative expertise over independent academic advice (Van Damme et al., 2011). Political scientists rarely feature in formal advisory bodies in Belgium. Nor are advisory bodies the prime recipients of political scientists' advice. It appears that political scientists prefer advising civil society actors directly rather then providing advice to the advisory bodies representing these actors. As will be shown, civil society actors are the second most important recipients of policy advice from political scientists in Belgium.

#### *5.2.3 Partitocracy*

The nature of the proportional election system contributes to the partitocratic features of the political system (De Winter & Dumont, 2006). Maintaining large coalition governments requires considerable party discipline in parliament, and strong ministerial offces staffed with ministerial advisors acting as powerful gatekeepers of the advice taken up in the decision-making process (Brans et al., 2017a). Toughly-negotiated coalition agreements represent further sturdy gates; they consist of voluminous contracts between coalition partners, determining what is addressed by the political agenda and what will be kept off the agenda.

Partitocracy is carried over from parliamentary and executive politics to a politicized administration (Brans et al., 2022, forthcoming). Academics too are often implicitly labelled on the basis of their political orientation. This arguably determines the selection or censuring of academics in parliamentary committee hearings or the media. However, there is no conclusive empirical evidence of the political inclination of political scientists in Belgium. In the public's mind, political scientists are generally perceived as being on the left side of the political spectrum, although there are certainly also examples of right-wing political scientists operating as opinion makers. Overall, as a 2019 survey by the quality newspaper *De Standaard* (2019) shows, humanities scholars (including political scientists) tend to be more left-leaning than their colleagues in the pure sciences. Research across Europe confrms this fnding (van de Werfhorst, 2020).

#### *5.2.4 Trends*

Since the 2000s, the Belgian policy advisory system has witnessed greater pluralization, professionalization and politicization (Pattyn et al., 2019). As in other countries, the Belgian policy advisory system has become more competitive than it was in the past. The pluralization of advice has expanded the numbers and types of advisor, including emergent actors such as think tanks and consultancy companies. At the same time, the policy advisory system has become more professionalized, and the Belgian political science community has produced more advice via institutionalised applied research programmes. Belgian political scientists have also set up more effective outreach mechanisms, for example through the establishment of professional evaluation societies. There is also anecdotal evidence, albeit no strong research fndings, pointing to the fact that the Belgian advisory system is marked by politicization. Pluralized expert-based advice in Belgium does not sit well with recent moves towards majoritarian politics, or with the continued reliance on ministerial cabinets (Pattyn et al., 2019).

Recently, scholars have noted a move towards "policy-based evidencemaking" (Straßheim & Kettunen, 2014), and even towards "evidencefreed policy-making" (Brans & Blum, 2020). Furthermore, in Belgium these developments appear to have had an impact on the policy advisory system and on the role of political scientists as policy advisors. For instance, long-term fundamental research projects conducted by policy research centres have been replaced by short-term, applied research assignments. On top of that, substantial budget cuts have limited the opportunities for structurally and publically-funded research in Belgium. Of note, also, is the uptake of behavioural insights in policy-making, which addresses rather narrow, unambitious policy implementation issues (Raymaekers & Brans, 2020). The enthusiasm over the evidence-based policy-making movement seen in the frst decade of the new millennium, has recently waned. There have even been cases in the broader domain of the social sciences where expert evidence is deliberately ignored, and where the producers thereof are discredited or denied access.1

<sup>1</sup>They are close to socialists and Marxists, activists rather than academics, the Belgian State Secretary of Poverty Alleviation said about the experts who tabled a report on poverty (*De Standaard*, 2017).

## 5.3 The Belgian Policy Advisory System: Location and Configuration

#### *5.3.1 Government Arena*

There are many political scientists working in the government arena, as federal and devolved bureaucracies are the prime destinations for political science graduates (Ilonszki & Roux, 2021). From a 2015 study on policy analytical work, it transpired that about one-ffth of the surveyed civil servants in the federal, Flemish and francophone administrations held a degree in Political and Social Sciences (Aubin et al., 2017; Fobé, 2020).

What about political science academics? Do they obtain positions in government during the course of their academic careers? The answer is that political science academics have rarely held political or legislative offce (one exception being Paul Magnette, who was appointed president of the francophone socialist party). However, there is a certain tradition of academics taking leave to serve as extensions of ministers in advisory or leadership positions in ministerial cabinets. Those from academia who engage directly in politics are more often than not law scholars, with the occasional economist or substantive policy analyst operating in the feld of migration or education.2

Political scientists are, however, regularly invited to parliamentary committee meetings and have occasionally also chaired parliamentary hearings such as the 2000 hearing investigating the Belgian State's responsibility for the murder of the frst democratically-elected Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Very occasionally, political scientists have also left university altogether to take up senior posts in international agencies, as with Hans Bruyninckx who was appointed head of the European Environment Agency.

2As for law scholars, see for instance Rik Torfs, Boudewijn Bouckaert and Francis Delpérée as MPs, Koen Geens as Minister of Justice, André Alen as *chief of cabinet* of the late PM Jean Luc Dehaene, Johan Vandelanotte as *chief of cabinet* at the Ministry of the Interior and as Minister and Vice Prime Minister. Notable economists have been Gaston and Mark Eyskens, both former Prime Ministers; Paul De Grauwe as MP, Frank Vandenbroucke as Minister, and François-Xavier de Donnéa as minister and mayor of Brussels.

#### *5.3.2 Societal Arena*

Civil society is traditionally strong in Belgium, with an enduring legacy of domination by strong representative umbrella organizations. Political scientists have been known to take up leadership positions in such umbrella NGOs, like the Environmental Union for a Better Environment, or *Beweging.Net*, the former Christian Democratic Workers Union.3

Political scientists in Belgium tend to be rather active in the media. They have prominent columns in newspapers, are guests on current affair talk shows or radio broadcasts. They also appear on television election programmes.

#### *5.3.3 Intersections Between Arenas: Political Scientists in Think Tanks, Advisory Bodies and Applied Research Institutes*

Think tanks lie at the intersection of the academic and societal arenas. They have only started to emerge quite recently in Belgium, as their function is traditionally "performed by professionalized political party study centres" (Pattyn et al., 2017). Even though there is no strong think-tank culture, several political scientists are connected to, or are on the boards of, think tanks, or they provide input to the occasional papers these centres of policy advice produce. The left-wing Minerva is a case in point.

Advisory bodies and applied research centres operate at the intersection between academia and the government arena. There are no precise fgures for the total number of commissions and committees providing policy advice to policy-makers across the different levels of government in Belgium. It is clear, however, that the number of advisory bodies is relatively high in comparison to neighbouring countries Germany, France and the Netherlands, with different counts ranging from 250 to 600, depending on the defnition of the term (Fobé et al., 2017). Yet, the composition of advisory bodies in Belgium is generally representative and lay, as opposed to independent and academic-expert based, thus placing these bodies at the intersection of the government and societal arenas. This means that most permanent advisory bodies will only occasionally feature an academic in the midst of interest organization representatives, if at all. One notable exception is the short-lived experience of the Flemish

<sup>3</sup>Hans Bruyninckx in Bond Beter Leefmilieu, before becoming Head of the European Environment Agency.

advisory body on governmental affairs (Fobé et al., 2013). In the mid-2000s, when the Flemish government reviewed its strategic advisory system, and amended the rules governing the composition of advisory boards, only one of those boards was allowed any signifcant presence of political scientists/public administration experts. The nomination of four members, including the chair, was neatly in keeping with the Flemish university landscape, with one scholar appointed from each of the four main universities. After 8 years, however, the board was abolished, offcially for reasons of effciency, but in practice also because it competed with other advisory structures at the intersection of government and academia (applied research centres), and of government and the societal arena (other advisory bodies such as the Socio-Economic Council of Flanders).

As to applied research centres, Flanders invested heavily in such structural interfaces between policy-makers and academics in many different policy domains. In a consortium of public administration and public policy scholars from different Flemish universities, academia was contracted for a period of 20 years, comprising four consecutive generations of funding. Scholars carried out both long-term and short-term applied research, with a view to advising the Flemish government on a wide range of administrative reform issues, such as evaluating the new advisory structure, the management capacity of local government, and the timely transposition of European legislation. At the Belgian federal level too, multi-university consortia conduct applied research, although the policy-science interface at that level remains fairly fragmented (Brans et al., 2017b; Pattyn et al., 2019).

## 5.4 Roles and Advisory Activities of Political Scientists

Turning to the survey evidence, we frst examine what kind of content political scientists circulate within arenas and at the arenas' intersections in the policy advisory system. Given the characteristics of the Belgian policy advisory system and the wide range of recipients in the crowded policy advisory space, we would expect political scientists to express a broad range of knowledge statements. The survey data also informs us about the ideal conceptions that political scientists have of their own advisory roles, and about the media they use within the framework of engagement with policy-makers.

What we fnd is that there are hardly any public intellectuals, and very few pure academics, among Belgium's academic political scientists. The largest group turns out to be those who actively target a broad range of actors, with a variegated repertoire of advice including normative statements. These fndings are discussed in more detail below.

#### *5.4.1 Highly-Active Scholars*

The survey results comprise the advisory activities of 87 Belgian respondents. We fnd that these Belgian political scientists are more active as policy advisors than the average political scientist in Europe. More than half of those responding to the survey state that they regularly provide some form of advice.

**Fig. 5.1** Advisory arenas in the policy advisory system—Belgium. (*Source*: Adapted from Blum & Brans, 2017)


#### **Table 5.1** Frequency and types of advice % (*N*)—Belgium

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Notes*: Question: "How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?"; including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year' 'once per month' or 'once per week'

The differences in the frequency of policy advice activities are particularly marked as regards the provision of data and facts (63% of Belgian political scientists compared to a European average of 45%), and the provision of consultancy services and recommendations (54% compared to 31%) (Table 5.1).

Political scientists in Belgium are less frequently involved in forecasting and polling, which seems to be a niche reserved for a few scholars only. Similarly, about a quarter of the Belgian sample indicates making value judgements and normative arguments at least once a year. This is slightly lower than the European average of 30%. It should be said that respondents may be reluctant to declare that they actually make value judgements and engage in normative advice giving.

### *5.4.2 Distribution of Advisory Roles and the Demographics of Ideal Types*

The distribution of types of advisory role in Belgium differs from the overall distribution of types in the survey sample. To be precise, the share of experts and opinionating scholars is higher than average, which results



*Notes*: Advisory types operationalized on the basis of the content and frequency of advice. See Chap. 3

from the higher level of advisory activity engaged in within Belgium. Likewise, pure academics are much less common in Belgium than on average in Europe. The outspoken public intellectual is a rarity in Belgium, with only one political scientist from the sample falling into this category (Table 5.2).

The average age of the 87 respondents in Belgium is 43.6, which is slightly below the European average of 46.2. Furthermore, political science in Belgium (and Europe in general) is dominated by male scholars. Only 34.5% of the Belgian political science respondents were female.

Certain characteristics of policy advice, and the differences between advisory role types, are discussed in the following sections of this chapter. Two things ought to be pointed out frst, however. The small size of the group ought to be taken into account when interpreting the fgures for pure academics. This is because outliers can signifcantly affect the distribution of the data. Secondly, the sole public intellectual in the sample has been integrated into the group of opinionating scholars, in order to maintain anonymity throughout the remainder of the analysis.

The investigation of ideal types by age shows that pure academics (av. 50.6 years) tend to be considerably older than experts (av. 41.8 years) and opinionating scholars (av. 44 years). An age effect appears to come into play in regard to the roles taken up by political scientists: the older academics become, the more limited their advisory activities will be. Alternatively, the results may point to generational differences between political scientists, where a younger generation of academics prefers to be more publicly visible than the older generation (Table 5.3).

Looking at the ideal types by gender, we fnd that female political scientists are mostly experts (40.6%). Pure academics account for only 20%


**Table 5.3** Ideal type by age—Belgium

of the female respondents in the sample, while there are 32% female opinionating scholars. Female political scientists are also younger than men (40.9 years compared to 45.2 years on average). This may indicate that political science in Belgium is slowly moving towards greater gender equality.

#### *5.4.3 Channels of Advice Across Types of Role*

A variety of advisory channels are often employed by political scientists in Belgium. Respondents mainly provide their advice through publications and research reports. Opinionating scholars use such channels of advice more often than experts, who are more inclined to provide training and to write policy briefs. This corresponds to the conceptual model of role types. For experts, training is an important way of transferring knowledge and best practices.

While opinionating scholars use traditional and new media as typical avenues for the dissemination of advice, they also produce publications and research reports—indeed, more so than the experts. This may indicate that opinionators attach value to including evidence in their advice (Table 5.4).

Furthermore, all Belgian political scientists prefer certain particular modes of dissemination, namely face-to-face contact and workshops or conferences, to other modes. The phone and e-mails are relied upon much less frequently. As in the previous fndings, opinionating scholars are generally more active advisors. They rely much more on all available modes of advice dissemination than the experts in the sample. To be precise, the four dissemination modes are used on average by 62% of opinionating scholars, compared to 44% of experts.


**Table 5.4** Channels of advice dissemination/Pathways to impact % (*N*)—Belgium

*Notes*: Question: "Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the channels below to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?"; including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year' 'once per month' or 'once per week'

## 5.5 Resisting Devolution? Policy Advice by Political Scientists Across the Language Divide

The centripetal and bipolar nature of the Belgian Federation raises the question as to what extent Belgian political science has become federated, and whether the advisory activities of francophone and Dutch-speaking political scientists have become fragmented. In what follows, we frst examine the advisory activities of the two political science communities based on the survey data. Secondly, we present a remarkable case of crossregional cooperation between political scientists, involving a Belgian academic cross-border think tank that advised societal and political actors to create a federal electoral district in order to counter the bipolar nature of political debate in the Belgian federation.

#### *5.5.1 Advisory Profle and Activities of Dutch-Speaking and French-Speaking Political Scientists*

The number of respondents is a representative linguistic sample of the total population of 328 political scientists in Belgium, which consists of 48% Dutch-speaking, 50% French-speaking and 2% English-speaking academics. Half of the 87 respondents to the survey are from Dutch-speaking universities (*N* = 44), 46% from French-speaking universities (*N* = 40), and 3.5% of them work in English language institutions (*N* = 3) such as the Vesalius College in Brussels or the College of Europe in Bruges.

What is the profle of Belgian political scientists across the two language communities in terms of their advisory activities? How similar or different are their substantive and sub-disciplinary foci?

First, the analysis shows that Dutch-speaking scholars are more active than their French-speaking colleagues. In fact, the latter group resembles more closely the average European respondent. French-speakers are more involved in polling, though—an effect of specialized investment in electoral studies (Table 5.5).

Second, there are some similarities between political scientists in French-speaking (FS) and Dutch-speaking (DS) universities, as regards their sub-disciplinary specializations. Some two-thirds of respondents consider themselves to be experts in core political science issues. However, there are also differences between the two main language groups. Public administration appears a more established sub-discipline within the Dutchspeaking political science community. Security studies, local government and political theory also display certain regional differences, the former two being stronger at Dutch-speaking universities, while political theory is stronger within the francophone academic community (Table 5.6).

Third, the substantive focus of political scientists' policy advice refects their areas of expertise. The main topics of advice are general issues of government and public administration or electoral reform—and to a lesser extent international affairs, development aid and EU-related matters. The


**Table 5.5** Frequency and types of advice by language group % (*N*)—Belgium

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Notes*: Question: "How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?"; including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year' 'once per month' or 'once per week'


*Notes*: Question: "Which categories best describe your area of expertise? Please select the three main categories"; data only reported if rf > 6%

results reveal a greater concentration of advice topics among Dutchspeaking political scientists, than among francophone scholars whose attention to policy issues is more evenly distributed. The comparatively strong focus on migration issues among French-speaking political scientists is remarkable, given the higher level of politicization of this topic in the Dutch-speaking part of the country.

Certain issues appear less frequently on the advisory agenda of Belgian political scientists: issues such as energy, labour, foreign trade and technology. These matters may be more the territory of scholars in other disciplines, such as economists and engineers (Table 5.7).

#### *5.5.2 The Locus of Belgian Political Science Advice: Federal or Devolved?*

What is the primary locus of policy advisory activities, who are the recipients of advice, and which government levels are targeted by political scientists on both sides of the language divide?

The civil service and civil society organizations are the primary recipients of policy advice in Belgium. The civil service receives more advice from political scientists based at Flemish universities, while the latter category is provided with more advice from political scientists based at French-speaking universities. Think tanks are targeted to a much smaller degree by both groups of political scientists, and are relative newcomers to the Belgian advisory scene. Nor is there any great degree of reaching out



*Notes*: Question: "With which substantive policy areas is your advice concerned?"; data only reported if rf > 6% for one of the two communities

to private interest groups or political parties, as is also the case in the rest of Europe (Table 5.8).

Furthermore, Flemish political scientists interact more with formal advisory bodies and with international organizations, while their colleagues in francophone Belgium focus more on providing advice to legislators.

Marked differences exist in the degree of formality of the advice provided. French-speaking political scientists resort more often to formal ways of advising (45% FS vs. 15% DS) whereas Dutch-speaking political scientists in Belgium more often alternate between formal and informal ways (54% DS vs. 26% FS). We have already established that Dutchspeaking political scientists' advisory activities are developed to a greater degree than those of their French-speaking counterparts, and this clearly comes with a mixed repertoire of formal and informal ways of connecting to recipient actors.

Political scientists across the country primarily target both the subnational and national level. It appears that the devolution of powers has increased the possible locations of policy advice, and has not led to a shift from one governmental level to another. In addition, the national level is considered slightly more important than the subnational level by



*Note*: Question: "With which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?"

respondents in both language communities (64% vs. 57% for DS, 67.5% vs. 52.5% for FS). Conversely, the international level of government is not the prime focus of the Belgian political science community (16% DS; 12.5% FS). The provision of advice to EU actors, in turn, is more of a concern (25% DS; 27.5% FS) than it is at the aggregate level of the countries in the sample (12.9%). This is not surprising given the proximity of the various EU institutions.

These fndings underscore the saliency of the remaining federal powers to the advisory activities of Belgian political scientists, despite the substantial devolution of powers within the country. There are no long-term data on advisory activities across government levels however, and for this reason, we cannot draw any conclusions regarding changes over time in the importance of governance levels and regarding effects of the federalisation process in Belgium on the advisory activities of its political science community.

#### *5.5.3 Diverging Opinions on the Relevance of Advisory Activities*

The survey included several normative statements about the policy advisory activities of political scientists. While a majority of Belgian academics consider it a professional obligation to engage in public debate, a smaller number of academics agree that political scientists should be involved in policy-making. In addition, a large group of respondents thinks that



*Notes*: Question: "To what extent do you agree with the following statements?"; including only those respondents who indicated 'fully agree' or 'somewhat agree'

evidence is key. These fndings are consistent across the language divide (Table 5.9).

There are, however, some notable differences between academics in the two language communities. French-speaking political scientists are more distant and cautious in the degree to which they feel it is important to take up advisory activities. Nearly a quarter of them think political scientists should refrain from any direct engagement. Conversely, Flemish political scientists are more inclined to bring evidence to the public debate (Table 5.9).

The vast majority of political scientists in Belgium are intrinsically motivated to contribute to society through providing advisory and consultancy services. Other forms of motivation include staying active minded and considering advice as the professional duty of scholars. While policy advice may also be instrumental to the pursuit of an academic career, this motivation appears much more important to Dutch-speaking scholars than to French-speakers. Also, the perception of the university's recognition of advisory work for the purposes of one's career development is more evident among Dutch-speaking scholars (Table 5.10).

#### *5.5.4 The Pavia Group Advice to Install a Federal Electoral District*

*The idea came up of doing something collective, of some magnitude and duration, in favour of a proposal which we thought was important enough to deserve a broad public discussion: the proposal of a federale kieskring or circonsciption fédérale, that is the creation, next to the provincial electoral districts, of a* 


**Table 5.10** Intrinsic and extrinsic motives for policy advisory and consulting activities %—Belgium

*Notes*: Question: "How important are the following reasons for your engagement in advisory or consulting activities?"; the results only include those respondents who indicated 'fully agree' or 'somewhat agree'

*country-wide electoral district in which a fraction of the members of Belgium's federal Chamber would be elected*. (Van Parijs, 2019)

In the 1970s, the three traditional Belgian political parties (Christian Democratic, Socio-Democratic, and Liberal) each split into a Dutchspeaking party and a French-speaking party, and more recently two Green parties have been established. The ethno-linguistic party system in Belgium has also witnessed the rise of two nationalist parties in Flanders: the liberal conservative party 'New Flemish Alliance' (N-VA) and the extreme rightwing party 'Vlaams Belang' (formerly Vlaams Blok). The francophone party system has no nationalist equivalents, although some parties with regionalist tendencies do exist. The devolved party system, combined with provincial electoral lists, has contributed to the strongly bipolar nature of the Belgian state, and has rendered the achievement of compromises arduous. The lengthy government formation processes, with frequent deadlocks, demonstrate that parties often make promises at the expense of other areas of the country, and that federal consensus institutions have become weak.

The idea of creating a country-wide or 'federal' constituency alongside 11 provincial constituencies was conceived in order to alleviate the problem of delay and deadlock. Even if only 10% of the seats were allocated to this federal constituency, it would be expected to smoothen the dynamics of Belgium's federal politics. If well designed, the leaders of all parties would be willing to run for elections in this constituency and thereby become accountable to the whole of the country, instead of to their own province or community (Deschouwer & Van Parijs, 2007, 2008, 2009).

The idea of creating a federal electoral district was conceived, substantiated and advocated by 'the Pavia Group4', a cross-linguistic academic think tank with 21 members5 (La Libre, 2005), the majority of whom were political scientists whose sub-disciplinary specializations were primarily embedded in comparative politics and electoral behaviour. The group aimed for the widest possible academic representation in its membership, comprising academics at eight universities of different denominations and languages. A majority of these members were well-known contributors to public debate in the press, and on radio and television news programmes, and also frequent guests on election shows.

The frst channel of advice chosen by the Pavia Group was the simultaneous publication of an opinion piece in both a Flemish and a Francophone quality newspaper in 2005. After meetings with other experts and leading politicians, the Group's fnal proposal was presented to the press at the Belgian University Foundation in 2007, followed shortly afterwards by interviews in the television current affairs programme Terzake (2007), and by a debate with a prominent political opponent from the Flemish nationalist party N-VA published in *Knack Magazine* (2007). The detailed proposal was published in *La Revue Nouvelle* and *Samenleving en Politiek*, and was also comprehensively discussed in a Cahier of the *Centre de Recherche et d'Information socio-politiques* (Sinardet, 2012). Many more opinion pieces followed, as did the publication of an e-book in English which eventually made it to a bicameral parliamentary discussion in 2014.

The Pavia Group explored all possible channels of advice. In addition to their publications, they also advocated their proposal through workshops, and through meetings with secretaries of state responsible for

4The Pavia group was named after the street name of the house in Bruxelles where the group frst met.

<sup>5</sup> Initial members were the scholars who signed the said opinion piece *Een kieskring voor alle Belgen/ La démocratie belge enrayée* (De Standaard et La Libre, 4 février 2005), namely: Kris Deschouwer (VUB & Lausanne), Philippe Van Parijs (UCL & Harvard), Rik Coolsaet (UGent), Pascal Delwit (ULB), Lieven De Winter (UCL & KUB), Marco Martiniello (ULg), Koen Raes (UGent), Benoit Rihoux (UCL), Toon Vandevelde (KU Leuven), Pierre Verjans (ULg) and Stefaan Walgrave (UA). They were later joined by Carl Devos (UGent), Marc Hooghe (KU Leuven), Petra Meier (UA), Olivier Paye (USaint-Louis), Jean-Benoit Pilet (ULB), Gérard Roland (UCBerkeley & ULB), Dave Sinardet (UA & USaint-Louis), Yannick Vanderborght (USaint-Louis & UCLouvain) et Caroline Van Wynsberghe (UCLouvain).

institutional reform, and even with the Prime Minister. With institutional reform shelved under the Michel-government (2014–2018), the debate surrounding the proposal was stymied. However, the idea survived, and one political party continued to explicitly promote the proposal. The proposal was subsequently picked up by the new Re-Bel think tank on Belgian Federal Institutions in 2020, with a discussion on how a federal district might prevent federal blockages.

This case of 15 years of discussion of institutional reform in Belgium exhibits certain key features of the Belgian political advisory system, with a strong emphasis on consensus-based advice and the representation of the different linguistic and denominational affliations of the experts involved. It also shows that political scientists with advisory roles have to deal constantly with the political sensitivity of the subject matter. Furthermore, the case illustrates the survey's fndings. It portrays the (mostly male) community of Belgian political scientists as active advisors, trying to change society through a plethora of media channels and other modes of dissemination, and engaging with multiple recipients of their advice. At the same time, the case is an example of how leading political scientists in Dutchspeaking and francophone Belgium are not locked in separate regional policy advisory bubbles. Moreover, the case is not unique, as the crosslinguistic involvement of political scientists in the G-1000, a democratic innovation initiative and platform, testifes (www.G1000.org).

#### 5.6 Conclusion

In Belgium, political scientists as experts or opinionating scholars are very much committed to policy advisory activities. Scholars at universities in the Dutch-speaking part of the country are more active advisors as compared to their colleagues in other European countries. The small size of this densely-populated country, which facilitates interpersonal ties, may be conducive to such activities. Another explanation for this relatively high level of engagement in advisory work, may be the resources supplementing the relatively limited in-house advisory capacity of governments. Belgian governments' science policies, albeit with certain variations between different levels of government, invested in applied social science programmes at least until the mid-2010s, as a result of which scientifc expertise and knowledge on policy issues was actively sought. In the absence of further research fndings, we may also speculate that Belgium's pillarized society has produced communities that value volunteer work and disinterested dedication to the group's interests. By extension, this will engender a relatively strong commitment on the part of academics towards 'service to the community'— what is called 'the third mission of universities'. Political scientists are also thought to offset the limited numbers and resources of political journalists operating in media organizations, with the latter actively seeking to engage political scientists for fact fnding and expert interviews.

Belgian political scientists are thus active players in the Belgian policy advisory system, and the survey results offer an interesting view of this system. While the civil service remains the main recipient of such advice, its provision to civil society is quite important as well, and probably on the increase. However, as the survey is synchronic, it is hard to tell whether or not the policy advisory system is moving towards greater pluralization and externalization. What is evident is that the traditional organizations linking government to society, that is, the advisory bodies are not the frst of the political scientists' targets. In these bodies, lay and representative interest-based expertise prevails. The advisory activities of political scientists, on the other hand, mainly concern the government arena, and take the form of direct advice to the nation's civil service, and to a lesser extent target executive and legislative politicians. While advice is also offered to the public arena, and in particular to civil society, little advice is provided to Belgium's private interest groups. Political scientists also maintain their distance from consultancy frms, which in recent years have considerably expanded their public sector activities. Think tanks have also become more active in Belgium, but from the viewpoint of political scientists' advisory activities they remain rather isolated actors in the policy advisory system.

What about the typical political-systemic features of the Belgian policy advisory system, such as consociationalism, partitocracy, and federalism? Well, the tradition of neo-corporatist consociationalism survives in the nature and recipients of advisory activities, as well as in the attention paid to ensure balanced representation of different denominational institutions in research consortia. Neither the survey nor the case in question has helped us to evaluate the partitocratic impact on policy advisory activities, beyond certain speculation about the predominance of partitocratic gatekeepers of policy advice. What about the federalisation of the policy advisory system? The survey has not provided any strong evidence of devolved policy advisory systems, at least not as far as it concerns the governmental level advice is targeted at. Actors at the federal level are no less important targets than are those at the subnational level. Moreover, the proposal to create a federal electoral district meets, both in substance and in the composition of the political scientists who devised it, the expectation that political scientists have not retreated into regional policy advisory systems.

What then can explain the fact that Dutch-speaking political scientists are more active advisors than their colleagues at French-speaking universities are? The survey results suggest that the importance that Dutchspeaking political scientists in particular give to their advisory roles, is related to professional norms and incentives. They perceive advisory activities as being instrumental to the advancement of their careers, more than their French-speaking colleagues do. The extent to which being a public person increases one's academic reputation, and increases the likelihood of being appointed to honorary positions (e.g. in the academy), and of receiving additional research funds (through ministerial mandates), has yet to be investigated. Whether roles as experts and opinionating scholars generate prestige and are encouraged and rewarded by universities, clearly merits further study.

Two further reasons for the aforesaid discrepancy may be the relatively greater importance of public administration studies at Flemish universities, and the relatively stronger administrative reform agenda of the Flemish government, backed by several generations of applied research. The differences in the degree to which Belgian political scientists actively provide advice may thus have been impacted by diverging policy agendas. A comparatively stronger administrative reform agenda in Flanders may have boosted advisory activities, particularly in the public administration community. Stronger mandates for economic and social recovery in francophone Belgium are consistent with the relatively greater attention paid to advising on issues of welfare and social policy, as well as with the shift in advisory activities away from political scientists towards economists. Nonetheless, empirical research beyond what is currently speculated is required in order to test such hypotheses. Matching the results of this chapter's analysis of the supply side with a demand-side perspective on the similarities and differences in comparative agendas, governmental policy advisory styles, and policy sectors, is a worthy idea for future research.

#### References

Aubin, D., Brans, M., & Fobé, E. (2017). The policy analytical profession in Belgium. In M. Brans & D. Aubin (Eds.), *Policy analysis in Belgium* (pp. 13–34). Policy Press.


*van de Kamer van Volksvertegenwoordigers in de periode 2011–2014*. Master dissertation, KU Leuven, Faculty of Social Sciences.


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## Restrained Wisdom or Not? The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Denmark

*Morten Kallestrup*

### 6.1 Introduction

The role and importance of policy advisors in Denmark is a research topic that has received very little attention. This is particularly true of research based on a 'policy advisory systems' approach (Craft & Howlett, 2013; Hustedt & Veit, 2017); Little research into the Danish political system has been conducted using such a theoretical approach. Previous studies within the Danish context have mainly focused on the role of interest organizations (Christiansen & Nørgaard, 2003; Christiansen et al., 2010) or of civil servants (Bo Schmidt-Udvalget, 2015; Grønnegaard Christensen & Mortensen, 2016; Schmidt & Christensen, 2016). Recently, there has been increasing interest in the role of think tanks in Denmark (Kelstrup, 2016, 2017), and also in the concept and phenomenon of 'policy professionals'. Policy professionals systematically strive to have an impact on public policy, but they are not classifed as politicians, civil servants, lobbyists or policy entrepreneurs (Poulsen & Aagaard, 2020; Kelstrup, 2020).

M. Kallestrup (\*)

University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark e-mail: kallestrup@sam.sdu.dk

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022 111

M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_6

Gravengaard and Rendtorff (2020) present an overview of the different roles played by scientists in the dissemination of research fndings beyond the academic environment.

While the international literature on policy advisory systems (e.g. Craft & Howlett, 2013; Craft & Halligan, 2017) points to externalization and politicization as important trends, the empirical basis is mainly taken from the systems witnessed in the English-speaking world. Intuitively, it seems diffcult to apply such conclusions directly to a Scandinavian politicoadministrative context (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011). The reason for this is that a classical Scandinavian, consensual neo-corporatist country like Denmark is characterized by close relationships between policymakers and interest organizations within the context of a classical unitary, centralized state (see also the chapter on Norway in this volume). Furthermore, there is very little information available regarding the involvement of Danish political scientists in policy-advisory activities.

The survey data collected for this book project, together with a number of other data sources, mean that there is now more systematic empirical information available which may indicate the state of the art and trends of Denmark's policy advisory system and the role of its political scientists in that system. Some of these trends correspond to assumptions about the relationship between (academic) experts and policymakers. Other trends seem to contradict what have been broadly accepted assumptions, including those present in the academic literature, on the relationship between political science expertise and policymakers in Denmark.

This chapter is set out as follows. Firstly, the policy advisory system in Denmark is described and classifed in terms of its general and comparative characteristics, and the country's political scientists are placed within that system. With regard to the 'location model' presented in Chap. 2 of this book, the main access points for political scientists are established and specifed for Denmark. Secondly, survey data are used to describe the advisory roles of political scientists in Denmark vis-à-vis the general typology of advisory roles and a comparative perspective is offered based on the overall dataset and the other country chapters contained in this book. Thirdly, the normative conceptions of political scientists regarding policy advisory behaviour vis-à-vis incentives and career opportunities and constraints, are discussed. The chapter closes with some concluding remarks and possible avenues for further research.

## 6.2 Existing Images of the Advisory Role of Political Scientists in Denmark

#### *6.2.1 The Danish Policy Advisory System*

Traditionally, Denmark has been classifed as an example of a neocorporatist political system (Armingeon, 2002) with a signifcant tendency towards the employment of a Scandinavian politico-administrative system (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2011), situated within a universalist welfare state (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Its corporatist characteristics have been particularly evident in policy sectors such as the labour market and business regulation, as well as in some areas of public service production (Christiansen & Nørgaard, 2003; Christiansen et al., 2010). Private interest government (Streeck & Schmitter, 1985) is therefore also a clear feature of the Danish political system.

As opposed to the neighbouring Sweden, a country with a corporatist tradition, that shares many of the aforementioned features with Denmark, policy decisions in Denmark seem more based on pragmatically developed processes than on systematic, evidence-based decision-making procedures. This has implications when classifying and specifying the policy advisory system in Denmark. The national *Power and Democracy Research Project* (Togeby et al., 2003; see also Albæk et al., 2003) analysing the state of Danish democracy over the period from 1998 to 2003 drew the following clear conclusions:

In Denmark, there has never been a strong tradition of relying on available knowledge and scientifc evidence when making political decisions—as opposed to Sweden for example. The scientifc/analytical level of Danish public commission reports has often been of a low quality. Public commission reports have appeared as the result of negotiated, rather than analytical, approaches to political problems. Much evidence shows that the knowledgebased foundation of political decisions has declined even further over the last couple of years. Increasingly fewer legislative proposals have been prepared by public commissions, and even when this has been the case, the lack of time available has been much more constraining than earlier (…). It seems to be that in general decision-makers have got used to just 'giving it a try', and then changing their decisions later when results and consequences are unforeseen and/or less fortunate' (Togeby et al., 2003: 382 (author's translation)).

In 2017-2018, researchers reviewed the fndings of the original Power and Democracy Research Project, and evaluated whether the conclusions of that project were still valid after more than a decade of further research into political and societal change in Denmark had been conducted (see Økonomi & Politik, 2018). They concluded that it is still very rare for political decision-makers to use systematic knowledge and scientifc evidence, while there is now a tendency for political decision-making processes to take even more distance from scientifc knowledge (Christiansen 2018a). Based on survey data regarding political scientists' views on how they, as experts, are being used as policy advisors, the question of the advisory roles of political scientists in Denmark will now be assessed from the international and comparative perspectives.

#### *6.2.2 Political scientists vis-à-vis other scientists as policy advisors*

As previously mentioned, there are limited data regarding the role of political scientists as policy advisors in the Danish policy advisory system. Across a fragmented feld, there are however a few studies that can offer an overview of the situation. In an unpublished paper, Christiansen (2018b) investigates what changes and developments have taken place in the role of Danish public committees during the period from 1972 to 2017. The research question of Christiansen's study is whether any signifcant changes have been seen regarding the role of *public committees* in the Danish political system and in Denmark's political decision-making. Given that the focus of this chapter is on the policy advisory roles of political scientists in Denmark, it is particularly interesting to see that Christiansen's paper comprises an analysis of the distribution of the professions of members of public committees. Figure 6.1 below shows the results of that analysis.

It appears that the experts sitting on Danish public committees have not been evenly distributed in terms of their different professions. The Majority of such committee members have been legal experts such as judges and professors of law. These two groups have been almost equally represented and 910 out of a total of 1685 (i.e. 54%) expert members have had a legal background. Both of these groups of individuals with legal training have increased their respective shares of seats on said committees over the course of the 45 years under examination. Political scientists, on the other hand, have played a modest role as committee members: totalling 66 committee members all told, they have only accounted for 4% of

**Fig. 6.1** Proportion of judges, other jurists, economists and political scientists in public committees relative to other committee members, 1972-2017,—Denmark. Source: Christiansen (2018b)

all the experts concerned. According to Christiansen (2018b), the most surprising fact with regard to committee membership has been the absence of economists (and to a certain degree of political scientists as well).

Another study of scientifc advisory services is Kelstrup's (2020) analysis of the educational and professional backgrounds of 'policy professionals' in Danish think tanks. His study offers a nuanced take on Christiansen's analysis of public committees, as Kelstrup fnds a correlation between the employment of members of a certain professional category on the one hand, and publicity in the Danish parliament (*Folketinget*), and in national newspapers on the other. Advocacy think tanks appear particularly keen on employing the services of economists, while employees with a training in economics are correlated positively with references and publicity, both in the Danish parliament and in the country's national newspapers (Kelstrup, 2020: 71). Of more than a hundred policy professionals working for 10 different Danish think tanks, some 40% were trained as economists, compared to 20% who were trained as political scientists.

A third important work is that of Albæk et al. (2011), who conducted surveys in 1998 and 2007 of the types of expert referred to in Danish newspapers' election coverage, the topics that the experts commented on (e.g. substance or process), and changes over time. What they discovered was that researchers are clearly the most frequently used experts in election campaign articles. The vast majority (94%) of such researchers are from the social sciences. Of the social science experts appearing in election campaign articles published in Danish newspapers, almost two-thirds were political scientists while 20% were economists (Albæk et al., 2011: 54). This fnding may not be particularly surprising given that political scientists are by defnition experts on matters of politics, including elections and political parties.

Thus, a major—and directly measurable—*formal* access point for Danish political scientists as policy advisors is that of public committees, where, however, political scientists are not a prominent presence. Nor are they prominent in the Danish think tanks compared to economists. Political scientists are, however, much more visible in public media; for example, they often feature in newspaper articles on topics such as politicaladministrative processes and political institutions. The picture depicted thus far may lead one to believe that the emergence of political scientists as experts and policy advisors seems to happen mostly via *informal* access points, such as public media, where they may advise and offer their opinions on elections, political parties, and the related processes of the political system. While this may be the impression given by the existing empirical data, the next step we shall take in this chapter is to examine the views and activities of political scientists more extensively.

## 6.3 Surveying Advisory Activities of Political Scientists

The analysis presented in this section builds on data generated by a largescale cross-national survey (see Chapters. 2 and 3 of this volume for details). A total of 61 of the 297 Danish political scientists invited to participate in the survey actually responded (a response rate of 20.5%). All those scholars responding to the survey were identifed as political scientists employed at one of Denmark's universities or scientifc research institutions.

Some 80% of the respondents are employed on a permanent contract (tenured professorships or associate professorships), while the remaining 20% are employed on a non-permanent basis (e.g. assistant professorships). Three-quarters are male, 21% are female, while a few chose not to disclose their gender. Altogether, the sample can be considered representative of political scientists employed at Danish universities or scientifc research institutions at post doctorate level or higher. Over 90% of the Danish respondents hold a PhD degree or equivalent qualifcation.

The survey questions reported below cover different types of advisory activity, recipients of advice, channels, levels of government, topics of advice, and the viewpoints of political scientists that may encourage or discourage them from engagement in such activity. In this way, we may also be able to contribute to the discussion on how 'relevant' Danish political scientists are to policymakers and to society at large.

#### *6.3.1 Activities and Role Types*

Applying the locational model presented in Chap. 2 and importing the survey data for Denmark, informal access indeed seems to be at least as important as formal access when political scientists choose, or they are called upon, to deliver policy advice. While approximately one out of three Danish political scientists claims that he or she engages with politicians when delivering policy advice, engagement with political parties is less frequently observed, with only one out of fve doing so. On the other hand, two-thirds of all respondents engage with civil servants. With regard to advisory bodies, think tanks, interest groups, and other civil society organizations and citizen groups, some 35% of respondents engage with these policy actors; while only 25% engage with international organizations. For the distribution of policy advice among recipients, see Table 6.1.

With regard to the level of governance at which political scientists engage, some 25% of them engage at the sub-national level, while 17% engage with EU or transnational and international organizations. Their primary focus is the national level: over two-thirds of political scientists are oriented towards the central institutions of government, thus emphasizing the importance of national political and administrative institutions as recipients of advice.

In other words, according to the survey data, the main access point for Danish political scientists consists of a direct link between the internal government arena and the external academic arena, with the latter providing advice both formally and informally. Civil servants operating in ministries and national public authorities appear to be the most important points of contact for academic political scientists in Denmark.


**Table 6.1** Recipients of policy advice—Denmark

Note: Question: 'With which actors have you engaged in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?'

Source: ProSEPS survey data.

On what topics do political scientists usually provide their advisory knowledge? It appears that topics are distributed somewhat unevenly, with advice on social welfare (20%) and international affairs, respectively to government and public administration organizations, representing the top two areas of advice, with almost 30% of the population of political scientists giving advice in each of these areas. With regards to the sub-disciplinary focus of the political scientists concerned, political science in general is the leading one (56%), but it is followed closely by public administration (39%), public policy (36%), and social policy and welfare (18%).

Applying the typology of advisory roles, six out of ten political scientists can be classifed as experts, indicating that they provide policy advice based on scientifc knowledge. Some three out of ten are opinionating scholars, meaning that they combine the provision of scientifc evidence-based knowledge with interpretation and normative statements or with advocacy about an issue. Table 6.2 shows that the 'pure academic' (11.5%) and the 'public intellectual' (1.6%) are roles that few political scientists in Denmark appear to perform.

Compared to the overall sample of political scientists from all countries in the ProSEPS project, political scientists in Denmark tend more to come into the expert category and far less into that of the opinionating scholar. There are also fewer pure academics among them, and while the presence of the public intellectual is very limited in general, this is even a smaller group in Denmark. Danish political scientists actively deliver scientifcally


**Table 6.2** Advisory roles of political scientists—Denmark

proven expertise to policymakers. They also give their own opinions, albeit less so than in many other countries in Europe.

Looking more specifcally at the frequency and content of the policy advice provided, Table 6.3 gives an overview of our combined fndings. Almost two-thirds of Danish political scientists state that they only provide advice once a year or less, while 20% say they never provide data and facts about policies or political phenomena. Even fewer analyse and explain the courses and consequences of policy problems. More than 40% indicate that they deliver such policy problem-oriented advice less than once a year or never do so. Danish political scientists are active in providing advice, but they do so by delivering data and facts rather than any comprehensive analysis of the issues at stake.

On the question of whether they offer any assessment of existing policies, institutional arrangements and so on, 3 out of 10 say they never do, while 1 in 2 indicate a frequency of once a year or less often. More than 3 out of 10 never offer consultancy services and advice, or make recommendations on policy alternatives, while almost half of the population of political scientists do so at least once a year or less frequently. Only around 10% of Danish political scientists make forecasts and/or carry out polls at least once a year: this may be accounted for by the fact that the provision of such advice is generally outsourced to professional consultancies specializing in producing forecasts and polls. Thus, the relative prominence of experts comes mostly with factual information provision. Danish experts are less active in the more extensive analysis of problems, polls, or evaluations of existing policy solutions.

Approximately 2 out of 3 political scientists claim that they never make value judgements or offer normative arguments. So, 1 out of 3 does in fact engage in normative dialogue with policy actors. This is the main indicator


**Table 6.3** Type of advice provided—Denmark

Note: Question: "How often, on average, over the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?"

that nearly one-third of political scientists are classifed as opinionating scholars (see Table 6.2 on the proportions of ideal-type policy-advisory roles). Yet, this is far less than the average for all European countries.

Another dimension is that of formal and informal advice provision: 20% classify their engagement in the provision of formal policy advice, while 23% say they are mostly informally connected to policymakers. A combination of formal and informal advice is the most frequently adopted approach, with half of the sample of political scientists indicating this. Table 6.4 shows the distribution of the degrees of formality of the advice provided by political scientists. Account should be taken here of the fact that Danish society is characterized by a substantial amount of social capital and considerable trust in the country's public authorities. Consequently, some of the advice may have been considered by respondents as 'informal advice', while in a different political and social culture it may have been considered as constituting more 'formal advice'. It does, however, remain unclear whether advice provided via informal channels such as workshops, face-to-face communication or public media, is being classifed as mainly formal or informal advice. The nature of the advice may thus be classifed as somewhat formal by the political scientist even when the communication channel employed is informal.

Political scientists in Denmark employ several different channels in their quest for the dissemination of expertise to policymakers and decisionmakers. Over the past three years, half of Denmark's political scientists used publications (books and articles) as a channel through which to provide policy advice and/or consulting services; and they did this at least once a year, or more frequently. Table 6.5 presents the corresponding fndings. Almost the same proportion of political scientists used traditional media channels with an almost identical frequency, while one third disseminated policy advice via policy reports, briefs or memos. Almost half of


**Table 6.4** Formal or informal advice—Denmark

Note: Question: 'Please rate your engagement in direct knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities, during the last three years, on a scale from entirely informal (e.g. personal talks) to entirely formal (e.g. appointment to advisory committees, expert councils, etc.)'


**Table 6.5** Channels of advice as pathways to impact—Denmark

Note: Question: 'Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the channels below to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?'

Source: ProSEPS survey data.

the political scientists have never written blog pieces or entries in social media, while just over half of them have provided policy advice or professional services in the form of training courses for policy actors, administrative organizations and other actors and stakeholders.

Almost 80% of the political scientists have taken part in public debates over the past three years. Approximately 1 in 2 has appeared on TV, while a slightly smaller percentage has been interviewed on the radio (both groups mainly at national level). Almost 70% have contributed pieces to newspapers/magazines, while only 1 in 3 has contributed to other online media. Some 4 out of 10 political scientists have been on TV, a little more than half have appeared on the radio, and 2 out of 3 have written for newspapers, at least once a year every year for the last three years. Once again, this involvement has mainly been at national level. 1 in 6 state that they have participated in public debate via Twitter, and a slightly smaller percentage via Facebook.

Some 80% of political scientists have used workshops or conferences or face-to-face gatherings with actors and organizations in order to provide policy advice or consultancy. A smaller proportion, some 60%, usually communicate with target actors by phone, e-mail or post.

Comparatively speaking, Danish political scientists are quite active at international conferences, with some 92% of the responding scholars declaring their participation in at least one international conference per year. Such behaviour refects what most Danish political scientists believe, namely that evidence-based grounds are required for the provision of policy advice (see below); it also fts in with the observation that there are far more experts and less opinionating scholars among the political scientists in Denmark compared to the average distribution of the four types of advisory roles in Europe.

This observation, however, does not ft completely with the initial hypothesis, based on former studies, according to which the main channel of advice for political scientists is not via formal access points (e.g. public committees), but rather through the writing of articles in the public media and the like. According to the respondents, the narrative of political scientists being primarily policy advisors via the public media is not exactly true: much policy advice is apparently provided through informal connections and through its direct disclosure to civil servants, civil society organizations, politicians and advisory bodies; at the same time, it is basically considered valid to do on the basis of scientifc evidence only. Hence the main fnding is that experts prevail over opinionating scholars in Denmark.

#### 6.4 Normative Conceptions of Advisory Roles

With regard to normative conceptions of their advisory roles, almost twothirds of the Danish respondents agree that political scientists should become involved in policymaking, while one-third of them disagree. The vast majority (90%) think that political scientists have a professional obligation to engage in public debate, and strongly disagree with the idea that political scientists should refrain from direct engagement with policymaking actors.

More than two-thirds agree that political scientists should provide evidence-based knowledge and expertise outside academia, but not be directly involved themselves in policymaking. From a comparative perspective, this closely corresponds to the high proportion of ideal type experts among Danish political scientists, and the low proportion of pure academics. Political scientists in Denmark are thus rather enthusiastic about their knowledge being used by policy actors, and about the idea of political scientists as the producers and conveyors of knowledge for the beneft of the policymakers.

As regards the motivation for engaging in advisory or consulting activities, between one half and two-thirds indicate their intrinsic desire to remain active minded, or see it as part of their academic obligations. However, only one-third think that advisory or consulting activities are important for the advancement of their academic careers. They see their contribution to society as being much more important. Danish political scientists are thus rather intrinsically motivated in their quest to provide advice to policy makers; while they also refer to their professional duty, this is considered to be less signifcant for the purposes of the advancement of their academic careers.

With regard to perceptions of the visibility of political science research in public debate, more than 9 out of 10 respondents indicate that the research produced by political scientists in Denmark is fairly or highly, visible in public debate. Approximately 6 out of 10 believe that political scientists have a considerable impact on the general public, while the rest state that political scientists have little impact on the general public. Hence, in comparative terms, Danish political scientists consider that they have high visibility in the public media, yet comparatively limited impact on policymaking.

What about normative conceptions of participation in public debate? An incredible 97% fnd that political scientists should engage in public debate (at least to some extent) as part of their role as social scientists, while only 18% fnd that engagement in public debate also helps in expanding career options (see Table 6.6).

In response to the question of whether political scientists receive recognition, in terms of career advancement, for their participation in public debate, the answers are rather unclearly distributed: approximately twoffths believe they do not receive such recognition, another two-ffths are somewhere in between, and one ffth fnd that political scientists do receive recognition in terms of career advancement as a result of participation in public debate.

About 50% of Danish political scientists tend to agree that they should not engage in public debate until their ideas have been tested in an academic setting, while the other half tend to disagree with such a requirement. Even though only one out of three are opinionating scholars who occasionally offer value-judgements and normative arguments when delivering policy advice, approximately 50% agree that the approval of any


**Table 6.6** Normative views on policy advice—Denmark

Note: Question: "To what extent do you agree with the following statements?"

Source: ProSEPS survey data.

expert advice provided through publication in scientifc outlets, does not constitute a prerequisite for participation in public debate.

To sum up: political scientists should engage in public debate since this is part of their undertaking, despite the fact that it does not necessarily advance their careers. While they agree that policy advice in general should build on sound scientifc evidence, political scientists differ as to whether participation in public debate hinges upon the prior approval of ideas via their publication in academic outlets.

#### 6.5 Conclusion

The survey data used in this chapter have extended the empirical picture of the involvement of Danish political scientists advising and public debate. While certain previous studies have shown that political scientists are not well represented in public committees and other studies have claimed that the main channel for the provision of advice by political scientists may be writing articles in the media, the survey fndings show that political scientists deliver substantial policy advice through informal contacts and channels of communication, directly to civil servants, civil society organizations, politicians and advisory bodies. They do this mainly at the national level, while taking an international approach to the production of their knowledge itself. Internationally peer-reviewed scientifc evidence is considered a key prerequisite for advising or opinionating, but not necessarily for participation in public debate more generally.

Based on the aforementioned typology of their advisory roles, 6 out of 10 political scientists in Denmark are categorized as 'experts', while 3 out of 10 are opinionating scholars. The rest are either 'pure academics' or 'public intellectuals'. Hence, compared to other countries and to the overall sample, political scientists in Denmark more often fall into the 'expert' category than the opinionating scholar category. There are also fewer 'pure academics' in Denmark than in the overall sample, which may indicate that Danish political scientists prefer to deliver sound, science- based expertise and advice to policymakers; and also that they display a much less common preference for combining policy advice with value-judgements and normative arguments.

The main means by which Danish political scientists provide policy advice appears to be the link with the governmental arena. Furthermore, Danish political scientists report that their advisory activities vary between formal and informal channels of access. Policy advice is mainly centred on political scientists in their academic setting and civil servants operating in ministries and national public authorities. Much of this interaction involving political scientists is informal, and takes place less frequently in formal settings such as public committees. Moreover, Danish political scientists employ several channels by which to provide advice, in their quest for the dissemination of expertise to policymakers and decision-makers, although traditional academic outlets such as books and articles are among the most commonly used. Media articles and courses for practitioners are further such outlets.

Political scientists in Denmark are keen on their knowledge being used by policy actors to enhance evidence-based decision-making in the country. There is considerable belief in the scholarly community's visibility in public media. The vast majority of political scientists also agree with the statement that they have a professional obligation to engage in public debate. A smaller majority—but a majority nevertheless—believe that their knowledge also has a real impact on political processes. However, as far as career advancement is concerned, most academics do not believe that policy advisory activities help them very much. Only 18% of them fnd that engagement in public debate helps the advancement of their careers. The most important motivational factor is a sense of professional duty.

As shown, the initial hypothesis based on former studies indicating that the main channel of advice for political scientists is not via formal channels and access points, but rather through the writing of articles in the public media and other similar activities, has been slightly amended with the addition of a further aspect: according to the political scientists themselves, much policy advice is provided via direct contact and communication, through both formal and informal channels, with civil servants, civil society organizations, politicians and national advisory bodies, and is mostly based on sound scientifc evidence. However, compared to trained lawyers (present on public committees) and trained economists (much present in think tanks), political scientists in Denmark do not seem to have obtained an equally and publicly recognized role (and one that is directly measurable) as policy advisors in Denmark. Probably because the provision of policy advice from political scientists—which is recognized as an important obligation by the profession itself and is practiced accordingly is still largely of an informal nature, channelled via public media and direct contacts, and therefore much more diffcult to measure and compare, and thus to prove.

Retrospectively, it may not be that surprising to fnd that political scientists do not very often participate in public committees, given that their main expertise consists in their knowledge of political-administrative processes and institutions, rather than substantive policy issues (e.g. Albæk, 2004). Moreover, most public committees are, as a matter of fact, tasked by the government with addressing specifc *legal* and *policy* challenges, and less so with challenges regarding political-administrative processes and institutions. There are, however, some prominent exceptions to this general rule. For example, there is a public committee investigating the relationship between civil servants and politicians, which in fact comprised political scientists (Betænkning 1443, 2004). The same goes for the committee tasked with analysing the prospects of political-administrative reform prior to the local government reform in 2005 (Strukturkommissionen, 2004; Christiansen & Klitgaard, 2008). There is also the recent public committee tasked with delivering a retrospective assessment of the decisionmaking processes leading to the Danish government's lock-down of the country in March 2020 due to COVID-19, which was also led by a political scientist (Folketinget, 2020; 2021). A recent illustration of the rather limited role of political scientists in national committees is how the policy challenges associated with the COVID-19 crisis resulted in mainly trained economists being considered for advisory roles (see Ministry of Finance, 2020).

Be this as it may, an underestimated point in the literature thus far is that political scientists deliver considerable policy advice via direct contacts and communication with civil servants, civil society organizations, politicians, and national advisory bodies, while they also address questions posed through the media concerning matters relating to political representation and the functioning of policy-making institutions. In the light of this, the following question remains to be investigated further by future research: whether Danish society possesses an insuffcient capacity to make practical use of important, well-documented political science knowledge, as a result of the relatively limited presence of political scientists in formal advisory bodies, thus representing a case of 'restrained wisdom'; or whether the policy advice provided by political scientists via direct contact with decision-makers and stakeholders, and their participation in social media and other informal channels, is actually suffcient to establish a solid knowledge-based foundation for policymaking and society as such. The survey data analysed in this chapter, and the comparative perspective from which the fndings can be viewed, may inform such further work on the advisory roles of a scholarly community that is well embedded in the international academic environment, and may have the potential to achieve an even more important policy advisory role within the national political system and society as a whole.

#### References


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## A Small Discipline, Scarce Publicity, and Compromised Outward Reach: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in France

*Pierre Squevin and David Aubin*

## 7.1 Introduction

Although its origins date back to the latter half of the nineteenth century, with the creation of a Free School of Political Sciences in Paris (Favre, 1989), French political science became established as a discipline in its own right in the years following WWII. A key moment in its foundation was the period 1948–1949 when the French Association of Political Science (AFSP) was constituted (Déloye & Mayer, 2008). Since then, studies have focused on the evolutionary patterns characterizing French political science (Gaïti & Scot, 2017; Déloye & Mayer, 2019). What stands out from these studies is French political science's slow development and lack of a legal framework until the late 1960s. This early period

P. Squevin (\*) • D. Aubin

UCLouvain, Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

e-mail: pierre.squevin@uclouvain.be

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022 131

M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_7

in its development was followed by a period of more sustained growth and expansion in the 1970s and 1980s, when it became the more frmly established, professionalized, mature discipline that it is now (Smith, 2020). More specifcally, some studies have looked at the internationalization of French political science (Boncourt, 2011) or the publication strategies of French political scientists (Grossman, 2010), while others have questioned the peculiarities and the emergence on the national scene of sub-disciplines such as international relations (Cornut & Battistella, 2013) and policy studies (Boussaguet et al., 2015; Halpern et al., 2018; Le Galès, 2011).

French political science is capable of self-refection and as such regularly questions its own existence and signifcance. Despite efforts to retrace the development of the discipline, and notwithstanding certain signs of selfcriticism among its members, limited attention has been paid to the role of French political scientists as advisers, experts, or relevant knowledge producers in their own right. Also owing to a lack of transparency and scarce evidence to date, little is known about the advisory roles of French political scientists. This issue has been raised on several occasions: the silence of the discipline has been denounced (Favre, 2005); there have been manifestations of autonomist tendencies (Spenlauer, 1999) together with demonstrations of the ambivalent, complex interdependencies between social sciences (including political science) and the State (Bezès et al., 2005; Lacouette-Fougère & Lascoumes, 2013). One chapter of a volume published in 2018 hinted at the advisory role of political science and other social science disciplines and suggested that there was a gradual, albeit still minimal, bridging of the gap between academic research in the feld of policy analysis and the practice of policy analysis itself (Le Galès & Hassenteufel, 2018).

Following on from such earlier refections and partial conclusions, this chapter seeks to shed more light on the degree and types of involvement of French political scientists in advisory activities. Using a tailor-made typology, their advisory profles will be disclosed and placed in context. This chapter also aims to reveal who the recipients of advice are, and how advice is delivered, and then goes on to explore the range of advisory content and formats. Normative attitudes towards advice-giving are also discussed, as is the participation of academics in public debate. The basis for this analysis is constituted by data on France taken from a European-wide survey of political scientists conducted in 2018. These data are complemented by 14 interviews with French political scientists in nearly all the relevant sub-disciplines, carried out between January and February 2019.

First, a description of the French policy advisory system is given, which also covers the position of political scientists within the national policy advisory system and the operation of that system. The chapter then focuses on political science as a discipline and on the ways in which its characteristics may condition the development of advisory roles. After presenting the sample of political scientists taken from the survey, a descriptive analysis will be conducted, and the fndings of such examined in order to better understand the advisory roles taken up by France's political scientists. A case study of a recent public debate on institutional reforms of parliament is used to illustrate how the advisory activities of political scientists in France may develop.

## 7.2 The Position of Political Scientists Within the French Policy Advisory System

The initial part of this section will present the characteristics of the policy advisory system in France and the place of political scientists within that system. There are indeed clear tendencies at work hindering French political scientists' involvement in advisory activities, but these may be in part offset by the presence of more integrative mechanisms. The second part of this section specifes the available access points through which political scientists' advice can fow and fnd its way to the country's policymakers.

#### *7.2.1 Characteristics of the French Policy Advisory System*

The most stable and characteristic feature of the French policy advisory system is statism. The roots of statism go back far in history to before the French Revolution. In its current form, statism entails the State acting as the dominant, omnipresent player within the country's policy advisory systems. The French State exerts considerable control over policy-making processes at all levels, and the intervention of central government is an intense, constant feature of many areas of economic and social life, despite more recent decentralization and privatization processes (Bezès & Le Lidec, 2011).

Statism as a form of interest intermediation has reinvented itself and remains a key feature of the national system (Woll, 2009). The best way to secure a prominent position in the policy advisory system of France is to be recognized as an expert or analyst by state actors, and in particular the central decision-making milieu comprising political insiders and senior civil servants (Grémion, 1982). Central decision-makers establish the inputs needed from other insiders, and also from stakeholders, societal groups, and possibly from academics. They exercise the gate-keeping power by which to silence, short-circuit, or reframe social demands.

At the same time, relations between the public administration and academic organizations are made diffcult by the characteristics of the French administrative system. Indeed, the functioning of the policy advisory system is conditioned by a Napoleonic (or Bonapartist) administrative tradition that has survived to this day (Ongaro, 2010; Painter & Peters, 2010). In such a system, the State is seen as both unitary and organic. A strong and preeminent executive is supported by a civil service acting as the ultimate guardian of the general interest (Rosser & Mavrot, 2017). Intimately linked to the Napoleonic administrative tradition, the involvement of intermediary bodies such as interest and public relations groups is still regarded with some suspicion in France (Schmidt, 1999). Hence, at least in principle, an independent, rather exclusive civil service enjoys considerable room for intervention in France's social fabric.

The importance of the central State in policy-making comes with the development of that State's general, multi-purpose expertise, which is needed to facilitate the management of public affairs on all fronts. This expertise has been referred to as State expertise, as opposed to, and usually distinguished from, other kinds such as lay or academic expertise (Hauchecorne & Penissat, 2018). State expertise, which also encompasses policy analysis and evaluation, is often to be found in the '*grands corps*', which are groups for the most part composed of senior career civil servants (Biland & Gally, 2018). Those groups share common characteristics, due to their similar backgrounds and training (usually at the various '*grandes écoles*'), their shared perception of the world, and their cohesion and '*esprit de corps*'. One of their hallmarks is the ability to navigate between the worlds of politics, the civil service, and the private sector. They are key agents in the interpenetration of the (senior) civil service and politics that has characterized the Fifth Republic (de Baecque, 1981). When they do not have an elective mandate, these individuals usually hold senior positions in central or local administrations or as personal advisers to ministers and junior ministers, local and regional political elites, or major frms operating in the private or para-public sector. The broad expertise of the *grand corps* and senior civil servants can be of a technical or administrative nature and serves many purposes with regard to the running of the State. This sort of monopoly over expertise and knowledge production makes it very diffcult for political science academics to bring their own expertise to bear on public policy.

Additionally, many French civil servants are not specifcally trained in the social and political sciences, either in universities or in the *grandes écoles*. Political science still plays a minor role in their curricula and is often viewed as a generalist discipline, although it has been gaining ground as a result of recent attempts to include more courses on political sociology or policy studies in teaching programmes. Individuals' training consists mostly of the study of public law, economics and public management, public fnance, budget and accounting, with regard to which they are required to pass specifc exams. If novices entering France's public administration studied at one of the *grandes écoles* like the National School of Administration (ENA), then they were mainly taught by practitioners and professionals. Subsequently, they acquire their skills, professional knowledge, and expertise on the job through their direct involvement in public institutions.

Despite what appear to be impediments fundamentally related to the administrative regime and its enduring traditions, in practice outside actors such as academics, taken individually or collectively, are not entirely removed from advisory roles vis-à-vis the public administration. The sheer size of the public sector in the country, and the omnipresence of the bureaucracy, may mean that academics do in fact encounter civil servants for advisory purposes at least a few times during the course of their professional careers. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly in terms of advisory opportunities, the Napoleonic tradition means that co-option mechanisms are always in place to guarantee outsiders a minimum of access to, and inclusion in, the handling of public service matters. Such mechanisms are based on invitations sent to specifc actors, whereby they are asked to help with, and play an instrumental part in, the resolution of those issues on the public agenda of the day (Painter & Peters, 2010).

In addition to statism, another essential feature of the French policy advisory system is neo-corporatism. Although France is certainly not a typical (neo-)corporatist nation, some elements of neo-corporatism can be found in certain policy domains. Indeed, a 'corporatism à la française' was identifed in the late 1980s within the domains of agriculture, social policy, and civil aviation, where stable, institutionalized arenas and coordination existed (Jobert & Muller, 1987). This has even led some scholars to speak of meso-corporatism or sectoral corporatism in France (e.g. Hassenteufel, 1990; Szarka, 2002). For French political scientists, participating in the policy advisory system would mean having signifcant ties with the social partners ('*partenaires sociaux*') who are regularly involved in, and consulted on, the management of socio-economic issues.

Recent developments point to a move towards pluralism in interest intermediation and to the emergence of a participatory imperative (Grossman and Saurugger, 2004). Such a trend also shapes, or rather reshapes, the current French policy advisory system. An indicator of this dynamic is a surge in the number of 'associations', that is, of non-proft organizations (as specifed under the law of 1901) embodying a wide range of aims (e.g. cultural, social, or interest representation). These social groups and civil society organizations are being increasingly consulted by public authorities during the policy-making process (Woll, 2009). They contribute to awareness of policy issues and participate in policy implementation by helping the concretization of policies and by spotting inconsistencies or bottlenecks in public policy solutions. Associations may also be active in the judicialization of policy-making. Yet, with regard to all of these aspects of their involvement, they do not enjoy equal weight; some play a more important role in local, regional, or national policy-makings, especially when they are offcially recognized as 'non-proft organizations serving the public good' (*associations reconnues d'utilité publique*).

#### *7.2.2 Access Points and Venues for the Provision of Advice by Political Scientists*

As we move from the core, internal advisory system to its more peripheral or external components, several points of access can be identifed; some of them seem harder to reach, such as ministerial offces, while others appear to offer real openings for political scientists to play a more important role, for example, in certain advisory bodies, consultative organs, or think tanks.

The internal advisory system revolves around various organizations and groups which may represent points of entry for the provision of political scientists' advice. In the French ministerial cabinet system, the fow of advice coming from, and circulating through, ministerial cabinets is highly signifcant. This also applies to the 'presidential' cabinet at the *Elysée*

palace. Any guaranteed access to ministerial offces, especially in core ministries, automatically offers academics important connections. Access is ensured via formal hearings and consultation, or through informal meetings, which usually take place in Paris. Being offcially appointed as a ministerial adviser is another way for a political scientist to enter senior executive circles, although sociographic research has shown that the number of cabinet personnel coming from the spheres of higher education and research is extremely limited (e.g. Bellon et al. 2018; Mathiot and Sawicki, 1999). During the Fifth Republic, only a handful of political scientists have succeeded in working within ministerial cabinets.

Advisory bodies, public consultancy organizations, and ad hoc committees must be considered as well. Although there are fewer advisory bodies in France than in many other countries (Schultz et al., 2015), several of them are quite active. Of these, the Economic, Social and Environmental Committee (CESE) deserves special attention. The CESE, operating as the third assembly of the French republic (after the National Assembly and the Senate), acts as the interface between organized, qualifed civil society and policymakers (specifcally, the executive and legislative branches of government), providing them with between 25 and 30 items of advice per year. 'Associate fgures' may be handpicked by the government to operate for the fve years of the CESE's term of offce and sustain its work thanks to their expertise. Their number varies from around 50 to a maximum of 72. The nature of such advisory fgures indicates the kind of individuals that the government of the day considers experts and whether political scientists are among them.

*France Stratégie*, which replaced the former *Commissariat Général au Plan (National Planning Offce)* attached to the Prime Minister's offce, dominates the internal advisory system. Countless smaller consultative organs also constitute potential access routes for political scientists. In September 2019, there were 394 consultative organs providing their services to the Prime Minister, government ministers, and the Bank of France, some of whom being more active than others (for an overview of advisory bodies, see https://www.vie-publique.fr/eclairage/22018-reforme-deletat-reduction-du-nombre-des-commissions-consultatives). Other higher or scientifc councils, observatories, and commissions, like the Economic Analysis Council (CAE) and the Higher Council for Climate, are telling examples of organizations that the French State uses to (re-)internalize expertise. Although they must compete with more prominent and established disciplines within the policy advisory system, political scientists can be offcially appointed as experts or 'qualifed fgures' within such organizations for a fxed period of time or be consulted more intermittently. There are a small number of such consultative organs dedicated to issues closer to political scientists' main concerns, in which they may play a key role, including the Scientifc Council on Radicalization Processes (COSPRAD), the Inter-Ministerial Delegation against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Anti-LGBT Hatred (DILCRAH), the Scientifc Council of the Directorate-General of the Administration and Public Service (DGAFP), the National Observatory of Urban Policy (ONPV), and so on.

Another point of access can be found in the legislative branch of government, in particular the National Assembly and the Senate (Rozenberg & Surel, 2018). Parliamentary commissions organize hearings and rounds of consultation with experts, who sometimes include political scientists. Political scientists are also quoted in, or engaged in the writing of, reports ordered by, or addressed to, members of the different assemblies, sometimes within the context of information/fact-fnding missions. In 2008, in an attempt to reinforce its powers, a constitutional amendment endowed parliament with new powers regarding the evaluation of public policy. This opened up opportunities for French policy scholars and scholars of democracy and institutions to become involved in parliamentary work.

Nevertheless, the aforementioned presence of the *grands corps*—the historical development of a particularly strong in-house advisory system with its own capacity to generate expertise within the different branches of government—does not prevent peripheral actors from external lay or academic arenas from also being active in policy advisory systems.

In this respect, consultancy has been on the rise in France as well as elsewhere (Gervais and Pierru, 2018). Studies have shown that consultancy frms participate in the production and diffusion of specifc ideas and approaches, such as that of New Public Management (e.g. Bezès, 2012). Political scientists will have been little affected, since they likely beneft only marginally from the outsourcing of advice provision to such consultancy frms.

Think tanks also appeared, to some extent, as external arenas of socialization and formulators of analyses and ideas (Berrebi-Hoffmann & Grémion, 2009). Many think tanks rely more or less extensively on the knowledge of political scientists, who, for example, are offered the opportunity to express themselves, write reports, and divulge their research fndings. The most well-known French think tanks are *Fondation Jean Jaurès*, *Terra Nova*, *Fondapol*, and the Montaigne Institute. Despite their admittance to the French policy advisory system, scholars continue to argue that French think tanks are not as important as their international equivalents, especially those operating in the English-speaking world (Campbell & Pedersen, 2014).

## 7.3 The Characteristics and Visibility of French Political Science

In 2014, French political science was portrayed as a 'rare discipline' by the Ministry of Research and Higher Education (Blaise et al., 2014). In the 2018 survey that provided the data for this book, some 500 political scientists were permanently employed in France. Basically, they may be divided into two categories. The frst is that of the teacher-researchers (*enseignant-chercheur*), who hold positions of assistant/associate or full professor. They either work in the Institutes of Political Science (IEP) or at a university, although not necessarily in fully-fedged political science departments. In France, the position of full professor of political science is much sought after and is subject to candidates passing a national exam (*Agrégation de science politique)* presided over by a jury of peers. Very few positions are available at each exam session and only for specifc locations (due to vacancies, for example). Opinion on this exam is divided between those in favour of it, who see it as a means of guaranteeing the discipline its due recognition and protection, and those who are against it and dispute its meritocratic nature (supposed to counter tendencies like localism). Proponents push for further institutionalization, while opponents insist on its selection biases (gender and national biases) and on the universities' loss of power to hire staff locally and choose their own personnel (Musselin, 2019: 201-210). The second category is that of CNRS researcher. This position involves conducting research full-time, with a limited teaching load. Researchers are under contract with the CNRS or foundations such as the National Political Science Foundation (FNSP). In total, French political science teaching and research is run by approximately 130 full professors, 240 assistant and associate professors, and 120 CNRS researchers (Roux, 2018). Compared to other disciplines such as law, economics, or sociology, this limited number of academics spread across the country and working in various different subfelds (of which political sociology and policy studies are the dominant ones) does not contribute to the visibility of the discipline (Déloye, 2012). The French public still sees *Sciences Po* as an 'elitist' school located in the capital, rather than a scientifc discipline as such.

In order to examine and understand the viewpoints and conduct of the community of academic political scientists in France with regard to their advisory capacities and their exposure, data taken from the international survey of political scientists have been used. The survey response rate in France was 22%, that is, 122 political scientists completed the questionnaire. The majority of the targeted scholars are tenured. The average age of those political scientists who responded to the survey was 50. This tends to refect the tenured, mainly permanent positions of those scholars concerned. The gender distribution was 59% male and 35% female, while some respondents preferred not to disclose this factor. The most common subfelds within the main discipline of political science indicated by the respondents were general political science (49%), public policy (32%), public administration (13%), and social policies and welfare (12%). This illustrates the emergence of subfelds in French political science.

## 7.4 Descriptive Analysis of the Survey Data

This part examines the commitment to policy advice by considering the underlying normative views, reported advisory activities, advice recipients, and levels of governance, together with the channels of advice delivery.

### *7.4.1 Normative Attitudes Towards Advisory Activities and Involvement in Public Debate: A Taste for Engagement*

Table 7.1 shows that political scientists display a mostly positive attitude towards participation in advisory activities and public debate, provided that ideas are frst developed and tested within the academic sphere (around 55% of them thought this). The surveyed political scientists either fully or somewhat agree to their direct or indirect involvement in policy-making.

Participation in public debate is also valued by political scientists in France, a country where historically speaking there has been a signifcant orientation towards societal engagement in the social sciences and humanities (Chabal, 2017). Intellectuals such as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Foucault and Raymond Aron were prominent participants in public debates. Some of those fgures are still major, highly venerated, authoritative sources of inspiration for contemporary social and political scientists


**Table 7.1** Normative views on policy advice and involvement in public debate—France

*Note*: Question: 'To what extent do you agree with the following statements?'; including only those respondents who indicated 'fully agree' or 'somewhat agree'.

Source: ProSEPS survey data.

(François & Magni-Berton, 2015). The survey results resonate well with this appeal for social engagement, since a positive view of participation in public debate seems to derive more from what respondents perceive to be the classical role of a social scientist (92%) than from any strict professional obligations or as a way of furthering a career (see Table 7.2). Among the reasons given for involvement in advisory activities, an academic's professional career or fnancial gain seems to be much less important than the commitment to making a genuine contribution to society.


**Table 7.2** Intrinsic and extrinsic motives for engaging in policy advisory and consulting activities—France

*Note*: Question: 'How important are the following reasons for your engagement in advisory or consulting activities?'; the results only include those respondents who indicated 'fully agree' or 'somewhat agree'. Source: ProSEPS survey data.

#### *7.4.2 Types of Advisory Activity*

The normative position towards advisory activities and engagement may lead us to expect the broad use of the range of activities concerned. However, this appears less true of political scientists in France. There is even a discrepancy between attitudes and actual advisory activities, as shown in Table 7.3. Frequencies of specifc types of activity are low. Most of the respondents engage in such activities either on a yearly basis, less frequently, or never at all. It is clear that, in general, French political scientists are not particularly active advisers.

Regardless of the low degree of involvement in advisory activities, the most popular such activities are the analysis of the causes and consequences of policy problems and the provision of data and facts. Evaluating policies is less frequently engaged in, as are offering advice and consultancy services, and making recommendations on policy alternatives. Offering normative judgements and conducting forecasts and polls are the least commonly found forms of advisory activity. Almost 80% of the respondents are completely unfamiliar with this type of advising. In short,



*Note*: Question: 'How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?'; including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year', 'once per month', or 'once per week'.

Source: ProSEPS survey data.

political scientists tend to refrain from making recommendations and propositions (which in their eyes could be tantamount to engagement) but are less apprehensive about performing diagnostics and providing mere knowledge, facts, and data. While French political scientists may 'preach' the importance of advisory roles, they do not actually practice very many of them.

#### *7.4.3 Substantive Topics of Advice*

When political scientists engage in advisory activities, their advice can cover various subject matters and domains. Table 7.4 shows that the most common topics with regard to which advice is sought and given are matters of government and public administration (including electoral reform),



*Note*: Question: 'With which substantive policy areas is your advice concerned?'

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data.

international affairs and the European Union, civil and political rights including gender issues, social welfare, and immigration. All of these topic categories refect the expertise of the survey's respondents.

#### *7.4.4 Recipients of Political Scientists' Advice and Levels of Governance*

In the last three years, the most recurrent benefciaries of political scientists' advice in France have been both civil society organizations and citizens groups (47.5%) and civil servants (41%), as Table 7.5 shows. The tendency to work with associations and other societal actors is once again evident. This refects the aforementioned move towards a greater degree of pluralism and the increasingly participatory nature of the policy advisory system. A good example of this transformation is the emergence of participatory and deliberative sciences. Indeed, a number of academics have responded to increase demand within public authorities for expertise on participatory matters, by providing a series of specialized and


**Table 7.5** Recipients of advice—France

*Note*: Question: 'With which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?'

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data.

standardized 'goods' and 'services', thus establishing what is now considered a market in its own right (Blatrix, 2012). Numerous political scientists, as scholars of participation, now monopolize these issues, with their expertise widely recognized; in this they have been aided by organizations and platforms such as the GIS Democracy and Participation or by think tanks such as 'Décider Ensemble'. Political scientists now take part in the construction, realization, and evaluation of participatory devices and experiences, together with actors from several tiers of government and with various organizations and associations.

The relative prominence of civil servants as recipients of political science advice is in keeping with the expectation of a rather 'impermeable' and 'independent' public administration, at least in its Napoleonic form, with inherently selective co-option mechanisms only working for certain political scientists rather than for a large majority of them. Whether or not such recipients are senior civil servants operating at the core or in the top layers of the administrative system is another question, the answer to which would require more detailed data.

Advice tends to a lesser extent to flter through to political actors as well. MPs tend to receive advice slightly more often (23.8%) than members of government (22.9%) or political party organizations (21%) do. It appears that most academic political scientists remain somewhat removed from politics and party political organizations. The diffculty of accessing central government (especially ministers and their entourage), as well as MPs and aides, possibly due to a perceived lack of openness and receptiveness on such politicans' part, may explain this. Advice from Europeanists and scholars of international relations and area studies, whose felds of expertise are not confned to national boundaries, may flter through to international and supranational organizations. France has clearly witnessed a limited internationalization of advice; offering additional windows of opportunity for political scientists (23.8%), but this is probably constrained by the frequent use of French as a working and publishing language.

The rise and affrmation of think tanks may also have impacted French political scientists, since a considerable number of them (30%) have provided advice to such bodies. Furthermore, advisory ties with formal advisory bodies (18.8%) and with interest groups in the private and corporate sector (6.6%) are somewhat weak. This contrasts with the relative prominence of civil society organizations and citizen groups. Political scientists distrust interest groups of the corporate sector, possibly sharing this distrust with bureaucratic actors and the broader French public. A relatively limited inclusion of political scientists in the activities of the many consultative and advisory organs was expected. A rapid screening of the identities of the CESE's associates, of the individuals offcially consulted during the CESE's hearings or called upon to participate in the activities of advisory bodies, would tend to confrm this expectation. Political scientists also have a marginal part to play in negotiations with social partners and stakeholders.

The levels at which political scientists offer their expertise, as displayed in Table 7.6, tend to refect the centralized nature of the French political and administrative system. It directs political science advice towards national actors, rather than subnational or international ones. This is not a static situation however, as in decentralization processes mean that subnational levels are now becoming more important, and now represent potential entry points to the advisory sphere for political scientists as well. Sub-national levels include regional tiers, *départements*, cities, and metropolitan areas of governance.

#### *7.4.5 Channels of Advice Delivery*

As shown in Table 7.7, political scientists tend to opt for academic publications, traditional media articles, and training courses for practitioners when offering their advice and expertise. They do this mostly on an annual basis. Here again, research reports and policy reports, briefs, or memo are


#### **Table 7.7** Channels of advice—France

*Note*: Question: 'Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the channels below to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?'; including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year', 'once per month', or 'once per week'.

Source: ProSEPS survey data.

#### **Table 7.6** Governance levels of advice—France


*Note:* Question: At which level of governance did you engage most frequently in policy advice or consulting activities during the last three years?

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data.

not common, and this once again indicates a certain distance from policymakers or a certain reluctance to produce and divulge content that could be very useful to such recipients. This may also be the result of a lack of demand for such advice from the decision-makers themselves, who may consider that the state expertise apparatus and the *grand corps* suffciently already cover their needs. Only a minority of French political scientists regularly write blogs or social media articles, even if the time required to produce such is less than that needed to write more traditional research and academic items such as articles and research reports.

## 7.5 Capturing Views and Activities in Main Policy Advisory Roles

Using the typology of advisory profles presented in Chap. 2, it appears that the pure academic is not the most common profle among the survey's respondents, meaning that despite the limited frequency of advice-giving, there is no evident retreating behind the walls of academia in French political science. Table 7.8 displays the main fndings in this regard. Just under 28% of the political scientists who responded to the survey questionnaire do not engage in any advisory activity and thus can be classifed as pure academics. This is also the category with the highest female presence (44%), while the proportion of female scholars decreases as role types involve increasing advisory activities. When French political scientists start to take part in advisory activities, even if not particularly frequently, they do so as experts, thus implying no explicit value judgements are given. The experts in our sample are also less advanced in terms of their academic careers and tend to be younger than their more outspoken colleagues. Opinionating scholars also are well represented and form a group which display normative views and include value judgements in the advisory content and some also engage in advocacy. This category of political scientists is also more widely present in the media. This may be related to the appreciation of social engagement, a certain critical stance towards government, and the quest for visibility, to be found among some political scientists.


**Table 7.8** Proportions of advisory roles—France

## 7.6 Institutional Reform and Involvement in Public Debate

On 3 July 2017, the newly elected French president Emmanuel Macron delivered a speech to MPs from the National Assembly and the Senate, gathered together at the meeting of Congress in Versailles, in which he set out his priorities for the presidential term. Reforming institutions had been one of his electoral pledges and a project he and others considered of prime importance. The last reform of this kind had been made in 2008 under President Nicolas Sarkozy, who intended to modernize the institutions, notably by curbing executive powers to the beneft of national parliament. This previous reform had consisted in a major review of the French Constitution. In its own way, Macron's ambition to re-design institutions targeted the country's parliament, although the CESE and other institutions were also concerned as well. Macron's plan sought to increase the quality of political representation and to improve the way institutions would operate.

He announced approximately 30 measures as part of the reform, including a reduction in the number of MPs of both the lower and upper houses by between 25% and 33% and a degree of proportional representation (10–25% of MPs were to be elected under a system of PR). After the President had set out his intentions, a public debate ensued: opinion polls indicated strong public support for both measures, while certain political fgures taking part in the debate were more sceptical. After examining and considering Macron's proposed reforms, the chairs of the two assemblies responded to the proposal and disagreements and red lines began to surface, particular in the Senate during the frst half of 2018.

Political scientists in academia could potentially have a voice, deliver knowledge and facts, and formulate their advice and recommendations on the specifc reform proposals. Some of them have seized this opportunity, as our case-study reform was a very good opportunity for political science to have some impact, especially through the involvement of scholars specialized in parliamentary institutions or the electoral system. At their initiative, they formulated contributions and chose the topics they wanted to speak about. Some focused on the proportional representation aspect and potential reform of the voting system, while others focused more on the potential reduction in the number of MPs. Numbers triggered attention in the debate, focusing in this case on the right combination of proportional representation and the ideal number of representatives in the two chambers of parliament.

Political scientists used different channels through which to present and divulge their advice. They wrote several reports published by think tanks or research institutes, together with articles in the specialized press or in traditional media outlets and also engaged in blogging activities. The reports proved to be rather effective and convincing, especially one which specifcally addressed the issue of the reduction in the number of parliamentarians (Ehrhard & Rozenberg, 2018).

The consequences of the reform were somewhat uncertain in many ways, specifcally with regard to the number and size of constituencies, to the internal diversity and pluralism within assemblies, and to budgetary costs. In contributing to the debate, political scientists examined and envisioned the consequences and risks of the reform, using 'what-if' simulations (e.g. Cohendet et al., 2018). At times, they also placed the French parliament in a broader international context, using fgures, informative tables, and political science literature to do so. However, the reports were not really 'neutral', insofar as they made explicit or implicit recommendations or directly criticized the reform plans. One of the reports, probably the most infuential one (Ehrhard & Rozenberg, 2018), examined the main arguments put forward by the government and the majority in support of the reform and challenged and debunked each and every one of them on empirical grounds.

The reports and statements made by political scientists in the debate did not result in any signifcant change in the content of the reform, but they did affect the terms of the debate. In the virtual absence of other contributions from scholars or analysts, opposition MPs fghting against the proposed reduction of MPs used the political scientists' analyses in order to adopt an evidence-based position against the reform plans. The release of the reports was well timed, coming just before the reform's examination in parliamentary commissions or plenary sessions. Furthermore, the authors of the reports and statements were not unknown to the parliamentary recipients of the advice as a result of past advisory involvement. This made political scientists more trustworthy in the eyes of a number of MPs.

#### 7.7 Conclusion

In a manner proportionate to its limited size, its organization, and its place within the sphere of higher education and research and in society as a whole, French academic political science has a certain advisory role to play. Political science has engaged in infrequent, but at times effective and lasting, ventures within the framework of the national policy advisory system. The advice fowing from academics to policymakers and civil society has enjoyed the beneft of certain favourable conditions, which have partly offset the macro-, meso-, and micro-level constraints on advice formulation, dissemination, and utilization.

First and foremost, there has been a substantial change in the participation of political scientists who, after aligning with civil society, societal actors, organized civil society and associations, may be benefting from their increasing importance to the policy advisory system. This is even more so because many political scientists seem to have a propensity towards such societal involvement. French political science may (re-)acquire broader relevance in this way.

Furthermore, the civil service does not seem impervious to seeking and/or receiving advice from political scientists. Therefore, a degree of cooperation between the administrative and academic spheres exists. In a way, a market for social science still exists, and as such this affects political science as well (Lecas, 1991: 329-330). The 'need to know' in sectors and domains where internal, state, or administrative expertise is absent, less incisive, or defcient may create and sustain advisory connections involving political scientists. Political scientists, either individually or collectively, may sometimes be pro-active in anticipating the needs of policymakers too, creating interfaces between the academic community and public authorities.

Contrary to the more secluded central decisional milieu, subnational tiers of government and the ecosystems that have come to surround them are now accessible venues. This situation was hardly acknowledged at all in earlier accounts of the discipline. The different degrees of advisory involvement at national and sub-national levels is becoming less pronounced. Moreover, ties with peripheral actors such as think tanks, boundary organizations for advice and research platforms concerned with the divulgation of research fndings and their interpretation, may critically enhance the advisory role of academic political science. The willingness and ability of individual scholars to employ a wide array of channels, formats, and strategies of diffusion will also help political science gain a more prominent position in France's policy advisory system.

In many respects, French political science has evolved and progressed signifcantly since the late 1940s. Gaining greater relevance in the eyes of decision-makers at all levels is another key challenge it faces, in a country where the central State's own capacity and expertise are considered by many a very strong asset. Some political scientists are already advocating a change of mindset and practices to break down barriers and suggest ways forward, such as through the development of hybrid profles and the cultivation of trust and shared understanding between the social sciences research community and the country's political decision-makers (e.g. Cagé, 2019). The question remains as to whether French political science will play a more important advisory role in French political policy in the near future.

#### References


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Woll, C. (2009). The Demise of Statism? In S. Brouard, A. Mazur, & A. M. Appleton (Eds.), *The French Fifth Republic at Fifty: Beyond Stereotypes* (pp. 226–246). Palgrave Macmillan.

#### Webpages

https://www.vie-publique.fr/eclairage/22018-reforme-de-letat-reduction-dunombre-des-commissions-consultatives

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## Driven by Academic Norms and Status of Employment: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Germany

*Sonja Blum and Jens Jungblut*

### 8.1 Introduction

While our knowledge of expertise brought into the policymaking feld has increased signifcantly in recent years, there is still much to be learned about how the roles of experts and expertise vary from the comparative perspective, including across policy areas and felds of expertise. This chapter studies the policy advisory role played by Germany's political scientists. Germany represents an interesting case for several reasons. Traditionally, the focus has been on the consensus-seeking nature of Germany's 'civic epistemology' (Jasanoff, 2007), that is, the culturally specifc practices of the State's production and use of knowledge (Straßheim & Kettunen, 2014; see also Pattyn et al.,

© The Author(s) 2022 157

S. Blum

FernUniversität in Hagen, Hagen, Germany e-mail: sonja.blum@fernuni-hagen.de

J. Jungblut (\*)

Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway e-mail: j.p.w.jungblut@stv.uio.no

M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_8

2019). Moreover, structural incentives for academics to engage in advisory work regarding political decision-making have been largely absent. However, mainly for historical reasons, German political science traditionally fulfls a 'watchdog' function, whereby it safeguards the democratic foundations of the State. Indeed, German political scientists have never been completely detached from societal debate or politics. At the same time, a strong academic ethos in Germany also limits policy advisory activities. Moreover, there may be differences in policy advisory activities between, for example, diverse levels of policymaking, policy sectors, and academic subdisciplines (such as public policy, electoral research, and political theory). In recent years, there has also been a lively debate among German political scientists regarding the political relevance of their discipline, which has gained momentum in the face of 'post-truth' and 'truthiness' discussions. Yet, while the debate is heating up, the role of political scientists in Germany's policy advisory system has not been the subject of much empirical research.1

Against this backdrop, this chapter studies how, to whom, and how often Germany's university-based political scientists provide their expertise for the purposes of policymaking. The analysis offered here is based on the German results of a survey of political scientists in more than 30 European countries that was conducted in the second half of 2018 and is presented in Chap. 2 of this book. The data provide the frst systematic overview of the advisory activities, and the related views and incentives, of political scientists working at German universities. We substantiate the quantitative analysis with a case study that examines how Germany's political scientists' policy advisory activities play out with regard to a topical case, namely, how right-wing populism in parliaments and society can be understood and addressed.

#### 8.2 The German Policy Advisory System

The policy advisory system in Germany, with regard to *scientifc* policy advice, bas traditionally been correlated to the consensus-seeking nature of civic epistemology (Jasanoff, 2007; Straßheim & Kettunen, 2014). In this, public knowledge-making is of a corporatist, institution-based character, and the main sources of expertise are authorized institutional

<sup>1</sup>To our knowledge that is with the exception of one study of the profession which included a question on policy advisory activities in a survey of German political scientists (Landfried, 1986).

representatives, for example, trade unions and employers' organizations. However, research on policy advisory systems, particularly in the Englishspeaking world (Halligan, 1995), has revealed how processes of externalization have led to a general shift away from reliance on the public service sector to other providers of advice and to the professionalization of policy powers outside the public service realm. The nature of policy advice has also changed in the case of Germany (Veit et al., 2017). While there is a degree of continuity in consensus-seeking, there has been a process of pluralization and professionalization of the advisory landscape since the 1990s (Pattyn et al., 2019). Pluralization refers to the shift from a mainly vertical advisory system to a more horizontal one (Craft & Howlett, 2013) characterized by the emergence of new, external advisory actors. In the German case, this has meant a weakening of the position of traditional advisory actors, the 're-discovery' of policy advice as a core task by nonuniversity research institutes (Thunert, 2013), and the emergence of new players. The process of professionalization, that is, the build-up of internal or external actors' powers to advise on different aspects of policy (Fobé et al., 2017), has seen the emergence of a 'consulting industry' (Heinze, 2013). The changes witnessed are correlated to the moving of parliament and almost all ministries from Bonn to Berlin and to the more competitive political climate of the 'Berlin Republic' (ibid.).

Overall, the policy advisory system in Germany currently seems more horizontal and pluralistic than vertical and hierarchical, although both types co-exist and interact, and the dominant one varies depending on the issue concerned and the specifc context. The policy advisory structures depend on consensus-seeking, neo-corporatist traditions within a specifc policy domain and on other factors such as whether long-term or anticipatory, more short-term or reactive decisions are concerned (see Craft & Howlett, 2013). The strength of political scientists within departmental research (*Ressortforschung*) or on ministerial advisory councils also varies between policy sectors. Furthermore, advisory content also varies, with some matters being procedural, while others are more substantive (Craft & Howlett, 2013; see also Prasser, 2006). As has been shown for other countries, the quantity, nature, and use of policy advice also depend on individual decision-makers in the political and administrative spheres (Landry et al., 2001). Policy sectors in Germany differ signifcantly with regard to the static characteristics of the advisory system, as well as in their dynamic characteristics (e.g. politicization, marketization of advice). These sectoral differences may also be refected in the degree and type of involvement of political scientists.

#### *8.2.1 German Political Science and Policy Advice*

Germany has a large political science community, refecting the established, advanced state of the discipline within academic research and teaching. As Schüttemeyer (2007, p. 183) concludes, political science 'is quite well positioned in the German university landscape'. While in some countries there has been a certain degree of specialization, in Germany all broader subdisciplines of political science have developed more or less equally. At the same time, as Eisfeld (2019, p. 182) warns, the considerable fragmentation of German political science may also endanger its overall political relevance. For political science, the relationship between 'politics' and 'science' as such is particularly pertinent and has been debated in Germany for decades (see, e.g. Landfried, 1986; cf. Blum & Jungblut, 2020). More direct involvement in public debate and policymaking that goes beyond the mere provision of factual knowledge is still something that some regard with suspicion as being 'un-academic'. At the same time, at a fundamental level German academia sees itself as one of the watchdogs of German democracy (cf. Blum & Schubert, 2013b), and this is also refected in the fact that academic freedom is explicitly mentioned as one of the basic civil liberties by the German constitution. There is an historical reason for this: following the failure of academia during National Socialism, German political science was established (with signifcant support from the United States) as a discipline after WWII. Its defning feature was its status as a 'science for democracy' (Paulus, 2010). In their role as 'academic watchdogs', political scientists would defend the basic foundations of the democratic state, whilst at the same time maintaining a certain distance from day-to-day politics, partly in order to guarantee political independence. Thus, the role of political scientists in Germany may be described best by comparing them to referees that uphold the basic rules of the game but do not interfere with the way the game is actually played.

Recently, the debate regarding political scientists' societal role and involvement in policymaking has been rekindled (see the documentation of the German Political Science Association [DVPW] available at: https:// www.dvpw.de/informationen/debatte-zum-fach/). In April 2016, two political scientists writing in the daily newspaper FAZ claimed that 'the voice of political science is hardly heard any more in the public sphere, since debates are organised by lawyers and economists, while the younger generation remains silent' (own translation; Decker & Jesse, 2016). In particular, the two authors criticized a self-referential, excessively fragmented nature of methodological and theoretical *art for art's sake*. The 'younger generation' did not remain silent for much longer after these claims were made but, on the contrary, responded with various articles published thereafter. Some of them (while disputing other points) generally agreed that German political science had been lacking in public visibility, while others (see Debus et al., 2017) argued that political science research does have impact. Furthermore, certain younger academics pointed to the low percentage of permanent posts in German academia and to the tough competition for such posts where policy advice is largely considered unimportant. Instead, the competition is often driven by a 'publish or perish' approach, by the awarding of grants, and to a large extent still by the traditional route of *Habilitation*. The 'habilitation' is characteristic of a handful of European countries, including Germany, and consists in the process of qualifcation for independent university teaching, said qualifcation being attained through a 'habilitation thesis' (traditionally the 'second book' a scholar publishes, but today often a series of published articles considered collectively) and a teaching exam.

To sum up then, there are limited incentives for younger scholars to become active in the policy advice feld. The recent debate shows that the policy advisory role is one that German political scientists disagree on, in terms of both its desirability and the actual performance of the role. Although German political scientists' traditional removal from direct involvement with day-to-day politics may be changing, and German political scientists seem readier to 'get involved' in an advisory capacity, traditional values and the structure of the academic labour market in Germany are not conducive to such policy advisory activities.

### 8.3 Expectations and Research Design

Formulating expectations about the degree and types of policy advisory role played by political scientists in Germany is hampered by the fact that while the development of policy advice and the policy advisory system has been treated in the literature, the position of political science in relation to said system has not. However, we may draw some tentative assumptions from previous works on the state and development of political science in Germany, and of certain specifc subfelds thereof (Schüttemeyer, 2007; Blum & Schubert, 2013a), as well as from the intense ongoing debate among German political scientists regarding the political relevance of their discipline.

The expectation is that all four ideal types of policy advisory role identifed in Chap. 2 of this book can be recognized amongst German political scientists, albeit with signifcant differences in the presence of each ideal type. Given the specifc traditions of German political science described above, we would expect the two prevailing types to be that of the pure academic and that of the expert. While the term 'pure academic' generally refers to those colleagues who avoid interacting, the term 'expert' includes those political scientists who are active in some policy advisory capacity, as a selected permanent or ad hoc advisor to ministries, agencies, political parties, parliaments, and so on. An expert may also be visible in the media, but with the main task of delivering facts and explaining political phenomena. The more fully opinionated scholar, who is more normatively oriented and outspoken about it, is expected to be rarer in Germany, to be found mainly among the older generation of professors. The widely active public intellectual is a role model that does not ft with German political science practices and is thus expected to be an exception.

Moreover, we expect there to be substantial differences between scholars with a permanent contract and those hired on a temporary basis, given the specifcs of the German academic system, and in particular the limited number of permanent posts in German universities. Tenured posts in the German academic system are generally reserved for full professors, and very few other permanent positions exist, for example, those of lecturers. While a younger generation of political scientists in Germany may be readier to become involved in policy advisory activities, their temporary employment status may hinder this, in that career opportunities are still strongly based on academic core competencies and research performance and funding. Permanent staff (i.e. full professors in the main) would have greater opportunities to offer policy advice or engage in opinion making. In Germany, no real incentives exist for research communication or advice when pursuing an academic career. What this means is that those political scientists who engage in advisory activities must have other reasons for doing so other than their career advancement.

#### *8.3.1 Research Design*

In the case of Germany, the survey questions used in this project were translated into German and only distributed in this language.2 A total of 376 of the 1986 political scientists, who were invited to participate in the survey in Germany, did so. This is a response rate of 18.9%. The 1986 listed German political scientists are all employed at German universities. Of the respondents, 62% are employed on temporary contracts, while 32% are tenured; 26.8% of those who received the survey are professors and thus have a tenured post under the German university system (while a number of other tenured positions, e.g. as *Akademischer Rat*, are foreseen). Further, 64% of the respondents are male (this was only slightly less in the total population of political scientists who received the survey). Therefore, with regard to both the gender and contractual situations, our sample may be considered to be representative. The average age of respondents is 42 years. Furthermore, some 60% of the respondents hold a PhD, around 14% has a 'habilitation', and about one quarter of them possess a master's degree and are often in the process of obtaining a PhD.

Based on the survey data, with the help of a simple descriptive analysis we shall offer an overview of the policy advisory activities of political scientists in Germany in general. In addition to a summary of the responses received to the survey, we shall also look at the important ongoing debate on the 'relevance' of German political science to the practice of policymaking. The survey responses also enable us to analyse the types and frequency of consultancy activities, the nature of the recipients and the governance level targeted, and also the channels through which advice fows. Secondly, we consider the patterns and contexts of the policy advisory roles of German political scientists and test the (tentative) expectations formulated earlier in this chapter. Finally, we discuss our fndings by placing the patterns within the German context, and we evaluate what these fndings may imply for the near future.

2We assumed this to be preferable to distributing the English-language survey, given the size of the German political science community, the importance of German as an academic language, and possible biases deriving from distributing an English-language survey particularly with a view to advisory and consultancy activities (i.e. those political scientists signifcantly engaged in advisory or consultancy work might specifcally prefer to use German as their working language and be less inclined to answer a questionnaire written in English).

#### 8.4 Empirical Patterns

#### *8.4.1 Descriptive Results from the Survey*

From our data we can see that policy advice is typically given by German political scientists at least once a year, although some are more active, while a good number of them give advice less frequently or never at all. Those modes of advice giving used at least once a year include workshops and conferences, as well as face-to-face contact with actors/organizations (Table 8.1).

The most frequently used modes change somewhat if we look at the advisory activities of the more active political scientists, that is, those who provide advice once a month or even once a week; in their case, phone calls and emails are more important means of providing advice, which mirrors their more frequent exchanges with the advised policymakers or other actors. This may be because those giving advice on a more regular basis


**Table 8.1** Modes of advice giving, in percentages—Germany

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: 'Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the channels below to provide policy advice and/or consultancy services?'

have already established a rapport and connection with the people that they advise, which means that their communications can go through less demanding, more fexible means such as emails or phone calls.

Besides providing information about the mode of policy advice provision, political scientists were also asked about the topics and frequency of the different forms of policy advice they had engaged in over the previous three years. The most commonly addressed topics were international relations and the EU (24.6%), followed by government and public administration (17.7%). Of the more specifc public policy themes, civil and political rights were the ones most mentioned (14.1%), followed by immigration (11.5%). When looking at the different forms that policy advice can take, the most frequently found ones consist in evaluations of existing policies, and the analysing, and explaining the causes and consequences of policy problems. These are presented in Table 8.2.

We also calculated the bivariate correlations between the different forms of policy advisory activities and found highly signifcant and strong positive results for all of them; this would indicate that those who are active in one type of activity are also more likely to be active in one of the other types. Overall, the results show that there are a small number of political scientists in Germany who are very actively providing advice.

Political scientists were also asked how frequently, over the previous three years, they had used different channels to provide advice. The responses show that the most popular channels used by German political scientists to provide policy advice are still publications such as books and articles, which are used at least once a year by 37.4% of those responding, followed by research reports (26.6%) and traditional media articles (18.7%). Among the channels used at least once a month, blog entries (3.9%) as well as training courses (3.6%) score particularly high, which shows that a small, but active, percentage of German political scientists regularly engage in these rather specifc advisory activities.

Political scientists not only reported the frequency and channels of their advisory activities but also to whom they provide their advice. The results are shown in Table 8.3. By far the most frequently advised types of actor are civil society organizations and citizens' groups, followed by political parties, think tanks, governmental politicians, and civil servants.

As regards the question of which policy levels are addressed by the advice of German political scientists, the survey shows that over the last three years more than a third of the German political scientists that engaged into advisory work did this mostly at a national or subnational



166 S. BLUM AND J. JUNGBLUT

*Note*: Question: 'How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?'

advisory or consulting activities over the

last three years?'


level. Advisory activities at the subnational level may be encouraged in Germany by the federal structure of the state. Advice is more seldom provided to the EU or to actors on the international stage. The fact that Germany is a prominent and powerful EU member state is only clear to some extent in the level of advising. This mostly concerns a small, specialized group of political scientists.

When asked about the agreement of respondents with normative statements on the role of political scientists as policy advisors, the results displayed in Table 8.4 show the strongest level of agreement with the statement that political scientists should engage in public debate since this is part of their role as social scientists. This indicates that most political scientists in Germany are in favour of some form of engagement.

#### *8.4.2 Factors Infuencing Policy Advisory Activities*

Given the nature of the German academic labour market, with only about 17% of academics (across all disciplines) holding a permanent position, and with the pressure on those in temporary employment to perform in a way that may help them secure a permanent position at some point, we expect the difference in employment status to have an impact on the



*Note*: Question: 'To what extent do you agree with the following statements?'

policy advisory activities undertaken. Based on histograms depicting the difference between the two groups, it becomes clear that the two samples are non-normally distributed with regard to the outcome variable. Thus, to test whether the two groups differ in their mean responses regarding their policy advisory activities, we use Mann-Whitney tests (Mann & Whitney, 1947).3 Consequently, the differences detected with these unequal group sizes offer especially valuable insights. We fltered out those respondents who had a missing value in the variable assessing their contractual situation, resulting in a sample size of 354 (22 missing values).

With regard to the frequency with which different types of policy advice are provided, we found signifcant differences for fve of the six types of advice. Respondents with tenure indicated that they more frequently analyse and explain the causes and consequences of policy problems (median = 3 vs. median = 4; lower values represent more regular activity; *U* = 6618; *z* = −4.161; *p* < 0.001; *r* = −0.221), evaluate existing policies or

3While we have an unequal sample size (just under two-thirds of the respondents are employed on temporary contracts), this is no problem with regard to the applicability of Mann-Whitney tests, although it is important to bear in mind that the statistical power (i.e. the ability to detect a difference that is also present in the population) will diminish as the group sizes become increasingly unequal.

institutional arrangements (median = 4 vs. median = 5; lower values represent more regular activity; *U* = 7001.5; *z* = −3.547; *p* < 0.001; *r* = −0.188), and offer consultancy or advice regarding recommendations on policy alternatives (median = 4 vs. median = 5; lower values represent more regular activity; *U* = 6697.5; *z* = −4.216; *p* < 0.001; *r* = −0.224). Moreover, those respondents with tenure also more frequently make value judgements and present normative arguments (median = 4 vs. median = 5; lower values represent more regular activity; *U* = 7650; *z* = −2.579; *p* < 0.01; *r* = −0.137) and provide data and facts about politics and political phenomena (median = 4 vs. median = 5; lower values represent more regular activity; *U* = 7823.5; *z* = −2.275; *p* < 0.023; *r* = −0.120). To sum up, this part of the analysis shows that, as we would expect, German political scientists with tenured positions are more active in providing policy advice.

#### *8.4.3 Ideal Types of Policy Advisory Role*

Based on the operationalization of the ideal types of policy advisory role (see Chap. 3), we investigated the number of German respondents falling into one of the ideal categories and compared the division of German political scientists with the overall sample (see Table 8.5).

The results show that most political scientists in Germany provide some form of policy advice and that the largest group also makes at least some form of normative or value judgement when doing so. Both of these results tend to confound our expectation that the two most prominent ideal types in Germany are the pure academic and the expert, particularly those who do not make normative assessments. At the same time, German


**Table 8.5** Proportions of advisory roles—Germany

#### *Source*: Author

*Note*: Types operationalized on the basis of the content and frequency of advice

political scientists are more often linked to the pure academic type than on average considering all the countries concerned. Thus, when looking at the fndings from a comparative perspective, our expectations for Germany are to some extent substantiated. Nonetheless, in general it appears that the level of political scientists' policy advisory activity is higher than was initially thought considering Germany's academic context.

Cross-tabulating the ideal types by their highest level of academic quantifcation, Table 8.6 clearly shows that scholars performing policy advisory activities are more often the ones with a PhD. Although most pure academics have a PhD, the possession of such an academic qualifcation is much more pronounced in the case of the other role types. This lends support to our belief that policy advisory activity is infuenced by academic credentials, which also correlates positively with having a permanent position within the German academic system. A small group of scholars who do not yet possess a PhD also engages in the provision of policy advice.

When looking at gender distribution across the four ideal types, Table 8.7 shows that male scholars represent the majority of those more active in policy advice provision. As policy advisory activities become exposed to a wider audience, the gender gap becomes more pronounced. While other factors may also be relevant here, such as the lower percentage of female academics with tenure, this gender gap may indicate a bias towards men in the policy advisory activities of German political scientists. This in turn may be related to the extent to which research agendas in Germany are gendered (Key & Sumner, 2019) and to the implications of this in terms of the demand for knowledge and policy advice.

Finally, since we expected, and indeed found, that a main factor in policy advisory activity is the type of academic position, we also cross-tabulated the contract variable with the ideal type of role. Table 8.8 presents an overview of the relationship between the two.


**Table 8.6** Highest university degree by advisory role—Germany


**Table 8.7** Advisory roles by gender—Germany

*Source*: Author

**Table 8.8** Advice roles by type of academic position (percentages by position)—Germany


*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

The cross-tabulation outcome confrms our expectation that the contractual situation of German political scientists will infuence their policy advisory activities, since most pure academics in the German sample are on temporary contracts, while pure academics represent the largest category of political scientists on temporary contracts.

Given our aforementioned fnding that male respondents and those with a higher academic degree are more frequently among the active ideal types, we calculated Cramer's V for the correlation between the academic position and the gender of the respondents. Both correlations were highly signifcant at *p* < 0.001, and as expected, the correlation between academic degree and position is strong (0.50), while the correlation between position and gender is of a medium effect size (0.32). Thus, gender, academic position, and highest academic degree all represent interrelated factors infuencing the extent of policy advisory activity.

Given that the four role types can be understood to range from the pure academic, as the least active type, to the public intellectual as the most active type, with regard to advisory activities, and since we can also assume the directionally of the relationship, in the sense that the type of position infuences the ideal type of policy advisory role, we conducted a Mann-Whitney test to establish the signifcance of this relation. The results show that respondents with tenure are signifcantly more likely to have a higher level of policy advisory activity (median = 2 vs. median = 1; higher values represent more policy advisory activity; *U* = 7205.5; *z* = −3.265; *p* < 0.001; *r* = −0.174). However, the effect size of the relationship is small.

In sum, the analysis of the distribution of ideal types of policy advisory activity has shown that overall, German political scientists are less active in the provision of policy advice than the average European political scientist. At the same time, a larger number than expected provide some form of policy advice, including normative judgements. The most frequent role type in relative terms is that of the opinionating scholar. Finally, male respondents with 'higher' academic credentials and a permanent contract are more likely to engage in publicly visible advising and opinionating.

## 8.5 A Case Study of Advice on the Rise of Populism

To further substantiate the quantitative analysis with an illustrative case study, we have drawn on the case of how the rise of right-wing populism in parliament and society is to be addressed. This represents a 'very likely case' of the engagement of German political scientists in real-world policymaking and also an opportunity for them to exercise various policy advisory activities. Regardless of whether or not one shares his views on the relevance of political science, this is confrmed by the political scientist Eckhard Jesse when he writes that:

Academic disciplines such as political science and sociology have, due to their strong self-referentiality, have seen their reputation impaired; however, with the Pegida-phenomenon—probably the frst new German right-wing social movement since Nazism—they have become highly topical.4 (FAZ, 4 January 2017)

To track policy advisory activities more systematically within this context, we focus on how political scientists have contributed to the debate and presented their research fndings, in the form of articles published in two leading German quality newspapers: the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) and

<sup>4</sup>All quotes from newspaper articles within this chapter are own translations.

the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). Although this admittedly excludes many key policy advisory activities from the picture (e.g. informal talks), it enables certain activities (policy advice through media articles) to be systematically tracked and others (e.g. 'popular science' books written by political scientists) to be hinted at. The focus here is on the period 2015–2017, which was one of key developments for the specifc German case. In late 2014, the right-wing political movement Pegida (Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident) was founded in Dresden, and from early 2015 on it attracted increasing public attention. The most visible developments were Pegida's weekly demonstrations gathering up to 20,000 demonstrators in Dresden, held on Monday evenings over the course of 2015 and at the height of the so-called refugee crisis in the summer and autumn of that year. The year 2017 saw the runup to the German federal elections held in September 2017, at which the right-wing AfD (Alternative for Germany) obtained seats for the frst time in the Bundestag. The AfD took 12.6% of the votes, coming third behind the conservative CDU/CSU and the social-democratic SPD.

What policy advice from Germany's political scientists do we fnd in the newspapers during those years, and how does this relate to the results of our survey? Overall, political scientists participated, and continue to participate, in the discussion. The FAZ published eighteen articles written by political scientists over the course of the three years in question; these articles included analyses, commentaries, and discussions regarding new books on populism and other related topics. In the SZ, political scientists wrote eleven articles in total. Moreover, the SZ published two interviews with political scientists, while the FAZ published four. Furthermore, political scientists were cited in several other articles—either in the form of direct quotes (often after they had been interviewed) or by citing defnitions or terms from political science research on populism and related topics. We focus here on direct contributions, as these show a clear intention to provide analysis and advice for the purposes of policymaking. Newspaper articles imply that political scientists are reaching out, and offering their opinions and advice, to the reading public.

Almost all of the writers in question were men (we found only two articles in FAZ and one in SZ, written by female political scientists, the latter co-authored with a male scholar). This example confrms the gender bias found in the survey analysis presented earlier. In the case of the FAZ, certain political scientists have contributed two or more articles, while two have written articles for both newspapers. The content of these articles is closest to the opinionating ideal type role or, when visibility and effects are high, to the role of public intellectual. Orientation is also of a partly generational nature. Overall, the vast majority of political scientists contributing one or more articles are university professors, who may be invited to contribute more frequently.

Overall, there seems to be either little demand for, or little desire on the part of, political scientists to present the results of concrete studies or projects; the focus is mostly on broader expertise and analysis. If concrete *publications* are addressed, they tend to concern highly infuential books. There is one clear exception to this rule, namely, the earliest studies of the Pegida movement. For example, a lengthy article appeared in the FAZ in October 2015 ('What is Pegida and why?'), in which three political scientists from Dresden presented the fndings of their study of Pegida (which were presented in even more concrete terms in other articles written by journalists: see, e.g. the SZ of 15 January 2015). In terms of our categories of advisory activity, the provision of data and facts is accompanied by analysis of causes, and then the authors move on to offering forecasts of the likely outcome of events:

About one third of the participants of the demonstration and 'evening strolls' showed diffuse Anti-Islam motives and attitudes. The majority passed fundamental criticism of politics, media and the practiced modes of democracy. […] Pegida may be interpreted as a protest against […] a political order, in which economic power and public-administrative functional elites prepare political decisions, but depart from the experiences of citizens and what may democratic-legitimatory be assigned to them […]. In a few years, the movement may be interpreted as a harbinger of political-cultural conficts and interpretative battles about identities in an immigration society. […] It seems that German democracy is facing a severe test. (FAZ, 19 October 2015)

During the course of 2016 and 2017 in particular, following the further rise of right-wing populism, more 'opinionated' or engaged contributions on populism, the state of democracy, and recommended courses of action appeared. For example, the following article offers an in-depth analysis of the problems of democracy—based on numbers taken from opinion polls and from the (political theory) research literature (i.e. explanation of causes)—which led to more normative judgements and (broad) policy advice as well:

We have to think much more about the procedures and institutions, with which minorities may legitimately complain about their disrespect, without having to use "the people" for this. […] And fnally, we have to think about how our electoral law, but also the interdependencies of central state and federal state policymaking can be designed in such a way that disputes and conficts seem not only as barriers on the way to a decision 'shared by everyone'. But that rather these conficts are acknowledged as a legitimate form of governing, in the same way as agreement and compromise. It is high time to start thinking about this. Because defending democracy in times of disappointment begins with ourselves. (SZ, 25 July 2017)

Overall, the question of the rise of right-wing populism would appear to have led political scientists from different subdisciplines not only to provide their expertise on the matter in the form of 'facts' and analysis but also to make more normative judgements in the sense of their becoming politically engaged in favour of democracy. In the specifc medium we have looked at here, it is still somewhat surprising to see how the discourse refects limited differences in participation in the provision of policy advice, in terms of political scientists' academic positions, gender, and cultural background. The question remains as to whether this is more a question of supply or of demand.

## 8.6 Conclusion: Tenured Academics in <sup>a</sup> Castle? Advisory Roles in Germany

This analysis provides a frst empirical account of the policy advisory activities of German political scientists. In doing so, it not only provides empirical insight into a seldom studied phenomenon but also aims to further the intense debate among German political scientists regarding the political and social relevance of today's political science. In general, advising on policy is something that political scientists in Germany appear to be engaged in to a greater degree than expected given the German academic context. While they are less active than their other European counterparts, as shown by the broad survey results, the most commonly found ideal type of German political scientist is the opinionating scholar, followed by the pure academic, the expert, and fnally, as in all countries, the public intellectual. This is contrary to our initial expectations, even though Germany has a higher proportion of pure academics than the overall sample's average. It may be because German political scientists are constrained by greater internal or external limits when engaging in advisory activities.

This would seem to be corroborated by the fact that German political scientists do not provide their advice very often, typically 'at least once a year' according to our respondents. Some colleagues are more active than this, but a larger percentage of political scientists give advice less than once per year, or indeed never at all. The more active forms of advising include workshops, conferences, and face-to-face contact with actors/organizations. The preferred means of conveying advice, however, is through books, articles, and research reports and, limited to a smaller group, also traditional media articles. Together with active outreach work, traditional academic outlets thus remain central to the advisory work of political scientists.

Over 90% of German political scientists agreed to an extent with the statement that 'Political scientists *should* engage in public debate since this is part of their role as social scientists'. This indicates that even if they still rely very much on traditional methods of knowledge divulgation, German political scientists nevertheless believe that engaging with the public is an important part of their work. Whether it is valued in terms of their academic career-prospects, however, is another question.

An examination of conditional factors within the sample of political scientists reveals that contract status has a major impact on the way that policy advisory activities are perceived and performed. German political scientists with tenure are generally more active in the feld of policy advising. Academic qualifcations and gender also make a difference: male respondents are much more represented in the more active role types, while possession of a PhD also seems to open the way for an advisory role, with this category of scholar likely to be more involved in providing advice than those still in the process of obtaining their PhD. Given the highly stratifed and competitive nature of the German academic labour market, these fndings are not surprising as they indicate that scholars without a permanent position do not have the standing or opportunities to engage in policy advising, since they are more focused on the core academic activities they are required to engage in to obtain a permanent post.

The case of German political scientists giving advice, through the media, on rising populism in parliament and society, confrms the survey fndings. Firstly, political scientists played an active part in this debate in the traditional media between 2015 and 2017. Secondly, their contributions in the media included a variety of policy advisory activities—from the provision of data and facts, and the analysis of causes, consequences, and forecast future developments, to more normative statements, positiontaking, and recommendations. Thirdly, those political scientists contributing their own articles in the traditional media are mainly tenured professors and also mostly male.

Our analysis, based on the combination of the survey fndings and the case study, draws a mixed picture of the policy advisory activities of political scientists in Germany. There is a higher than expected level of general activity and of acceptance of policy advisory work, with the contractual situation appearing as a key factor in this engagement. One conclusion we can draw from this is that the recurring complaint of German political scientists' lack of societal interaction and relevance does not appear entirely justifed (see also Blum & Jungblut, 2020). Eisfeld's call (2019, p. 190) for the transformation of political science in Germany to a 'relevant, citizen-oriented science of democracy' may still have some way to go before achieving its objective. However, given the fndings presented in this chapter, it is important to realize that such a transformation will not come about if it is only based on a strict 'impact agenda' that reduces the freedom to choose between *different*, or even complementary, roles such as the pure academic, the expert, the opinionating scholar, and/or the public intellectual. The analysis presented here is but a frst explorative assessment of the issue, and further research is very much needed to unbundle the policy advisory roles of political scientists in Germany. Such further analysis, exploring in greater depth cases of policy advisory work as well as engaging in more quantitative work covering a broader sample of political scientists, perhaps also compared to other disciplines, will further our understanding of the emerging arenas of policy advice in which scholars are involved. Moreover, such future research should include not only the supply side of knowledge production and advice provision but also the demand side by investigating the way in which recipients and users of advice perceive, and can develop, the roles played by political scientists in Germany's policy advisory system.

#### References

Blum, S., & Jungblut, J. (2020). Besondere Freiheit, besondere Verantwortung? Eine empirische Studie zur deutschen Politikwissenschaft in der Politikberatung. *dms – der moderne staat – Zeitschrift für Public Policy, Recht und Management, 13*(2), 486–506.


Germany. *International Review of Administrative Sciences*. https://doi. org/10.1177/0020852319878780


#### Sources


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## Coping with a Closed and Politicized System: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Hungary

*Gábor Tamás Molnár*

## 9.1 Introduction: An Emerging Discipline in <sup>a</sup> Democratic System Under Pressure

Studying the policy advisory roles of Hungarian political science helps bridge two signifcant gaps in our knowledge. Hungary can be described as an exemplary case of an illiberal democracy (Hajnal & Rosta, 2019; Korkut, 2012) and also of populist policymaking (Bartha et al., 2020). However, there is almost no systematic knowledge of policy advice in Hungary (Hajnal et al., 2018b: 451), and understanding how a specifc professional community engages in it can contribute to understanding how recent developments structure it as a whole. Can we fnd elements of an emerging populist policy advisory system? The second puzzle concerns the study of academic professional communities: how do they ft into such

G. T. Molnár (\*)

Department of Public Policy and Management, Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary

e-mail: gabortamas.molnar@uni-corvinus.hu

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022 181

M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_9

a policy advisory system? This chapter aims to be a stepping stone in our understanding of activities of political science scholars and their position in the Hungarian policy advisory system.

The study's frst goal is to consider the applicability of the theoretical framework used in this book to the Hungarian case. We can utilize the specifcs of the Hungarian case to formulate expectations on the policy advisory role of political scientists in that country. Our frst research question is how can we use our theoretical framework to describe the patterns of policy advisory activities of political scientists in Hungary? The survey enables us to examine the involvement of political scientists in policy advising, with a specifc focus on the kind of advisory strategies enabling them to enter the advisory system and the relationship between the strategies adopted and our ideal types of advisory role. In the Hungarian case we can use fndings regarding the activities and views of political scientists in order to draw a picture of what is a relatively unknown national policy advisory system. Although political science is a comparatively new discipline in Hungary, it is not any less important than elsewhere (Ilonszki & Roux, 2019) but, on the contrary, represents an important segment of potential academic policy advice, especially if we consider the relevance of political science and public policy knowledge to a nation's policymakers.

This chapter will then go on to explain the level of engagement of political scientists and to look at the supply (push) and demand (pull) factors at play. The survey used in this chapter offers us an idea of the features of Hungarian political science and of the determinants of the supply of advice by political scientists, as well as of the way in which the policy advisory system in Hungary provides opportunities for, or limits, the demand for such advice.

In order to provide some answers to such questions, Sect. 9.2 offers an overview of the known features of Hungarian policymaking and Hungarian political science. We have a handful of existing fndings on specifc aspects of the policy advisory system, such as think tanks (Bíró-Nagy, 2019) and the internal advisory capacities of the government (Hajnal et al., 2018a). The chapter thus begins by connecting these fragments with known features of the populist policy process (Bartha et al., 2020) to formulate expectations regarding those factors affecting demand for policy advice. It then turns to the supply factors by formulating expectations about the advisory activities of political scientists. Section 9.3 discusses the results of our survey in relation to these expectations. Section 9.4 then concludes the chapter with a discussion of the results, highlighting themes of interest for policy advice scholarship.

## 9.2 The Policy Advisory System and Political Scientists in Hungary

This overview of Hungarian policy advice in the policy process is structured along the locational model presented in Chap. 2. First, features of the government system and its environment are presented. Then certain important characteristics of the political science community are illustrated, followed by expectations regarding political scientists' role in the policy advisory system of the country.

#### *9.2.1 Political and Public Arenas*

Hungarian democracy emerged as a mix of consensus and majoritarian democracy with both neo-corporatist and pluralist elements after the regime change in 1989. Its neo-corporatist elements waned in favour of majoritarianism (Körösényi et al., 2009). The two main trends in Hungarian politics were an increasingly adversarial dynamic of intense partisan competition between emerging ideological blocs and the centralization of political power leading away from a chancellor-parliamentary system towards a quasi-presidential one (Körösényi, 2003). This coincided with the centralization of policymaking and advisory capacities within government. This centralization also manifested itself between levels of government, with a system of fragmented, weak local governments and even weaker regional governments (Hajnal & Rosta, 2019).

In line with the increasing partisan polarization, politicization has become a major feature of Hungarian public administration (Meyer-Sahling, 2006), with recent studies pointing to medium to high levels of it (Meyer-Sahling & Veen, 2012; Staroňová & Gajduschek, 2013; Ványi, 2018). Political logic pervades even the lower levels of bureaucracy, which suggests the politicization of most recipients of policy advice as well. Even without taking account of political considerations, public administration in Hungary is inherently unreceptive to political science expertise, with its highly legalist *Rechtstaat* tradition and the continued dominance of lawyers in bureaucracy (Gajduschek, 2012; Hajnal & Ványolós, 2013). This continuing legalist administrative approach is thus expected not to be open to political science and public policy-based approaches to policymaking, when compared to input from the felds of economics and sociology even.

In seeking to understand the logic of Hungarian policymaking over the last decade, we can draw on three systematic scientifc attempts to label the country's political evolution. Hungary has been defned as an illiberal democracy (Korkut, 2012; Mudde & Jenne, 2012; Szelényi & Csillag, 2015), a populist democracy (Bartha et al., 2020; Pappas, 2014), and a plebiscitary leader democracy (Körösényi et al., 2020).

Centralization has continued within central government: the prime minister's offce occupies the central position, while there has been a reduction in the autonomy afforded to the various ministries (Körösényi et al., 2020). The underlying logic of the system is that of political governance*,* as characterized by centralization and strong political control over the whole government (Hajnal et al., 2018a). This has led to substantive policy expertise playing a very marginal role, subordinated as it is to political considerations. Outside of central government, the country's already weak local governments have seen their powers weakened even further in the existing illiberal era (Hajnal et al., 2018b; Hajnal & Rosta, 2019).

Political governance also implies a 'radically accelerated, top-down, unilateralist style of policy making' along with the 'lack of evidence-based policy making practices' (Hajnal et al., 2018a: 32–33). The ideological character of illiberal-populist governance is *anti-elitist and often antiintellectual*, considering political will superior to scientifc expertise with regard to policy questions. Populist governments do rely on expert political advice, but they do so under their own terms, framed by the political logic of the regime.

This anti-pluralist governance logic implies the further politicization of previously partially autonomous spheres such as the media, the economy, and public administration. Potential sources of policy advice are included or excluded, based on their personal and political connections. While this dynamic may not apply to occasional contributors, the choice is often between co-optation and exclusion for those regularly involved in policy matters.

While the populist logic may run counter to the idea of autonomous spheres of expertise, its dependence on maintaining popular support calls for the participation of scientifc advisors in two ways: in political polling and consulting as experts, on the one hand, and in political windowdressing or public legitimation activities as opinionating scholars, on the other. Normative advice can be expected, because while populist governance is ideologically very fexible, it still requires normative justifcation for legitimacy purposes. In the Hungarian case, this ideological basis of governance in the 2010s, called ethno-nationalism (Bozóki & Hegedűs, 2018) or post-communist neo-conservatism (Szelényi & Csillag, 2015), was cultivated on a strong philosophical and normative social scientifc basis. This need generated a diverse group of political consultants (ranging from theorists to experts in political practice) tied to the centre of power, providing policy ideas and tracking what is salient or politically feasible.

A growing outsourcing of advice has led to a diminishing of the internal advisory capacity and role of cabinets and mandarins (Hajnal et al., 2018b). A growing sector populated by various applied research institutes and think tanks has taken their place in the policymaking sphere.

Hungarian think tanks fall into two categories: government-linked think tanks (and applied research institutes) and opposition-oriented think tanks (Bíró-Nagy, 2019). Those in the frst category are characterized by their strong political ties to the government, and while they fulfl think tank functions publically, their main functions locate them within the internal government arena. Think tanks sponsored by the government work in an almost identical way to applied research institutes: both deliver knowledge to government and party politicians, while at the same time engaging in public debate to legitimize governmental policies and narratives. There is no clear dividing line between applied research institutes and think tanks on the government's side, as some organizations fulfl both roles and party and government operations largely merge. While a couple of think tanks have enjoyed stable central contracts (Bíró-Nagy, 2019), the sphere of applied policy research institutes is characterized by higher institutional volatility. Both kinds of organization are generally awarded steady, substantial government contracts, with the corresponding portfolios ranging from policy-oriented studies to political communication.

The societal arena of the Hungarian policy advisory system consists of non-governmental think tanks and political consultancy frms, civil society, and economic actors involved in the policy process. The most important group of non-government-linked political advisors are those working for think tanks and political consulting frms. Opposition think tanks often rely on marketized advice and foreign funding to survive (Bíró-Nagy, 2019). Most think tanks also offer political consulting services, whereas a couple lack the ideological profle generally associated with think tanks.

Since in an illiberal system, the centre of power does not tolerate institutionalized checks and balances, civil society is weak and often dependent on party politics and the government. Non-governmental policy actors have little infuence on the policymaking process, which is dominated by the central executive (Boda & Patkós, 2018; Hajnal et al., 2018b). Since civil society cannot infuence domestic policymaking directly (Bartha et al., 2020), the effect of such actors is conveyed through the media or through international organizations. The fnal important group in the external arena consists of international organizations, and in particular the European Union (EU): these have important roles in many policy areas due to their position as the fnal hard constraint on the government's room for manoeuvre (Bozóki & Hegedűs, 2018).

#### *9.2.2 Expectations on Advising Activities*

This section examines the supply factors underlying advice provision by the political science community and the extent to which this community produces and divulges knowledge of relevance to policy. Hajnal et al. (2018a, 2018b) note that the lack of evidence-based policymaking in Hungary is due not just to demand factors but also to academia's lack of capacity. Although this is a circular problem, we can argue that it partially stems from the structure of the Hungarian political science community. In line with the legalistic traditions of the country, state sciences (Staatswissenschaft) have developed as, and remained, a separate discipline from political sciences, thus maintaining a tradition that prioritizes legal procedure over policy considerations (Gajduschek, 2012). This was a major obstacle for the institutionalization of policy studies. While public policy and public administration developed as semi-autonomous disciplines, distinct from the rest of political sciences, their institutional positions remain rather weak (Hajnal, 2020). Furthermore, the study of international relations developed separately from the rest of political science and is mostly detached from the population of scholars studied in the country chapters in this book.

The political science community has become increasingly internationalized, conforming to European academic standards and research directions, albeit only for a core group of academics (Molnár & Ilonszki, 2021). One expectation is that the international or supranational level of advisory activities will only be signifcant for a select group of internationalized academics. They are likely to be found in the very best research institutes and universities, as well as in those think tanks and NGOs which are not funded by government and therefore have to rely on foreign donors and partners to an increasing degree as part of their diversifcation strategy.

The second question concerning supply-side factors is the willingness of political scientists in Hungary to act as advisors. This will depend on their intrinsic motivation to do so, or their reservations about advisory activity, and also on the external incentives provided by the institutional context. Depending on the prevailing professional norms and on their own personal convictions, academics may have reservations about engaging with their subject matter in an advisory capacity, or they may consider advisory engagement to be one of their professional obligations. The external incentives defned by academic and applied scientifc institutions can reinforce either of these considerations by rewarding or disregarding advisory impact.

During the democratic transition and the formative years of Hungarian political science, a strong tradition of public intellectuals prevailed, where public and political engagement was the norm among academics (Szabó, 2010). During the professionalization of the discipline in the 2000s, increasing emphasis was placed on value-neutral, internationally relevant scientifc work. This meant the introduction of incentive systems (mostly publication criteria) which made it very diffcult for upcoming scholars to focus on advisory careers while advancing in academia. As Hungarian political science is a young discipline, and is thus mainly concerned with its professionalization and academic institutionalization, one may expect to fnd a low sense of professional obligation to engage in policy advice among its members.

By the time of this survey, the 'impact agenda' had not reached Hungary yet, with practically no impact incentives included in performance evaluation or promotion criteria, and only social relevance included as a secondary consideration for research funding (Bandola-Gill et al., 2018). This basically means that the way is open for academics to engage in advisory activities based on their personal values but is not incentivized in any way. This, combined with the considerable publication and teaching requirements at most universities, means that we can expect advisory activities to happen mainly as a result of economic considerations. The key monetary incentive is expected to come in the form of the extra income provided by the advisory activity itself, as government or private consulting contracts can provide much higher income than academic work can. Services are provided through external institutions and are not linked to academic positions. Therefore, academics working outside of academia (for think tanks, applied scientifc institutes, or political consultancy frms) can be expected to be much more active as policy advisors. Furthermore, there may be a sharp division between the pure academics with substantial professional reservations about advisory engagement, and their more engaged colleagues who are likely to feel an obligation to provide advice, or at least fewer reservations about doing so, since the institutional landscape alone will not be enough to encourage their involvement.

The country's political and governmental arrangements would suggest that most of the demand for policy advice arises at national government level, where it is concentrated around the centre of executive power. Opposition parties and international organizations should represent two further important recipients of advice, while others will only have marginal roles. Along with the major infuence of government over much of the media, this means that experts who do not have access to government insiders are going to have very few channels available to them by which to infuence policies; these channels will mainly consist of opposition parties and their corresponding think tanks. Unfavourable traditions, together with recent developments in policymaking, suggest that the overall level of demand for most sub-disciplines of political science will be low.

Based on policy process characteristics, our expectations are in keeping with Hajnal et al.'s recent expert assessment that at the national policymaking level, 'external expertise is dominant; as far as it can be judged a very narrow circle of (mostly) informal sources of policy advice dominates the felds' (Hajnal et al., 2018b: 451). There are three key expectations here: the main channels of advice are likely to involve externalization with (quasi-)marketization instead of internal positions; the dominance of central government's political will and the closed nature of the policy process would seem to suggest selective advisory access to the politicized arenas; and the key importance of personal, informal connections to gaining that access.

Regarding the content of advice, the logic of populist political governance leads us to expect the diminished role of substantive public policy and public administration considerations, while political consulting and opinion polling are expected to be central. The politicized nature of the policy advisory system also means that those involved are likely to provide normative considerations relatively more often (than the European average).

With regard to the four main ideal types, the majority of Hungarian political scientists can be expected to fall into the 'pure academic' category, with a minority of them supplying all observable advice. Among those who engage in advisory activities, experts and opinionating scholars are expected to be the main types, more than public intellectuals. Professional reservations against political engagement lead us to expect experts to outnumber opinionating scholars, who may be a smaller active minority. Those academics who have links to the government or to an opposition organization are likely to engage in widespread, informal advisory activities. Those who have no direct access to policymaking are expected to remain pure academics or to utilize alternative pathways in order to have an advisory impact.

### 9.3 Empirical Patterns of Advising

The analysis is based on the results of the survey conducted for this book project. The survey had a 29.3% response rate in Hungary, with 66 members of the profession answering the questionnaire. The sample slightly over-represents female and younger colleagues, as well as those employed on temporary contracts. The fact that these groups may be less involved in advisory activities could lead to a slight underestimation of the level of engagement in our fndings.

#### *9.3.1 Frequency and Content of Advice*

How active are Hungarian political scientists in policy advisory activities? Table 9.1 shows the frequency of the different forms of advice they provide. Hungarian political scientists are not very active when compared to the European average, as about half of them say they never engage in any of the listed advisory activities. This difference is most striking in relation to the more relevant advisory activities, where only 25% to 30% of European respondents never engage in providing data and facts, analysing and explaining causes and consequences or evaluating solutions. Conversely, the fgures closest to the European average are observed with regard to the least commonly engaged in advisory activities, such as consultancy and policy recommendations, forecasting, and polling.

Against the backdrop of this generally limited engagement with advising, the most frequent activities are the provision of data and facts and the analysis and explanation of causes and consequences. These are followed by evaluation and consultancy. The activities least frequently engaged in are making value judgments and providing normative arguments. These


**Table 9.1** Frequency and type of advice, in percentages (N)—Hungary makers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?'; including only those respondents who indicated 'at least once per year', 'once per month', or 'once per week'.

fndings contrast with the expectations based on the logic of Hungarian policymaking regarding the importance of normative content. They also indicate that political science in Hungary is either not connected to, or not well-suited for, the kind of advice required by policymakers. This interpretation is supported further by the survey's fndings on the substantive topics of advice, where except for a few popular areas such as social welfare and economic policy, advice by Hungarian political scientists is much less likely to have a substantive policy focus than the European average. The most striking difference is the lack of scientifc advice on 'government and public administration organization, and electoral reforms', with only 14.3% of respondents engaged in policy advice indicating this activity, against a European average of 40.8%, and on 'International affairs, development aid, EU' with 17.1% (compared to 33.8% in the overall sample). Also the provision of advice on 'civil rights, political rights, and gender issues' is well below average, at just 8.6% compared to 21.6% of the total sample in the survey.

The perceptions of political scientists in Hungary on their public visibility are much closer to the average for all countries (54.6% in Hungary and 55% on average in Europe). This represents a remarkable discrepancy with the actual activities performed. This may mean that political scientists in Hungary have alternative ways of infuencing public debate or that the small group of active scholars establishes the reputation of the category of political scientists as a whole.

#### *9.3.2 The Supply Aspects of Advice*

To what degree are political scientists in Hungary encouraged to engage in policy advising? The expectation was that the professional-institutional context itself does not provide any really strong incentives to scholars to engage in policy advising. This does not appear true however. Some 40% of the respondents claim career considerations as part of their advisory motivation, which is higher than the fgure of 32.9% for the overall sample. Incentives from outside the academic sphere seem even more important, as 54.3% of respondents indicate that alternative sources of income and career options are part of their motivation, which is once again higher than the European average of 42.9%. Low engagement is therefore diffcult to account for in terms of perceived external incentives.

The next question to consider is the intrinsic motivation of political scientists to engage in advisory activities. Scholars may have a sense of


**Table 9.2** Normative views on policy advice, in percentages (percentages in overall sample)—Hungary

*Note*: Question: 'To what extent do you agree with the following statements?'; including only those respondents who indicated 'fully agree' or 'somewhat agree'.

Source: ProSEPS survey data.

professional duty or may seek solutions for practice or may have personal motives. Table 9.2 gives the relative weight of different normative views behind the advisory activities of political scientists in Hungary.

The level of agreement with normative views of the profession reinforces the relevance of incentives for advising, since 68.2% of Hungarian respondents agree to some extent that academics should be involved in policymaking. A professional obligation to engage in public debate is recognized by 57.6% (16.7% fully agree, 40.9% somewhat agree). Professional reservations do not differ signifcantly from the European average, where cautious engagement is the norm. Only 24.3% of respondents in Hungary agree that political scientists should refrain from direct engagement with policy actors. This suggests that supply factors alone cannot explain the


**Table 9.3** Proportion of advisory roles by subfelds—Hungary

*Note*: Question: 'Which categories best describe your area of expertise? Please select the three main categories'.

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data.

low level of advisory engagement. Yet, given the politicized nature of the policy advisory system, they may contribute to it, as more than two-thirds (69.7%) of respondents say they should not be directly involved in policymaking, and 63.6% believe that they should test ideas in academic outlets before any engagement in policy advising.

What impact does the academic background of respondents have? Table 9.3 shows the distribution of the four ideal types and the subfelds of the discipline in which the respondents work. In line with the observation that almost half of Hungarian political scientists never do any advising, 47% can be qualifed as pure academics. This proportion is twice that of the European average. At the other end of the scale we fnd that, as in all countries, public intellectuals in Hungary are a rare species. The two in-between roles are less prominent due to the prevalence of the pure academic. Experts (16.7%) are political scientists who generally refrain from offering any explicit normative forms of advice, whilst focusing more on factual knowledge; however, opinionating scholars are considerably more common (31.8%); these are political scientists who utilize both factual and normative analyses when providing advice. The proportions of experts and opinionating scholars in Hungary are well below the European average for the respective categories.

Scholars in the subfelds of security studies, public policy, and international relations are most likely to engage in advisory activities, followed by political economists and electoral behaviour specialists. From among the most populous sub-disciplines in our sample, scholars in social science methods, comparative politics, political theory, political institutions, and, in particular, public administration are less likely to engage in advisory activities. This suggests that the unique disciplinary structure of Hungarian political science, with the weak position of public policy and the separation of international and security studies, contributes to the low level of engagement in our sample.

The reservations and obligations regarding advisory engagement show very similar distributions among the four advisory roles. One expected and observable difference is that opinionating scholars and public intellectuals are more likely to see engagement in public debate as a professional obligation (64% and 100% agree, respectively, compared to 55% and 42.9% of pure academics and experts), since engaging in this type of advisory activity is not linked to strong external incentives.

#### *9.3.3 Advisory Demand and Features of Advice*

In order to understand the factors behind advisory engagement, we need to return to the demand side. Whom do political scientists advise and how? The data on the recipients of advice are in line with our expectation that the national level of governance prevails, as 68.6% of those engaged in advice indicated this. The international (25.7%), European (20%), and subnational (11.4%) levels of governance remain way below the national level as recipients of advice. Yet, compared to most other countries, Hungary's national and the subnational governance levels feature much less within the advisory scope of the country's political scientists. There are no signifcant differences in orientation, in terms of the level of governance, among the advisory ideal types.

The most important recipients of advice in Hungary are think tanks (30.3%), international organizations (above the European average), and civil society organizations (well below the European average). The relevance of international organizations is somewhat surprising, as Hungarian political science is internationalized to a certain degree only. A mere 19.7% of respondents have ever held academic positions outside of Hungary, which is much lower than the average of 36.8% in the overall sample. This is reinforced further by our data on the internationalization of research activities. Hungarian political scientists lag behind their colleagues in other European countries when it comes to publishing with international coauthors and in peer-reviewed international journals. It seems that for an internationalized core group of academics, cultivating relations with international organizations is a successful way of achieving an impact in the selective, closed advisory system.

The apparently strong role of think tanks was to be expected, given the strong externalization trends in government. This is reinforced by the below-average share of civil servants (24.2%), political parties (21.2%), executive politicians (19.3%), and legislative politicians (18.3%) among the recipients of advice. For all of them, Hungary scores below the European average. The two least likely recipients highlight the dismantling of neo-corporatist and consultative institutions, as advisory bodies (10.6%) and private interest groups (9.1%) appear less than half as frequently as in the European sample as a whole.

Our data on the positions of political scientists point towards weak institutional links between academia and policymaking. Of all those with a position outside academia, 32% of academics never give policy advice, while 66.7% of the political scientists without such a position stay away from advisory engagements. Likewise, having no experience with a position outside of academia correlates with a much lower likelihood of being an expert or opinionating scholar (11.1% against 20% and 16.7% against 44%). Hungarian political scientists adapt to institutional incentives by taking up positions in frms much more than the European average (33.3% compared to 14.7%). Some kind of affliation to a frm also gives a political scientist in Hungary above average leverage as an opinionating scholar. Though their numbers are very limited, the role of public intellectual in Hungary goes with political offce more often than indicated for Europe as a whole. This shows the weakness of civil society and that neo-corporatist structures such as interest groups and advocacy organizations are less likely to be the recipients of advice of political scientists. Table 9.4 also shows that while in the overall sample academics holding positions in NGOs engage in policy advising more often than those who are not involved in such organizations, the opposite is true in the Hungarian case.

To get a better understanding of the existing advisory relationships, Table 9.5 shows expectations regarding the formality/informality of advice.


**Table 9.4** Advisory roles by positions outside academia, in percentages (percentages in overall sample)—Hungary

**Table 9.5** Formality/informality of advice by recipients, in percentages (percentages in overall sample)—Hungary


Source: ProSEPS survey data.

It seems that policy advice in Hungary overall is somewhat more informal than the European average, while this difference is considerable in the case of recipients for whom personal connections are key: executive politicians and advisory bodies, legislative politicians and (ideologically aligned) think tanks, and civil society organizations. While this relationship is weaker in the case of advice provided to civil servants and international organizations, these recipients are still more likely to seek informal advice in Hungary than in Europe on average. Note that respondents could indicate multiple recipients and an overall level of formality, so the high level of informality in most categories may result from an active group of academics having informal talks with many actors (thus affecting several rows), while those with more formal advisory activities have more concentrated relations, affecting the results vis-à-vis a few recipients. This could also account for the composition effect, where the overall difference in the formality of advice between Hungary and the European average is smaller than for any recipient. The modes of advice dissemination refect the prevalence of informality, where the most frequent activities are those involving personal meetings, with 40.9% of respondents giving policy advice on a face-to-face basis at least once a year and 39.4% via workshops or conferences.

#### *9.3.4 Determinants and Alternative Strategies of Access*

We can better understand patterns of access by comparing those who remain outside with those involved, albeit in mostly unfavourable circumstances. The two flters of engagement together lead us to expect both age and gender to be important determinants of access, for three reasons. First, changing academic norms in political science mean that the older colleagues, who are more likely to be male, are also more likely to be public intellectuals or opinionating scholars. Second, academic position also impacts results here, as women and younger researchers will likely have to concentrate more on core academic activities in order to get a foothold in the profession, leaving less time and energy for advisory activities, which are not taken into account in performance assessment. Lastly, we expect a signifcant degree of homophily in informal advisory linkages, whereby older, male PSs are more likely to be part of the 'in-group' with access to government policymaking, since older men still dominate Hungarian politics. Thus, age and gender act as proxies of personal connections with politicians and other policymakers.

Do younger academics choose different channels and forms of advice, in order to gain access to, and to affect, policymaking? Table 9.6 displays the average age of political scientists grouped by recipients of their advice. The only signifcant age difference (of 7.1 years) is found between those who advise international organizations and those who do not. A less signifcant impact of age on access to the recipients of advice are visible when those recipients are executive politicians, advisory bodies, political parties, legislators, and think tanks. Political scientists advising civil society organizations and civil servants are comparatively younger. Age also appears to have quite modest effects in terms of role types.


**Table 9.6** Average age of respondents by recipients of advice—Hungary

How does gender impact engagement in advisory activities? Our data indicate that men are more likely to be opinionating scholars (34.5% against 23.1% for women), whereas women are more likely to be experts (23.1% against 13.8%). If this may suggest a gender infuence on role type choice, two of the three public intellectuals in our sample are women. Here it appears that experience in political offce also has an effect.

Table 9.7 gives further details of the communication channels of advice used by female and male political scientists. The frst four modes all rely on the existence of personal connections between advisor and recipient, and all modes are more likely to be frequently used by men. This is in keeping with the expectation of males being more likely to have access through their personal connections.

For the other channels except traditional media articles, we fnd that female political scientists use these more frequently. Making sense of this pattern, there is a relationship with the advisory role type: channels that go with an expert role are more prominent for female scholars, while opinionating, in which male scholars are more active and visible, is more closely connected to informal communication modes and media article writing.


**Table 9.7** Modes and channels of advice by gender—Hungary

## 9.4 Discussion: Towards <sup>a</sup> Populist Policy Advisory System?

In Hungary, the level and types of advisory activity of political scientists is more limited by demand-side factors than by the supply side of knowledge production and by viewpoints within the scholarly community itself. While the academic arena may only provide weak incentives for advisory activity, fnancial considerations on the other hand may drive scholars towards offering their advisory services. The main obstacle to the greater engagement of political scientists lies in the lack of ft between the advisory expectations or claims of the dominant policy actors and what political scientists are actually able to provide.

The goal of this chapter was to provide a clearer understanding of how political scientists do or do not cope with the features of the closed policy process with its limited number of institutionalized access points. Expectations regarding the viewpoints and behaviour of political scientists in Hungary were compared with the responses to survey questions. Only one of the expectations on policy advice in the illiberal-populist system of governance in Hungary was not corroborated by the survey results: despite the expected importance of political polling and consulting activities and normative considerations, advisory activities were dominated, instead, by substantive advice and analysis, albeit mostly outside of traditional core PS subfelds. The other observed features of policy advice met our expectations very closely. The national level of governance dominates the policy advisory system, just as it does policymaking. The externalization of policy capacities is clearly visible in the key position taken by think tanks, in the moderating role of frms, and in the small share of total advice received by advisory bodies and internal governmental actors.

The connections between expertise and governance seem to be underinstitutionalized in general, while it is through cultivating personal connections that academics are able to have a signifcant advisory impact without enjoying institutionalized access points. This leads to highly informal advice right across the policy advisory system. The closed advisory system with its selective, often personalized, gender-biased access points also leads to different channels being used by male and female academics. An additional important aspect of our portrayal of the illiberal-populist policy advisory system consists in the signifcant relative weight of international advisory activities, which may be the natural outcome of the contraction and closing of the domestic system, but which could also be the result of international actors looking to understand and deal with the unpredictable patterns of domestic policymaking.

How generalizable are these results to the policy advisory system as a whole? Political science might be in a privileged position due to its relationship to the political considerations underlying policymaking. Academics from other disciplines may be less capable and willing to navigate the politicized landscape and to cultivate personal connections, thus leading to their even higher rate of exclusion and passivity. As knowledge areas and activities specifcally linked to political science were found to be relatively unimportant for advice given by political scientists, our fndings may approximate how academics more generally ft into the policy advisory system of Hungary.

This frst overview of the Hungarian policy advisory system including systematic empirical data forms part of the enigma of the existence or otherwise of a more general illiberal-populist policy advisory model. A crosssectional analysis does not enable us to establish how much of the closed and informal nature of the system presented here is driven by Hungarian political traditions and how much is due to recent developments. The chapter on Turkey provides another look at an illiberal regime with populist tendencies and a policy advisory system with many similar features, but in order to reach any systemic conclusions, other cases of populist policymaking, such as the rather similar case of Poland, need to be analysed. It is also worth asking whether the connections between underinstitutionalization, the externalization of advice, informality, and selective access can be substantiated in other contexts.

#### References


*Administration and Policy, 11*(1), 11–39. https://doi.org/10.2478/ nispa-2018-0001


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## Of Pure Academics and Advice Debutants: The Policy Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Italy

*Andrea Pritoni and Maria Tullia Galanti*

## 10.1 The Policy Advisory Roles of Italian Political Scientists

### *10.1.1 The Italian Policy Advisory System*

To date, no systematic attempt has been made to describe the main features of the Italian policy advisory system—with respect to its components, interactions, and dynamics (Halligan, 1995), or the stock of its analytical capacities (Howlett, 2009). Nonetheless, the peculiarities of the Italian political system and policymaking suggest a weakly institutionalised system of advice where policy knowledge is dispersed vertically across levels of government (Dente, 1997) and horizontally across society and

A. Pritoni (\*)

University of Turin, Turin, Italy e-mail: andrea.pritoni@unito.it

M. T. Galanti University of Milan, Milan, Italy

© The Author(s) 2022 205 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_10

policy sectors (Dente, 1995). In fact, the consolidation of a quasi-federalist form of state has empowered local governments, particularly regions and municipalities, with responsibilities for specifc policy sectors, including health, social welfare, and economic development (Lippi, 2011). At the same time, the 'quasi-majoritarian turn' that characterised the political system at the beginning of the 1990s affected the party system, starting a never-ending transition from multipartitism to a 'fragmented bipolarism' of coalition governments, the latter of which is now challenged by new entrants, such as the 5-Star Movement and the League (previously the 'Northern League') (Chiaramonte et al. 2018). These transformations have lately highlighted the consensual, albeit still polarised, character of a system where political parties continue to play a central role also in politicising the public administration. In the so-called Second Italian Republic, the number of policy advisors who have been appointed due to their political affliations (or at least, ideological affnity) is even higher than it was in the past (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016).

Against this backdrop, the Italian case shows scarce administrative capacity at the ministerial level, with legal expertise still prevailing (Capano & Gualmini, 2011; Ongaro, 2008; Capano & Vassallo, 2003; Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016). Governmental analytical capacity is strongly focused on the law-making process, thus favouring the legal expertise of legislative offces over other types of knowledge (Regonini, 2017). The few studies of the Italian case conducted to date have focused on the composition of specifc administrative branches, such as ministerial offces (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016), with particular attention paid to political appointments and politicisation, rather than policy advice per se. In particular, the changes in the party system have increased the ministerial advisors' vulnerability to government change and reshuffes, with high turnover rates negatively impacting the advisors' level of professionalisation (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016: 520).

Advisory activities can be deduced from the statutory dispositions of governing public agencies and public and private research institutions and from the thick knowledge of the policy process in different policy felds. At the national level, in-house policy advisory activities are traditionally performed by ministerial cabinets (called '*uffci di diretta collaborazione*' since 1999) and by legislative offces. In particular, ministerial cabinets developed in post-war Italy as large in-house institutionalised advisory structures designed to bypass the mistrusted senior civil servants; they play a central role in policy formulation and executive activities (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2013). These ministerial advisors are usually qualifed lawyers (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016). Other actors performing advisory activities include the public bodies and administrative agencies with technical expertise in a specifc policy area, such as the ISS—*Istituto Superiore di Sanità* (National Institute of Health), the INPS*—Istituto Nazionale per la Previdenza Sociale* (National Social Security Institute), and the CNEL— *Consiglio Nazionale dell'Economia e del Lavoro* (National Council of Economy and Labour). Traditionally, advisory functions can be performed also by temporary ad hoc committees in Parliament (e.g. the *Commissione Onofri* for the reform of the social welfare system in the 1990s). At the same time, external-to-government policy advice provision (by academics, think tanks, professional consultants, etc.) is traditionally weakly institutionalised. The common practice is for the Prime Minister and other Ministers to appoint consultants, mainly economists and legal scholars, but very few political scientists.

Among the recent trends observed in the PAS literature (differentiation, externalisation, and politicisation of the PAS) (Craft & Howlett, 2012, 2013; Craft & Halligan, 2017), the Italian case shows signs of differentiation both within and outside of government and the civil service. In terms of internal advisory bodies, the Bassanini Reform (Italian Legislative Decree no. 300/1999) tasked the ministerial cabinets with formulating and evaluating public policy (Dente, 1995). The recent Madia Reform (Italian Law no. 124/2015) required government to assign specifc powers governing the analysis, design, and evaluation of public policies, to the Prime Minister's Offce (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016). This measure should have echoed the French experience with the *Révision Générale des Politiques Publiques* (RGPP, General Review of Public Policies). However, the corresponding legislative decree was never approved. At the same time, soliciting the advice of individual experts is a common practice in Parliamentary committees and Ministries.

Looking beyond the core executive and the Parliament, the provision of policy advice also mushroomed among public research institutes and independent private think tanks. The advisory function of public research institutes such as the *INAPP—Istituto Nazionale per l'Analisi delle Politiche Pubbliche* (National Institute for Public Policy Analysis) or the *ISPRA*—*Istituto Superiore per la Protezione e la Ricerca Ambientale* (Institute for Environmental Protection and Research) (Guaschino, 2018) was recently acknowledged by Italian Legislative Decree no. 218/2016. At the sub-national level, regional governments may rely on institutional advisors, as in the cases of Polis in Lombardy (Cattaneo, 2018) and of *IRPET—Istituto Regionale Programmazione economica della Toscana* (Regional Institute for Economic Planning of Tuscany) in Tuscany. At the same time, private research institutes and think tanks are creating a variegated supply of policy advice, with their research fndings often presented in the national media. Even though we still lack an updated mapping of these subjects, a number of other think tanks sponsored by different political parties have proliferated (Diletti 2011). All in all, policy advice continues to be delivered mostly on an individual basis by academics, in particular by law scholars and economists. By contrast, political scientists only seldom engage in providing policy advice, with no particular differences with regard to gender or academic career position. Yet, when they do, they generally provide advice on a few specifc issues, such as the public administration and the electoral system, international relations and the European Union (EU), immigration policy and civil rights (for further details, see Sect. 10.2).

In sum, there is some evidence of the growing differentiation of the Italian PAS, as in all European countries (Hustedt & Veit, 2017). Still, the impact of these trends on the 'quality' (i.e. the degree of innovation, internal coherence, and evidence-based content) of policymaking in Italy remains negligible (Capano & Pritoni, 2016).

#### *10.1.2 Italian Political Scientists in the Policy Advisory System*

Regarding where academics and scientists are located within the PAS (Blum & Brans, 2017), the (scarce) evidence relating to the Italian case suggests that scientists mainly populate the academic arena, while also maintaining a presence at the intersection with the governmental arena (with a variety of governmental research institutes) and at the intersection with the societal arena, where researchers work as consultants in the research centres of various interests groups and private foundations. Law scholars represent the vast majority of scientists and academics acting as experts and public intellectuals in public debate and are also key fgures within the governmental arena (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2013). Political scientists, on the other hand, being a relatively 'new' academic discipline, constitute a numerically limited group of experts of rather 'marginal' importance to public debate (Capano & Verzichelli, 2016); as such, they are seldom involved in Italian policymaking. Italian political scientists tend to be concentrated in the academic arena (in particular universities and few policy research institutes), while sometimes appearing in the media as opinion-givers on political and partisan matters, but rarely accessing the governmental arena as policy experts. The type of advice that political scientists tend to give can vary extremely. Political scientists are rarely involved in giving policy advice on substantive and procedural matters (Craft & Howlett, 2012). The case of electoral experts is a partial exception to this pattern, but there are very few cases where political scientists produce, or are requested to prepare, reports on a specifc policy problem, or are involved in the formal evaluation of public policies. Most of the time, their policy advice is long term and anticipatory when they write in scientifc journals and more short term and reactive when they write editorials for newspapers. Anecdotal experience also suggests that the more procedural policy advice is informally channelled in cases of mutual recognition and trust between a policymaker and a political scientist.

The main access points for political scientists as academics to bring their expertise to bear on policymaking are based on previous personal or professional knowledge shared by the policymaker and the academic. This mode of access is not frequent and is poorly institutionalised. In very rare circumstances, Italian political scientists are invited to join governmental agencies or parliamentary committees. Few political scientists are engaged in the societal arena, especially when promoting participatory practices at local level through associations and NGOs. Specialists in elections and social media may also bridge the academic and societal arenas, creating a genuine business of applied research into political and policy matters.

## 10.2 Political Scientists: Types of Advisory Role in Italy

To date, there has been no comprehensive mapping of all the cases where an Italian political scientist has been engaged in policymaking. This is the reason why the data we present and discuss in this chapter are useful and, above all, innovative. Thanks to an online survey, 177 Italian political scientists responded to a broad set of different questions on their (potential) advisory roles. Even though our sample appears to be quite small for a large country like Italy, it is highly representative of the Italian community of political scientists, which is actually rather limited in size. More precisely, the response rate to the online survey was 61.0% (177 responses to a total of 290 invitations), with no particular differences with regard to gender or academic career status. Despite this relatively high response rate, the numbers invite the conventional caution when it comes to drawing conclusions. The responses to this broad set of questions allow us to differentiate Italian political scientists and to 'categorise' them. More precisely, our classifcation makes reference to a typology of policy advisors which divides academics into four categories: the 'pure academic', the 'expert', the 'opinionating scholar', and the 'public intellectual' (see Chap. 2).

The frst main step to take is to analyse how frequently Italian political scientists (from now on IPSs) engage in different kinds of policy advice provision. Table 10.1 sets out the answers that Italian academics gave to the survey questions regarding six different kinds of policy advice: (i) providing data and facts about policies and political phenomena; (ii) analysing and explaining the causes and consequences of policy problems; (iii) evaluating existing policies, institutional arrangements, and so on; (iv) offering consultancy services and advice and making recommendations on policy alternatives; (v) making forecasts and/or carrying out polls; (vi) offering value judgements and normative arguments.

A large share of Italian political scientists do *not* provide policy advice. This fnding is particularly clear with respect to their making forecasts and/or carrying out polls (68.4% of respondents has *never* done so) but can reasonably be extended to all kinds of advice. This is a frst—fairly preliminary—confrmation of what we claimed in previous sections: in Italy, political scientists are seldom consulted by policymakers. The latter prefer to collaborate with legal experts and, subordinately, with


**Table 10.1** Frequency and type of advice—Italy

*Note*: Question: 'How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors?'

economists (in particular with regard to policy evaluation and policy recommendations). However, there appears to be a select sort of 'inner circle' of political scientists who, on the contrary, are very much concerned with policymaking. A dozen Italian academics are rather frequently ('once a week' or 'once a month' answers) engaged in policy advising: policymakers usually refer to their expertise in various areas, and their scientifc knowledge is frequently a value added for designing and implementing policies.

If we cross-tabulate frequency and type of advice, we can thus categorise Italian political scientists who responded to our online survey, according to the typology presented in Chap. 2. How many 'pure academics', 'experts', 'opinionators', and 'public intellectuals' can be identifed among political scientists in Italy? (Table 10.2)

In Italy only one political scientist in the survey could be classifed as a 'public intellectual' on the basis of our criteria. This means that only one Italian political scientist (hereafter abbreviated to IPS) offers different types (normative arguments included) of advice very frequently (at least on a once a month basis). On the contrary, around one IPS out of four can be identifed as a 'pure academic': she/he never offers policy advice of any kind. Finally, the vast majority of IPSs can be classifed as either 'experts' or 'opinionators', with the latter representing the modal category in our distribution. However, within those categories, the vast majority of respondents are seldom involved in the provision of policy advice (with answers that very often are 'once a year' or even 'less frequently').


**Table 10.2** Typology of political scientists' policy advisory roles—Italy

*Note*: Total respondents to the online survey (N): 177.

Therefore, this empirical fnding does not contradict the qualitative view that Italian political scientists are scarcely involved in policymaking (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016).

Yet, more interesting than the simple categorisation itself is refecting on the most likely factors that infuence that same categorisation. In other words, what impacts the likelihood that Italian political scientists give more or less advice in more or less different ways? With respect to this, the easiest answer seems to involve personal factors. It might be, for instance, that political scientists on permanent contracts are more involved in policy advice than political scientists on temporary contracts or that males are more involved than females.

We shall start by examining the temporary/permanent distinction. Tenured political scientists are generally older than their non-tenured colleagues and thus will have had more time to develop those personal relationships that are so important to any involvement in policy advisory activities in Italy. Non-tenured political scientists, in turn, are naturally more interested in teaching, and above all in doing research aimed at the publication of articles and books, than in providing policy advice, since their academic record (and thus their publications and teaching experience) will decide whether or not they can secure tenure in the near future. Academic careers are mainly based on teaching and research, not on policy advice provision. To empirically test these expectations, we cross-tabulated the distribution of Italian political scientists in different categories with whether they have (or do not have) a permanent contract with a university (Table 10.3).

Quite surprisingly, whether an IPS occupies either a permanent or a temporary position in academia does not have much impact on the likelihood that she/he will be classifed as a pure academic, an expert, an opinionator, or a public intellectual. Indeed, although the only Italian public


Non-tenured 5 (21.7%) 7 (30.4%) 11 (47.8%) 0 (0.0%) 23 (100.0%) Tenured 8 (25.0%) 10 (31.3%) 13 (40.6%) 1 (3.1%) 32 (100.0%)

**Table 10.3** Ideal types: differences between tenured and non-tenured political scientists—Italy

intellectual responding to the survey holds a tenured position, it is not possible to establish any particular differences between tenured and nontenured political scientists. This empirical fnding, precisely because it is highly surprising, merits further research in the near future.

Another potential driver of the likelihood of providing policy advice could be linked to gender issues. More precisely, it might be that in a patriarchal society like Italy (even in these initial 20 years of the twentyfrst century), men are more likely to be involved in the provision of policy advice than women are. Accordingly, we would expect to fnd many more women than men in the 'pure academic' category, whereas it is highly likely that the only Italian public intellectual will be male. What do our data tell us about gender issues?

On the one hand, Table 10.4 confrms the fact that the only selfdeclared public intellectual among the political scientists surveyed in Italy is male. On the other hand, women are characterised by a higher percentage of experts and opinionating scholars than men are, whereas the opposite holds true for men classifed as pure academics. In other words, if a bias really exists, this seems to work in favour of, rather than against, women. However, we are considering just a few dozen cases, and it could be misleading to draw such conclusions from the data available. Once again, further research will help us analyse in greater depth and better understand this very interesting empirical fnding.

Yet, regardless of the typology, many other characteristics of advice are interesting to analyse. As regards the formal or informal nature of their advice, for example, IPSs tend to use both formal and informal channels. To be honest, this empirical fnding is not unexpected. Generally, experts are formally called on to participate in policymaking, while their advice can be provided both in formal settings (in the meetings of advisory bodies, for example) and on informal occasions (e.g. in phone conversations or face-to-face encounters). This fnding can also be read from a second

**Table 10.4** Ideal types: differences between male and female political scientists—Italy


perspective, that of the (weak) institutionalisation of the policy advisory roles (of political scientists) in Italy. When policy advice is highly institutionalised and routinised, it is more likely that formal channels will prevail over informal channels (Craft & Howlett, 2013; Galanti & Lippi, 2018). By contrast, the fact that advisors tend (or are forced) to make use of informal channels to provide their advice and expertise to policymakers is a clear sign of the limited, albeit not complete lack of, institutionalisation of their role and common practices.

Thus, IPSs are seldom involved in policy advice activities, but when they are, they follow both formal and informal channels. Yet, who are policymakers actually asking for advice? In answer to this question, Table 10.5 divides recipients of advice into four broad categories: political actors, bureaucratic actors, societal actors, and international actors. These, in turn, can be further broken down into nine specifc sub-categories: (i) executive politicians; (ii) legislative politicians; (iii) political parties; (iv) civil servants; (v) advisory bodies; (vi) think tanks; (vii) interest groups in the private and corporate sector; (viii) civil society organizations (CSOs); and (ix) international organizations.

First, Italian political scientists are more often engaged in providing policy advice to societal and political actors than to bureaucratic and


**Table 10.5** Principal recipient(s) of advice—Italy

*Note*: Question: 'With which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?'

international ones. Once again, this fnding represents very interesting confrmation of what has been repeatedly argued in the literature, albeit from a qualitative rather than quantitative point of view (Di Mascio & Natalini, 2016). Bureaucratic offces would prefer to consult legal experts rather than any other kind of policy advisor. As already said, legal experts are the main protagonists within the Italian PAS, especially in relations with ministerial executives and supranational institutions. Second, there is a great difference among societal actors between interest groups in the private and corporate sector, on the one hand, and think tanks and CSOs, on the other. While the former rarely take advantage of political scientists' advice, the latter much more frequently seek their expertise. A frst tentative explanation of this striking difference relates to the left-wing bias that characterises IPSs (Curini, 2010). Probably, the interests of think tanks and CSOs are seen by academics as more legitimate than corporations' interests. Accordingly, political scientists are more willing to provide their expertise to those whose interests they can relate to more. Moreover, it might well be that think tanks and—above all—CSOs are less endowed with expertise than interest groups in the private sector are (Bouwen, 2002). This implies that the latter do not need external policy advice, whereas other organisations do. Third, no substantial distinctions exist among different political actors (executive, legislative, parties) in terms of their asking for academics' advice. It seems that all actors are (more or less) equally interested in the expertise of IPSs, and no particular patterns arise related to different political arenas.

Another very relevant aspect that has been scrutinised at length in our survey is the governance level of policy advice (Table 10.6).


**Table 10.6** Governance level of advice—Italy

*Note*: Question: 'At which level of governance did you engage most frequently in policy advice or consulting activities during the last three years?'

First of all, proximity matters a lot. Italian political scientists engage in policy advice much more frequently at the sub-national and national levels of governance than at the EU and trans-national levels. This fnding does not come as a surprise. In the literature (Dente, 1997), it is generally acknowledged that the demand for expertise on public policies is higher at closer levels of governance. This pattern could be mainly due to the fact that proximity enables better and tighter personal (and, in turn, professional) links and connections. However, many Italian political scientists do not provide policy advice at any level of governance.

That said, what is still lacking is a more fne-grained picture of the different policy areas where IPSs offer their advice (Table 10.7) and a further exploration of the channels through which they disseminate their expertise.

First, there appears to be a big gap between the few policy areas where many IPSs frequently give policy advice (public administration and electoral system; EU and international relations; immigration policy; civil rights) and all other policy areas. Second, among those policy areas


**Table 10.7** Areas of policy advice—Italy

*Note*: Question: 'With which substantive policy areas is your advice concerned?' Comparative Agenda Project categories.

involving a signifcant number of political scientists, a further distinction can be made between 'traditional' 'political scientists' areas of expertise that is, public administration, electoral reform, international relations—on the one hand, and immigration policy and civil rights, on the other. The latter, indeed, are themes that have been very much on the public and political agenda in recent years (Chiaramonte *et al*. 2018). It is hence not surprising that political scientists are called on to provide their advice in relation to these particular aspects, in addition to the more conventional issues of public administration organisation, electoral system reform, and IR. Third, very few political scientists are consulted in key areas of public policy, such as health, agriculture, labour, education, environment, energy, and so on. One possible explanation for this could be the public's acknowledgment of other disciplines as expert in policy evaluation, such as economy and sociology (at least, this is what seems to emerge from public debate).

Finally, as regards the channels of advice dissemination, it should be pointed out that the dissemination of policy advice is infrequent (regardless of the channel), which would further confrm previous empirical fndings. Nevertheless, the dissemination of advice through publications and research reports is more frequent than that through policy reports and media articles (while blog/social media and training courses take up an interim position between the two).

## 10.3 The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists As Taken up in Current Debates

In recent years, IPSs have played a major role in (at least) two major policy reforms that have been a constant feature of the political agenda over the last 25 years in Italy (Capano & Pritoni, 2016): the labour market reform of the Renzi government (the so-called Jobs Act: Italian Law no. 183/2014) and the electoral reform of that same government (the socalled *Italicum*: Italian Law no. 52/2015).1 The choice of these two cases

<sup>1</sup> Italy had approved (at least) four 'large-scale' labour market reforms, representing a paradigmatic policy change, over the course of the previous 25 years: the so-called *Pacchetto Treu* in 1997, the 'Biagi Reform' in 2003, the 'Fornero Reform' in 2012, and the Jobs Act in 2014. As for the electoral system, after more than 40 years with the same proportional electoral law, Italy has witnessed a series of reforms: in 1993 (Mattarella Law), in 2005 (the socalled *Porcellum*, or Calderoli Law), in 2015 (the so-called *Italicum*), and in 2017 (the law currently in force).

might offer some comparative advantages, in a sort of 'within-case comparison'. Both reform processes involved the same prime minister, Matteo Renzi, who is deemed to display a distinctive policy style (Piattoni, 2016). While the labour market reform is considered the most important of the Renzi government, the electoral reform represented a crucial decision affecting the (informal) support for the Prime Minister from the opposition forces. Furthermore, these reforms affected sectors where IPSs have only recently acquired any prominence compared to other types of academics (law scholars and economists in particular). Therefore, this comparison reveals signifcant differences in the type of policy advice, in the type of engagement, and in the role that timing may have played in rendering the policy advice more or less effective (i.e. resulting in actual policy solutions).

Labour market reform had been one of Renzi's pet projects since he took over the leadership of the PD in December 2013 (Pritoni & Sacchi, 2019). The topic was consequently one of the main topics of political debate in 2014, particularly given that Renzi took over offce from his fellow PD politician Enrico Letta in late February. In a nutshell, the Jobs Act dealt mostly with four policy areas: restructuring unemployment benefts, reorganising public employment services, reviewing the range of employment contracts, and facilitating the work-life balance. In particular with regard to the frst of these themes, the role of Stefano Sacchi (full professor at the Polytechnic of Turin) as expert advisor has been fundamental, since he actually drafted the legislative decree on social security safety nets (Italian Legislative Decree no. 148/2015).2 Sacchi was initially contacted, on behalf of Matteo Renzi, by Marianna Madia, who was in charge of the labour market portfolio within the National Secretariat of the PD when Renzi became the party's national secretary (December 2013). Sacchi was given complete free rein in terms of his policy mandate: nobody gave him specifc recommendations or set particular policy goals to be achieved through his legislation. He only had to transpose his previous academic and scientifc work into legislative form. This latter aspect is of particular interest, in our opinion, because it represents further confrmation of what has been repeatedly argued in the literature on Matteo Renzi's leadership

2The empirical material for this part of the chapter is taken from newspaper articles published in the main Italian newspapers—*Il Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, il Sole 24 Ore* and from a semi-structured interview (held in June 2017) with Stefano Sacchi, to whom the authors are grateful.

style and legislative action: that he has been much more interested in *changing* and *renewing* policies than in *how to actually* change and renew them (Capano & Pritoni, 2016).

Once Matteo Renzi had been appointed as Italy's Prime Minister in February 2014, the need for the Government to present a draft bill on the reform of the Italian labour market became even more pressing. Between February and December 2014, Sacchi worked on his proposal on social security safety nets; throughout this period, he was in daily contact with other policy advisors (Nannicini, Leonardi, Del Conte) and counsellors working on behalf of Prime Minister Renzi, although he never met personally with the Prime Minister. Marianna Madia and Filippo Taddei (who was in charge of the macro-economic portfolio within the National Secretariat of the PD) acted as intermediaries between Sacchi and the Prime Minister. In this sense, the relationship between the policy advisor and Renzi were mediated by other advisors, with whom Sacchi moreover met very frequently and in an informal way.

The fnal thing that ought to be noted here concerns the professionalisation of advice provision: how was advice remunerated? Was the advisor offcially part of the policymaker's staff? In this regard, Stefano Sacchi's involvement differs from that seen in our second case study. Indeed, Sacchi worked both formally and informally for the government. During the initial period of his involvement (between February and October 2014), he had no offcial role either as a policy advisor for the PD or as an advisor to the government. Yet, the Minister of Labour and Social Policies, Mr. Giulio Poletti, appointed him as an offcial counsellor to his Ministry in November 2014. Sacchi held this offce for more than one year, up to end of 2015, when the government decided to appoint him as the President of *INAPP—Istituto Nazionale per l'Analisi delle Politiche Pubbliche* (National Institute for Public Policy Analysis). In other words, his advice had been highly appreciated and consequently duly remunerated.

During the same period of the labour market reform, Renzi directly contacted another political scientist and recognised columnist of op-eds, Roberto D'Alimonte (full professor at the LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome), to ask him to draft a new electoral law that would have been approved by the main opposition party, *Forza Italia*, led by Silvio Berlusconi.3 The electoral reform was considered to be part of the

3The empirical material for this part of the chapter is taken from newspaper articles published by the main Italian newspapers—*Il Corriere della Sera, La Repubblica, il Sole 24 Ore*— informal bipartisan agreement also known as '*il Patto del Nazareno*', the pact named after the national headquarters of the PD in Rome, where Renzi and Berlusconi had met in January 2014 to discuss potential institutional reforms (Parisi, 2015). Signifcantly, several technical aspects of the new electoral law as one of many features of the *Patto del Nazareno* had been discussed in advance by Renzi and D'Alimonte (as his key advisor on this subject) starting in late December 2013.

In a nutshell, the frst draft bill was built around a two-round electoral system based on party-list proportional representation, with a majority prize and a 3% access threshold. D'Alimonte's advice was fairly technical and focused on the functioning of different electoral systems in terms of proportionality and governability. In particular, the content of D'Alimonte's advice was aimed at introducing the double-round system as a means by which to counter party fragmentation.4 Signifcantly, with the help of his team of young political science researchers based at the CISE *Centro Italiano Studi Elettorali* (Italian Centre for Electoral Studies), affliated to the University of Florence and to the LUISS University in Rome, D'Alimonte only worked with Renzi on the drafting of the very frst version of the reform bill (which included the two rounds, lower access thresholds and majority prize to coalitions and not to party lists, as in the fnal version) between late December 2013 and March 2014, after which he was no longer consulted by Renzi on this matter. After the failure of the 2016 constitutional reform bill, the *Italicum* was shelved, and neither D'Alimonte nor any other political scientist was involved in the redrafting of the present electoral law.

In this specifc case, D'Alimonte was directly engaged as advisor on the reform by Renzi, but this engagement was never formalised, and D'Alimonte was never remunerated for his efforts. There were both professional and personal reasons for D'Alimonte's involvement. In fact, D'Alimonte is widely acknowledged as one of the main experts on electoral systems in Italy. He is active in public debate through the columns he writes for the main Italian fnancial journal (*il Sole 24 Ore*), and he does not have any party ties or political affliations. D'Alimonte was also personally known to Renzi—who initially followed him as columnist of the

and from a semi-structured interview (held in February 2018) with Roberto D'Alimonte, to whom the authors are grateful.

<sup>4</sup> See La Repubblica, Firenze local edition, "*D'Alimonte: 'I miei rapporti con Renzi? Inesistenti'*", March 6, 2014, accessed online February 11, 2019.

*Sole 24 Ore* and through his frequent TV appearances—and starting from 2012, Renzi invited him to speak at Renzi's political annual event entitled the '*Leopolda*', held in the city of Florence which is where D'Alimonte used to work and currently lives. The 'Professor'—as Renzi used to call him—was also known to other political leaders such as Denis Verdini who actually discussed several technical aspects of the new electoral system with D'Alimonte. D'Alimonte's advice was then discussed with other political key actors, also in his presence, with the aim of fnding technical solutions for a compromise acceptable to both PD and *Forza Italia*. At the same time, D'Alimonte offered his point of view in national newspaper op-eds and on TV and also explicitly criticised certain aspects of the latest version of the reform.

According to D'Alimonte, Renzi's mandate was to draft a proper legislative bill as soon as possible. Renzi himself proved competent in terms of the functioning of the different electoral systems, while welcoming D'Alimonte's advice only for a limited period of time before discarding some of his recommendations. Informality and a sense of urgency thus shaped this policy advice relationship, with D'Alimonte and his colleagues quickly producing both the very frst draft of the bill and the simulations of the functioning of the different electoral systems. In keeping with the characteristics of Italian law-making, it is noticeable that the legislative bill was a key product of the advice given, thus confrming the centrality of the legalist culture among Italian policymakers.

Overall, these two cases highlight two striking things: frst of all, both of the political scientists in question had been hired on the basis of their being known to key political actors (and/or their direct co-workers). Even though their professional status as academics was well known, they were not chosen for the reason that they represented political science as an academic discipline. Second, in both cases the relationship between policy advisors and policymakers was very informal: D'Alimonte acted as a direct advisor to the Prime Minister for the entire time, without being assigned any formal role, while Sacchi actually drafted his reform proposal while not being a consultant of the Ministry of Labour and Social Policies. He was appointed *after* giving his advice, as a reward for his work, not *before*. Hence, both IPSs were not recruited exclusively for their scientifc credibility or their capacity to contribute to evidence-based policymaking, and in turn, their involvement in the policymaking process did not follow professionalised and/or institutionalised patterns. On the one hand, personal knowledge and proximity seem to play a vital role in guiding the demand for policy advice from policymakers and political leaders. On the other hand, advice is given without any remuneration (D'Alimonte) or formal role (Sacchi).

#### 10.4 Conclusions

The Italian PAS has received scant attention in the literature, and the empirical evidence regarding the role that IPSs play within that system is even more limited. Thanks to an online survey of 177 IPSs and the reconstruction of two particularly relevant policy processes in which IPSs provided valuable advice, this chapter specifcally seeks to bridge this gap.

The empirical analysis conducted here can effectively be summarised in the form of three main considerations. First, IPSs seldom engage in policy advisory activities. Many of them have *never* done so. Yet, those who do are consulted infrequently and in relation to a few specifc issues concerning, above all, public administration, electoral systems, international relations, relations with the European Union, immigration and civil rights policies. Second, there are no particular differences—from the point of view of personal characteristics—between those who provide advice and those who, on the contrary, have never done so. Male political scientists provide policy advice to the same extent as their female counterparts do. The same holds true for academics on temporary contracts and more experienced scholars. Third, the advice provided by IPSs is both formal and informal. As the aforementioned two case studies show, however, it is the informal channel that can have the greatest impact on policymaking. This reminds us of how much the Italian PAS is still poorly institutionalised and largely based on personal relationships and political proximity.

#### References


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## The New Abundance of Policy Advice: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Norway

*Ivar Bleiklie and Svein Michelsen*

### 11.1 Introduction

This chapter investigates the position of academic policy advice in Norway, and in particular the role played by political scientists in policy advice. To inform the presentation of the particularities of the Norwegian case, we base our analysis on the locational model of policy advisory systems (PAS), arenas and roles (Chap. 2), as well as on previous studies of politicoadministrative systems and Scandinavian administrative traditions (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004; Painter & Peters, 2010a, b). We identify structures and processes in the provision of political science expert advice in Norway. Norwegian academic political scientists are heavily engaged in policy advice, at various levels of government as well as in public debate on relevant issues. We ask the following questions. How is the Norwegian policy advisory system to be understood? What are the main access points for certifed academics wishing to bring their expertise to policymaking? What

University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

I. Bleiklie (\*) • S. Michelsen

e-mail: Ivar.Bleiklie@uib.no; Svein.Michelsen@uib.no

<sup>©</sup> The Author(s) 2022 225

M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_11

trends can be discerned? What is the position of Norwegian political scientists in emerging structures and processes of policy advice? We examine the policy advice offered by political scientists who have certifed academic credentials and who are researchers in universities or specialized research institutions. We pinpoint two important corporatist arenas for strong involvement in policy advice: the Research Council of Norway (RCN) and ad hoc advisory bodies.

To answer these questions, we combine data based on responses from political scientists in a pan-European survey, conducted in connection with COST Action CA15207, on the Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science: the survey, and hence the data, concerns norms of engagement, types of advice, relations with other actors and arenas for the provision of policy advice. We also use data collected regarding the development of political science as an academic discipline in Norway. Taken together, the data point towards a new abundance of policy advice, as well as a strengthening of the position of political scientists in the national policy advisory system, in different ways and in different areas.

## 11.2 Theoretical Perspectives on Policy Advisory Roles, Arenas and Systems

What is policy advice? What place does it have in decision-making processes in modern democracies? The concept of "policy advisory systems" (PAS) represents a new way of characterizing and analysing multiple sources of policy advice utilized by governments in policymaking (Craft & Howlett, 2013). A PAS may be described as nationally specifc ways of soliciting, organizing and delimiting policy advice activities. PAS literature maintains that advisory systems have changed as a result of the dual effects of the two processes of "politicization" and "externalization". *Politicization* refers to the increased use of partisan political advice inside government itself; the strengthening of political acumen; the rising numbers and roles of political appointees in the executive; and the hiring of ministerial advisors to aid elected representatives. *Externalization* is the process whereby the locus of policy advice shifts from within the public bureaucracy to outside sources. PAS literature argues that these twin dynamics have blurred the traditional sharp distinctions between inside and outside sources of advice and between the technical and political dimensions of policy formulation.

We argue that there is a need to extend the focus of attention from Anglo-Saxon political systems to also include European corporatist systems like Norway, in which policymaking is enmeshed in networks of organized interests and consultative obligations. Corporatist systems are ambiguous. Corporatist organizational arrangements may serve to contain political confict and usually mean de-politicization. However, they may also be a potential instrument of political control. The balance between the two uses might vary, depending on the character of the corporatist system, its location and its function in the politico-administrative system (Streeck & Schmitter, 1985). Corporativization also varies over time. One important question is whether, and to what extent, corporatist systems can serve as instruments for expert advice and the force of knowledge-based arguments or primarily as bargaining arenas.

The dynamics of policy formulation and the role of policy advice are continuously subjected to movements of political interest or control beyond previously accepted lines (Starr & Immergut, 1987: 221). As the state has expanded, the space for politics has become increasingly restricted in a number of policy areas, and many issues are now discussed in technical, rather than political, terms. Thus, a process of *de-politicization* has taken place through *bureaucratization* as well as *professionalization and corporativization*. This has left policy advice and decision-making authority to the discretion of bureaucrats, professional experts or interest groups. The interaction of politicization and de-politicization might produce very different advisory arenas, structures and dynamics and change the locus of policy advice in the internal government arena, as well as in the overlapping and external arenas.

We argue that the PAS may fruitfully accommodate the participation of certifed expertise located in academic knowledge-producing institutions and their roles in the provision of policy advice. Starting with three partly overlapping arenas—*the Government*, *the Academic* and *the Societal* arenas—the location of advisory actors can be identifed (adapted from Blum & Brans, 2017; see Chap. 2, this volume).

The three arenas can be seen as demarcations between science and nonscience, between science and politics as well as between the lay area and the policy area. Political scientists can act in, and move between, all three arenas. They can act as members of the scientifc community in the academic arena, as academic experts in the societal, lay arena, or they can act as bureaucratic experts in the government arena. The boundaries between these areas are not just important in functional terms but invite us to take the relations between arenas as entry points for the analysis of policy advice seriously. The notion of *Overlapping areas* is potentially very useful for studying demarcations between political and scientifc tasks in advisory relationships as well as their interrelations. Several spaces and institutions for transmitting scientifc knowledge to politically useful knowledge—as indicated above—have evolved at the intersections between the three arenas. These arenas provide space for the formation of a variety of advisory roles and activities, where political scientists engage in advisory bodies, as members of public commissions and boards, or in mass media of various types and forms.

We distinguish between different advisory roles and the types of knowledge that may underpin them. These roles can be illuminated by a set of ideal types (Weber, 2013) that allow the broad classifcation of advisory roles, based on the different kinds of knowledge that underpin them (Table 11.1).

The *Pure Academic* is a researcher who primarily fulfls a duty to society by informing politicians or society at large about his or her research, broadly in the enlightenment tradition. The *Expert* is an academic more focused on producing scientifc knowledge and technical advice to help understand and/or develop practical solutions to problems defned by decision-makers. The *Opinionating scholar* uses academic knowledge to draw implications from normative positions in political theory relating to current affairs or to justify normative stances in terms of political science data and empirical analyses. The *Public Intellectual* is a well-known, recognized, learned person whose written works and other social and cultural contributions are recognized by many members of society in general.


*Source*: Chapter 2, this volume

Traditionally, in public administration the importance and contribution of policy advice was strongly related to that of the expert, technical expertise provided based on specialized knowledge. The addition of other types of advisory roles, like the opinionating scholar, the public intellectual and the pure academic, allows a more diverse set of activities to be explored, which may be defned as advisory in an extended sense and which take place in a variety of arenas.

The combination of the locational model and the policy advisory ideal types enables us to get a frmer grip on relations between the different arenas, different types of advisory roles and activities associated with these role types. However, different nation states with their peculiar politicoadministrative systems and administrative traditions have developed different habitats and structural peculiarities that may help us understand the distribution of advisory roles across arenas, as well as the nature of the different arenas in which policy advice is provided. In the next section, the central characteristics of the Norwegian PAS system are presented and discussed.

## 11.3 The Configuration of the Norwegian Policy Advisory System

Until now the Norwegian political administrative system has not been mapped as a PAS with its dynamics, governmental and non-governmental actors. Nor is there very much literature available on the policy advisory role of political scientists. Therefore, we have had to make do with other sources in order to approach the topic. Our point of departure is the literature on politico-administrative regimes and administrative traditions, concepts that refer to fundamentals of political life that are relatively stable and that change only infrequently or gradually (Pollitt & Bouckaert, 2004; Verhoest et al., 2010; Bleiklie & Michelsen, 2013; Painter & Peters, 2010a). We assume that the character of the PAS in any nation state is broadly shaped by regime type. *Scandinavian administrative traditions* combine the *Rechtsstaat* tradition of the state as an integrating force focused on the preparation and enforcement of law, with a strong universal welfare orientation (Painter & Peters, 2010b). The Scandinavian countries are regarded as unitary states, both centralized and also decentralized (Baldersheim & Rose, 2010), where the central bureaucracy enjoys a strong position (Olsen, 1983) and where state-society relations have been characterized by corporatism as well as extensive participatory networks (Painter & Peters, 2010b; Peters 2001). These systems typically combine a strong, responsible bureaucracy with a complex institutionalized landscape consisting of corporatist and advisory bodies organized in different shapes and forms.

The Norwegian politico-administrative regime may be considered as a complex combination of partly conficting principles and organizational structures. It has a long tradition of homogenous, parliamentary-based political leadership where major actors have coexisted peacefully (Olsen, 1983). The political leadership has maintained a close relationship with administrative leadership, characterized by strong mutual trust. Central political and administrative actors have agreed on balancing political considerations with a rule-oriented civil service, citizens' rights, transparency, equality, the interests of affected parties and codes of professional behaviour. The Norwegian parliament has traditionally been based on modest forms of professionalization. Policy capacity has been weak, although somewhat strengthened in recent years (Askim et al., 2014). During the 1980s and 1990s, Parliament strengthened its position vis-à-vis the executive (Rommetvedt, 2005), primarily due to a transition from majority to minority governments. This development has turned parliament into an attractive arena for "lobbying" and the provision of policy advice (Espeli, 1999). The number of ministries has remained relatively constant over time, but relations between them have changed, often because of government reshuffes. By international standards, Norwegian ministries are relatively small, and their capacity for policymaking, reform and control is relatively low (Verhoest et al., 2010). Furthermore, the ministries have been streamlined over time, as tasks have been offoaded onto other institutions. An important justifcation for this development has been the need to transform the ministries into political secretariats for the minister, by devolving routine tasks to subordinate agencies. The combination of these features clearly indicates that the ministries are very important in the provision of policy advice and a key part of the PAS structure.

However, there is also a strong tradition of internal devolution or agentifcation going back to the nineteenth century (Jacobsen, 1964). These processes have opened up spaces for the integration of expert knowledge considered practically useful for continuous political problem-solving (Jacobsen, 1960). Thus, the Norwegian central administration has come to comprise a more varied set of knowledge groups than the classical lawdominated format associated with its inception. This has also opened up the way for continuous links to problem-driven research activities. Other important aspects can be related to the rise of the research councils. In this type of arena, the role of organized research as a tool for providing policy advice to the central government has been developed and honed through a merger, in 1994, into a single research council, situating all research into a context of application. At the same time, public commissions and advisory bodies have evolved into arenas in which academic experts play an increasingly important part. The de-centralization and delegation of public authority and responsibility to local government has expanded with the growth of welfare state services, far more than central government has. In 1962, 50% of those working full-time in the public administration were employed by local government bodies; the corresponding fgure in 2001 was 74%. The fact that most welfare state services are delivered by local government probably impacts the structuring of policy advice.

Ongoing changes in the Norwegian PAS can also be related to processes of pluralization (Rommetvedt, 2005). The Norwegian corporatist system has been characterized as highly specialized and segmented, that is, as sectorized concentrations of power. Cleavages do not run between the central bureaucracy and organized interests as different types of institutions but between different constellations of institutions. *Political segments* bear a resemblance to meso-concepts like "policy communities" or "policy networks", normally defned in terms of the basic values and perceptions shared by their participants, who may come from ministries, parliamentary committees, interest organizations and research institutions (Egeberg et al., 1978; Olsen, 1983). Within such segments, political advice may be based on shared values and may focus on technical criteria and means-end relations in political problem-solving. Arenas for integrated participation are mainly stable, and there is a focus on uncertainty avoidance and mutual trust rather than on appeals to the public with regard to matters of contention. In other areas where shared basic values are far from obvious, confict levels may be higher, participation patterns much more fuid, and appeals to the public more recurrent. Rommetvedt (2005) holds that Norway has moved from a neo-corporatist system in the 1950s and 1960s, via a segmented state system in the 1970s, to a neo-pluralist system in the 1980s and 1990s. Twenty years into the twenty-frst century, the Norwegian system looks like a mixture of elements of neo-corporatism, segmentation and neo-pluralism. The balance varies across sectors and policy areas, but the centre of gravity has probably moved in the direction of pluralism. Even if these characteristics are important, they cannot easily explain the position of political science in the articulation of policy advice in Norway. In the next section, we present data on the national disciplinary traditions and advisory roles of political scientists. This may provide a more precise understanding of how political scientists ft into the broader picture presented above.

## 11.4 The Policy Advisory Roles of Expert Political Scientists

Political science is a relatively new discipline that emerged in Norway, as in the rest of Europe, after WWII (Hammerstein, 2011). New social science disciplines emerged during that same period. The rise of the social sciences in Norway took place through a process of dual institutionalization. The frst form of institutionalization consisted in the establishment of the Institute of Social Research, followed by the University of Oslo, with a study programme in political science; this was followed by the establishment of new positions, as well as a separate department, in political science (Thue & Helsvig, 2011). The study of policy, political systems and social organizations previously undertaken primarily by history and law scholars at the university took on a new face. During the initial phase, the discipline led a modest existence characterized by internal dynamics (Kuhnle, 1986). The 1970s and 1980s represented an important period of expansion, during which political science secured a solid academic position at the country's four universities (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø), as well as importance in the labour market. Political science became a favoured educational path for those aiming for a career in public administration, strengthening the utility and professionally oriented dimension of the discipline and the problem-driven aspects of research (Olsen, 2012). As the discipline grew and diversifed, Norwegian political science emerged as empirically solid, nationally oriented, but not very innovative from a conceptual perspective (Olsen, 2012).

Today, the history of political science in Norway can safely be described as representing the transition from an individual pursuit to a collective enterprise. A review carried out in 2017 on behalf of the ProSEPS project revealed that the Norwegian political science community comprised 340 members (120 women and 220 men), located in 32 different institutions. The institutional landscape in which political scientists are employed has evolved from one university and one institution for applied science into 19 universities, specialized universities and university colleges, together with 15 independent applied social research institutes. The University of Oslo and the University of Bergen represent the two strongholds of the discipline, where close to 70% of Norway's political scientists work. As far as sub-disciplines are concerned, Norwegian political science is heavily concentrated within comparative politics, public policy and administration. The feld of international relations is considerably smaller, while political theory comprises a mere 4% of the political science community. A strong feature of the Norwegian Political Science profle is its policy-oriented research (SAMEVAL, 2018). A general observation covering most of the research areas is that much work is driven by a strong focus on Norwegian policy-related issues rather than on political science's theoretical development.

#### *11.4.1 Normative Views on Advisory Activities and Public Debate*

The Pan-European survey provides data on the perceptions of political scientists of a broad range of policy advice indicators and questions. This allows us to close in on the various roles that exist for the provision of policy advice. This section gives an overview of (a) attitudes among political scientists at the national level regarding involvement in policy advice and other forms of engagement in politics (Table 11.2), (b) their experiences of engagement in various policy-related activities (Table 11.3), (c) how frequently various channels for the provision of policy advice and/or consulting services are used (Table 11.4) and (d) the actors with whom they have engaged (Table 11.5), as well as the policy level at which engagement has taken place (Table 11.6). The Norwegian rate of response to the survey was only 18%, which calls for a certain degree of caution when interpreting fndings.

A large majority (more than 90%) agree that political scientists have a professional duty to engage in public debate. Whether such activities are useful for expanding career options or not seems to be of lesser importance. The survey also indicates that research produced by political scientists is visible in public debate. More than 90% of respondents agree that political science is either very or quite visible in public debate, but not necessarily more so than other felds of knowledge. More than two-thirds of respondents have taken part in a public media debate over the last three years. Much of the media coverage has focused on the elections, although


**Table 11.2** Normative views on policy advice % (*N*)—Norway

*Notes*: Question: "To what extent do you agree with each of the following statements?" *N* = 63

attention has also been given to various aspects of the public administration and the implementation of public sector reforms, as well as to international relations and foreign affairs. The strong focus on public debate reinforces the impression of a well-established, enduring aspect of Norwegian political science, namely, its focus on the general basis for democracy in Norwegian society (Underdal, 2007). Norwegian political scientists have a penchant for discussing democratic problems and the defnition of such problems rather than their solutions, and there is not much evidence to suggest a movement towards a more practice-oriented profle within the discipline (Olsen, 2012). The more important effects are perhaps more indirect, although potentially of great signifcance. As a result of political science knowledge production, a whole vocabulary on


**Table 11.3** Frequency and type of advice % (*N*)—Norway

*Notes*: Question: "How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?"

*N* = 63

elections, centring on "political cleavages", has been disseminated to, and shared with, the public at large. In the area of public administration, notions of the "segmented state", "the parliamentary chain of command", "new public management (NPM)", "wicked problems" and the signifcance of organization as a basis for political life and of political outcomes have permeated Norwegian public debate as well as the Civil Service and local government. Although diffcult to measure, this vocabulary has been infuential in structuring outlooks, perceptions and debate.

The general norm among political scientists is that one should not participate as an expert in public debate unless one has relevant and visible expertise in the feld in question, as demonstrated by academic publications in the feld. Few, if any, political scientists operate as public intellectuals rather than scientifc experts with specialized knowledge in a policy


#### *N* = 63

a Question: "Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the modes below (here above) to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?"

bQuestion: "Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the channels below (here above) to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?"

area or on a specifc issue. The political science community is more divided when it comes to normative views on policy advice and involvement in policymaking. More than 50% agree that political scientists should become involved in policymaking, while 42% disagree. However, what involvement (or non-involvement) in policymaking actually means is unclear. Thus, more than 60% agree that policy should be evidence-based and that


*Notes*: Question: "At which level of governance did you engage most frequently in policy advice or consulting activities during the last three years?"

*N* = 63


*Notes*: Question: "With which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?" *N* = 63

political scientists should provide evidence-based knowledge in arenas outside academia. Nevertheless, just a small minority agrees with the idea that political scientists should *refrain* for direct engagement with policy actors.

#### *11.4.2 What Kinds of Advisory Activities Are Norwegian Political Scientists Engaged in, and How Often?*

In the survey, respondents were asked questions about their engagement in various types of advisory activities with policy actors.

The data indicate that Norwegian political scientists engage in advisory activities with policy actors quite often: more than 50% engage in such activities at least once a year. They provide data and facts, analyse policy problems and evaluate policies and institutional arrangements. This activity also includes making value judgements and offering normative arguments. However, making normative arguments and value judgements is contested. More than one-third never offer normative arguments or value judgements; 16% never evaluate existing policies or institutional arrangements. Their responses could be interpreted in terms of the old normative distinction between "the political" and "the technical". Thus, different types of policy advisory activity can be placed along a continuum between the political and the technical. "Technical" advisory activities, such as the provision of data and facts, tend to prevail, while forecasts and normative judgements are the least prevalent and are regarded as the most problematic. The more we move towards the political end (providing evaluations and value judgements), the less prevalent and more contested the activities.

In principle, the combination of these factors indicates that just a small fraction of the political science community actively chooses to remain outside of the PAS. Political scientists taking the role of "pure academic" are rare. This suggests that roles and norms have been formed within political science, structuring scientifc activities and perceptions so that the practical application of disciplinary knowledge in policy advice is highly acceptable. Only 5% fully agree that political scientists should refrain from direct contact with policymakers, and a mere 3% have never provided data or facts about policy or political phenomena to political actors. This illustrates the tight links between the academic community and the state. The Norwegian university was formed as a creature of the state for the state, designed to produce civil servants and the knowledge they required to fulfl their professional duties (Bleiklie et al., 2000). University professors were expected to assist and advice the state, offering expert knowledge in their respective specialized felds (Slagstad, 1998). Furthermore, the academic profession was, and remains, an integral part of the civil service, and its members enjoy the status of civil servants (Bleiklie & Michelsen, 2008). This feature of the profession is highly signifcant. Civil servants have traditionally been considered special employees with dual loyalties, towards the state as employer, and to the nation as citizens of that nation (Seip, 1997). Formally speaking, Norwegian professors are situated within the boundaries of the state, but in functional terms they are "external" and independent, in the sense that institutional and individual autonomy has been afforded them by the state.

In the survey, respondents were asked questions about the frequency with which they provide policy advice and the channels they use for this purpose (see Table 11.4).

A small fraction use channels of policy advice on a weekly or monthly basis. This type of interaction normally takes place through face-to-face communications with policy actors/organizations, through workshops/ events or through traditional media articles, blogs or social media writings. A large majority of political scientists provide policy advice at least once a year, and the main channels they use are publications (books and articles), research reports and traditional media articles, followed by faceto-face encounters, phone conversations and emails.

Most knowledge exchange, advisory or consultancy activities take place in settings characterized by a mixture of informal and formal elements (40%) or in mainly formal settings (28%). Just 3% declared that they were active in purely formal settings. Hence, these informal exchanges and discussions are very much prevalent.

#### *11.4.3 At What Level, and with Which Actors, Do Norwegian Political Scientists Engage in Advisory Activities?*

Data from the survey indicate that the national level is the major arena for the provision of policy advice. Almost 80% engage at this level. This corroborates the national orientation of Norwegian political science. However, Norwegian political scientists are generally also heavily involved in policy issues and in the provision of policy advice at the sub-national level of governance (37.7%). This shows that the Norwegian politicoadministrative system provides access points for the provision of political advice at both the local and national levels. Offering policy advice at European and international levels seems less prevalent, comprising about 21% of respondents.

Norwegian political scientists engage with a variety of different actors (see Table 11.6). The percentage of political scientists who have been engaged in advisory bodies corroborates the general tendency of increased expert representation by political scientists in such bodies. A total of 37.3% of the respondents have engaged with advisory bodies over the last three years. Twice as many have engaged with civil servants in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities over the last three years. Thirty per cent have engaged with political parties and 36% with executive politicians; 33% have engaged in exchanging knowledge or providing political advice with interest groups in the private and corporate sectors, and 45% with civil society organizations and citizen groups; 22% of the respondents have engaged with think tanks. Like interest groups and civil society organizations, "think tanks" represent civil society. They are situated outside the state, and they provide public decision-makers with knowledge and arguments. This number is quite high considering that advocacy think tanks in Norway are something of a recent phenomenon. Norwegian think tanks are characterized by their partisan and non-academic profle (Christensen & Holst, 2017). For the most part they have an explicit ideological profle, covering the whole political spectrum from left to right. The applied research institutes are not usually regarded as think tanks (Ibid.). Through their main activities, such as publications (pamphlets, reports, policy briefs and the occasional book), seminars, and debates, they engage in the dissemination of knowledge, political debate, and the provision of policy advice (Bjerke, 2012). They are much more active in disseminating knowledge rather than in producing it, and recruitment patterns are based more on political affliation rather than on academic merit. However, Norwegian media contributors from think tanks are normally presented as independent experts (Bjerke, 2012). Their standing as independent expert organizations is not very high compared to that of universities and applied research institutions, and they depend on the more established institutions of academic expertise. Think tanks have regularly engaged with academics, often social scientists from the universities, and some of these have also found think tank forums to be rewarding as an alternative to regular academic and consultative channels. As far as research goes however, they can be considered as "second-hand stores" rather than as the producers of knowledge, and research results are as a rule explored, systematized and strategically exploited for partisan political purposes.

## 11.5 The Provision of Academic Expert Advice Through Advisory Bodies and Commissions

One important corporatist venue for the provision of policy advice is that of advisory bodies and commissions. Commissions are governmental advisory bodies that operate as decision-making groups on a consensual basis. The signifcance of the role played by commissions in the Nordic countries has led scholars to characterize them as a core element of the "Nordic model of government" (Arter, 2008). The Norwegian commission system is far more extensive than those in countries with a Westminster-type government, for example (Craft & Halligan, 2017). Typically for the Norwegian neo-corporatist variant of PAS, these bodies fnd themselves at the intersection of three arenas, rather than at the government/academic arena intersection or the government/societal intersection. Thus, they closely connect the state, academia and corporatist interests in the provision of policy advice.

Here we want to concentrate on ad hoc advisory commissions and the representation of academic experts, civil servants and organized interests. Academic experts wield increasing infuence on public policymaking (Tellmann, 2016; Christensen & Hesstvedt, 2019; Christensen et al., 2018, Christensen & Holst, 2017). Available fgures show clear trends in the participation of academics on commissions. Firstly, the total number of academics on commissions has increased gradually, from 7% in the 1970s to 26% in the last decade. Thus, expert advice has become increasingly important within the corporatist channel, in public commissions and on temporary advisory boards, although organized interests are still important actors (Christensen & Holst, 2017).

During this period, the position of social scientists in general, and of political scientists in particular, has been considerably strengthened.

Economists are the largest academic group present on public commissions, followed by social scientists. The latter group has grown strongly, rising from 10% of total academic members in the 1970s to 27% in the 2010s. Economics and other social sciences together represented the professional background of more than half of all academic members of public commissions in 2010. Political scientists and sociologists comprised approximately 70% of all social science members. In comparison, representatives of the natural sciences, medicine, technology and engineering have signifcantly fallen in number. This development is remarkable considering that political scientists were struggling to make their mark in policy advisory processes during the 1970s (Kuhnle & Rokkan, 1977). An early study of members of public commissions showed that political scientists were rarely called upon for advice. In fact, only 15 cases were found where a political scientist was a member of, or a consultant to, a public commission.

The increased representation of political scientists could refect the fact that the position of political scientists in the bureaucracy has changed dramatically over time. While most candidates previously found employment in government administrations outside of the central bureaucracy, or with lower-level administrations (Kuhnle & Rokkan, 1977), a survey conducted in 2018 (thanks to Per Lægreid for providing this material) gives a completely different picture (Christensen et al., 2018). Political scientists now (in 2018) constitute one of the three largest academic groups in Norwegian ministries, together with lawyers and economists. Furthermore, political scientists are distributed across all ministries. According to Christensen and Lægreid (2008), technical competence in general is held in high regard in the civil service. In their 2005 survey, 80% of all civil servants stated that technical knowledge was important or very important in their own position. The ability to give good and reliable policy advice was slightly less appreciated, as 65% declared that this was important in their position. This ability was far more common in ministries than in central agencies (Ibid.) In general, social scientists (political scientists included) score high on policy advice, boundary-spanning skills and implementation abilities but low on technical knowledge. They also score highest on reform-related areas of competence. This may imply not only that their educational background is more conducive to developing this kind of competence but also that it is more closely related to the design and development of different aspects of administrative policy rather than to the technical contents of these policies (Ibid.).

## 11.6 RCN and Programme Research: A New Interface for Expert Advice

Another important arena intersection for the provision of policy advice is the Norwegian Research Council (RCN), once again at the heart of the PAS model in Fig. 11.1. Here, the state's need for useful research knowledge and academic research competence is brought together under one roof. The RCN serves as an advisory body on research policy issues,

**Fig. 11.1** Expert advice at the heart of the policy advisory systems model— Norway. (*Source*: Adapted from Blum and Brans (2017) [see Chap. 2, this volume])

identifes research needs and recommends national research priorities. The various ministries all provide resources for research through the RCN, and they are responsible for steering research in their particular felds. When four existing research councils merged in 1995, the resulting new council was an unusual creature in an international context, in that it encompassed both basic and applied research (Skoie, 2005). The merger was justifed as an attempt to break down the sharp division between basic and applied research and to situate all research within a context of application (Guldbrandsen, 2005).

In this new structure, programme research evolved as a core component mediating between basic and applied research (Mathisen, 1989; Emblem, 2010). In this space, politicization processes created fresh room for more "applied" programme research in basic areas, where researcher autonomy and academic self-governance previously had been the rule. Policy considerations and policy utility became the normal basis for programme development and funding (Sejersted, 1991). The old division of labour between the university sector and the policy-oriented institute sector was reconfgured. The applied research institutes were now regarded as an integral part of the academic research community. On the other hand, programme research also created new opportunities for universities to engage in problem-oriented research based on relatively broad, longterm research programmes.

The result was a series of relatively specialized programmes, funding opportunities and patterns of representation. A study of the composition of programme boards in the period 2000–2010 (*N* = 797) suggests that on average researchers represent the majority of board members—some 55%—while the "users" comprise a large minority of 45% (Bjerke, 2012). A similar percentage is recruited from the higher education sector, while 8% of board members come from the applied institute sector. Civil servants or representatives of organized interests make up 22%, while 8% come from the business sector. The natural sciences, technology and engineering and medicine/health professions enjoyed strong representation in this arrangement. The social sciences, law and the humanities, on the other hand, were not as strongly represented. Most programmes pertaining to political science do not address questions limited to specifc disciplines but comprise broader sets of issues that are often open to interdisciplinary cooperation, sometimes also involving co-production and "users as co-researchers". Available data from the Bjerke (2012) study suggest that political scientists are not well represented on RCN programme boards. Estimates indicate that 3–5% of all board members trained as political scientists. Furthermore, political scientists tend to be concentrated in programmes related to issues of democracy, education, the welfare state, welfare services and EU-related research.

The system of relatively fne-grained programmes organized around a fairly predictable division of labour within the RCN has paved the way for networks connecting policy problems, research problems, researchers, civil servants and administrators from the various segments of the political administrative system. The programme boards are signifcantly involved in providing venues, conferences and workshops, where policymakers and civil servants from the ministry and agencies, organized interests, researchers and other stakeholders concerned with a specifc research feld can meet. These activities and venues involve a small core of political science researchers funded by the RCN as well as other researchers engaged in various different policy felds. This confguration of processes, values, arenas, actors and outcomes illustrates important institutional conditions for the widespread notion of policy advice provision held among Norwegian political scientists in the ProSEPS survey.

The Norwegian PAS and its various arenas have provided important institutional conditions for the widespread notion of policy advice held by Norwegian political scientists. The data profles associated with each ideal type indicate that two of the four ideal typical roles are hardly represented among Norway's political scientists (see Table 11.7).

Public intellectuals as defned and measured here are rarely encountered. Moreover, the relative scarcity of public intellectuals in Norwegian public life has been discussed in the Norwegian media in recent years. We were able to identify two people who have been active in this role, one of whom died in 2017, and the other who retired in 2016. In the survey, no Norwegian political scientist seemed to ft the description of the "public intellectual". A small group of "pure academics" emerged however. Nevertheless, the concentration of political scientists (almost 90%) in two of the four role categories is overwhelming.

This leaves us with the other two ideal types: the "expert" and the "opinionating scholar". Ideal types are abstract utopian, one-dimensional methodological tools. They are simplifed, logical constructions emphasizing different elements. Measured by the condensation of indicators and results in the survey, 55% of Norwegian political scientists can be classifed as opinionating scholars, while almost 35% can be classifed as experts. The percentage of political scientists who consider engagement in advisory


**Table 11.7** Ideal typical roles of political scientists with regard to policy advice % (*N*)—Norway/Europe

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Notes:* Types operationalized on the basis of content of advice and frequency. See Chap. 2

*N* = 63

activities as a duty, as well as a part of their role (more than 90%), testifes to the weight of public debate activities and the high opinionating scholar score, as does the frequency of this type of engagement. On the other hand, the survey results also reveal that 70% of all political scientists engage with civil servants and that "technical" advisory activities, such as the provision of data and facts, are prevalent and considered appropriate, while forecasting and normative judgements are less prevalent and regarded as more problematic. Engaging in public debate is seen by most to be an obligation; however, the preferred form of engagement underlines the strong status of expertise and a reluctance to engage in partisan political debate and arguments.

#### 11.7 Conclusion

Norwegian political science has emerged, and has derived its core characteristics, from the politico-administrative system in which it is historically embedded. Political science became tied to the state through the provision of higher education programmes, through the development of political advisory systems, and through research. This also shaped how academic political scientists perceived their discipline and policy advice and how they provide advice and participate in policy advisory activities. As the discipline grew and diversifed, Norwegian political science emerged as empirically solid, policy-oriented and with a nationally oriented research agenda. The academic experts in the discipline tend towards contributing to policymaking and at the core of the discipline lies a strong orientation towards democracy.

Norwegian political scientists engage in a wide range of advisory activities with policy actors, and in particular with civil servants. In this arena they often engage with their own kind, since political scientists represent a major educational category in Norwegian ministries. From a modest basis in local government, political scientists have since become one of the three largest groups in Norway's ministries, together with lawyers and economists. Political scientists apparently do not represent technical advice in the traditional sense. Instead, a different type of advice is provided, focusing more on reform-related policy issues, boundary-spanning skills, and execution competence. While this could imply that the educational background of political scientists is more conducive to developing this kind competence, it may also mean that it is more closely related to the design and development of different aspects of administrative policy than to the technical contents of these policies. These features have an interesting parallel in their preferred types of engagement: the provision of data and facts, the analysis of policy problems and the assessment of policies and institutional arrangements.

Within the architecture of the Norwegian PAS, the corporatist system represents an additional focus for academic political scientists with regard to the provision of policy advice. The corporatist arenas illustrate the interaction of politicization and de-politicization in the formation of overlapping arenas and institutions. This does not necessarily imply that Norwegian political science has evolved into an architectonic discipline, based on policy relevance and the provision of policy solutions. Norwegian academic political scientists are more interested in policy problems than solutions. While political scientists are distributed across all ministries, they tend to be concentrated in certain specifc arenas rather than in others. While academic political scientists have achieved a strong position in the feld of temporary advisory boards, their position in the RCN is concentrated on social science programmes and is considerably weaker.

Norwegian political scientists engage in a broad range of policy advisory activities. Engaging in public debate is generally seen as an obligation by most political scientists and as an integral part of their role. More than two-thirds have taken part in public debate in the media over the last three years. Measured by the ideal typical advisory roles suggested, the available data point in two directions: the roles of "the opinionating scholar" and "the technical expert". One of the commendable aspects of the ProSEPS project is the extension and integration of sets of variables that have been brought to bear on the provision of expert policy advice. We can now get a far more nuanced picture of the policy advisory roles and activities than previous research allowed for. The data provide a picture of academic political scientists that is a far cry from representations of the allegedly isolated "ivory tower" of the university. This approach provides a new abundance of policy advisory activities, as well as new roles and role-sets for the shaping of various types of policy advice. However, the choice of ideal types is highly theoretical, and several questions remain regarding their construction and the interpretation of observations. Norwegian political scientists seem to engage extensively in public debate. But does extensive involvement in public debate necessarily make academic political scientists opinionating scholars? Does preoccupation with policy problems necessarily imply getting involved in the provision of policy solutions and "what works", as implied in the expert category? Description is not neutral. The results testify to the increasing complexity and ambiguity of policy advice. This allows for different interpretations, where some of the implications might be clearly normative. It also points to the fact that razor sharp distinctions between role types are diffcult to make and that the categories may be blurred at times. The Norwegian case of political science policy advice suggests the prevalence of a curious mixture of roles and orientations, combining and aligning features associated with "the opinionating scholar" and "the expert" in actual practices and regularities, where problem orientations in both areas seem more important than technical solutions.

#### References


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## In Search of Relevance: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Spain

*José Real-Dato*

### 12.1 Introduction

The idea that political science should be socially relevant has always been present during the development of the discipline (Easton, 1969; Ricci, 1984). Producing knowledge that is useful for society has been perceived by many not only as an ethical responsibility, but also as a way of granting social recognition to political science and of reinforcing the legitimacy of the discipline, both internally—compared to other disciplines—and externally—with respect to potential users of such knowledge and the general public. However, many authors have suggested that social engagement needs to be subordinated to the cultivation of the highest epistemic standards and have therefore criticized those who prioritize applicability over scientifc rigour.1

1The clearest example of such debate in this century has been the controversy raised by the 'Perestroika movement' in political science (in the early 2000s) and the subsequent debate

© The Author(s) 2022 253 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_12

J. Real-Dato (\*)

University of Almería, Almería, Spain e-mail: jreal@ual.es

The question of how political science could be more relevant to society has become even more pressing in recent years (Flinders, 2013; Stoker et al., 2015; Real-Dato & Verzichelli, 2021). The impact of research has become a criterion for its evaluation, and for the allocation of research funds, in many countries (Bandola-Gill et al., 2021, 35–63). This forces political scientists to demonstrate that their work not only contributes to expanding our understanding of the political and social world, but also that this better understanding can in some way help to change that world.

One of the ways in which political scientifc knowledge is more likely to have an actual impact is by channelling it into the political process. Providing political or policy advice does not guarantee that such advice will have a direct, immediately visible impact on political actors' behaviour or decisions—knowledge 'silver bullets' are a rare phenomenon, particularly in policy-making processes (Weiss, 1980). However, the proactive involvement of political scientists in advisory tasks may make political science more relevant in other ways (Flinders, 2013). Advice recipients may value political science knowledge because it can provide additional legitimacy to policy decisions, or due to its mere enlightening function (Weiss, 1977). Moreover, the simple act of providing advice is important as such in order to enhance the visibility of political science vis-à-vis other competing disciplines in the policy and political advice market.

Assuming the importance of the advisory role of political scientists for the relevance of the discipline and identifying those factors that explain why individuals engage in such activities may help identify ways in which the social relevance of the discipline can be enhanced. This is particularly important in countries like Spain, where the institutionalization of political science as an academic discipline came relatively late (Jerez-Mir, 2010; Jerez & Luque, 2016; Ortega-Ruiz, et al., 2021).

Therefore, this chapter analyses the involvement of Spain's academic political scientists in political and policy advisory tasks, as well as the factors that account for such involvement. It does so by using data from the ProSEPS COST Action survey (see Chap. 3) collected from political scientists working in Spanish academic institutions in the year 2018.

The chapter is structured as follows. First, I provide the general background to the phenomenon in question, by describing both the

between Flyvbjerg and the critics of his 'phronetic approach' to social science (Flyvbjerg, 2001, 2006; Flyvbjerg et al., 2012; Laitin, 2003; Monroe, 2005; Schram & Caterino, 2006). However, such concerns can be traced back even further in time (Ricci, 1984).

contextual opportunities and limitations affecting the demand and supply of policy and political advice in Spain. I then formulate the research questions that will guide the empirical analysis and elaborate a number of theoretical propositions (hypotheses) that could explain the frequency and causes of political scientists' engagement in policy advice activities. Subsequently, I introduce the data used in the analysis, which takes up the rest of the chapter. The analysis is divided into two sections: the frst section presents the main features of the advisory roles adopted by political scientists in Spain; the second section examines those factors explaining their involvement in advisory tasks. The chapter ends with a refection on the contribution of such involvement to the relevance of political science in the next future.

## 12.2 Opportunities and Limitations on Advice by Political Scientists in Spain

The ability of academic political science to enhance its social relevance through the provision of policy and political advice depends on both supply and demand factors. On the demand side, political science advice must be sought by actors participating in political processes. Although no systematic evaluation of such demand in Spain has been conducted, the analysis of the context of opportunity for political science advice in the Spanish political system may provide some clues as to the entity of demand.

This context of opportunity is closely linked to the characteristics of the political (and policy) advisory system. On the one hand, the politically decentralized structure of the Spanish state (Magone, 2008) potentially favours the opportunities for such advice provision, at least in terms of the multiplication of the decision-making venues. Each of the seventeen regions (*Comunidades Autónomas)* has its own government, parliament and public administration, deciding on (often through exclusive powers) and managing an extensive number of policy subjects, including key areas such as health, education, social policy, territorial development or tourism.

Policy making in today's Spain mainly fts the neo-pluralist model, with elements of neo-corporatist dynamics witnessed in several policy areas (particularly those comprising policies with an economic component) (Molins & Medina, 2019). Therefore, public policies are currently being developed in a multiplicity of sectoral subsystems whose components and internal patterns of interaction (consensual vs. confictual) differ. Sometimes these subsystems may be of a multilevel character (involving national and regional arenas and actors), while others are restricted to one specifc political level. Within these subsystems, therefore, there may be several types of client interested in acquiring political science knowledge at any given moment: 1) decision-makers (either in parliaments, governments or public administrations; 2) arm's-length public advisory bodies (i.e. advisory bodies, either permanent or ad-hoc, that are not situated directly within the hierarchical structure of the government) (OECD, 2017: 96); 3) political parties; 4) think tanks; 5) interest groups and other private organizations. Therefore, Spanish politics, and particularly the decentralized characteristics of the state, offers, at least potentially, substantial opportunities for engaging in the political process by providing advice in this myriad of decision-making situations.

In addition, changes in Spanish politics in recent decades have increased the opportunities to use political science knowledge among political agents, as well as the receptivity of said agents to such knowledge. On the one hand, over the last two decades Spain's public administrations have (slowly) placed greater emphasis on performance, quality and evaluation (Alba & Navarro, 2011; Parrado, 2008). These are all areas where political scientists specialised in public administration can make an important contribution. One example of this was the creation in 2007 of the AEVAL (*Agencia Estatal para la Evaluación de Políticas Públicas y Calidad en los Servicios Públicos –* State Agency for Policy Evaluation and Public Services Quality).2 This Agency can be considered one of the fagships of this performance and evaluation movement within Spain's public administration, and academic political scientists played an important role in its inception.

Moreover, the advent of the economic crisis in the late 2000s has resulted in political science becoming more visible.3 The crisis triggered a number of political consequences which changed the existing political landscape: a crisis of confdence in political institutions (both national and European); increased politicization of public opinion and electoral volatility; a reconfguration of the party system, which was transformed from a two-party system to a polarized, multiparty system; and increased governmental instability, particularly at national level (Montabes & Martínez,

<sup>2</sup> In 2017 it was re-named the Institute for Public Policy Evaluation (*Instituto para la Evaluación de Políticas Públicas).*

<sup>3</sup> 76.4 per cent of the respondents to the ProSEPS survey in Spain stated that the impact of political scientists on public debate has increased since 2009.

2019; Muro & Lago, 2020; Reniu, 2018). In addition, there has also been the territorial and constitutional crisis provoked by the attempted secession of Catalonia in 2017. This context has boosted the demand for political science knowledge, particularly from the mass media, to help make sense of all these changes, and eventually to propose alternatives.

However, this picture would not be complete without an examination of the limitations faced by those academic political scientists who wish to engage as advisors. Firstly, the receptivity of potential users to knowledge provided by academic political scientists is limited by the competing sources of advice that exist. Political science is at a disadvantage compared to other 'neighbouring' disciplines, particularly law and economics. Legal knowledge has traditionally occupied a key position in Spain's political and policy advice system. This importance is accounted for not only by the key structural role played by formal regulations in the functioning of any state, but also by the inheritance of a legalistic tradition common to countries where public administration developed on the basis of the principles of the Napoleonic State (Alba & Navarro, 2011; Ongaro, 2010; Parrado, 2008). This tradition has promoted an administrative (and political) culture mainly focused on normative compliance, while effciency and quality of service have generally been considered of secondary importance (OECD, 2015). This is also evident in public administration recruitment procedures, where knowledge of the law is of key importance in public exams, while political science subjects are of marginal importance even in those areas of the civil service specialised in public management. Consequently, this legalistic culture has left limited room for certain standard avenues for the entry of political science knowledge into the political system—such as advice on policy diagnostics, strategy or design, public management instruments and reform, policy evaluation, or even major institutional or constitutional reforms (electoral or territorial).

Despite the fact that the above-mentioned modernization of Spain's public administration in recent years—with a greater emphasis placed on performance, quality of public policy and public management—has considerably bolstered the opportunities for political scientists to engage in policy advisory activities, they by no means command exclusive knowledge of these subjects. Political scientists wishing to provide advice on these areas have to compete with other larger, more well-established academic disciplines such as economics, sociology, or even psychology. Economists have had two major competitive advantages over political scientists. Firstly, economics as an academic discipline was institutionalized much earlier, in the early nineteenth century in fact (Martín Rodríguez, 1989). Secondly, the state's increased intervention in the management of Spain's economy and trade during both the nineteenth and, in particular, the twentieth centuries boosted the demand for economic knowledge from the country's government and public administration. This demand was institutionalized in the 1930s, with the creation of a specifc civil service Corps of State Trade Technicians, followed in the 1950s by the establishment of the Corps of State Economists (ATCEE, 2020). In sum, the leading role in the modernization of public management, and the introduction of quality assurance and policy evaluation techniques in public administration in Spain, can be mainly attributed to civil servants with a background in economics or law.4

Apart from its later institutionalization, another crucial factor affecting the limited use of political science knowledge in Spain is the actual size of the discipline. In 2015, undergraduates studying for political science degrees in Spanish universities numbered 13,234. The equivalent numbers for those doing law and economics degrees and business studies degrees were, respectively, 110,625 and 183,338 (Jerez & Luque, 2016: 187). These fgures give an idea of the very limited size of the political science academic community compared to those of neighbouring disciplines.5

There are several possible consequences of this comparatively small political science community. First, in a scenario of growing demand for political science knowledge, it is most likely that such demand will not be met, and so knowledge consumers will have recourse to other sources. Secondly, size interacts with the above-mentioned advantage of more established disciplines, further reinforcing the 'Matthew effect' (Merton, 1968) favouring their advisory role vis-à-vis political science. This is related to the mechanism by which academic knowledge is usually passed on to the political decision-makers and other parties concerned by the political process. This mechanism involves other actors acting as brokers between knowledge producers (academics) and knowledge consumers (policy

4The abovementioned creation of the AEVAL is an example of this. The members of the consultation committee in charge of its creation with an economics background numbered

twelve, compared to only four political scientists. 5 Jerez and Luque (2016: 188) also offer comparative data about size, albeit limited to the number of associate and full professors in public universities. In 2014, that number stood at 175. The equivalent fgures for the felds of constitutional law, applied economics and sociology were 248, 1060 and 425, respectively.

makers or policy stakeholders) (Craft & Howlett, 2012; Sundquist, 1978). People in government, public administration or stakeholder organizations are likely to play such a role, promoting the use of knowledge based on their own academic or professional background. Therefore, in the case of political science, the comparatively limited number of politicians, senior civil servants, organization executives and advisors who have studied political science is likely to negatively affect the possibility of political science knowledge being used.

This is not to say that political science academics have not been favoured by certain conditions. For example, the territorial advancement of political science—which is now taught at university in nine of the seventeen *comunidades autónomas* (Jerez & Luque, 2016)—increases the likelihood that political scientists will develop their advisory skills through contact with subnational authorities and actors. Furthermore, certain favourable niches for political scientists are present in the policy advisory system: for example, specifc public advisory bodies (OECD, 2017) exist within national and regional administrations, and even in local government. These bodies mostly deal with three fundamental questions: institutional and constitutional reform, public opinion research, and public administration modernization and reform.6 Academic political scientists are usually found within the staff of these bodies, recruited either on an ad-hoc or a regular basis, although these organisations are also populated by scholars from neighbouring disciplines.

Another niche for political scientists in Spain are think tanks. These may be divided into two groups. The frst group comprises generalist think tanks covering a wide range of topics and may employ (as staff members or on an *ad hoc* basis) political scientists alongside members of other academic disciplines. The most well-known examples of such think tanks are

6Examples at national and regional levels include 1) Political and institutional reform: a) at the national level: *Centro de Estudios Políticos y Constitucionales* (CEPC, Centre for Political and Constitutional Studies); at the regional level: *Instituto de Estudios de Autogobierno* (IEA, Institute for Self-government Studies, Catalonia); 2) Public opinion research: a) at the national level: *Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas* (CIS, Centre for Sociological Research); b) at the regional level: *Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió* (CEO, Centre for Opinion Studies, Catalonia); 3) public administration modernization and reform: a) at the national level: *Instituto Nacional de Administración Pública* (INAP, National Institute for Public Administration); b) at the regional level: *Instituto Andaluz de Administración Pública* (IAAP, Andalusian Institute for Public Administration, Andalusia), *Escola d'Administració Pública de Catalunya* (EAPC, Catalan School of Public Administration, Catalonia).

close to one of the country's major political parties. This is the case of two progressive foundations, *Alternativas* (Alternatives) and *Sistema* (the System Foundation), linked to the Socialist Party (PSOE). In turn, the conservative FAES (*Fundación para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales—* Foundation for Social Analysis and Studies) is a well-known think tank with strong ties to the Popular Party (PP). Other think tanks where political scientists can be found offering their advisory services specialise in specifc policy areas, particularly international relations—as is the case of the *Real Instituto Elcano* (Elcano Royal Institute) and that of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB).

Finally, the presence of academic political scientists in the advisory system depends on factors within the discipline. These are of two types. On the one hand, the presence of incentives (positive or negative) entice academic political scientists to be proactive in engaging in policy or political advice activities. Spain is a country where prospective research impact and knowledge transfer are offcially taken into consideration when assessing bids for research funding (Bandola-Gill et al., 2021) although the posthoc evaluation of individual contributions to knowledge transfer is in its early stages and is far from being formalized.7 Policy advisory activities may therefore not be very appealing to those political scientists focusing on the advancement of their academic careers. On the other hand, the involvement of academic political scientists in advisory activities might be conditioned by the normative orientation of the individuals concerned, refecting their different ideas of the roles that academic political scientists should play.

This general review of the opportunities and limits affecting the engagement of Spanish political scientists in advisory activities with social and political actors provides the background for the empirical analysis of such involvement to be conducted in the following sections.

## 12.3 The Advisory Activities of Spanish Political Scientists: Research Questions and Hypotheses

There are two main research questions guiding the rest of the chapter. The frst question is a descriptive one, and it refers to the prevalence and characteristics of advisory activities among Spanish academic political

<sup>7</sup>The frst national call for the assessment of individuals' knowledge transfer across 6-year periods (the so-called *sexenios de transferencia*) dates back to 2018.

scientists. The empirical analysis will focus on the types of advice provided and the frequency of engagement in those activities, in order to identify the distribution of Spanish political scientists in terms of the four advisory roles defned in Chap. 2 of this volume, namely: the pure academic (no engagement in advice activities); the expert (involved in purely technical advice activities, without providing value judgements); the opinionator (providing expert advice but also offering value judgements when doing so) and fnally, the public intellectual (individuals with the broadest repertoire of advisory activities, including value judgements, and a very high level of engagement).

In addition, the description of the policy advisory patterns of Spanish political scientists will focus on the government levels where advice is provided, the main areas and recipients of advice and the channels through which advice is provided. The operationalization of these variables is presented in the following section.

In addition, the context of policy advice described in the previous section throws up a number of hypotheses regarding descriptive patterns in Spanish political scientists' advisory activities. Firstly, given the multilevel nature of the Spanish policy advisory system and the territorial spread of academic political science, *advisory activities at the subnational level are expected to be more frequently engaged in than those at the national or supranational levels* (Hypothesis 1). Secondly, regarding the areas of advice, given the competitive disadvantage of political science compared to other disciplines within the advisory system, *Spanish political scientists' advisory activities are expected to be signifcantly more frequent in those policy areas where advice requires core disciplinary political scientifc knowledge namely, the area of government and public administration organization and that of electoral reform* (Hypothesis 2).

The second research question in this chapter focuses on the factors explaining academic political scientists' involvement in political or policy advice; that is, it centres on the differences between those who are involved in some form of advisory activity and those who are not, and on the intensity of such activity. In this respect, I will focus on a number of demand and supply factors. With regard to demand, the previous section has shown that political scientists have more opportunities to provide advice when the knowledge they produce better fts the demand of political agents, as in the case of electoral behaviour, territorial or institutional reform, and public administration modernization and reform. Furthermore, it is plausible that policy specialists are more likely to be in demand as advisors than non-policy specialists are. Therefore, the expectation is that *political scientists with those types of specialisation are more likely to participate in advisory activities than those without them* (Hypothesis 3).

Regarding the explanatory factors on the supply side, I shall consider two types of factor. Firstly, there is the impact of internalized professional norms. Engagement in advisory activities may obey a 'logic of appropriateness' (March & Olsen, 1984) and so the decision to engage in such activities may depend on the political scientists' perception of it as part of what they should do. In this respect, engagement in policy advice *is expected to be more frequent among those who consider it part of their professional duties* (Hypothesis 4).

Secondly, there is the infuence that incentives have on the supply of advisory services. Since the survey data I use (see below) do not include any question concerning the infuence of incentives that could be used in the explanatory analysis,8 I will resort to using the level of progression in one's academic career as a proxy. Since, as manifested in the previous section, the incentives to getting involved in advisory activities are very limited in Spain, it is expected that, since those individuals who are still at a developmental stage of their careers, and thus are more focused on activities that could contribute positively to such development (i.e. publishingoriented research, management tasks), *they are less likely to be involved in advisory activities* (Hypothesis 5). In this respect, since highly intensive publishing-oriented research is likely to consume much of such individuals' time, *it is also likely that those involved in highly intensive research work are less inclined to engage in policy advisory tasks* (Hypothesis 5b).

However, it is necessary to consider the demand aspect of political scientists' career stage. Thus, the likelihood of political scientists at an advanced stage in their careers being asked to act as advisors, may be greater simply because they also possess greater expertise, gained down the years. In order to separate these two effects, I propose an interaction. Therefore, following the previous reasoning, it is also likely that *advancedstage political scientists with lower levels of specialisation are less in demand than those with higher levels of specialisation* (Hypothesis 6).9

<sup>8</sup>The questions of this type were asked only to those respondents who indicated they participated in advisory activities, but not to those who did not.

<sup>9</sup>This hypothesis can be also formulated focusing on early-stage researchers: *early-stage political scientists with higher levels of specialisation are more demanded than those showing lower levels of specialisation.*

#### 12.4 Data and Methods

In order to test the hypotheses presented in the previous section, I am going to use the data from the ProSEPS survey of political scientists in Europe. The total size of the sample in Spain was 140, which represents a response rate of 30% of the population of political scientists working in Spain who were invited to participate in the survey. Women are slightly under-represented in the sample (33%, compared to 35% in the population).

The variables used in the descriptive analysis (see next section) are operationalized as follows. The four types of advisory role (pure academic, expert, opinionator and public intellectual) are constructed just as they are in the other chapters of this book, that is, by combining the types of advice provided over the last three years (whether they imply providing value judgements and normative arguments, or not), the frequency of participation in advisory activities over the last three years and the scope or range of advice (the number of different types of advisory activity an individual has engaged in over the period in question) (see Chap. 2 in this volume for more details on the construction of the types of advisory role).

Regarding the other variables, the levels of government considered are subnational, national and EU/international. For the areas of expertise, the list is based on the coding of policy areas used by the comparative agendas project (Green-Pedersen & Walgrave, 2014). In turn, recipients of advice are subdivided into six main arenas, based on the location of the advice producers-recipients concerned (see Blum & Brans, 2017): the inner governmental arena (including executive politicians, civil servants, members of parliament), public advisory bodies (which may include both governmental and non-governmental actors), political party organizations, think tanks, interest groups and other private associations, and the international arena. Finally, the channels of advice are subdivided into three groups: exclusively formal, exclusively informal and mixed.

With regard to the variables considered in the explanatory analysis, the focus is on explaining why individuals engage in advisory activities, and on the intensity of such engagement, irrespective of the type of advice. Consequently, the dependent variable (*frequency of advice*) is an ordinal one, coding three possible situations: individuals who have not provided any kind of advice over the last three years; those providing some kind of advice, but less than once a month, and those who have provided advice more frequently than once a month during that same period. In order to increase the number of observations, missing values have been considered as cases of no advice given.

Regarding the independent variables, the 'type of specialisation' variable represents the feld of specialisation characterizing the respondent's most advanced university qualifcation. The initial categories in the ProSEPS survey totalled fourteen (plus one 'Other' category), and individuals could choose a maximum of three such categories. Therefore, four variables have been created, the frst three as proxies for areas of higher demand for political scientifc advice: 1) expertise in the feld of public administration or political institutions (including local government); 2) specialisation in electoral behaviour, including expertise in political communication; 3) public policy expertise (specialisation in the policy process or specifc policy sectors). A categorical variable was then created that measures different *levels of specialisation* in 'marketable' political science knowledge areas, and this takes the following values: 0 ('No specialisation'), 1 ('Specialisation in one of the three areas'), and 2 ('Specialisation in two or all of the three areas').

In order to measure whether engagement in policy advisory activities obeys a 'logic of appropriateness' (Hypothesis 4), I will use the level of agreement of respondents to the ProSEPS survey with a normative statement concerning a *general professional norm* commanding such engagement ('political scientists should become involved in policy making'). To test the infuence of epistemic norms (Hypothesis 4b), I use the level of agreement with another normative statement ('Political scientists should provide evidence-based knowledge and expertise outside of academia, but not be directly involved in policy-making'). Although the second part of this sentence ('but not be directly involved in policy-making') may somewhat distort the relationship with the corresponding dependent variable (see above), the expression is ambiguous enough to not preclude the toleration and participation of the respondent in such advisory activities. Both normative variables have been recoded to a binary form (agree vs. disagree).

Hypothesis 5 refers to the impact that career stage has on the likelihood of engagement in advisory tasks, from a supply-side perspective. This variable is operationalized using *age* as a proxy—since younger individuals are more likely to be at early stages of their careers.10 Furthermore, the

<sup>10</sup>An alternative variable accounting for the stage of an academic's career, which is also provided in the ProSEPS survey dataset, is whether respondents have a *permanent* or *fxed-*

possible negative infuence of publication-oriented research activities (Hypothesis 5b) is measured by a variable representing the *international publication record* of the respondent.11 Finally, the joint infuence of career stage and level of specialisation on the likelihood of engaging in advisory activities is measured through an interaction term combining *age* and *levels of specialisation.*

With regard to the techniques of analysis adopted in the explanatory section, given the nature of the two dependent variables, I use ordered logistic regression for the model explaining the frequency of advice and multinomial logistic regression for the model of the types of advice.

#### 12.5 Descriptive Analysis

With regard to the distribution of different advisory roles among political scientists in Spain, Table 12.1 shows that a great majority of those who responded to the ProSEPS survey (78.6%) have provided some form of political or policy advice over the last three years. Of these, a great majority (42.1% of the total) are of the 'opinionator' type (i.e. political scientists providing both expert knowledge and normative arguments), while a small minority (5%) show high levels of engagement in advisory tasks, in terms of frequency (at least once a month) and scope (four or more types of advice, including the provision of value judgements). In any case, the distribution does not signifcantly differ from the general pattern detected in the ProSEPS survey.

With respect to the recipients of advice (Table 12.2), almost 70% of the respondents who were engaged in advisory tasks claim to have engaged with representatives at inner government level, either executive politicians or civil servants. More specifcally, contacts were much more frequent with

*term* contract. However, this variable may mask the incentives that individuals with permanent contracts may have to advance their careers (for instance, promotion from associate professor to full professor).

11This variable is constructed as the addition of three variables: the number of publications in international peer-reviewed journals; the chapters in edited books published by international publishing houses and the number of monographic studies published by international publishing houses. Each of these variables is measured nominally at three levels (1 = 'nothing published in that category', 2 = 'one or two publications in that category' and 3 = 'three or more publications'). I have recoded them as quantitative variables, where 'no publications' is given a score of 0, 'one or two' a score of 1.5 and 'three or more' a score of 3. I then added the scores for the three variables to obtain the variable used in the analysis.


**Table 12.1** Proportion of ideal types of policy advisory roles—Spain

*Note:* Types operationalized on the basis of content of advice and frequency. See Chap. 3. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data.


**Table 12.2** Recipients of advice % (total and by types of advisory role)—Spain

*Note*: Percentages computed with respect to those respondents who claimed to have been engaged in advisory activities during the last three years (N=110). Question: 'With which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?'

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data.

the former category: 58.2% acknowledged having had this type of contact, compared with 40% who claim to have advised civil servants at some point in time, this fgure being signifcantly below the average in the ProSEPS sample (52.6%). Moreover, over half of those who provided advice did so for political parties or legislators, think tanks and interest groups, or other non-governmental organizations (NGOs). More specifcally, the level of engagement with corporate interest groups (10%) was signifcantly below the ProSEPS survey sample (25.4%). Also, a signifcant proportion (32.7%) also engaged with international organizations, albeit less frequently. Finally, only a small minority (16.4%) advised public advisory bodies. Most of these patterns coincide with the general ones found in the ProSEPS survey, with the exception of contacts with interest groups or other NGOs and public advisory bodies, which political scientists in Spain tend to be signifcantly less involved with.

Table 12.2 also reveals the differences between the diverse types of advisor. In general, political scientists whose advisory activity is limited to providing expert knowledge are much less active in most of the arenas the only exception being that of international organizations. Advisory activity increases in the cases of opinionators and, above all, public intellectuals. Regarding the latter category, this elite group within Spain's political science community is signifcantly engaged in advisory tasks with both public actors (particularly those in government) and private ones. On the other hand, they are less internationally oriented than the members of the other two categories—although the differences are minimum and not statistically signifcant.

This descriptive analysis also focuses on the degree of formality of contacts between political scientists and the recipients of their advice. Formal and informal modes of advice provision are evenly distributed among political scientists in Spain—a general pattern that also holds for the entire sample in the ProSEPS survey. Regarding the different types of advisory role, there is barely any difference between experts and opinionators. However, in the case of public intellectuals, formal aspects seem to be more prevalent (about 42% claim that the advice is mostly formal, while this fgure in the other categories is less than 18%).

Regarding the government level at which advice is provided (Table 12.3), two-thirds (exactly 67.6%) of those engaged in advisory activities addressed actors at the subnational level (regional or local), and 37% provided advice exclusively at this level. The corresponding fgures for the national level are 47.2 and 12%, respectively. The proportion of those engaging with international actors is lower, though not negligible—31.5% of respondents, although only 4.6% operate exclusively at the international level. Looking at the uniqueness or mix of levels of engagement in advisory activities, the sample is almost evenly divided, with 53.7% dealing exclusively with one level, while the rest provided advice to two different levels over the three years prior to the survey feldwork.

Compared with the other countries covered by the ProSEPS survey, the percentage of political scientists in Spain who exclusively engage with actors at the subnational level, or who do so at both subnational and international levels, are signifcantly higher than average. This pattern is found in two other countries only, Germany and Russia, both of which are federal states.


**Table 12.3** Governance levels of advice (total % and by types of advisory role)—Spain

*Note*: Percentages computed with respect to those respondents who claimed to have been engaged in advisory activities during the last three years (N=108). Question: 'At which level of governance did you engage most frequently in policy advice or consulting activities during the last three years?'

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data.

As regards the different types of advisory role, Table 12.3 also shows that the proportion of opinionators dealing exclusively with subnational actors is signifcantly higher (47.4%) than it is for the other two categories of advisor. It is also remarkable to see that international actors do not receive the advice of public intellectuals at all, despite the greater frequency and scope of said intellectuals' advisory activities.

In sum, the patterns shown in Table 12.3 confrm the validity of Hypothesis 1, since they provide evidence of the infuence of the politically decentralized structure of the Spanish state on the advisory patterns of academic political scientists in Spain, whose greatest opportunities for providing advice exist at the subnational (mainly regional) governance level.

The second descriptive hypothesis presented above also fnds confrmation in the data (Table 12.4). The main area in which Spanish political scientists provide advice is that of government and public administration organization, and electoral reform. The percentage of those providing advice regarding this area (53.6%) is much higher than that of the other policy areas targeted by political scientists as policy advisors: social and welfare policies (24.5%), civil rights and gender (23.6%), EU and international affairs (21.8%) and immigration (14.5%). It is remarkable that the two most important sectors (government and social policies) attract signifcantly more advice from political scientists in Spain than in the other countries covered by the ProSEPS survey (the respective averages,



*Note*: Percentages computed with respect to those respondents who claimed to have been engaged in advisory activities during the last three years (N=110). The list of categories has been adapted from the policy areas list of the Comparative Agendas Project. Question: 'With which substantive policy areas is your advice concerned?' (\*) The 'Other' category comprises the following areas: Technology (including telecommunications) (5.5%), crime, law and order (4.5%), macroeconomics, monetary policy, industry policy (3.6%), labour (3.6%), environment (3.6%), culture (3.6%), transportation (2.7%), defence (2.7%), housing (1.8%), health (0.9%), domestic trade, commerce, fnancial sector (0.9%), agriculture, food policy (0.0%), energy (0.0%), foreign trade (0.0%), other substantive policy areas (not in the previous categories) (4.6%).

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data.

excluding Spain, are 46.4 and 11.5%). In contrast, policy advice offered by political scientists is underdeveloped in other areas, such as energy (0%), defence (2.7%) and, in particular, EU and international affairs (21.8% compared to the average in other countries of 36.8%).

In any case, in keeping with Hypothesis 2, it would seem that demand for political scientists' advice is higher in the area where the discipline has a high level of 'ownership' over the knowledge at stake.

#### 12.6 Explanatory Analysis

The remaining explanatory hypotheses set out above are tested in this section. Given the low number of observations, models are restricted to the basic variables—those testing the corresponding hypotheses plus a control variable (gender). The main descriptives of the variables in the analyses are shown in Table 12.5.

The models in Table 12.6 test the hypotheses relating to the frequency of advice provision. For the sake of the interpretability of the ordered logit results, these are presented in the 'odds ratio' form. Both hypotheses 4 and 5 are confrmed. First, participation in advisory activities in Spain is signifcantly related to professional normative beliefs. Thus, the probability of providing advice against not providing it multiplies by about 1.8 when the respondent agrees with the statement 'political scientists should become involved in policy making'. The same applies to the probability of being very frequently involved in advisory tasks (at least once a month) compared with not being involved at all, or doing it only sporadically.

Secondly, advice practices seem to be infuenced by the stage of an academic's career development. The signifcant infuence of the *age* variable over the frequency of advice (though the signifcance level is at *p*<0.1) in Model 1 suggests that individuals at early stages of their careers are less likely to engage in policy advisory activities (the likelihood increases about 8% for each additional year).

However, the effect of *age* must be evaluated jointly with that of the *level of specialisation*. Model 2 points to the relationship between these two variables. As mentioned above, it is likely that these variables interact and that the effect of career stage is modulated by the degree of expertise. This interactive relationship was the target of Hypothesis 6, which fnds confrmation in the model.

A clearer interpretation of how both of the aforementioned variables condition one another is given in Fig. 12.1. The different graphs for marginal probabilities suggest four types of pattern, each with different explanations. On the one hand, there is a pattern of higher probability of participating in advisory activities as individuals develop their careers, which could refect some kind of *seniority effect*. It is most evident when respondents are not specialised in any of the more 'marketable' political science areas (upper left panel), and when higher levels of participation are contrasted with not participating at all. Therefore, the expected


**Table 12.5** Variables in the analysis and descriptives—Spain


*Note*: Figures represent odds ratio for ordered logistic regression. Robust standard errors in parentheses. The dependent variable is the *frequency of advice*: 0 (reference) = No advice; 1 = less than once every month; 2 = at least once or more every month. The reference category for *Level of specialisation* is 'No specialisation', and for *Male* is 'Female and gender not declared'.

\*\*\* p<0.005, \*\* p<0.01, \* p<0.05, + p<0.1.

probability of not participating greatly decreases with age, while that of intensive involvement (providing advice at least once a month) increases as a political scientist's career develops. The impact of this seniority effect is expected to diminish as specialisation increases (upper right panel).

This seniority effect could be also inferred from the observation of those sporadically participating in advisory activities involving no specialisation (upper left panel), although the likelihood of participation decreases towards the end of a person's career—probably an additional manifestation of this seniority effect. Nevertheless, this pattern could be also seen as a result of a *career cycle effect*, as the probability of participation increases until respondents reach middle age—coinciding with the period in which they may be building their academic careers—while such probability

**Fig. 12.1** Joint effect of age and level of specialisation—Spain. *Note*: Marginal predicted probabilities, with 95% confdence intervals, based on the results of Model 2 in Table 12.6. The values of the outcome variable (*frequency of advice*) are 0 = No advice during the last three years; 1 = Advice less than once a month; 2 = Advice at least once a month. *Levels of specialisation* refers to specialisation (at the highest university degree) in one or more of the following areas (see text for details): 1) public administration or political institutions (including local government); 2) specialisation in electoral behaviour, also including expertise in political communication; 3) public policy expertise (specialisation on the policy process or on specifc policy sectors). *Age* values are set at percentiles 10, 25, 50, 75, and 90.

stabilizes and decreases as they approach retirement age. In any case, the existing evidence is insuffcient to differentiate between both types of pattern.

The lower left panel shows a third type of pattern—a kind of inverted version of the seniority effect. Thus, at high levels of specialisation, the likelihood of very frequent participation in advisory activities decreases with age, while that of not participating at all increases. The mechanism accounting for this pattern may be linked to a life-cycle effect; however, this explanation is inconsistent with the seniority effect found for the other levels of specialisation. That is, if those without any 'marketable' skill are more likely to become highly active in advisory tasks as they get older, why does the same thing not happen in the case of the highly specialised political scientists? A possible explanation for this pattern could be some sort of *renewal* or *generational substitution* effect, where older specialists are replaced by younger ones. This explanation makes sense from the perspective of advice recipients, since they may well believe that younger experts are more likely to possess state-of-the-art methods, skills and knowledge.

There is a fnal pattern of interaction affecting those who sporadically participate in advisory tasks and present average or high levels of specialisation. In these cases, Figure 12.1 shows that the likelihood of such involvement does not vary with age.

Finally, I should point out that Hypothesis 5b is not corroborated by the data. Thus, the degree of involvement in academic-oriented research activities does not affect the probability of engagement in advisory activities.

#### 12.7 Conclusions

This chapter has shown that most political scientists in Spain are involved to some extent in political or policy advisory activities. This seems to be favoured by the decentralized structure of the Spanish state, which multiplies the opportunities for engagement, particularly in the public sector. Moreover, advice is more frequently provided in those areas where political science has 'issue ownership' (government organization and electoral reform) compared to other social science disciplines. In contrast, although advice on specifc policies is not totally absent, it is usually less frequent than in other countries (the one exception being advice on welfare policies).

In addition to these demand-side factors, the engagement of political scientists in political and policy advisory activities is also dependent on the supply side, and in particular on political scientists' propensities, qualifcations and availability. Therefore, the chapter has demonstrated how internalized professional norms, expertise and seniority (this being associated with tenure) favour the participation of political scientists in such advisory activities.

These fndings also offer some clues to ways in which the scope and relevance of political science to political and policy processes can be further broadened. On the one hand, the analysis has shown that in Spain there is still room for expansion in certain specifc policy areas in which political scientist in other countries play a more prominent role. Since relevance is immediately related to the ability to generate specialised knowledge in those problem areas where political science has a competitive advantage over other disciplines, any expansion into specifc policy areas where political scientists in other European countries play a greater role (areas such as international relations, energy and defence) would probably result in direct competition with other, better equipped or more established disciplines (mainly international law and economics).

On the other hand, political scientists in Spain can still expand their advisory clientele, particularly in the public administration sphere where their infuence is still limited compared to that witnessed in other countries. This is partially due to the propensity in Spain's public administration to favour internal over external advice. However, it also relates to the aforementioned need for greater specialisation in specifc policy areas (e.g. in the areas of evaluation and management processes) in addition to those where political science potentially possesses a competitive edge, since this is the kind of knowledge that mostly interests government bureaucrats.

Therefore, the expansion of the advisory importance of political science in Spain would probably entail political scientists fostering further policy specialisation, which would likely imply introducing epistemic elements blurring the demarcation between political science and neighbouring disciplines. This is not a major problem for political science, which has always been ready to import tools from other disciplines. The question here is whether such an interdisciplinary transformation would allow political scientists to maintain the identity of the discipline and offer their own approach to the problems and issues for which their advice is sought.

#### References


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## Polder Politics Under Pressure: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in the Netherlands

*Valérie Pattyn and Arco Timmermans*

## 13.1 The Embedding of Advisory Roles

In this chapter we analyse the policy advisory activities of political scientists in the Netherlands, all working from their academic home basis. In the Netherlands, public administration (including public policy) exists alongside political science. At some universities the two strands of the discipline are integrated, but often they are organized in separate departments and have separate research and education programmes. Does this segmented nature of political science in the Netherlands appear in the external activities of those scholars concerned? Or is the overall policy advisory system in which political scientists are embedded or placed in some way, a more important overarching institutional determinant? What about developments in the policy advisory system itself, pressures on institutions and trends in the environment and their consequences for the supply and demand of scholarly political science advice? These are the central questions we shall be examining in this chapter. We present two

© The Author(s) 2022 279

V. Pattyn (\*) • A. Timmermans

Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands e-mail: v.e.pattyn@fgga.leidenuniv.nl; a.timmermans@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_13

hypotheses on how these structural and cultural factors related to the Dutch policy advisory system may affect the types and magnitudes of political-science-based advising. First, we expect experts and opinionating scholars to be the most frequent categories of advisor, given the multiple institutional and informal access points in the Dutch consensus-style policy advisory system. Second, we expect the segmented structure of political science to be visible in advisory profles, with political scientists 'senso strictu' being more active as opinionating scholars while public administration scholars more often play the role of expert.

To set the stage, we frst present the historical and institutional development of the academic discipline of political science in the Netherlands. Then we look at the main features and trends of the Dutch policy advisory system and the niche occupied by political scientists. While a niche may assume some demarcated space in the larger tree, it also may be that academic political scientists are included in more diffuse ways in advisory processes. One reason why this may be is that political science not only has a substantive, material object of knowledge of its own but also squares into many other felds of knowledge where political or administrative dimensions come in view. For example, ecologists and experts of artifcial intelligence profle for their substantive knowledge but political scientists may appear in advisory roles related to these areas whenever political decision making on renewable energy or administrative responses to algorithms for data analysis are at stake. Likewise, scholars of public policy mostly profle on the governance of problems, mixing knowledge of policy processes with content.

The empirical fndings based on the survey are the central part of this chapter. They help us to draw the picture of advisory activities and views on them within the Dutch scholarly political science community. As we will see, political scientists in this country gauge their visibility and their social and political impact as relatively high, and a large majority of them engage in policy advisory or advocacy activities, either occasionally or more frequently, in a way more or less visible to a wider audience. The patterns that emerged also indicate the extent to which the segmented structure of academic political science impacts advisory roles, and the signifcance and prospects of such segmentation for the years to come. We conclude by examining some implications of our fndings and offering our views on possible future developments.

## 13.2 The Institutionalization of Political Science in Dutch Academia

Political science in the Netherlands has a long tradition and a history of institutionalization. As far back as 1613, Daniel Heinsius was appointed *Professor of Politices'* at Leiden University. However, the real emergence of political science in the Dutch academic system came in the years after the Second World War. The frst three full chairs in political science were established between 1948 and 1953. Jan Barents, the holder of the frst Dutch political science chair at the University of Amsterdam, was a member of the executive committee of the International Political Science Association and also co-founder of the Dutch Association of Political Science (*Nederlandse Kring voor Wetenschap der Politiek*) in 1950. In 1963, the frst professor of political science to have an educational background in political science was appointed (Reinalda, 2007), and in 1967, political science was included in the Dutch Academic Statute governing university education in the Netherlands (Reinalda, 2007). In later years, other universities followed suite by setting up departments of political science and public administration. In 1973, the Association of Public Administration (*Vereniging voor Bestuurskunde*) was founded. The main academic journals published in the feld emerged concurrently with the frst chairs and associations: *Bestuurswetenschappen* in 1946, the *Internationale Spectator* in 1947, *Acta Politica* in 1965, and *Beleid & Maatschappij* in 1973. Later, in 1992, the Dutch Association of Public Administration launched its own journal, *Bestuurskunde*.

Within academic departments, political science developed as a broad discipline together with public administration and, to a lesser extent, public policy and grew into separate research and education programmes. Of the 14 universities in the Netherlands, 10 have a department of political science or of public administration, or both. In total there are 14 departments in the feld. Political science and public administration mostly coexist in separate institutes and programmes, refecting a segmented institutional structure. Most departments are members of the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG), which organizes conferences, facilitates research mobility, and runs a joint PhD education programme. The existence of this national PhD programme is a feature not seen in most other countries and may indicate that attempts are being made to coordinate the segmented world of academic political science in the Netherlands. There is a high degree of mobility of political science scholars between Dutch universities, perhaps not for this reason alone, while the discipline generally boasts an international orientation. The student population in political science has increased and internationalized, in particular since the turn of the century.

The survey comprising the Netherlands revealed (for the count year 2018) the presence of 457 scholars in the feld with a PhD degree, affliated to one of the 14 university departments where political science teaching and research is organized structurally. This number does not include teaching staff without a PhD or PhD researchers.

## 13.3 The Dutch Policy Advisory System

The Netherlands is commonly considered a text-book example of a consensus-driven, neo-corporatist country (Lijphart, 2012). Consensus politics has proven to be a strong mechanism with which to overcome the segmentation of the Dutch political landscape and its underlying socioeconomic and religious cleavages. It has given rise to the establishment of politico-administrative arrangements that make the involvement in policy making as broad as possible. The consensus-oriented character of Dutch democracy has been a determining factor in the confguration of the country's policy advisory system, and in the role of expertise in general. Expertise in consensus countries is broadly valued for providing a nonpartisan basis for political agreement and for depoliticization (Van Nispen & Scholten, 2015). It has permitted the establishment of a rich, densely populated landscape of relatively independent institutions specialized in policy analysis. In the Netherlands, these public knowledge bodies combine subject-specifc research with the provision of knowledge-intensive services (Koens et al., 2016).

Unique to the Netherlands are the so-called planning bureaus, comprising the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, the Central Bureau of Statistics, the Environmental Assessment Agency, and the high-level Scientifc Council for Government Policy (WRR). Most of these planning bureaus are strongly oriented towards evidence-based advising (Halffman, 2009), and the WRR is also an important source of policy ideas (Van Nispen & Scholten, 2015). Since the establishment of the Dutch Constitution in 1814, the Netherlands has had a National Court of Audit whose historical roots go back even further, to the ffteenth century. Audit courts for governmental policy evaluation were set up at local level in the early 2000s. Most of these are advised by external experts. External advisory organizations focusing on the structure and working of government itself include the Council for Public Administration, and the Electoral Council, with the latter focusing specifcally on electoral processes and systemic issues. Within the domain of international affairs and domestic security, the Advisory Council on International Affairs and the National Coordinator for Security and Counterterrorism provide strategic knowledge and policy options. All of these institutions perform a strong demarcation function, not only bridging the gap between science and politics, but often also establishing the boundaries within which political debate takes place (Halffman & Hoppe, 2004). As such, the advisory bodies and councils have always had a rationalization and legitimation function. Generally speaking, the expert rationality of authorized institutional representatives is highly valued (Strassheim & Kettunen, 2014). Also, most political parties have their own scientifc bureau (Timmermans et al., 2015), although the infuence of such is somewhat limited (Pattyn et al., 2017).

Consensus democracy in the Dutch case has been typically associated with a neo-corporatist tradition, characterized by the institutionalized involvement of representatives of all relevant segments of society (such as trade unions and employer organizations) in policy decisions (Crepaz & Lijphart, 1995). While the neo-corporatist characteristics of the country have weakened in recent years, the features of the so-called polder model (i.e. tripartite cooperation between employers, trade unions, and government) in the Netherlands are still visible in the infuential role that the Socio-Economic Council plays in welfare state discussions and labouremployer negotiations and in the institutionalization of a wide range of strategic and technical advisory bodies that focus on specifc policy areas. Although the number of such advisory bodies has signifcantly fallen since the 1990s (down from 119 to 24 offcial advisory bodies at national level), they still constitute a cornerstone of the Dutch advisory system (Scholten & Van Nispen, 2015). Academics participate in many of these advisory organizations on a rotating basis. In several of them, such as the abovementioned Council for Public Administration and the Electoral Council, political scientists are the most important temporary members.

The institutionalization of policy advice in the Netherlands is not limited to the establishment of formal and vested advisory organizations and corporatist-style advisory bodies. A series of other arrangements exist by which academics can provide input to policy making. Several regulatory guidelines require the involvement of experts. For formal policy reviews, for instance, an expert must be appointed to the advisory committee (*Regeling Periodieke Beleidsevaluatie* 2017). Furthermore, where such legal requirements do not exist, it is common practice to involve academic experts in advisory committees concerned with applied research, including policy evaluations. The relatively large number of 'endowed professorships' in Dutch academia, for which the funding and appointment of chairs is supported by external parties, is also important. The latter parties may be foundations or private actors, but also ministries or non-proft organizations. Such provisions have contributed to the anchorage of academic expertise within the public sector and to more permeable boundaries between academia and advisory structures.

To sum up then, when viewed in terms of the locational model presented in Chap. 2, evidence-based knowledge in the Dutch system is imported and embedded at the intersections of the government arena, the societal arena, and the academic arena. The societal arena contains professionalized and traditional actors, a plethora of civil society and interest organizations, consultancy frms, and the media and the wider public.

While all institutionalized things take time to change, or are even resistant to change, the Dutch policy advisory system has started to shift towards greater diversifcation. It has begun to feel the infuence of internationalization, and in particular the Europeanization of advising (Van den Berg, 2017). More general trends to which the Netherlands also is exposed include the pluralization and externalization of policy advice (Craft & Howlett, 2013). Van den Berg (2017) found a clear trend among senior civil servants in the Netherlands, towards relying increasingly on external advisors, including offcial councils, consultancy frms, and university-based research institutes. The country has innumerable consultancy frms, which is a sign that there is a considerable market for such. Furthermore, increasing pressure on government has given rise to a number of informal advisory committees (Schulz et al., 2008). A comparative study of policy advisory systems in OECD countries shows that the Netherlands is at the short end of the scale of longevity of ad hoc committees—most of which last less than a year (OECD, 2017: 34).

While many arrangements have resulted in the 'scientifcation of politics', the opposite trend, meaning the increasing politicization of science, is also visible (Weingart, 1999). In February 2017, the Chamber of Representatives adopted a motion requesting the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences to investigate the extent to which the 'independence of science' is threatened within academia, as one view held that social scientists had leftist political preferences. In 2018, the Academy concluded that such a threat was not clearly grounded (Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2018).

As a result of all of these developments, we may conclude that the boundaries between government organizations, the external environment and the academic sphere, have become more fuid in recent years. (see also Timmermans et al., 2021). The policy-making system of the Netherlands has always included a structural form of intensive cooperation between policy makers and experts. However, this has recently become more diversifed and has also moved beyond the existing formal structures, making interactions less predictable.

#### *13.3.1 Expectations on the Advisory Roles of Political Scientists*

Political scientists in the Netherlands thus have an increasing range of institutional and extra-institutional windows in which to interact with policy makers. This is a mutual situation: political scientists, like other academic experts, may seek such access to the policy-making domain and social debate, but they also are invited to, or sometimes actively drawn into, those spheres. The institutional shift in public task performance has involved a growing need for external advice on the part of both government departments, that have witnessed something of a policy-making 'brain drain', and private and semi-private organizations embracing new tasks (Van den Berg, 2017).

The four ideal types of political scientist differ from one another in their spheres of activity. An opinionating scholar may be oriented, in the main, towards media channels in an attempt to divulge the messages concerned to a broad audience. A true opinion maker, on the other hand, engages in such external activity relatively frequently. So does the public intellectual, but this role type implies more external 'multitasking': both opinionating and providing advice to policy makers. Comparatively, the expert may be oriented more towards policy-making institutions and different types of recipient within, or related to, such.

Considering the traditional features and the changing aspects of the Dutch policy advisory system and the general characteristics of political science in the Netherlands, we can posit several expectations with regard to the advisory roles of scholars. Firstly, while all of the aforementioned types may be present in the Netherlands, we would expect experts and opinionating scholars to be much more frequently so. In line with other consensus-style regimes, political scientists may be expected to engage relatively strongly in policy advising, as they have multiple access points facilitating interaction with policy makers. Thus we would expect the role of expert to occur frequently. However, we also expect a large number of political scientists to engage in providing opinionated advice, either close to or at some distance from policy-making institutions. We attribute this mainly to the more open, diversifed nature of exchanges between political scientists and policy makers, which lowers the threshold for engaging in normative phronesis. Moreover, the political affliations of certain political scientists may also trigger this type of activity. We would assume that scholars who are not involved in policy advising at all, but who operate as pure academics only, are mainly going to be younger scholars who are not (yet) known in formal policy advisory arenas, and who feel pressurized into prioritizing fundamental research and developing their teaching portfolios. Overall, however, we would expect the pure academic to be less prominent in the Dutch sample. The public intellectual—the 'all-inclusive' role type—is expected to be found less frequently, but to be comparatively more visible than in other countries.

As mentioned earlier, the Dutch political science community is segmented, with public administration existing next to political science departments. While we cannot make any broad generalizations here, our next expectation is that the community of public administration scholars is relatively more oriented towards the role of expert, as their specifc feld emerged precisely in order to provide a knowledge base and source of education for public administration practitioners. For those indicating political science as their primary domain, we expect them to be more likely within the opinionating category of scholars engaging in advising on their specifc areas of study: political parties, the electorate, and European and world politics. This opinionating role, moreover, may be driven by increased diversity and an increasing number of cases of politicization.

## 13.4 Policy Advising and Public Engagement by Dutch Political Scientists

Based on the typology presented in Chap. 2, we now present and discuss the fndings for the Netherlands. We also present fndings on the general estimation of the social or political relevance and impact of the discipline, and on the extent to which Dutch political scientists appear in the media, and in what roles. The viewpoints and activities of scholars in Dutch academia are measured and analysed in regard to organizations with policy responsibility, or seeking to infuence public policy, and/or the media and public opinion.

Totally 18.6% (85 respondents) of the population of political scientists working at a university institute in the Netherlands flled in the survey questionnaire. These respondents represent a mix of ages, and hence also seniority, with the youngest respondent born in 1989 and the oldest in 1946. The average age of respondents was 44.8, which is slightly younger than the overall average in the project as a whole (46 years). Furthermore, 27.4% of Dutch respondents were female, and 69% men (3.6% preferred not to disclose their gender, or did not respond to this question). This is in keeping with the gender distribution of the total population of political scientists that received the survey in the Netherlands (31% females, 69% male).

#### *13.4.1 Estimated Visibility and Impact*

Dutch political scientists consider themselves to be publicly visible and also capable of achieving a social and political impact. The country is among the ten countries with the highest level of self-estimated visibility in public debate, and in the top three in terms of estimated impact. More than 50% of the respondents think that political science has a real impact on society and politics. This visibility and impact is about social and political relevance, rather than professional (training political scientists for future jobs) or civic relevance (engaging with civil society) (Senn & Eder, 2018: 5–6). Political relevance connects most closely to policy advising.

#### *13.4.2 Engagement in Different Types of Advisory Activity*

If we focus on the frequency of advisory activities, we see certain differences between the types of advice provided by Dutch political scientists. Weekly activity is something of an exception, although some activities happen regularly while others are rarely witnessed, as can be seen from Table 13.1.

The fndings indicate that evaluations are provided less frequently—and probably by fewer political scientists—than are analyses, explanations, or advice on policy alternatives. Conducting evaluations also comes with a particular methodological toolkit not familiar to all political scientists.


**Table 13.1** Frequency and type of advice % (*N*)—the Netherlands

*Note:* Question: 'How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?'

Also making value judgements and normative arguments happens, on average, no more than once a year or less. Comparatively, however, normative discourse is less often excluded from the scope of activities than on average for all the countries included in this study, where almost 44% of respondents never reach out in this way. Likewise, consultancy services are offered more frequently in the Netherlands. By and large, the threshold for advisory activities seems to be once per year, with part of the political science community performing such roles more often, but a larger part of the respondents doing so less often. The least frequent activity of all is the specialized activity of polling and forecasting, which is only performed on a regular basis by a small number of political scientists, as is the case in most countries.

Turning to a more in-depth analysis of the profle of political scientists who engage in policy advisory activities, we fnd the compartmentalized nature of the community in this feld represented in the focus of scholars. While a majority believe that they are frst and foremost focused on political science matters, almost half of the respondents mention public administration, and one-third deal with public policy. These choices are not mutually exclusive, but they show the different orientations of scholars in the Netherlands, which are also institutionalized in academic departments. Specialized foci are rarer: specifc policy domains are the primary territory of few political scientists engaged in advisory activities as can be seen from Table 13.2. The prominence of public administration stands out: the


**Table 13.2** Sub-disciplinary areas of political scientists (%)—the Netherlands

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: 'Which categories best describe your area(s) of expertise? Please select the three main categories.'


**Table 13.3** Substantive focus of policy advice (%)—the Netherlands

*Note*: Question: 'With which substantive policy areas is your advice concerned?'

percentage is more than twice the average for all countries included in the survey (21%).

While the disciplinary focus is mainly on political science, public administration and public policy also offer advisory activities in regard to many different topics. This is clear from Table 13.3, which illustrates the substantive focus of policy advice.

Matters of government structure and functioning, and of international affairs and EU governance, represent the topics most widely focused on by political scientists. These are their areas of expertise par excellence. However, their advisory activities also concern a number of other topics, such as social welfare, immigration, civil rights, and the environment, and to a much lesser degree a variety of other policy issues. The issue of social affairs is third in the ranking, after domestic and international political structure and process, of those areas in which political scientists are most active. Generally, social policy is the most external advice-taking domain in the Netherlands (van den Berg, 2017: Table 4) and political scientists thus take their place in it. The increasingly contested, publicly debated nature of some policy topics, such as immigration, rights, and environmental concerns, have also opened the way for the involvement of political scientists (Timmermans & Scholten, 2006). However, while political scientists have a knowledge primacy regarding general domestic or international governmental issues, they are usually not experts on other topics on the political agenda. This is corroborated by the fndings in Table 13.2. The advisory roles of political scientists mostly concern how these issues may pose challenges in terms of governance, and how political structures and processes addressing such challenges are to be understood and strengthened. In other words, political science-based advising on issues is often more about the *process* than about specifc content. This refects the body of knowledge and skills of academic political scientists.

#### *13.4.3 Recipients and Channels of Advice*

The civil service features prominently in advisory interactions with political scientists, as Table 13.4 below shows. Civil servants in the Netherlands have come to rely increasingly on external advice (van den Berg, 2017): this category of advice is actually an umbrella for all kinds of advisory interaction, both formal and informal, consisting of longer or permanent arrangements, as well as those of a more ad hoc nature.

The types of recipients of advice do not correspond exactly to specifc types of advice, such as offcial or unoffcial, permanent or temporary, arrangements with political scientists, and so on. Thus, for example, advisory bodies, which are second in order of prominence, may offcially employ political scientists part-time, or they may simply call on them occasionally. The same applies to civil society organizations, think tanks, and all other types of recipient. The fact that only just over fourth quarter of political scientists engage with political parties for advisory purposes stands


**Table 13.4** Recipients of advice (%)—the Netherlands

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note:* Question: 'With which actors have you engaged in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities over the last three years?'

in contrast to the large number of parties in the Netherlands and the affliations that many political scientists have with them.

The most important conclusion that can be drawn from Table 13.4 must be seen in a comparative perspective: with the exception of political parties and legislative politicians, *all* types of recipients of advice in the Netherlands have higher, in some cases much higher, percentage scores than the average scores taking all countries into consideration. This fnding empirically illustrates the density of advisory arrangements, the diversity of its forms, and as we shall see below, the orientation of scholars towards advising and outreaching. The fact that political science academics advise parties and legislators to only a modest degree may tell us something about the perception that the Dutch parliament has of political scientists in regard to the policy process or about the perception held in parliament of political scientists acting in advisory roles in the Netherlands. Private interest groups may be the least expected counterparty in advisory situations, but interaction with such groups is nevertheless more frequent in the Netherlands than it is in many other countries.

The different recipients, both inside and outside the formal institutions of government, are provided with a broad range of channels for interaction with experts in the Dutch policy advisory system. Formal channels are more frequently used by political scientists in the Netherlands than on average. Political scientists, however, also engage in informal knowledge exchange, although hardly anyone uses such channels alone, as Table 13.5 reveals. The data in this study are not time series data, and so we cannot be certain, but it would seem that the many mentions of both formal and


**Table 13.5** Formality/informality of advice % (*N*)—the Netherlands

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note:* Question: 'Please, rate your engagement in direct knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities, over the last three years, on a scale from entirely informal (e.g. personal talks) to entirely formal (e.g. appointment to advisory committees, expert councils, etc.).'

informal channels point to an ongoing trend towards pluralism and the opening of external channels for advice and advocacy. However, it should be pointed out that also traditional channels in neo-corporatist structures in the Netherlands involve a level of informal boundary work between knowledge producers and knowledge users. The aforementioned prominence of the Dutch civil service as a recipient of advice also involves both formal and informal channels.

It is not always possible to distinguish between formal and informal advice by looking at the specifc channels used. The most commonly used way of providing knowledge to recipients is via publications (57% of the sample mentions doing so at least once a year), which is also the most commonly used outlet in all countries when a frequency of 'at least once a year' is taken as a threshold. This, however, is the least typical channel for *advising* activities as it is part of the regular academic work of scholars. Research reports are the next most frequently used channel (50%) and are functionally more distinctive in this respect, while the drafting of policy reports, briefs, and memos is an even more characteristic advisory activity and is mentioned by almost 41% of the respondents who had already indicated that they engage in advisory work. Blog writing and social media contributions (just over 40%) and traditional media articles (39%) are other external advisory channels aimed at a broader audience. Given that such activities usually require less preparation time than do more academic publications, they are used somewhat more regularly, several times a year in fact, by a signifcant share of the respondents. As mentioned, the Netherlands is one of the countries with the highest estimated visibility of political scientists. A substantial number of them indeed state that they occasionally or regularly participate in public debates in the media.

The most distinctive way of transferring knowledge to policy makers and other practitioners in the Netherlands, however, is by providing training courses or sessions, which happens more frequently in this country than elsewhere. Some ministries, such as the Ministry of Finance, have established their own training institutes ('National Academy for Finance and Economics'), where political scientists (mainly public administration scholars) give classes. The Netherlands School of Public Administration is another organization providing executive training for civil servants. Almost half of the Dutch respondents indicated that they engage in training at least once a year, compared to an average of 38% for all countries. Advice is also provided through face-to-face contact, partly combined with the channels above, and partly during workshop sessions or conferences.

#### *13.4.4 Reasons for Engaging in Advisory Activities*

What are the underlying reasons for engaging in advisory activities? Table 13.6 reveals that an overwhelming majority of political scientists consider advising as making an important contribution to society.

**Table 13.6** Intrinsic and extrinsic motives for engaging in policy advisory and consulting activities % (*N*)—the Netherlands


*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: 'How important are the following reasons for your engagement in advisory or consulting activities?'

A substantial number of scholars also consider it part of their professional duties. For many, advising is important to stay active-minded. Most Dutch political scientists do not engage in advising for the purpose of advancing their careers, although it is seen to offer opportunities for the expansion of career options and research funding.

When asked about their motives for engaging in public debate, almost all political scientists considered this a part of their role. This is consistent with the aforementioned sense of professional duty, which is also high. The majority still think that academic outlets should be tested before engaging in public debate. Again, this conforms to the perception of professional duty more generally, while a strong scientifc knowledge base is considered important (Table 13.7).


**Table 13.7** Normative views on policy advice % (*N*)—the Netherlands

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: 'To what extent do you agree with the following statements?'

### 13.5 Types of Scholars in Advising

The variables presented and discussed thus far underlie the construction of the four main types of advisory role, from the pure academic who refrains from any kind of such activity to the public intellectual for whom engagement is all-inclusive.

When considering the occurrence of advisory types, the Dutch picture resembles the average in the larger European sample only for the categories of experts and public intellectuals. Table 13.8 shows that 28.6% of the political scientists responding to the survey are experts, slightly more than the European average. The different recipients of advice lie both within the government apparatus and also in external arenas and at intersections where evidence is central in the modus operandi of the various advisory bodies. Hence we can distinguish between government-oriented experts and external arena-oriented experts. Just under 5% are public intellectuals, which is marginally above average for all countries. Not surprisingly, it is quite rare to fnd political scientists taking a highly active role in a diverse range of advisory activities, from formal advising to opinionating in external arenas and the media. Most scholars engage in advisory activities in this feld to a certain extent, although it is not their call to be active in such.

The opinionating role is the one most frequently adopted overall, particularly in the Netherlands. We note that the opinionating role is a broad category, and the frequency of activities actually determines whether we can truly speak of an *opinion maker*, or rather of the political scientist playing a more modest and cautious role as an occasional voice helping with the interpretation of matters on the public or political agenda.

The relatively large number of opinionating political scientists in the Netherlands contrasts with the comparatively small proportion of political


**Table 13.8** Proportion of advisory role types—the Netherlands

#### *Source:* Author

*Note:* Types operationalized on the basis of the content and frequency of advice (see Chap. 3)

scientists who defne themselves as pure academics. Less than 10% see themselves in this latter category, compared with over 20% in the European sample as a whole. The solid anchorage of many science-policy interfaces in the Netherlands provides ample opportunities for policy advising, which almost all political scientists seem to resort to with a certain frequency. Admittedly, self-selection may have reduced the number of pure academics in our sample. Scholars who do not engage in any type of advising may have chosen not to participate in the survey. There is no reason, however, to believe that such self-selection was more frequent than in the other countries concerned.

The fndings regarding role types thus confrm our expectation that there are more experts and opinionating scholars in the Dutch sample than elsewhere. In terms of experts, the difference from the European sample is very small, whereas it is more pronounced in the case of opinionating scholars. Tendencies in the Dutch policy advisory system may partly account for this: the boundaries of the advisory system have become more permeable, and interpretation, opinionating, or advocacy by political scientists happens not only in formal arenas but also in informal and public arenas. Affliation to political parties may also be conducive to such activities. Public intellectuals, however, are a small minority within the academic political science community. Comparatively speaking, their occurrence seems related to the degree of institutionalization of academic political science: in smaller countries without such institutionalization public intellectuals are more numerous. The context is different in the Netherlands.

The expert and opinionating roles also refect the topics on which political scientists advise. The main such topics (general structures, reforms and operations of government, and international or European matters-) appear particularly prominent among opinionating political scientists. They are less the focus of attention of the experts, and public intellectuals, who tend to concentrate specifcally on immigration, rights, and education. Experts and opinionating scholars also advise on other policy topics and differ as to which ones they focus on. Experts advise on matters concerning the environment, agriculture, and food, as well as certain specifc social policies and labour-related topics, while (more or less active) opinionating scholars advise on social welfare, civil rights, immigration, and, occasionally, defence matters and public works. While experts seem to specialize, opinionating scholars advise on the broadest range of topics, with only agriculture and food policy (an expert domain) remaining outside of their domain.

#### *13.5.1 Age, Gender, and Role Types*

The age of scholars appears to differ considerably with role types: experts (with an average age of 42.7) and opinionating political scientists (average age of 47.8) in the Netherlands tend to be older than pure academics (38.1) and public intellectuals (36.8). The younger age of pure academics is not surprising, as younger scholars are under considerable pressure to perform academically, and they may also not have obtained access to, and taken advantage of, the full range of advisory venues and channels. However, the fact that public intellectuals on average are almost the youngest category is rather remarkable. Although the limited number of scholars falling into this category should be interpreted cautiously, a small group of younger academics has decided to go 'all the way' and use every opportunity to engage with policy makers and other practitioners. While this age-role type combination is very unusual, it is also an exception, as the two largest groups of political scientists—the experts and the opinionating scholars—are on average in their mid-40s. In particular, an opinionating role appears to refect academic experience. This is also the largest category of scholars, thus telling us something about the career paths developed prior to performance of this type of external activity. In the case of the experts, this applies to a lesser extent. While there is thus clear variation in the age-role type relationship, we note that the average ages in the Dutch sample (between 36 and 48 for the different role types) also follow our selection criteria in the survey: all scholars in the sample have obtained their PhD. For still younger scholars the pattern may be somewhat different, as it is likely that advisory and other external activities come with steps up in their academic careers.

While political science in the Netherlands is a feld numerically dominated by men (over two-thirds of respondents declaring their gender were men), female scholars are represented in each of the advisory types. Compared to the European sample, the pure academic and the public intellectual categories contain more female scholars in the Netherlands, precisely 50% of the total. Again, these are percentages representing relatively small absolute numbers. What stands out most is that for the larger categories of experts and opinionating political scientists, female scholars are underrepresented. Women in political science academia engage in opinionating in the Netherlands even less than in the European sample as a whole. Opinionating in the feld of political science in the Netherlands is thus very much a male activity. This is true to a lesser extent in the case of those political scientists within the expert category.

To conclude, advisory roles in the Netherlands in the feld of academic political science tend to be age-dependent. We expected pure academics to be younger than their more active advisory colleagues, and our fndings confrm this with the one surprising exception of the small group of public intellectuals. However, advising is even more strongly gender dependent. Changes in the policy advisory system and political and social processes, that draw more political scientists into advisory roles, seem to affect male scholars more than female scholars in the Netherlands.

#### *13.5.2 A Segmented Discipline and Advisory Roles*

We expected public administration scholars to be relatively more active in the role of experts, and political scientists more in that of opinionating scholars. Public administration includes (or is adjacent to) public policy, which is a part of the discipline that directly targets policy makers in many domains. The distribution of the policy topics focused on shows that experts and opinionating scholars place a different emphasis on the domains in which they provide advice. Likewise, when looking at the academic background of the experts and opinionating scholars, as shown in Table 13.9, public administration appears less the exclusive preserve of the experts than expected. There is a greater difference between political


**Table 13.9** Proportion of advisory roles by sub-disciplinary focus (% by type) the Netherlands

science and public policy as the indicated primary discipline. Political science throws up relatively more opinionating scholars, and also includes all public intellectuals. In turn, those scholars with a background in public policy more often fall into the expert category of advisor: these fndings are in keeping with our expectations. While public administration is less a distinguishing feature of advisory role type, the related disciplinary area of public policy contains more experts. Moreover, opinionating scholars generally have a broader background than experts, who tend to come more from specifc parts of the discipline. This confrms the expectation that experts will be specialized to a relatively greater degree also in their own subjects.

Thus, while in recent decades, political science and public administration have evolved as relatively independent segments of Dutch academia, the effects of this segmentation on the types of advisory role have been limited. There are more visible similarities between the types of advisory role performed by scholars in political science and public administration (and public policy) than there are differences. The specifc objects of research, and consequently of advice, may vary between them, but the nature of engagement that emerges from our study seems to point to a future of integration between parts of the discipline.

#### 13.6 Discussion and Conclusion

The advisory activities of political scientists in the Netherlands must be understood within the context of the Dutch policy advisory system as a whole. Compared to other consensus-style countries, the advisory landscape has become increasingly diversifed, with a strongly institutionalized role being played by boundary organizations bridging science and policy making, but also new actors appearing in the diverse arenas of knowledge exchange (Pattyn et al., 2019). The Dutch advisory system displays an increasing degree of overlapping and interaction between government, academia, and the public sphere. These developments mean that political scientists now have a range of formal and informal windows for providing policy advice, either reactively on demand or more proactively on their own initiative. Figure 13.1 places political scientists within the Dutch policy advisory system.

Against this evolving institutional and cultural background, it is no surprise to fnd that an overwhelming majority of Dutch political scientists (90.5%) engages in policy advising in some way, and with a certain

**Fig. 13.1** Political scientists in the Dutch policy advisory system. *Note*: Adapted from Blum and Brans (2017: 348)

frequency. A considerable proportion of political scientists working in Dutch academia are international. In the present study we have not looked at the extent to which international scholars are involved in advisory roles. Part of advisory activity is conducted at international and European levels and deals with international issues. While this may imply involvement, another fnding that emerged is that the majority of advisory activities are conducted at the domestic level, and to a lesser extent at the subnational level.

Political scientists working at Dutch universities perceive themselves as being highly visible and having a signifcant social and political impact. They mostly agree that engaging in policy advising has no distracting effect on career advancement and that their advisory work is part of their professional duties. For many, it also contributes towards making democracy and the policy process work better. The traditional characteristics of the Dutch policy advisory system lead us to expect a strong presence of experts. They are indeed visible, but those who stand out more are the opinionating political scientists. While the consensual policy advisory system is based on the logic of depoliticization and scientifcation, the prominence of opinionating scholars may point to an increasing degree of politicization of political science, or at least to the lowering of the thresholds for public interpretative and advocacy activities.

The ideal typical roles applied in the empirical analysis all contain some behavioural variation. Political scientists within a given role category do not all display the exact same behaviour. We have used a threshold for classifying scholars in terms of their advisory orientation and activities. Opinionating, which is the most frequently observed activity of political scientists, can vary from giving viewpoints or interpretations once or a few times a year, to real opinion making or even punditry. Thus the high percentage of political scientists within this category must be seen in nuanced terms. Likewise, what we call experts include both those political scientists with one or more permanent, prominent advisory positions and scholars bringing their knowledge to the table more occasionally, for the beneft of either government or external organizations involved in the policy process. We have classifed scholars on the basis of their varying advisory roles and perspectives of such roles, but always within the context of their academic background. Political science scholars do not normally operate as consultants, news-makers, opinion leaders, or dedicated advocates of a cause. At the same time, the vast majority of political scientists are not the pure academic type sometimes stereotyped as the inhabitant of an ivory tower.

Our study also shows that thresholds exist for advisory engagement on the part of younger, and in particular female, political science scholars. Role perception and behaviour may be discretionary but are more likely to be formed by institutional or cultural conditioning. This fnding and our fndings in general are barely infuenced by the segmented nature of political science in the Netherlands. Although separate departments of political science and public administration have co-existed side-by-side since the 1980s, the advisory profles of scholars within these two areas of the discipline differ less than we expected. Public administration and public policy scholars only operate more in an expert capacity, and political scientists more in an opinionating capacity, to a certain extent.

Changes in the policy advisory system may be partly unrelated to the views and behaviour of academic communities such as that of political science, but also partly linked to what happens in such scholarly communities. Stability and changes within the domestic policy advisory system shape and reshape the advisory roles performed by scholars in any feld of scientifc knowledge. The Dutch system is now more pluralistic than before, with the 'lay arena' outside governmental organizations becoming more diversifed and open, but also setting different criteria for the production, use, and legitimacy of knowledge. In this changing environment, political scientists may play a greater advisory role in the future. One issue that requires examining with the future in mind is how the questions of age and, in particular, gender play a part in the advisory aspects of political scientists' careers in the Netherlands.

#### References


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## Changing Policy Advisory Dynamics in the 2000s: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Turkey

*Caner Bakir and H. Tolga Bolukbasi*

### 14.1 Introduction

This chapter maps the changing features of the policy advisory system in Turkey and explores the policy advisory roles of Turkish political scientists in the 2000s. We take policy advisory systems as systems "of interlocking actors, with a unique confguration in each sector and jurisdiction, who provide information, knowledge and recommendations for action to policy makers" (Craft & Howlett, 2012: 80). In mapping the institutional features of Turkey's policy advisory system, we follow the editors of this volume (Chap. 2) who rely on the multi-dimensional locational policy advisory system model developed by Blum and Brans (2017). The demand

Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey e-mail: cbakir@ku.edu.tr

© The Author(s) 2022 307 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_14

C. Bakir

H. T. Bolukbasi (\*) Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey e-mail: bolukbasi@bilkent.edu.tr

side of the policy advisory system comprises a variety of decision makers who receive policy advice through several different access points. On the supply side of the advisory system, on the other hand, are policy advisors offering advice to the aforesaid decision makers. This chapter focuses on the advisory roles of political scientists employed at universities in Turkey on the supply side and contextualizes these with the demand side of the country's advisory system.

Public policy research suggests that policy advisory systems feature nationally specifc characteristics. There seems to be a general consensus in the literature that the type of policy advisory system, among other things, systematically varies across countries with their respective levels of development (Howlett, 2019) and systems of government (Hustedt & Veit, 2017). It is therefore no wonder that the editors of this volume conclude that "the policy advisory system in any country refects the broader and deeper political-administrative-social system in that country" (Brans et al., 2022, Chap. 2 this volume). This chapter will thus explore the advisory roles of political scientists in Turkey's changing policy advisory system against the background of the ever-increasing centralization of executive power in the country over the course of the 2000s.

The chapter presents the fndings of an exploratory case study on Turkey's policy advisory system and the advisory role of political scientists, based on empirical data collected using a variety of methods. First, it relies on the data obtained from the responses to the ProSEPS survey, a crossnational study conducted in more than 30 European countries within the framework of the ProSEPS COST Action, which included questions on the advisory roles of European political scientists. This chapter focuses on the responses provided by a sample of 97 political scientists working in political science, public administration and international relations departments at universities in Turkey, collected during the period January– February 2019. These survey results are then contextualized with other recent scholarship and case study material collected through interviews with policymakers carried out for the purposes of various different research projects, the review of programming documents and a survey of printed publications collected over the course of the 2010s. Rather than presenting conclusive evidence on the policy advisory system and the role of political scientists within that system, the chapter aims to open up new avenues of research and help scholars develop hypotheses to be tested with further data.

The chapter is structured as follows. The second section outlines the changing features of Turkey's policy advisory system in an environment characterized by the centralization of executive power within a hybrid political regime. It explores how government actors have dictated the terms of engagement of societal actors in the policy process over the last two decades. It also compares the ways in which government actors in general, and the president's offce in particular, have been treating politicalstrategic and everyday agenda items differently in receiving policy advice. It concludes by examining how Turkey's policy advisory system is increasingly infuenced by a host of processes, including the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. The third section explores the main access points through which political scientists bring their expertise to policy processes by drawing on the Locational PAS Model developed by Blum and Brans (2017). It traces the extent to which political scientists' access is institutionalized both within and at the intersections between the governmental arena and the societal arena and examines the degree of such access. It does so by exploring the dynamics of access in the processes of policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. The fourth section presents the policy advisory roles of political scientists in Turkey with the help of the ProSEPS survey. After having introduced the survey, this section outlines the characteristics of those political scientists who provide advice. We then explore the main recipients of policy advice, the different types of advisory activity, the predominant roles of political scientists in Turkey's policy advisory system and also political scientists' normative positions on their relationship to policymaking and policy actors. The ffth section offers our conclusions.

#### 14.2 Turkey's Changing Policy Advisory System

The policy advisory system in Turkey operated increasingly within the context of an ever-increasing centralization of executive power during the 2000s. During this period, Turkey witnessed the strengthening of the *de facto* presidentialization of its parliamentary system, which was followed by the introduction of a new presidential system of government in 2018. This section of the present chapter shows how changes in the system of government have led to incremental changes in Turkey's policy style. It then examines how such changes in policy style have been subject to fve different processes: the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice.

#### *14.2.1 Changes in Turkey's System of Government*

The June 2018 election resulted in the transformation of Turkey's system of government into a presidential system against the backdrop of a hybrid regime.1 The new system saw the abolition of the offce of prime minister, to be replaced by that of the president. The offceholder also became the head of state as well as of Turkey's government and ruling party. Traditionally, presidential systems of government come with a tradition of strong leadership, impositional and proactive policy styles and the extensive use of institutional resources (e.g. presidential decrees with the effect of laws) as tools in the appointment, dismissal, transfer and promotion of politicians, judges and senior bureaucrats (Bakir, 2020). This leads to the centralization of the core executive and the presidential bureaucracy. In this system, the centralization of the executive branch and the presidential bureaucracy offer quicker, more decisive policy responses than a parliamentary system of government. These kinds of response come about due to institutionalized political loyalty, obedience and commitment to implement the orders of the president and/or the presidential offce without delay or veto. However, there are risks of policy design and implementation failures when policy problems are wrongly diagnosed, their policy solutions are mistaken and/or complementary policy instrument mixes are poorly implemented, due to pressures requiring hasty responses (Bakir, 2020). This is because (1) there is both a limited delegation of discretionary authority and autonomy to the executive branch and the bureaucracy and limited incentives for public sector actors to take discretionary action and (2) there is limited inclusiveness and social diversity in relation to the defnition of problems and the articulation and deliberation of policy solutions (Bakir, 2020: 427, 429–430; see also Sobaci et al., 2018). Thus, there is limited space for genuine policy feedback and instrument calibration and potential greater risk of failure in the policy design and implementation process (Bakir, 2020: 425).

<sup>1</sup>Following his election by popular vote in August 2014 under the parliamentary system, the president was re-elected in the presidential elections. Following the June 2018 presidential election, the president's ruling party regained a clear parliamentary majority, winning 317 out of 550 seats.

#### *14.2.2 Changes in Policy Style*

Turkey's policy style, based on the country's historical Napoleonic administrative traditions and its majoritarian political-institutional arrangements, has been characterized by "statism" under the parliamentary system of government (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019). These key pillars of that style have had two key implications for the policy process. Firstly, by concentrating all political authority, power and resources in the centre, the Napoleonic administrative tradition endowed government actors with centralized administrative power over the agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision-making and implementation processes. Secondly, majoritarian political institutions magnifed the impact of the centralized administrative power on policy processes, especially when there was a single-party government in power. Typical of the statist policy styles worldwide (Squevin, 2022), Turkey's key government actors remained *the* central, exclusive actors, over-determining state-society relations in hierarchical ways in policy processes. One typical characteristic of this engagement was the fact that government actors engaged with societal groups in selective ways—ultimately it was almost always government actors who defned the terms of this engagement (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019).

During the 2000s, government actors have become even more selective in their engagement with societal actors. While government actors predominate the entire policy process, their selective approach has been more evident in the agenda-setting, policy formulation and decision-making processes than in policy implementation. In the former processes, government actors have reached out to certain societal actors while freezing out others. The system of interest intermediation and representation, where societal actors compete for open access, has therefore been much less competitive. In the implementation processes, however, there has been more room for increasingly competitive forms of interaction in the interest intermediation and representation system. At this stage, the degree to which government actors have been insulated has varied depending on the agenda items. When government actors have pursued political-strategic agenda items, they have not refrained from acting unilaterally. Such engagement with societal actors has been defned on the basis of a selective approach, in that we see a monopolization of decision-making regarding who gets involved and who gets frozen out. When they pursue everyday agenda items, however, government actors may choose to engage with a wider span of societal actors. Although there has been some variation here across agenda types, there have still been discernible patterns in this engagement process, where governmental actors have been able to pick and choose those actors to be involved in the policy processes. Such selective engagement has largely resulted in the co-optation of those societal actors allowed to play a role in policy processes. In one way or another, government actors have had the last word on whether, and if so, which, on what issue, when and how to include societal actors in policy processes (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019, on the basis of Schmidt 1996).

To be sure, centralization has always been part and parcel of the statist policy style. Yet, the presentialization of the Turkish political system has strengthened the centralization tendency even further, extending the centre's grip all the way down to processes of policy implementation and crowding out spaces for policy advice from a variety of actors in the policy cycle. Layered onto the statist administrative tradition, the president presides over the centralized hierarchical system of government and a centralized administration (Bakir, 2020). The president's desires, preferences, choices and decisions shape how policy networks respond to policy problems. In other words, presidential policy preferences are not contested or reversed through external checks and balances by executive, legislative, judicial and/or bureaucratic actors. Thus, this is a new version of the centralization of public policymaking and the politicization of the civil service which goes beyond the traditional statist policy style. Turkey now observes the centralization of the executive, referring to the greater use of the president's unilateral power in setting respective agendas as well as "steering their implementation through the institutions and actors of the presidential system of government" (Bakir, 2020: 428). Unsurprisingly, the central features of the current policy style include "exclusiveness" and "selectiveness" and embrace social "uniformity" "in values, religious beliefs, life circumstances, lifestyles and other aspects of the human condition" (Bakir, 2020: 427, 429–430). Policy design, thus, takes place "through 'backyard' presidential executive 'offces, and embedded civil society organisations involving an exclusive group of individuals with mostly uniform rather than diverse educational backgrounds and worldviews" (Bakir, 2020: 427). Therefore, centralization and presidentialization have rendered statist selectiveness and exclusiveness even stronger.

#### *14.2.3 Basics of the Policy Advisory System*

The country's predominantly statist policy style under a parliamentary system of government has shaped the ways in which the national policy advisory system operates, allowing government actors to dictate the selective terms of engagement with societal actors. Turkey's policy advisory system thus features elements of statism refecting the country's overall policy style. The national policy advisory system, therefore, is characterized by an entrenched understanding of the hierarchy between government actors and advisors. In this system, government actors selectively invite in certain policy advisors while freezing out others. In contrast to pluralist policy advisory systems, prospects for competitive access are very limited.

Like all policy advisory systems, Turkey's advisory system has also been undergoing a series of processes, albeit limited and specifc to issue areas, that have affected Europe and beyond, namely, the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. First, there has been an *externalization* of advice, where actors outside of the state bureaucracy exercise infuence over the policy process (Craft & Howlett, 2013: 188). New sources of advice have emerged during the 2000s that have remained outside of the state bureaucracy. It is striking to observe elements of externalization creeping into the statist policy advisory system, where a bureaucratic machine has traditionally displayed a relatively substantial (Napoleonic) bureaucratic and administrative capacity (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 364–365).

Secondly, processes of externalization have been coupled with the *politicization* of policy advice during the 2000s (Orhan, 2018). Politicization, in this context, is a process whereby "partisan-political aspects of policy … displace non-partisan public sector sources of policy advice" (Craft & Howlett, 2013: 188). In a politicized advisory system, state actors favour "political judgement" in the policy process more than "technical or scientifc evidence" (Brans et al., 2017: 5). Although elements of politicization have always been present in Turkey's policy advisory system (Bakir & Ertan, 2018: 3), the 2000s have seen an increasing trend towards practices allowing partisan recruitment and back-door entry. The top-level appointments have become less open to competition, and even in the case of positions with technical portfolios, appointments have become increasingly less merit-based (European Commission, 2020: 12, 20). The 2000s have seen an increasing turnover rate of senior positions, which is an indicator of politicization (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 363–364 based on OECD, 2016: 5, 13–14). Politicization is also evident in the government's engagement with experts in the policymaking processes. Although we do not have any direct evidence for the politicization of the advisory system based on the ProSEPS survey, the results presented below suggest that certain university professors are appointed to key positions in order to provide politicized external advice. Furthermore, other recent research shows that the government invites in a limited number of "embedded experts" in selected policymaking processes (Orhan, 2018: 133).

Thirdly, the *privatization* of policy advice has accompanied the frst two processes. Often referred to as marketization, privatization is intricately related to processes of externalization of policy advice. Privatization is generally defned as outsourcing of "policy advice to agencies at arm's length from government or to management consultancy frms" (Brans et al., 2017: 5). This trend is widely observed in many countries in Europe and beyond. In Turkey too, there has been a mushrooming of consulting companies providing government consultancy services over the past decade (Ministry of Development, 2018: 4; Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 365; Visier, 2016: 30; Bakir & Ertan, 2018: 4, 10). These consulting companies employ university professors, generally on a short-term basis in non-key expert positions. Acquiring such services through external bodies represents a channel through which advisory contents from university professors are disseminated.

Fourthly, the process of marketization has also been directly related to a fourth trend, namely, that of *Europeanization*, which largely takes place through the implementation of operations and projects under the EU's Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA) programming.2 The IPA requires that in the implementation processes of the *acquis*, consultancy companies outside of government carry out all projects and programmes. Since the early 2000s, these companies have typically relied on non-in-house technical teams composed of university professors tasked with carrying out these implementation processes since the early 2000s. Similarly, in policy evaluation exercises pertaining to EU accession, most projects and programmes funded by the EU-IPA have to be monitored and evaluated externally by consultancy companies. Political scientists in

<sup>2</sup> IPA, the Instrument for Pre-accession Assistance, is the EU's fnancial instrument through which the EU "supports reforms in the 'enlargement countries' with fnancial and technical help" (https://ec.europa.eu/neighbourhood-enlargement/instruments/ overview\_en).

particular, and in general university professors with technical expertise in the areas covered by the EU accession chapters staff the technical teams responsible for projects and operations. In this way, they offer their services to the ambitious process of transforming Turkey's entire public administration (Bolukbasi et al., 2018). Expertise in the technicalities of implementing the *acquis communautaire* therefore constitutes an asset in advice supply. This asset renders political scientists of value in the policy advisory system.

Fifth, the *societalization of advice*, which is common in many other European countries (Brans et al., 2017: 5), is also becoming increasingly visible in Turkey, at least at face value given the rather restrictive application of public consultation processes. In 2006, the government adopted new rules governing the drafting of legislative proposals (*Resmi Gazete*, 2006). These rules require public consultation with civil society organizations. Despite the implementation of these rules, results in terms of actual consultation practices have been mixed (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019). For most policy proposals, consultation is not systematically or openly carried out. In cases where consultation is carried out, it is limited to the period *after* the policies have already been shaped, and even then only on a selective basis (Bolukbasi & Ertugal, 2019: 363–364 based on OECD, 2015: 34; Orhan, 2018: 133). All this does not imply that Turkey's policy advisory system is entirely closed. In fact, the advisory system has been opening up to input from think tanks and civil society organizations since the 1990s. What is important here is that government actors in the system have become increasingly selective. Only the think tanks that have close links to the ruling government are invited to participate in policy processes (European Commission, 2020: 14).3 The system remains effectively closed to actors that are "critical" of government policies (Doyle, 2017; Ekal, 2019; Orhan, 2018: 143).4

3These think tanks have been seen as "partisan think tanks" (Orhan, 2018: 2 based on Yıldız, 2013: 196–197).

4Policies on environmental policies and gender, for example, are two areas widely discussed in the literature, and with regard to which the system is closed to actors who are critical of government policies (Doyle, 2017; Ekal, 2019; Orhan, 2018).

## 14.3 A Locational Model of the Policy Advisory System in Turkey

This section explores Turkey's policy advisory system with the help of the Locational Policy Advisory Systems Model developed by Blum and Brans (2017). The model locates policy advisory actors in three arenas (in this volume labelled the government arena, the academic arena and the societal arena). Political scientists employed at universities and research institutes fnd themselves in the academic arena, although they will venture into, or engage with, other arenas or intersections between these arenas in regard to the production and dissemination of policy advice. We shall now take a closer look at the advisory engagement of political scientists and explore the main access points for political scientists bringing expertise to policy processes and the degree of their institutionalized access.

#### *14.3.1 Government Arena*

Political science graduates are certainly not absent from the internal government arena. Political scientists play key roles as elected members of parliament. At the time of writing (February 2021), there are 62 members of parliament (out of 600) with undergraduate or graduate degrees in political science, public administration or political studies.5 They also serve as ministers and deputy ministers. In the current cabinet, 2 ministers and 15 deputy ministers have undergraduate or graduate degrees in political science or related felds. What about political science academics? There have been examples of political scientists being "invited" to serve on scientifc committees tasked with preparing key legal codes such as the Law on Foreigners and International Protection (Law No. 6458). Political scientists, when invited to participate in such scientifc committees, also deliver hearings in parliamentary committees, especially on matters related to technical, everyday agenda items. Political scientists have also been serving as members of "specialization commissions" and "working groups" drafting background studies during the preparation of Development Plans providing strategic guidelines for public policies. The tradition of having political scientists as members of such commissions and working groups since the 1960s has helped institutionalize their advisory

<sup>5</sup>Nine of these have PhD degrees in these felds.

roles. Most recently, selected political scientists have served as members of the "inner circle"—the Policy Boards instituted under the Presidency Offce in 2018 (Bakir, 2020).

#### *14.3.2 Societal Arena*

Political scientists may advise interest groups, trade unions, employers' associations, consultancy frms, non-governmental organizations and citizen groups. As in the other arenas or intersections thereof, access varies with the type of agenda item at different stages of the policy process. As the policy advisory system becomes increasingly centralized, political scientists are even more selectively invited to participate, at the same time as actors in the societal arena move closer to the political centre. The degree of access has been increasing, in a selective manner, through the externalization of policy activities previously carried out by state actors. The brand names of consultancy companies have been seen as important in framing and legitimizing policies formulated by government actors. Being involved in such privately sourced advice has increasingly become an indirect advisory route for Turkish political scientists.

In policy implementation processes, political scientists can gain access to the policy advisory system with regard to implementation projects and operations funded by the EU-IPA. Political scientists may engage directly with government through research-based projects commissioned or tendered by central ministries. Yet, their involvement is becoming increasingly indirect. Most of the implementation operations and projects, as well as policy evaluation tasks, are increasingly being carried out by consultancy frms who hire political scientists as expert members of their technical teams. Political scientists' access to the evaluation processes has been growing thanks to new rules on legislative processes (*Resmi Gazete*, 2006) and the launching of EU accession negotiations since the mid-2000s. These changes were designed to lead to an increase in the number of regulatory impact assessments. Despite an initial increase in such, the government's demand for assessments has declined overall (OECD, 2019: 5).

In policy implementation and evaluation too, opportunities for political scientists' access vary depending on the type of agenda item. On politicalstrategic agenda items, whether or not political scientists are invited to participate depends on partisan factors. On everyday agenda items, however, access opportunities may be greater for political scientists working with organizations that do not have strong links to the government.

#### *14.3.3 Intersecting Areas*

The intersecting arenas include advisory bodies and think tanks. Again, given that policy advice is increasingly becoming the exclusive preserve of the "inner circle" under the presidential system, divergent individual, organizational and/or collective actors with diverse intentions and preferences are excluded from participation in the policy advisory system. This not only restricts membership of advisory bodies to a select few political scientists but also limits their involvement to the type of think tank the government chooses to listen to or even co-opt for its own political purposes.

## 14.4 The Policy Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Turkey

#### *14.4.1 The ProSEPS Survey Instrument*

The ProSEPS survey was based on an online questionnaire sent out to over 11,000 political scientists in 39 countries. The average response rate for the survey was 20.7%, and valid responses number 2354 after cleaning. Once the questionnaire items had been fnalized by the research team, they were translated into Turkish. The questionnaire was administered to 579 political scientists, and the process was concluded in February 2019. The response rate in Turkey was 16.8%, with an overall total of 97 responses recorded.

One key objective of the ProSEPS survey was to identify the predominant role of political scientists in national policy advisory systems. The ideal-typical roles are the pure academic, the expert, the opinionating scholar and the public intellectual. In the rest of this section, we explore a set of characteristics of the political scientists assuming policy advisory roles, the recipients of policy advice, the types of advisory activities, the predominant roles of political scientists in Turkey's policy advisory system and the normative positions and motivation for engaging in the provision of policy advice.

#### *14.4.2 Key Characteristics of Political Scientists Assuming Advisory Roles*

The political scientists in Turkey who participated in the survey do not differ signifcantly from their counterparts in Europe in demographic terms. The median age of the sample of political scientists in Turkey is 44 years, compared to 46 years in the overall sample. As to gender, a little over 28% of political scientists in the Turkey sample are women. This is slightly higher than the overall sample percentage of 25%.

In terms of their educational attainment, all of the political scientists who participated in the survey in Turkey hold a PhD. When it comes to their employment status, two-thirds of the respondents (66%) in Turkey are employed on a permanent contract; 25% of the Turkish sample work under a non-permanent contract. Both fgures are almost identical to those in the overall sample.

The composition of the specialization subfelds reported by political scientists who participated in the survey is rather similar to that of the overall sample. An overwhelming majority of respondents in Turkey specialize in three sub-disciplines: international relations (31% in Turkey as opposed to 20% overall), comparative politics (30% in Turkey as opposed to 28% overall) and political theory (21% in Turkey as opposed to 13% overall). The subfelds that are represented the least in the Turkish sample are political economy (4%), local government (4%) and gender studies (0%). One visible difference between participants from Turkey compared to the overall sample is in the feld of security studies, with 9% of participants from Turkey specialized in that feld compared to 4% of those in the overall sample, which may largely be accounted for by Turkey's geopolitical position.

In terms of channels of policy advice, political scientists were posed a question in the survey about the channels through which they provide advice. The results would seem to indicate that political scientists in Turkey prefer traditional channels, such as publications and research articles, with 36% of respondents declaring they use this channel at least once a year. This preference is in keeping with the corresponding fndings for their colleagues in Europe. This channel is followed by research reports (22.7%) and policy reports, briefs and memos (21.6% less frequently than once a year). The least preferred channels for providing policy advice in Turkey on a yearly basis are blogs and social media (7%).

As regards the level of governance at which advice is provided, of those who answered this question, Turkish political scientists declared that they provide the majority of their advice at national (44.3%) and sub-national (28.5%) levels. Advice is provided at EU and transnational levels signifcantly less frequently, amounting to, respectively, 6.2% and 9.3% of the overall advice given by political scientists in Turkey. These fndings are broadly in line with those for the overall sample of European political scientists.

The level of internationalization of political scientists is a fundamental aspect we explored in ProSEPS. One key indicator of this level is their experience in working abroad. Of the political scientists who participated in the survey, 32% had worked abroad. The level of internationalization of political scientists in Turkey, measured in this way, is therefore not too different from that of their counterparts in Europe (at an average of 36% for the overall sample).

#### *14.4.3 Recipients of Advice*

In terms of demand for the advisory activities of political scientists, the sample in Turkey signifcantly differs from the overall sample. Table 14.1 shows, in percentages, the actors with whom political scientists engage when giving policy advice. Over a third of political scientists in Turkey give advice to civil society organizations (42.2%), think tanks (34.0%) and civil


**Table 14.1** Recipients of advisory activities %—Turkey

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: "With which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?"

servants (34.0%). While these fgures are not much different from those for the entire sample, Turkey's respondents provide much less advice to executive politicians (only 6.2 %) than do their European colleagues (29.6%). They also turn signifcantly less to legislative politicians. While a little over 10% of political scientists in Turkey provide advice to legislative politicians, this fgure stands at 30% for the overall sample. Figures are higher for advising political parties, but at 19.5%, it is still well below the 28% seen for the overall sample.

Two enigmas merit further investigation here. Firstly, why do Turkish political scientists give so much less advice to political actors than do their European counterparts? Secondly, why is it that at the same time, they provide advice to civil society organizations almost as much as their counterparts in Europe do?

In addressing these two enigmas, we take as our starting point the institutional traits of Turkey's policy advisory system. As discussed above, government actors in Turkey hold the power to be highly selective in their engagement with all actors in the advisory system. In the Turkish policy advisory system, government actors are in a position to dictate who gets invited to participate in, or remains frozen out of, the various stages of the policy process. The state is not entirely closed to the input of advisors; however, governmental actors have the last word when it comes to selecting which policy advisors to engage and when. Political scientists, like actors in the societal arena too, are therefore not operating in a competitive policy advisory system, even though more than one in three of the political scientists in the sample (40.2%) *has* provided advisory services to different government actors (civil servants and executive politicians) at least once. As in all engagements with non-governmental actors, the type of policy and the type of advice given are determined by governmental actors. On political-strategic issues particularly, only a small, handpicked clique of advisors, each very close to one other key governmental actor, are invited to provide advice. With regard to everyday agenda items, on the other hand, the pool of advisers is likely to be broader.

What would then explain the very high percentages of political scientists providing advice to civil society organizations (42.2%) and think tanks (34.0%)? While these percentages are not very different from those in the overall sample in purely numerical terms, there may still be some qualitative differences given Turkey's presidential policy advisory system. It might be that political scientists provide more advice to civil society organizations and think tanks simply because they are no longer being called upon to advise executive and legislative politicians, and thus, they turn to their second best outlet for their advisory services—in this case civil society organizations and think tanks.

An alternative explanation may be found in the changing nature of civil society organizations and think thanks in Turkey. Recent research on civil society suggests that the distance between these actors and governmental actors has diminished and that several of them are being increasingly coopted by the state (Paker et al., 2013; Yabanci, 2019; Massicard & Visier, 2019). Moreover, funding such organizations would free state agencies from the usual administrative and fnancial constraints that come with directly purchasing advisory services (Yülek, 2008; Yıldız, 2013; Ministry of Development, 2018). Some of the advice political scientists provide to civil society organizations and think tanks may thus be, albeit indirectly, targeting governmental actors (Orhan, 2018). Again, we expect this to be so in the case of everyday agenda items, where governmental actors take advice from experts beyond their close inner circles of traditional advisors. While the ProSEPS survey does not provide any hard evidence of this, at least some of the advice (with indeed the highest frequencies in the Turkish sample) given to civil society organizations and think thanks, we believe, may indirectly be aimed for governmental actors.

Whether they end up with their second best recipients, or actually get to advice government actors albeit indirectly, political scientists fnd themselves in a buyer's market institutionally shaped by the country's presidential policy advisory system, with government actors hierarchically positioned at the centre, calling the shots on which political scientist to invite in, on what issue, when and how to include him (mostly) or her in the policy process.

#### *14.4.4 Types of Advisory Activity*

The survey's results with regard to the types of advisory activity engaged in by political scientists may further illustrate the centralized nature of Turkey's policy advisory system. Table 14.2 shows that one of the most frequent advisory activities engaged in by political scientists in Turkey is the provision of value judgements and normative arguments, together with the evaluation of existing policies and the examination of the causes and consequences of policy problems at least once in the last three years. The fact that two-thirds (66.6%) of all political scientists in Turkey in the sample provide value judgements and normative arguments stands in


**Table 14.2** Frequency and type of advice % (*N*)—Turkey

*Note*: Question: "How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors?"

marked contrast to the reluctance of their European colleagues—less than one in three (32.0%)—to do so.

The tendency of political scientists in Turkey to concern themselves very much with providing value judgements and normative statements may offer a clue to the nature of the engagement in the policy advisory system. In order to be invited to participate, advisors in the policy advisory system are more likely to be expected to provide endorsement, validation and support of and for the president's line and that of the presidential offce. This may also be interpreted as a sign of the politicization that has been characterizing developments in Europe (see Chap. 2). Other than this, the Turkish political scientists in the sample do not behave much differently from their colleagues in Europe in terms of their activities related to consultancy and advisory services and the making of forecasts and/or the carrying out of polls, both of which score the lowest in the types of advisory activity engaged in.

#### *14.4.5 The Predominant Type*

Table 14.3 shows that, based on the operational defnition of ideal types presented in Chap. 2 of this book, roughly one out of two political scientists (52.6%) in Turkey who participated in the survey are *opinionating scholars*. These political scientists mostly provide informal advice on a very frequent basis to politicians and policymakers, journalists and the wider audience. These opinionating scholars use all available channels in order to provide advice, including talking to advice recipients directly either in person, by phone or email. They rely on opinion-editorial and newspapers columns, appear on TV and radio interviews and actively use social media and the Internet, rather than producing extensive published material.

The centralized, selective nature of the statist policy advisory system provides key government actors with considerable room to use their discretionary powers. This opens up avenues for the frequent informal advice that opinionating scholars are known for. When recipients of advice are civil society organizations and think tanks, opinionating scholars fnd it convenient to provide their advice through informal channels. Table 14.3 also shows that the share of opinionating scholars in all political scientists in Turkey (52.6%) is not much different than the share of opinionating scholars in Europe (48.7%).

Table 14.3 also shows that only about one in ten (11.3%) political scientists takes on the role of *expert* in Turkey. Such experts offer advice on a variable basis, and they do so formally and usually when asked to do so. The advice, which is usually empirical research or applied research based, is offered to policymakers in the public administration, on committees and


**Table 14.3** Advisory roles in proportion to overall sample—Turkey

*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note:* Types operationalized on the basis of content of advice and frequency. See Chap. 3

in think tanks. Advice is provided through direct or indirect publications such as research papers, memos, reports and strategy papers. Dwarfed in terms of numbers by opinionating scholars, technical experts are likely to play key advisory roles in policy processes concerning in particular the everyday items on Turkey's policy advisory system agenda. The low number of experts among political scientists in Turkey also stands in contrast with much higher numbers of experts (26.6%) among political scientists in Europe. The fact that experts are heavily outnumbered by other advisory types in Turkey is in line with the fnding above that there are signifcantly more political scientists in Turkey's political advisory system, who provide value judgements and normative statements, than their colleagues in policy advisory systems in Europe.

Not all political scientists in the sample in Turkey engage with the country's policy advisory system. Table 14.3 also shows that almost a third of political scientists (32%) are *pure academics*, that is, scholars who are mostly preoccupied with their academic activities. This percentage is higher than the equivalent fgure for the overall sample (20.3%). While some of these pure academics in Turkey may be deliberately refraining from engaging with the policy advisory system, there may be others who would have played more active roles had they been invited in or not frozen out by governmental actors.

Among the ideal types, the least frequent (4.1%) category in Turkey in terms of advising activity is the *public intellectual*, and this ratio is similar in the entire sample of political scientists across Europe.

In terms of the gender balance across ideal types of advisory role, the few public intellectuals are all men. Most strikingly, by far the highest share of Turkish female political scientists are pure academics, who never engage in any advising activity whatsoever. Only a few female political scientists engage in policy advisory roles. This means that the majority of women political scientists in Turkey either refrain from playing policy advisory roles or are not invited to do so.

#### *14.4.6 Normative Perceptions of Policy Advice Giving*

When asked about the roles that political scientists should play as policy advisors, the ProSEPS survey points to mixed results (Table 14.4). Nine out of ten respondents (90.7%) believe that political scientists should become involved in policymaking. Moreover, the percentage of those who believe they have a professional obligation to engage in public debate



*Note*: Question: "To what extent do you agree with the following statements?"

(87.6%) is almost as high. The fact that almost all political scientists approve of involvement in policymaking attests to their sense of public mission. This is not surprising given the statist nature of the country's policy advisory system, where governmental actors represent the ultimate authority. The sense of public mission is also evident in the very high number of political scientists who feel a professional obligation to engage in public debate.

Despite this strong sense of their public mission, when it comes to engaging with actors directly almost a third of political scientists report hesitance. The survey results show that only 70.1% of political scientists agree that political scientists should directly engage with policy actors. The most polarizing statement seems to be that political scientists should offer evidence-based advice but not be directly involved in policymaking—more than half (57.8%) of the respondents agree, while another 40.1% disagree, revealing signifcant levels of hesitance. Such hesitance may stem from the increasing politicization of the policy advisory system—political scientists may feel less comfortable in engaging with policy actors whom they view to be politicized.

#### 14.5 Conclusions

This chapter aimed at exploring the changing features of the policy advisory system in Turkey and the role political scientists play in that system. The literature has not yet classifed policy advisory systems on the basis of their institutionalized features. Since a national policy advisory system is framed by an overall policy style, we build on the literature on policy styles to explore the key institutional features of Turkey's policy advisory system. The recent literature shows that the policy style in Turkey has been changing as the system of government has been undergoing centralization. Over-determining state-society relations in hierarchical ways, it is the president domineering governmental actors who increasingly defne the terms of engagement with societal actors in policy processes.

The changing policy style shapes a national policy advisory system based on a non-competitive, exclusive, uniform, hierarchical engagement between governmental actors and advisors. These rules of the game apply to the political scientists taking roles in the policy process. In the advisory system too, therefore, the president and the other principal actors in his "inner circle" have the last word on selectively inviting certain policy advisors to engage with them, whilst freezing out others. In policymaking processes, the policy advisory system remains highly selective, and advisors cannot openly compete for access to that system. The dominant central features of the emerging policy advisory system are it being exclusive to the aforesaid inner circle and it embracing the uniformity of belief systems, particularly as regards political-strategic agenda items. However, policy implementation processes may offer somewhat greater scope for more inclusive and divergent forms of interaction with regard to everyday agenda items. Like their European counterparts, Turkey's policy advisory system has also been undergoing a series of changes, including the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. These processes of change seemed to have been layered with exclusion and uniformization, hence strengthening the evercentralized features of Turkey's advisory system, rather than moving it in the direction of competitive pluralism.

According to the ProSEPS survey, a typical political scientist in Turkey who provides policy advice is a male opinionating scholar offering mainly informal face-to-face advice, mostly to civil society organizations, think tanks and civil servants. He is an expert on international relations, comparative politics and political theory. Political scientists in Turkey who participated in the survey do not differ from their counterparts in Europe with regard to their demographic characteristics, educational attainment, employment status and specialized subfelds. Like their colleagues in Europe, respondents mainly use informal channels. The level of governance also does not differ signifcantly between political scientists in Turkey and their colleagues in Europe. Respondents provide most of their advice at the national level, followed by the sub-national level. The level of internationalization of political scientists in Turkey and Europe, too, is very similar.

With regard to recipients of advice, there is a striking difference between the two groups in terms of the advice they provide to executive politicians, legislative politicians and political parties. Signifcantly lower numbers of political scientists in Turkey provide advice to these categories of recipients than their counterparts in Europe. What unites political scientists in Turkey with their colleagues in Europe is that most respondents in both Turkey and Europe report that they give advice to civil servants. An equal share of political scientists in Turkey and Europe provide advice to civil society organizations and think tanks, too. Advice to civil society organizations and think tanks in Turkey, which have increasingly been taken over by the centralizing government, may actually end up being provided to government actors, albeit indirectly.

This chapter presents the fndings of an exploratory case study of Turkey's policy advisory system and the advisory role of the country's political scientists. Further research is called for regarding the ways in which the policy advisory system is being transformed as it gets exposed to the externalization, politicization, privatization, Europeanization and societalization of advice. We would also invite scholars to explore the aspects of continuity and change in the advisory roles of political scientists in this hybrid regime, within the context of an increasingly centralized policy advisory system that political scientists are all the time more selectively invited to participate in.

#### References


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## Making Political Science Matter: The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in the United Kingdom

*Matthew Flinders, Justyna Bandola-Gill, and Alexandra Anderson*

## 15.1 Introduction

It is possible to identify at least three inter-related streams of scholarship on the discipline of political science (or political *studies* as it is generally known in the United Kingdom).1 The frst is a historical strand that charts the emergence and early ambitions of the discipline and is refected in

1Notwithstanding Mike Kenny's questioning 'about whether the very idea of a "discipline" projects a spurious unity, and misleading singularity, on to what are in reality internally diverse and loosely bounded felds of study' (Kenny, 2004).

M. Flinders • A. Anderson (\*)

University of Sheffeld, Sheffeld, UK e-mail: alexandra.anderson@sheffeld.ac.uk

J. Bandola-Gill University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland works such as Stefan Collini, Donald Winch and John Burrow's *The Noble Science of Politics: A Study in Nineteenth Century Intellectual History* (1983) and Robert Adcock, Mark Bevir and Shannon Stimson's *Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges Since 1880* (2007). The second is a more critical stream of work that explores and critiques the evolution of the discipline during the twentieth century. David Ricci's *The Tragedy of Political Science*: *Politics, Scholarship and Democracy* (1984) and Gabriel Almond's *A Discipline Divided: Schools and Sects in Political Science* (1990) form essential reference points within this second seam. This fows into a third stream of more recent scholarship that seeks to build upon the existence of long-standing conficts, concerns and contradictions by focusing on re-establishing a more explicit link between 'the study of' politics and democracy and 'the practice of' politics and democracy Key contributions within this body of work would include Sanford F. Schram and Brian Caterino's *Making Political Science Matter* (2006), Gerry Stoker, B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre's *The Relevance of Political Science* (2015) and Rainer Eisfeld's *Empowering Citizens, Engaging the Public: Political Science for the Twenty-First Century* (2019). Taken together, what this body of work highlights is the existence of a longstanding and continuing schism within the feld about how to balance the need for scientifc objectivity, intellectual independence and professional autonomy, on the one hand, while also demonstrating the social relevance, public benefts and policy impact of political science, on the other. This tension or gap provides the focus of this chapter as it explores the role of political scientists within the UK's policy advisory system.

One of the main challenges in terms of exploring this topic in the past has been the absence of any reliable data about how political scientists seek to engage with policy-making processes or even contribute to public debates about specifc policy controversies or options. This study responds to this challenge by exploring two new datasets which each in their own ways shed light on the complex network of channels through which political scientists seek to operate within policy advisory systems. The frst dataset is unique to the UK and utilises Claire Dunlop's analysis of the 181 'impact' case studies submitted to the 'Politics and International Studies' sub-panel of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) (Dunlop, 2018). The second dataset is the ProSEPS comparative survey of political scientists that was conducted during 2018–2019 and that included 33 countries. Taken together these sources of data lead us to offer three main arguments:


In order to substantiate these arguments this chapter is divided into three main sections. The frst section focuses on the historical evolution of the policy advisory system in the UK and the position of political scientists within it. The main conclusion of this opening section is that political science has traditionally not been a major actor within the policy advisory system until the past few decades. The second section adopts a locational model and utilises data from REF2014 to assess how political scientists have claimed to have had an impact within the policy advice system. This reveals an extensive range of engagement strategies and pathways to impact, many of which pre-date the formal introduction of non-academic impact as a component of the national audit framework. The third and fnal section drills down still further by utilising original ProSEPS survey data to explore not just *how* and *when* political scientists engage with policy-makers but also *why*.

## 15.2 The Policy Advisory System in the United Kingdom

The focus of this chapter is on the policy advice role(s) played by members of the political science community in the UK. In terms of charting these roles and mapping the main interfaces or 'docking points' between political scientists and policy-makers, the work of Jonathan Craft and Michael Howlett on 'policy advisory systems' provides a valuable analytical lens (Craft & Howlett, 2012). Policy advisory systems are structures of 'interlocking actors, with a unique confguration in each sector and jurisdiction, who provide information, knowledge and recommendations for action to policy makers' (Craft & Howlett, 2012, p. 80). Advice in such systems is seen as fowing from multiple sources, at times in intense competition with each other, with decision-makers sitting in the middle of a complex web of advisory actors. Subsequent research on policy advice has focused attention on both the policy advisory system as a unit of analysis per se and the activities of various actors (Hustedt & Veit, 2017). Policy advice can, through this lens, be interpreted quite simply as 'covering analysis of problems and the proposing of solutions' (Halligan, 1995, p. 139). The beneft of this approach is that studies have gradually expanded its analytical lens away from the behaviour of individual advisors and advisory practices to encompass a far more synergistic frame that acknowledges the dialectical manner in which various policy advice pathways interact (Aberbach & Rockman, 1989; Craft & Howlett, 2013). As an approach it also focuses attention on differences in tempo, intensity and sequencing, but *the role of academics, in general, or political scientists, in particular*, as a discrete subset of actors within policy advisory systems has not been the focus of sustained analysis.

The UK is generally considered an archetypal power-hoarding majoritarian democracy (Lijphart, 2012). Although recent reforms have adjusted the constitutional infrastructure from one of 'pure' to 'modifed' majoritaranism, the political culture remains informed by a low-trust, high-blame and adversarial mind set (see Flinders, 2009). A historical preference for 'responsible government' (i.e. strong, stable, centralised, insulated, etc.) over 'representative government (i.e. participatory, open, devolved, etc.) has led to the emergence of politico-administrative arrangements that, unlike consociationalist countries, have traditionally done little to facilitate widespread engagement in the policy-making system. The UK was, and to some extent remains, a 'winner-takes-all' democracy and ministers enjoy high levels of fexibility in relation to re-shaping government structures (Kelso, 2009, p. 223). The pluralist character of Dutch or even German politics and policy-making therefore provides something of a counterpoint to the conventionally elitist character of British politics.

That is not to suggest, however, that the political advisory system has not changed in recent decades. Studies of the policy advisory system in the UK have generally revealed the gradual erosion of public service policy capacity and a general trend of declining substantive experience in favour of generalist and process-heavy forms of policy work (Edwards, 2009; Foster, 2001; Gleeson et al., 2011; Page & Jenkins, 2005; Tiernan, 2011). A distinctive shift occurred in the 1980s with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, promoting a strong emphasis towards the externalisation and politicisation of policy advice due to her lack of confdence in both the neutrality and capacity of the permanent civil service (and to a large extent of most social scientists) (Foster, 2001; Fry, 1988). The closure of the Royal Institute of Public Administration (RIPA) in 1992 was arguably emblematic of a deeper set of changes within the policy advisory system. Originally established in May 1922, RIPA had sought to bridge the academic-practitioner divide in order to foster higher standards of both scholarly understanding and professional development. Its demise has been well documented, but the critical element for this section is that there was no appetite amongst ministers or senior offcials to step-in to save RIPA with what would have been a very modest resource allocation (see, e.g. Rhodes, 2011 and Shelley, 1993). As a result, the 1990s witnessed a distinct shift away from traditional policy advisory structures towards a hybrid system in which the role of politically appointed advisers and independent think tanks increased at the expense of long-standing constitutional ties that focused on the relationship between ministers and their senior offcials (Campbell & Wilson, 1995; Foster, 2001; Halligan, 1995; Page & Jenkins, 2005). Patrick Diamond has referred to this general decline of *internal/offcial capacity* combined with an increased reliance on *external/partisan advice* as a 'crisis of Whitehall' (Diamond, 2014).

Concerns about the lack of professional capacity vis-à-vis policy advice in the UK have consequently been the focus of a series of critical reports by the National Audit Offce (NAO) and the Institute for Government (IFG). For example, the IFG's report *Policy Making in the Real World: Evidence and Analysis* (2011) notes that '[t]here are signs that the policy profession is starting to address some of these problems. But there is considerable work to be done in order to create a realistic, coherent approach to improving policy making' (Institute for Government, 2011, p. 5). Reports also found that the Civil Service has been struggling to effectively support and implement new policy-making and that departments frequently have ad hoc policy strategies that are often fragmented (Institute for Government, 2017; National Audit Offce, 2017). The existing research base suggests that the evolution of the policy advisory system in the UK has become more distributed with an expansion of (1) internal [partisan] governmental capacity (political advisory systems, special advisers, new central policy units, etc.) and (2) external sources of advice (think tanks, commissions, task forces, review groups, etc.) at the expense of the traditional internal [neutral] public service sources (senior offcials, departmental briefs, etc.) (Craft & Halligan, 2017).

In order to understand the data presented in this chapter, it is necessary to contextualise it through a very brief focus on the history of British political studies and also upon the changing meta-governance of higher education in the UK.

As Jack Hayward, Brian Barry and Archie Brown's *The British Study of Politics in the Twentieth Century* (1999) and Wyn Grant's *The Development of a Discipline* (2010) each in their own ways serve to illustrate, the study of politics in the UK is distinctive in at least two ways. First, it exhibits a highly pluralist approach to theory and method which is arguably more diverse and inclusive than is generally found within the feld in other countries. Tight disciplinary 'boundary management' has never been a core concern in the UK; to the extent that questions have been raised about 'whether political studies—or even political science—is in fact a discrete discipline' (Warleigh-Lack & Cini, 2009, p. 7; Gieryn, 1999, p. 27). The second characteristic revolves around what Jack Hayward and Philip Norton have described as a long-standing tension in the Aristotelian conception of politics as a 'master science' between 'a theoretical preoccupation with political science as a vocation on the one hand and public service as a vocation on the other (Hayward & Norton, 1986, p. 8)'. As a result, 'an ineffectual zig-zag has taken place in the no man's land between rigidly separated theoretical and practical spheres (Ibid.)'.

At a broad level, it is therefore possible to suggest that historically political scientists have not been active or engaged members of the policy advisory system in the UK. That is not to suggest that some specifc scholars or sub-felds have not played an active role in producing theoretically informed policy relevant research but disciplinary histories generally identify the existence of a signifcant 'gap' between politics or policy-making 'as theory' and politics or policy-making 'as practice', especially due to the perception that the specialisms of political scientists could impede them from effectively contributing to a national, and therefore more generalised, policy process (Smith, 1986). Even when the policy advisory system was recalibrated under Mrs Thatcher, the politicisation that accompanied this shift was unlikely to create opportunities for an academic community that was overwhelmingly left-wing in political orientation (see, e.g. Halsey, 1992). The exception to this statement was the signifcant role of academic economists within key right-wing think tanks such as the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute (Harrison, 1994). Political scientists were, on the whole, 'outsiders' and therefore rarely engaged with or appointed to the main arenas or processes that tend to constitute policy advisory systems (i.e. advisory agencies, consultancies, special adviser roles, commissions of inquiry, etc.).

If the *demand-side* variables for political science to engage in the policy advisory system have traditionally been weak, then the *supply-side* variables have also arguably been problematic as the vaunted 'professionalisation' of the discipline in the 1990s and into the 2000s has very often veiled the emergence of an emphasis on a 'scientifc', 'objective' and increasingly quantitative disciplinary emphasis. Not only did this mean that there were very few incentives for political scientists to engage in policy advisory roles or processes but it also meant that the outputs of the discipline were increasingly specialised and inaccessible to non-academic readers. The risks of this 'road to irrelevance' had been highlighted ffty years earlier in Bernard Crick's frst book—*The American Science of Politics* (1959), and by the 2010s a major internal debate had erupted about the policy relevance and social impact of the discipline (Flinders & John, 2013). At the same time, ministers and their offcials were increasingly committed to ensuring that publicly funded research was being utilised within policy advisory structures. This complemented a broader shift towards 'evidencebased policy' and the reorientation of universities towards the transfer, translation and commercialisation of academic knowledge (see Rip, 2011). In 2010 the Higher Education Funding Council for England commissioned a series of impact measurement pilots designed to produce narrative-style case studies (Bandola-Gill & Smith, 2021) which ultimately led to the endorsement of non-academic impact as a key performance indicator within the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (Research Excellence Framework, 2010; see also Watermayer, 2014; Brook, 2017; Wilkinson, 2018; Watermeyer & Chubb, 2019). Societal impact was broadly defned

as an effect on, change or beneft to the economy, society, culture, *public policy or services*, health, the environment or quality of life, *beyond academia*. [Italics added]

The meta-governance of higher education had shifted signifcantly as a raft of incentives to encourage academics to engage with potential researchusers were suddenly put in place (placement opportunities, knowledgeexchange funding, changes to promotion criteria, 'impact acceleration accounts', etc.) by institutions (Bandola-Gill, 2019). Three elements of a rapidly changing policy advisory system are notable. First, the main public funder of social and political science, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), has in recent years focused on the creation of increasingly innovative forms of research infrastructure that are designed to facilitate mobilisation and to ensure the mobility of people, ideas and talent across traditional professional, disciplinary and organisational boundaries. These include a national network of 'What Works' centres that are generally co-funded by research-users and a host of 'hubs' or 'nexus networks' that operate at the interface of academe and society (see Box 15.1, below) (Great Britain, Cabinet Offce, 2019). The second element is that universities have themselves sought to build knowledge-mobilisation capacity, and this has generally occurred through the rapid proliferation of institutes of public policy. In 2019 this led to the creation of the Universities Policy Engagement Network (UPEN) as a national platform for engaging with a number of policy arenas. In July 2019 a new report by a number of UPEN members—*Understanding and Navigating the Landscape of Evidence-based Policy*—called for the establishment of a new National Centre for Universities and Public Policy to support an ongoing culture change around valuing academia policy engagement (Walker et al., 2019). The third element is that research-users have created new teams and launched new initiatives in order to foster academic engagement. As the Institute for Government's report of June 2018—*How Government Can Work with Academia*—highlighted, this includes the Department for Education's creation of a pool of academic researchers that offcials use to commission rapid evidence reviews, and the Cabinet Offce has set up a unit, sponsored by universities, that helps senior academics to work parttime with departments to develop policy. In addition to this all government departments now publish a regularly updated list of 'areas of research interest' which is designed to signpost specifc areas where policy-makers would welcome academic engagement, the vast majority of which tend to be areas that demand input from the social and political science community (Great Britain, Government Offce for Science and Cabinet Offce, 2019). This shifting landscapes underlines the manner in which a new 'political economy of impact' has emerged in the UK (Dunlop, 2018, p. 272). The 'ineffectual zig-zag' (mentioned above) had suddenly taken a very sharp turn towards engagement with potential research-users, and although the merits and risks of this 'zig' or 'zag' divided opinion, there is little doubt that it led to a sharp shift in behaviour. In order to explore this shift, the next sub-section combines the analysis of REF2014 impact data with the locational model of policy advice.

#### **Box 15.1 United Kingdom in a Changing Europe: an example of the advisory role of political scientists in current debates**

The award-winning United Kingdom in a Changing Europe Initiative (UK-ICE) started in 2014 and aims to ensure that public and policy debates about Brexit are underpinned by access to worldclass social and particularly political science. It is a fairly unique investment by the Economic and Social Research Council in that it is focused primarily on the translation and dissemination of existing research rather than on the production of new knowledge and data. The UK-ICE initiative has gained a reputation as a reliable and impartial source of information that operates at the intersection or nexus between the academy and the policy advisory system.

The structure of the UK-ICE is also innovative in that it works through a hub-and-spoke model with a core investment to fund a small strategic team at King's College, London, which is charged with overseeing and co-ordinating a network of fellowships and grants that are based across the United Kingdom. The main UK-ICE team also acts as the main gateway for media and public inquiries and also maintains a highly professional and accessible website. It therefore acts as a highly agile and responsive 'one-stop shop' for any individual, group or organisation that is keen to understand the existing evidence base on any specific Brexit-related topic. Under the guidance of its director, Professor Anand Menon, the UK-ICE has emerged as a source of commentary and analysis that is widely respected and trusted not just by journalists, commentators and civic groups but also (critically) by actors and activists on both sides of the Brexit debate. This has been a remarkable achievement in a highly polarised area of policy and in a context where the public trust in experts has been questioned.

The UK-ICE programme has maintained high-level relationships in Whitehall and Westminster, in addition to working with politicians and policy-makers in the devolved territories and also in Brussels. Engagement has taken the form of formal workshops, informal meetings, masterclasses, briefing papers and the provision of data and information. This engagement has subsequently fed back into scholarly understandings of policy challenges, while also expanding the existence of high-trust professional networks at a critical time for the country. In 2019 the ESRC announced a major new package of funding to continue the UK-ICE programme until 2021.

## 15.3 The Locational Model of Policy Advice

The focus of this chapter is on the role of political science within the British policy advisory system. The previous sub-section suggested that levels of engagement had up until recent decades generally been fairly low. This refected a rather closed and elitist political culture, the dominance of right-wing governments during the fnal decades of the twentieth century and a lack of professional incentives to actually engage with policy-makers. This dovetailed with a strangely British academic culture that often looked down upon those scholars who were willing to 'dirty their hands' in the grubby world of politics or even engage with the public via the media (Grant, 2010, pp. 44–45). This section utilises a locational model adapted by Blum and Brans (2017) from Halligan (1995) to describe how and in which policy advisory arenas political scientists engage with policy advice (see Figure 2.1, Chap. 2).

The main aim of this section is to utilise Dunlop's analysis of the 181 impact case studies that were submitted to the 'Politics and International Studies' sub-panel in REF2014 as a proxy measure of where in the policy advisory system political scientists have been most active (Dunlop, 2018).2 We cannot claim that this approach represents a complete account of the role and visibility of political science within the UK's national policy advisory system, but we do suggest that it offers a signifcant, distinctive and original starting point from which to explore the topic. We relate fve specifc fndings to Blum and Brans' locational model:


<sup>2</sup>Note this analysis covers 166 case studies (submitted by 56 universities) as 15 were either confdential or heavily redacted. All case studies are available at Research Excellence Framework (REF). 2019. *Search REF Impact Case Studies* [online] Research Excellence Framework. [Viewed 16 December 2019]. Available from: http://impact.ref.ac.uk/ CaseStudies.

**Fig. 15.1** Politics and international studies impact case study sub-felds (in percentages)—UK. (*Source*: Dunlop, 2018, p. 274)


*Source*: Dunlop (2018, p. 275)



*Source*: Dunlop (2018, p. 275)

The remainder of this sub-section takes each of these fve issues in turn. The frst of which is simply to note that when it comes to operating within the policy advisory system, four areas of the discipline dominate (see Fig 15.1, below) and the main benefciaries of this activity are found within the 'internal government arena' (notably providing research-based advice to government departments, public agencies and parliamentary committees) and the 'external lay arena' (to think tanks, charities and nongovernmental organisations and international organisations).

The second insight emerging from this analysis is that the underpinning research being fed into policy advisory systems was based upon work and academic-user relationships that very often pre-dated the REF2014 assessment period. Indeed, 43% (N=72) of the case studies were based on projects and relationships developed over a decade or more before the 2014 deadline, and 40% (N=66) were between fve and nine years before the cut-off point. This suggests that irrespective of the concern expressed by several members of the discipline about the challenges faced by political scientists who wanted to engage with policy-makers in the 1990s and 2000s, a signifcant number were in fact able to develop and maintain relationships long before the impact agenda came into fashion (Bevir & Rhodes, 2007). What's also interesting (and the third insight) about Dunlop's analysis is the manner in which it indicates a broad range of benefciaries within the policy advice system and a number of 'pathways to impact' or 'tools of engagement' (Tables 15.1 and 15.2, below). The 'polite or contemptuous rejection of political science by those in authority' that was discussed in the previous section—or what Wyn Grant labelled 'reticent practitioners'—appears to have been replaced by a more open and diverse institutional architecture. Moreover, the data also suggests that UK political scientists are becoming far more proactive and entrepreneurial in terms of identifying and initiating contact with potential research-users. It also suggests that a signifcant number of UK political scientists operate as 'boundary-spanners' in the sense that hold academic appointments alongside signifcant roles within political parties, think tanks, NGOs or charities (Hoppe, 2009). Over a ffth of the impact case studies (21% *N* = 35) involved academics with non-research-related commitments of this nature.

One of the weaknesses of the locational model, however, as currently devised is that it struggles to accommodate the role of political science within policy advisory systems above or below the nation state. This is particularly restrictive in the case of the UK where the evidence suggests that a large amount of engagement occurs at the sub-national and local level or at the European and international level. 'This is not simply a story about UK-based academics working with UK-based policy-makers', Dunlop emphasises 'Internationalisation is very strong: 64% of cases (N=106) involve non-UK governments as benefciaries, 45% (N=74) international organisations and 58% of all cases (N=96) claim some sort of international impact' (Dunlop, 2018, p. 277). The ffth and fnal insight emerging from Dunlop's analysis of the REF2014 impact case studies submitted to the 'Politics and International Studies' panel is the relative lack of engagement in two key areas. The frst relates to business and industry links (just 5% of cases, N=9) which is possibly not surprising given the widespread professional concern that the impact agenda is linked to a dominant neo-liberal ideological agenda. It could also be a result of the historically developed 'pathways to impact' discussed above, where the potential for impact is largely determined by the presence of relationship between the producers and users of research. Therefore, if the political scientists engaged historically with policy-makers, the access to the private sector might be challenging and consequently rare. What is more surprising, especially given the discipline's long-standing emphasis on citizenship and the promotion of civic engagement, is the lack of political science case studies that claim direct engagement with and impact upon the public (22% N=37) (ESRC, 2007). This was an issue that the government's own offcial review of the 2014 REF process highlighted but may actually be explained as being indicative of the methodological challenges faced by any scholar or institution who seeks to make claims regarding the existence of causal links between a specifc piece of research, on the one hand, and changes in the orientation of a specifc public debate, public attitudes or even public behaviour, on the other. Put slightly differently, the REF2014 case studies do not necessarily mean that political science is not engaging with the public (see below) but simply that institutions are making strategic decisions about the type of impact they attempt to claim. It could also be a consequence of specifc measurement approach, where the focus on a specifc change is not conducive to projects aimed at the public, as these are not easily documented and traced (Bandola-Gill & Smith, 2021; Smith & Stewart, 2017). One way of assessing the true role of political scientists within the policy advice system (broadly defned) would be to step away from the rational instrumentalities of REF2014 (and soon to be REF2021 with an even higher 'impact' weighting) and to explore data collected directly from academics. In order to do this the next section examines the ProSEPS survey data for the UK.

## 15.4 Advisory Roles Adopted by Political Scientists

The UK is arguably unique when it comes to assessing the role of academics within the policy advisory system. This stems from the manner in which 'impact' is now formally and explicitly institutionalised within the regulatory landscape of higher education. A note of caution is, however, required. The data presented and discussed in the previous section relates solely to the activities of those political scientists who were selected by their institutions to be assessed within REF2014. It therefore provides a partial account or a snapshot of disciplinary activity and as only one impact case study was required for every ten members of staff, and not all institutions submitted returns to the Politics and International Studies Panel, the generalisability of this data is limited. The REF2014 data therefore provides a valuable and unique lens on the role of the discipline within the British policy advisory system while at the same time being particularly hard to benchmark in terms of the degree to which it is representative of engagement at a broader level. This is a critical point. It is diffcult to know from the analysis of the REF2014 impact case studies if they provide either an account of the achievements of a hyper-engaged minority of scholars or whether they actually understate the true extent of policyrelated activity for the simple reason that the social impact of more diffuse forms of *public* engagement (as opposed to more specifc *policy* engagement) is far harder to prove in the demonstrable and auditable manner the assessment process requires.

This section engages with these epistemological and methodological challenges by presenting the insights of a new data set that was collected through a major international survey of political scientists. Although the UK response rate was fairly low (400 responses from a disciplinary community of around 3000 or 13.5%), it offers a credible, complementary and fne-grained lens through which to explore the current role of political science within the UK's policy advisory system. This is largely because the dataset engages beyond those who were selected to deliver REF2014 impact case studies. The main conclusion emanating from the ProSEPS database is that, as might have been expected from the emergence of the 'impact agenda', British political scientists do report a relatively high degree of engagement with policy-makers, and there appear to be a relatively small number of hyper-engaged scholars (see Table 15.3, below). Underlying insights that resonate with Dunlop's analysis of the REF2014 case studies include the following:



**Table 15.3** Frequency and types of advice, % (N)—UK

*Note*: Question: 'How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors?'



*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: 'With which substantive policy area is your advice concerned?'


*Note*: Question: 'With which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?'


*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: 'At which level of governance did you engage most frequently in policy advice or consulting activities during the last three years?'

Overall, the British political scientists reported a relatively high engagement with policy-makers—only a minority of academics reported not engaging in any form of advisory activities. The most popular type of advice—providing data and facts—was given once a year or less frequently by 60% of academics. Furthermore, the academics reported that they engage at least once a year or less often in policy analysis (57%), policy evaluation (60%) and consultancy (54%). There is also a considerable group of academics who engage with various forms of advice very frequently—once a week or once a month. For example, this group of academics engaged in policy analysis (15% of respondents), providing data and facts (10%) and policy evaluation (13%) at this frequency. Nevertheless, there are some areas of policy advising in which the academics did not


**Table 15.7** Pathways to impact % (N)—UK

*Note*: Question: 'Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the channels below to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?'


*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Types operationalised on the basis of content of advice and frequency. See Chaps. 2 and 3

participate, most strikingly 70% of academics reported they have never made forecasts or conducted polls. The UK academics seem to be more divided with regard to conducting consultancy (35% of the respondents has never done it) and offering value judgements (37% reported never engaging with this activity). The UK academics appear to be split, with large groups of this population either engaging in these two types of activities or avoiding them completely. This is best illustrated by the approach to value judgements—37% of the respondents avoid it completely and yet 46% of the UK academics reported producing value judgements once a year or less frequently and 13% did it at least once a month or once a week. This fnding might suggest that some types of advisory practices were seen to be more politicised than others (such as policy evaluation or analysis) and as such, they were avoided by a larger group of political scientists.


**Table 15.9** Normative views on policy advice % (N)—UK

*Source*: ProSEPS survey

*Note*: Question: 'To what extent do you agree with the following statements?'

**Table 15.10** Intrinsic and extrinsic motives of policy advisory and consulting activities % (N)—UK


*Source*: ProSEPS survey data

*Note*: Question: 'How important are the following reasons for your engagement in advisory or consulting activities?'

In terms of the policy areas where political scientists were most active, the data highlights three main areas—international affairs, development aid, EU and government and public administration organisation and electoral reform—which broadly dovetail with the main sub-felds that were most visible in Dunlop's analysis of the REF2014 case studies (see Fig. 15.1, above).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, and again in line with the REF2014 analysis, the main benefciaries highlighted in the ProSEPS data were civil servants (with 51% of respondents reporting having engaged with them), but what was possibly more surprising was the popularity of think tanks (47%) and civil society organisations (48%) as the venue for advisory activities (Table 15.6, below). This popularity might be explained by the perceived expert status of these organisations which might be better aligned with the preference of the academics to offer data and facts, rather than value-laden analysis. The least popular target groups of advice were executive politicians (23%), political parties (21%) and the interest groups from the private sector (25%). This fnding might point again to the importance of the autonomy and impartiality of the political scientists in the UK who prefer engagement with less political and more expertise-based target groups. This is especially interesting in the case of think tanks which are portrayed—both by media and by the UK politicians as expertise-driven organisations (Hernando, 2019). However, the political neutrality of think tanks is largely challenged with research showing that these types of organisations are in fact closely aligned with the dominant coalitions (Stone, 1996). Consequently, think tanks in the UK produce what Marcos González Hernando called 'politically ft expert knowledge' rather than politically neutral knowledge (Hernando, 2019, p. 12).

What is also interesting from a locational model perspective and which once again chimes with the REF2014 analysis is the critical role that legislative scrutiny committees appear to play as an important 'docking point' (39%) between political scientists and policy-makers. This may refect the manner in which investments have been made in order to build research infrastructure to facilitate interaction, specifcally through the creation of a Social Science Team within the Parliamentary Offce for Science and Technology (POST) in 2011 (Great Britain, POST 2019). *The Role of Research in the UK Parliament* was a major report published by POST in 2017 which, although not focused specifcally on political science, did provide huge detail on the ways that academics engaged with parliament and which parts of the legislature they tended to work with (see also Kenny et al., 2017). It also revealed that parliament featured in 20% of REF2014 impact case studies but that major challenges existed in terms of increasing the spread of academics that were willing to engage and making sure they had the skills to submit evidence in an accessible, timely and relevant manner (see also Kenny, 2015).

What also becomes clear from the ProSEPS data is that there is no single policy advisory system in the UK but a number of multi-layered and nested systems linked to devolved territories in which political scientists operate. As Table 15.6 illustrates, the national level remains the main focus of activity but with signifcant levels of engagement 'above' and 'below' the nation state (again chiming with Dunlop's analysis of REF2014). Engagement by political scientists within the Scottish parliament and National Assembly of Wales appear from the available evidence to be particularly strong, and this may refect a number of issues including the existence of a different and more open political culture at the sub-national level and the simple benefts of scale in terms of facilitating formal and informal networking (Hewlett & Hinrichs-Krapels, 2017; McQuillan, 2017).

The 'pathways to impact' or 'engagement tools' highlighted in the ProSEPS data also complements the REF analysis discussed in the previous section. The added insight here, however, relates to frequency and the apparent existence of a clear preference for a once-a-year communication via publications (40%), research reports (31%), policy reports (30%) and blogs and social media (30%). The least popular channel was an organisation of training courses for policy-makers, 38% of the respondents claimed they have never engaged in this type of activity. However, the vast majority of the respondents used these communication channels at least once, most frequently once a year for most of the channels.

This focus on benefciaries, frequencies, pathways and levels fows into a fnal focus on a broader set of questions that take us well beyond Dunlop's REF2014 analysis and instead focus on how political scientists self-defne their contemporary role vis-à-vis the policy advisory system and what are the drivers of the activities that have been revealed in this data. As Table 15.8 illustrates, less than 15% of British political scientists described the type of advisory role they perform as that of being a 'pure academic', whereas over 50% thought of themselves as 'opinionators'. However, as the ProSEPS study defnes the opinionator as one 'who does not write extensive publication material, but mostly focuses on opinion editorial and newspapers columns, tv and radio interviews' (see Chap. 2 ), then this defnition does not correspond with the importance of publications in UK academia. From the earliest stages in their career, academics are encouraged to conduct high-quality research through single or lead authored publications (especially as this is an important criterion of the REF assessment) (see, e.g. The British Academy 2016). A low number of political scientists in the UK would be reluctant to self-identify as a 'pure academic' (14.6%) due to the formal adoption of 'impact' within the regulatory landscape of academia, as outlined above. The role of an (technical) expert, whose advice is normally 'offered to policy makers in the administration, committees, think tanks' is more common in the UK system, with 27.1% declaring to take on this role. Given the increasing need in the UK for academics to provide evidence of impact and public engagement with their research, it is not surprising that the majority of political scientists (80.6%) who partook in the survey self-identifed as either an 'opinionator' or an 'expert'. However, it is surprising that more did not self-identify as 'public intellectuals' (4.8%), as it was defned as 'a hybrid between the expert and the opinionator'. This low selection could be due to the time and effort required for engaging with both 'policy makers in the administration, think tanks, [and] committees' as well as 'politicians and policy makers, the general public, [and] journalists'. Those who identify as the 'public intellectual' would have done so because they view themselves as engaging in this way 'very frequently' and through both informal and formal channels. Whilst this low percentage of 'public intellectuals' could be a result of the manner in which modesty is extolled as a virtue in British culture, it could also be due to the way UK academics in the twenty-frst century are facing increasing 'demands on their time' where the 'complexity of those demands are changing and escalating almost exponentially', as described by Light and Cox (2009).

What Table 15.8 suggests is that the vast majority of British political scientists do self-defne themselves in terms of having some form of role within the policy advisory system, either as a technical expert feeding evidence and data into debates or the policy-making process or as a potential pundit helping to stimulate and inform public debates more broadly. But what drives or underpins this commitment to visibility or what might be termed engaged scholarship?

Tables 15.9 and 15.10 suggest that the emergence of an explicit and externally audited 'impact agenda' in the UK cannot on its own explain the levels of activity highlighted in this study and related reports. Indeed, what the ProSEPS data indicates is the existence of a deep cultural attachment within British political science to undertaking research that has an impact far beyond the lecture theatre or seminar room. Two-thirds of respondents suggest that political scientists should become engaged in policy-making and an even higher proportion agreed that political scientists had a professional obligation to engage in public debate. Nine out of ten respondents disagreed with the suggestion that political scientists should refrain from direct engagement with policy-makers, which might refect the relatively low levels of attachment to the notion of being a 'pure' academic (Table 15.8, above). Table 15.10 develops this through its indication that although promotion structures now tend to reward impact-related contributions, extrinsic 'public good' motivations far outweigh intrinsic self-interested motivations. Once again two-thirds of respondents viewed engagement as a professional responsibility of political scientists to the public and nearly half felt that making a contribution to society was 'absolutely important'.

#### 15.5 Conclusion

These fndings regarding normative drivers and the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations bring this chapter full circle and back to the opening section's focus on the existence of a long-standing tension within British political science between its scientifc aspirations as opposed to its public service ethos. In the second half of the twentieth century, political scientists played a limited role in the political advisory system due to the selective nature and established relationship between few academics and Westminster. There also existed a tension between the political scientist who believed in the strictly academic study of politics and the 'public duty' of engaging and supporting public policy and democratic processes. This tension was eased by the beginning of the twenty-frst century, where the meta-governance of higher education encouraged, supported and recognised the desire of political scientists to engage outside of academia. The incentives for advising were thus made formal and included in the promotion and reward structures for academics. Due to the standardisation brought by the REF, impact on the political advisory system was now included in scholarly performance evaluation in the UK.

What the data that has been presented and discussed in the second and third sections of this study suggest, however, is that in many ways it may well be too simplistic to equate apparently high levels of policy engagement with the introduction of the 'impact agenda' from around 2010 onwards. As Dunlop revealed, many political scientists were operating within the policy advisory system long before the assessment system in the UK included an impact component. Indeed, what the 'long view' of political science in the UK might actually suggest is a more nuanced interpretation whereby the demands of REF2014 legitimated, incentivised and rewarded a shift towards public service and policy engagement that was in reality a long-standing cultural dimension of the discipline. What this study aims to demonstrate is that the role of political science within the UK's policy advisory system appears more signifcant than is generally recognised but that the reasons for this may refect deep-seated cultural values within the discipline rather than an instrumental response to an external audit regime.

#### References


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## Patterns Across Countries in Europe

## The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Comparative Perspective

*Arco Timmermans, Marleen Brans, and José Real-Dato*

## 16.1 Introduction

In most European countries, political scientists based at universities perform other tasks than research and education alone. They also engage in advisory activities. Advising is a multidimensional enterprise, varying along the communication chain from sender to receiver in viewpoints, knowledge base and aim, format, content and targeted actor. Advising can be constructed strongly on the basis of scientifc evidence and result from the orientation that, in an advisory role, academics must stay close to the objective knowledge and truth about their object of study. It also can be

M. Brans Public Governance Institute, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium e-mail: marleen.brans@kuleuven.be

J. Real-Dato University of Almería, Almería, Spain e-mail: jreal@ual.es

© The Author(s) 2022 363 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9\_16

A. Timmermans (\*)

Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands e-mail: a.timmermans@fgga.leidenuniv.nl

constructed by academics who not only want to analyse and explain but also express beliefs that the functioning of government must be improved, democracy needs innovation, or some policy problems and social groups obtain too little attention, and others too much.

Political scientists as advisers thus can keep distance from their objects of study or choose to engage with political actors or other stakeholders in the policy process. They even may try to set the political agenda through such engagement. It is impossible and also undesirable to derive one uniform type of 'best' and 'most justifed' advisory role for political scientists as a group of academics. This was our point of departure in this book, and the general observation that political scientists across European countries engage to different degrees and in various ways underlines the importance of this neutral stance. The advisory orientations and activities of political scientists not only result from personal conviction but also are contingent on the domestic academic structures, the policy advisory system, and broader developments in politics and society.

The twelve country chapters in this book all considered the same set of questions on the advisory roles of political scientists. What roles do they take? How do they look at any work at the intersection of the university home basis and the political and social environment? How do evidence, facts, normative beliefs and advocacy enter into choice-making? And which driving factors play a signifcant role when political scientists differ in gender, age and status of their employment at the university? The frst next section of this chapter presents the main fndings for 39 countries, at an aggregate level, using the pooled data of the entire ProSEPS international survey project. How are the advisory role types distributed, and what is the effect of individual background variables such as gender, age and status of work contrast for the extent of engagement? Then in Sect. 16.3 we discuss how countries are similar or different in the patterns observed. In this comparative section, we consider the responses to the survey questions as operationalizations of the different dimensions of advising. Given the chapters in this book with in-depth country studies, we use these 12 countries in the comparison. Such a frst comparison of advisory orientations and behaviour across European countries cannot be exhaustive given the multitude of variables that may play a part. For this reason, the focus is on how countries with a number of features in common compare to other countries, and how in this way patterns of advisory activity may be placed in context, which is the central focus of Sect. 16.4.

Then in Sect. 16.5 we return to the advisory role types and the simple two-dimensional model used to assess their occurrence. The fndings of our joint comparative project on the different other dimensions of advising lead us to examine how it may be possible to move beyond the simple model of advisory activities of academic political scientists. What interpretations can we make, what inferences can we draw from the aggregate fndings on style, form and recipients for the four ideal typical roles? What do these fndings tell us about the characteristics of the pure academic, the expert, the opinionating scholar and the public intellectual? How may we further develop these types? This is the point where our approach with a basic model and analysis of a broader range of fndings can inform further theory building and conceptual generalization beyond the academic political science community. The fnal Sect. 16.6 is an outlook not only on further inquiry but also on possible implications of our comparative work for the professionalization of political science in Europe in the years to come.

## 16.2 The General Picture Emerging from the Survey Project

The picture emerging from the overall survey data is that the majority of university-based political scientists in Europe can be categorized as opinionating scholars. This not only is the most frequent advisory type, it also occurs more frequent than the pure academic who refrains from engagement. Figure 16.1 shows the percentages of each of the four types of political scientists. Almost one out of two political scientists (48.7%) in our sample belongs to the category of opinionating scholar, with experts coming second at a distance (26.6%). Just over one-ffth (20.3%) stays away from advising as a pure academic, and, as expected, the all-round profle of public intellectual applies to only a small group (4.4%) of political scientists.

A frst conclusion is thus that on average, political scientists in Europe are more extrovert in their behaviour as academics than is sometimes thought. In their professional functioning they live outside the 'ivory tower' for some part of their time and tasks, delivering knowledge and information messages to practitioners in the policy process. They are oriented to a signifcant degree on 'entrepreneurial relevance' (Timmermans et al., 2021). Often these messages contain analytical viewpoints and recommendations, and even more often they bring normative statements on

**Fig. 16.1** Policy advisory types of European political scientists (%) *N* = 2354. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

politics and policy problems or speak the language of advocacy. European political scientists do not appear to fear the power to which they speak truth, and engage in all kinds of interaction with policy-making institutions or other stakeholders in the policy process. Though this does not mean that academic political scientists collectively go political or do this continually, it is clear that next to scientifc evidence, also values and normative beliefs play a part when they engage. This frst main fnding is important as it may indicate tendencies within the academic community of political scientists and within the policy advisory systems in Europe. The object of study and advice itself may have become more politicized, or at least politically sensitive, and it also may be that advising from diverse locations within the policy advisory system is in a process of mediatization. The prominence of opinionating may testify to such a tendency.

#### *16.2.1 The Non-unitary State of Political Scientists in Europe*

This major fnding, however, may not apply equally to all countries in Europe. Hence we must look at the pattern across countries. Figure 16.2 displays the proportions of advisory role types for all 39 countries in the ProSEPS project. It appears that the pure academic is a much rarer breed in some countries than in others. In Albania, Belgium, Denmark, Norway,

**Fig. 16.2** Policy advisory roles of political scientists by country (*N* = 2354). (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, relatively few political scientists are of this kind, while in France, Germany, Italy and particularly in Hungary and Turkey there is a higher proportion of the scholarly political science community abstaining from active engagement. This pattern is contingent on considerably higher levels of advisory activity in the frst group of countries, and lower levels in the second group. What stands out is that in the two countries with the largest proportion of pure academics, Hungary and Turkey, opinionating scholars far outnumber experts. This suggests a divide between political scientists who stay mostly within the academic sphere and those who make explicit normative statements and engage in advocacy.

Countries with few pure academics fall into two categories: those where experts are relatively prominent (Belgium, Norway and in particular Denmark), and those where opinionating scholars take the lead (Albania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). From the countries not examined more closely in this book, it is striking that former communist states and also Malta have a higher or much higher proportion of opinionating political scientists. With the exception of Malta, these countries also have a higher percentage of public intellectuals than in the European average, and some even have *no* pure academics within the group of respondents in the survey. Actors running the government and politics of these countries thus seem to stir opinionating contributions from scholars studying them. In some of these countries, political scientists also have previous or ongoing external affliations that bring some kind of political or professional commitment (see Chap. 3 where positions outside academia are presented and discussed). Finally, Germany and the United Kingdom, the two countries with the largest population of political scientists, differ mainly in one respect: the comparatively larger number of pure academics in Germany (29.8%) suppresses the proportion of opinionating colleagues (41.3%) in that country, while in the United Kingdom space for opinionating (53.5%) is opened by the lower salience of the role of pure academic (14.6%).

In short, the academic political science community in Europe is not uniform across countries in the extent and types of advisory roles taken. This is not a surprising fnding, given the diversity in history, institutionalization of the discipline and developing relationships between policymaking institutions and academia. The patterns we fnd across countries refect these contextual factors, which will be further addressed later in this chapter.

#### *16.2.2 Effects of Gender, Age and Job Status*

A second main perspective on advisory roles is through the lens of background variables. The country chapters have shown that such variables as gender, age and work contract matter. Sometimes, the effect of such factors is intended or offcial policy. But often, the way in which gender, age and work contract impacts on the activities of academics, and certainly on external professional activities, is unintended. Causes of engagement or nonengagement are inadvertent. Or indeed, it may be that there is not even a clear picture of how individual characteristics as basic as gender and age have an effect on the professional performance and career development of academics at all.

Let us begin with the aggregate picture of gender composition of academic political scientists in the four role types. Just over 33% of the sample in this survey project indicates a female gender. This is certainly an underrepresentation compared to the overall population of European countries—as is the case in many professions—but it is representative of the total population of political scientists at universities in Europe, and only slightly lower than in the *World of Political Science* survey conducted in 2019, which had a global scope (Norris, 2020).

Be this as it may, there is a clear pattern in the gender composition of role types: as we move from the pure academic to the limitedly exposed expert on to the more exposed opinionating scholar and further to the public intellectual, the percentage with a female gender drops consistently. As Table 16.1 shows, a bit over 39.2% of the pure academics is female, but this goes down 20.2% of the public intellectuals, with experts and opinionating scholars in between.

What are the main fndings on the average age of political scientists in role types? Our aggregate data tell us that age variation across the types is limited: pure academics are around 43 years old on average, while experts are nearly three years older and also opinionating scholars and public intellectuals both are just above 47 years old. The average age just above mid-40 is the result of just over 75% of the respondents being born until 1980, and just under 25% after 1980. As with gender, the percentages of these two groups change consistently with role types: of the pure


**Table 16.1** Policy advisory types by gender

academics, 37.2% is born after 1980, and this goes down to 24.8% of the experts, 18.7% of opinionating scholars and 21.2% of the public intellectuals.

This points to a professional life cycle effect, in which different ages are associated with different types and degrees of advising. Professional accomplishments and consolidation of expertise may enable political scientists to assume and perform more roles. Important to realize here is that in this project on advisory views and activities, the target population consists of scholars already at or beyond the stage of obtaining a PhD and/or with substantive teaching tasks within their university department. The frst stage, earliest career scholars thus were not included in the survey. This also explains that even pure academics were, on average, already above 40 years old on average.

A third factor bringing more depth in our understanding of advisory role performance is employment status. This relates in part to the professional life cycle, but apart from work mobility that may involve more than one tenure track as scholars move from one university to the other, a temporary or permanent contract usually is decided relatively early on in an academic career. And again, the pattern we observe is consistent to subsequent role types, noting that the sample consists almost entirely of post-PhD scholars. If on average for all political scientists almost 28.7% has a temporary and 71.3% a permanent contract, pure academics face more job uncertainty, as they have a permanent contract in only 59.6% of the cases. For experts this is 70.6%, opinionating scholars have permanent work in 76% of the cases, and public intellectuals in 77.2%. These, however, are all relative fgures. The majority of pure academics, certainly when no longer in their earliest career stage, have a permanent contract at any of the political science departments in Europe (or sometimes an affliation elsewhere as well). This is a relevant observation for understanding the role perception of pure academics: when they refrain from active advisory engagement, it is not only for reasons of job security.

## 16.3 Unpacking the Dimensions of Advising

The distribution of advisory role types of political scientists in Europe is based on the simple two-dimensional model in which different advising activities represent types of knowledge (episteme, techne and phronesis), and an ordinal scale is used for the frequency of each of these activities. The percentages of role types within countries and the pooled data for all countries are generated on this basis. When looking into this model for all countries together, we fnd that overall and presented in Fig. 16.3, delivering forecasts and poll results to policy makers is practised the least, and analysing and explaining causes and consequences of policy problems is the type of advice provided most often. Both are expert matters (and forecasting and polling even are for specialists) but problem analysis also may come in combination with other types and in this way also can be part of the repertoire of opinionating scholars and public intellectuals. The other kinds of activity are between the lowest and highest frequency of delivery, and in different combinations they fll the role types of all. Thus, the frequent provision of data and facts is more typically expert business, while ongoing contacts for evaluation, consultancy and recommendations may bring political scientists closer to more outspoken role types if they link this to normative statements or advocacy. That a majority of academic political scientists does not step back from sometimes or more often making value judgements and normative arguments is a key indicator of the sizeable group of opinionating scholars.

**Fig. 16.3** Frequency of advising activities. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

### *16.3.1 Why Political Scientists Engage*

Given the composition of our crossnational sample of political scientists, targeted to include scholars who are no longer in their earliest career stage, most ft some advisory role type. Pure academics comprise one-ffth of the respondents on average, with variation between countries from 0% to above 40%. For various reasons among which some job uncertainty, these academics do not engage. Asked about underlying views, indeed also about one-ffth of all European political scientists agree entirely or partly that political scientists should refrain from direct engagement with policy actors. But as Fig. 16.4 also shows, most agree fully or to an extent that their knowledge has a role to play in practice, that visibility in public debate belongs to their professional obligation, or that they must directly engage with policy makers themselves. As with the different advising activities, this points to an open orientation on expertise delivery or opinionating.

Intrinsic or extrinsic motivations also play a part. Professional and public role performance appear more important than instrumental considerations such as funding opportunities or career advancement. Figure 16.5 entails deliberate selection in the generation of viewpoints here, as only respondents who do engage in advising were asked what motivates them. An overwhelming majority believes that making a contribution to society

**Fig. 16.4** Desirability of engagement. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

**Fig. 16.5** Motivations for engagement. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

is important and that advising helps to stay active minded. And duty weighs heavier than academic position or research money coming from this external source.

#### *16.3.2 The Flow of Advice*

Two next dimensions of advising are the channels used and the recipients who solicit advice or are targeted by political scientists themselves. While the most traditional and typical form of knowledge dissemination for academics is via (scientifc or semi-scientifc) publications, advising requires also other channels or formats. These are included in Fig. 16.6. Easily produced, fexible and accessible channels are used more frequently in advising than publications, but for each of these channels the group of political scientists never using them (between 18.2% and 38.3%) also is larger than for publications (14.0%). This suggests that we deal with academics in advisory roles, not with professional advisors located elsewhere who are not so occupied with writing publications. However, visible in Fig. 16.6 is the opinionating role: when used, writing traditional media articles, blogs or social media entries happens more often at a monthly or even weekly interval compared to the use of other channels, which also require more investment in time and effort.

**Fig. 16.6** Channels of policy advice. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

These different channels relate also to the formal or informal nature of advice giving, even though these may be somewhat ambiguous concepts. Here, we refer to the extent to which an advisory relationship is formally organized and structured or contained in a contract or arrangement. Research reports or training courses will ensue more often when some formal arrangement between the adviser and recipient or client is set up. By contrast, blogs and media articles are more fuid and contain pieces of advice or advocacy in a more indirect and informal way. Academic publications may be harder to pinpoint in that they may be formal given the review and release process they often involve, but as channels of advice they may fow more informally and indirectly towards the reading audience or specifc targets. Overall, political scientists mostly deliver advice both formally and informally, with some emphasis on informal ways. This is consistent with the relative prominence of opinionating as a type of advice.

#### *16.3.3 The Receiving End*

The end point of the fow of advice is the recipient. This may be an organization with which a structural arrangement is made, it can be a client of advice made ad hoc or it can be a group or organization at some more distance from the political scientist but which appears in the chain of communication. Figure 16.7 contains, again with pooled data, the main recipients of advisory activities of political scientists in Europe. While also organizations at the international or supranational stage are served and targeted with political science advice (24.2%), most knowledge and information traffc fows to actors in the policy process at the national level. By and large, the two relatively most attended recipients are civil society organizations and citizen groups (44.8%) and civil servants (41.2%). In a way these are the most distinct types of actors, in that the former are much active in the public arena, while civil servants may be considered the least publicly oriented and exposed part of the government machinery. Private and corporate organizations are the least targeted recipient across European countries (18.3%). Advisory bodies do not appear prominent either, certainly compared to think tanks which may incorporate not only scientifc facts but also viewpoints and normative stances that political scientists want to express. Political parties and their executive and legislative branches take a middle position (all at or just below 30%).

These percentages hide variation across countries. The policy advisory systems of Belgium, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and to a lesser

**Fig. 16.7** Recipients of advice (*N* = 2354). (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

extent also Denmark, Norway and Spain seem to contain wider access points to political scientists than the European average. For the other countries in this book the percentages of recipients mentioned are lower. This corresponds to a higher or lower proportion of active advisers within the political science communities in these countries, and to the size of the groups of experts and opinionating scholars. In countries with a comparatively less actively engaged community of political scientists, some specifc recipients are visible on the demand side or are targeted. In Albania and Hungary, for example, international organizations and civic interest groups interact with political scientists more often than other recipients, and in Turkey also think tanks take their knowledge or advocacy messages as an indirect route for making political scientists' voices heard.

When looking more specifcally at prominent types of recipients, we see patterns that can inform us more about the position of political scientists within the domestic policy advisory system. Civil servants are very important recipients of advice in Belgium, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Also frequent interactions appear with the legislative and executive branches of political parties as well as with private and public interest groups and policy advisory bodies and think tanks. In the Netherlands, Denmark, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium and the United Kingdom, formal advisory bodies are important intermediaries of political science knowledge to the government, but they are not in Spain. The mix of this group of countries may suggest that advisory roles do not only come with a specifc policy-making system, such as a neo-corporatist and consensus model that entails many access points. The position of political scientists in the policy advisory system may be infuenced by broader political, social and economic interests and trends such as politicization and more public attention to political issues, giving rise to more demand for knowledge in this feld, and supply whenever political scientists are outreaching.

Likewise, France and Germany have different systems, but they both display comparatively lower levels of intensity of interactions between political scientists and recipients of their advice. In both France and Germany, civil society groups are the most frequently mentioned recipients and private and corporate interest groups seem to be the furthest removed from the realm of political scientists. But civil servants appear much less prominent in Germany than in France, while for political parties we see the opposite. Political scientists are located selectively in these countries, and this also may indicate how the policy advisory systems develop. The relatively low degree of interactions between political scientists and civil servants in Germany may be surprising given the bureaucracyoriented tradition in policy making in this country. In Italy, political parties and their branches are connected to political scientists at a level close to the European average, but there is more emphasis on think tanks and civil society organizations, and less on civil servants and advisory bodies. This too may indicate development in the policy advisory system: moving from the classical model of 'partitocrazia' and institutions formally associated to policy making towards civil society and independent centres for knowledge and ideas not connected to the political system. Political scientists display a similar tendency in Turkey in their connections for delivering advice, with emphasis on civil society organizations and think tanks.

A fnal dimension related to recipients is the level of governance at which advice by political scientists is delivered. When looking at the intensity of contact with types of recipients, it is not surprising that on average political scientists focus primarily on the national level (53%). Subnational government or other actors at that level follow at some distance (30.1%), and the international level (14.6%) and the European Union (13.3%) are the least attended, even though the difference becomes smaller when we take the percentages for EU and international together. As with recipients, countries vary considerably around the mean scores. This is mostly the case for relationships of political scientists within the domestic policy advisory system. In France and Turkey, the distribution of attention to national and subnational recipients is at the European average. The emphasis on national level recipients is higher in Albania, Denmark, Hungary, Norway, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, while in Belgium, Germany, Italy and particularly in Spain the subnational level is more prominent than on average in Europe. These two groups of countries ft neatly into the distinction between unitary and federal states. The constitutional features of the political system thus mirror the advisory orientation of political scientists in most of the countries analysed in this book. In France and Turkey, the subnational level also is visible in advising, which may relate to the relevance of local government.

EU-membership becomes visible in the orientation on the European level, as in most member states political scientists show interest in it at an average level, sometimes above it. Political scientists in Belgium show high interest in the EU, given the location of Brussels. High attention also applies to the United Kingdom (prior to Brexit, when the survey was conducted). In France there is less attention. Countries outside the EU system all show lower levels of attention, except Albania. When taking also the international level into account (beyond the EU), differences between countries become more marked. Political scientists in the UK stand out for their international orientation in advising, as do political scientists from the much smaller community in Albania. Also Norway stands out, but negatively, in that the reputation of the country on military and peace research does not become visible in the proportion of scholars attending to the international level of advising. The regional role of Turkey in international relations also does not speak from the fndings. Figure 16.8 presents for the 12 countries the emphasis on subnational relative to national level advising and on international level relative to national advising.

#### *16.3.4 Topic Areas of Political Scientists*

The occasional publicly oriented academic from the disciplines of economics, philosophy and sociology may quite comfortably speak on political matters (s)he has not studied. Van Parijs (2021) calls such an academic an *inexpert responsible*. Political scientists appear more cautious in such wide topic engagement. What may be expected from political scientists is that whenever engaging they do this primarily on subjects and issues close to their knowledge basis. The analysis of the substantive content of advice uses the topic classifcation system of the Comparative Agendas Project, distinguishing 21 main topic categories. In these, the structure and operations of government (including democratic and electoral reform) and international relations are the two felds closest to the body of knowledge of political scientists, as they are the main objects of study. But it is important to appreciate that the object of political science is not just institutional design or redesign, but also the policy-making process, in which any other topic can be involved. Thus political science knowledge includes representational, participatory, decisional and administrative aspects of policy problems. These policy problems themselves can range from migration to technology, civil rights to urban planning and from cultural to economic issues of the welfare state. The process element becomes a more relevant subject of advice as the nature of problems get more 'wicked' and policy makers face risks of support, legitimacy and accountability, or where other stakeholders need advice for having infuence.

Taking these points into account, the main two topic areas are indeed about the core knowledge of political science: government and public administration (30.8%) and international affairs including the European

**Fig. 16.8** Orientation on levels of governance. (*Note*: Axes represent the respective ratios between the percentage of respondents in each country declaring to provide policy advice at the subnational or international levels relative to those declaring to provide advice at the national level. For example, in Spain the percentage of those providing advice at the subnational level represent 1.4 times that of those who declare to provide advice at the national level, while the international level is just 0.18 times that of the national (and subnational) level. By contrast, political scientists in the UK place much more emphasis on the national relative to the subnational level, and also have a relatively strong orientation (ratio of 0.65) on the international level. *Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

Union (27.6%). These are followed by some major policy themes: civil rights and gender, migration, education and social welfare. Other major public policy topics such as health (relating to pandemics—but note the survey was taken prior to COVID-19) or environment and energy (relating to climate change) appear niches of smaller groups of political scientists. Figure 16.9 presents the topics from most frequently addressed to the ones with the lowest attention.

The policy agenda of most national or subnational governments and international or European institutions usually displays a distribution of attention where priorities are visible. These priorities shift over time, and making such shifts may be risky or costly, but they happen (Jones & Baumgartner, 2005). In the same way, advisory topics appear as an expression of attention of political scientists. If we called this an 'advisory agenda' it would be important to realize that this agenda is not endogenous to the scholarly community but emerges in close interaction between academia and the political and social environment. It emerges in response to demand from practitioners and also results from what scholars in this feld have in supply or believe they must actively put forward. The topic rank order is thus not static, even though the political agenda will shift more often and more drastically than the advisory agenda of political scientists. Just as economists, environmental scientists or legal scholars, political scientists have their realm of knowledge and expertise to which some topics are more central than others. The respondents to the ProSEPS survey indicated that their main feld or subfeld of expertise is political science (60%), public policy (28.5%) or public administration (21%), with low percentages for specifc subfelds in which they may have become specialized as academic political scientists. Still, as Fig. 16.9 shows, nearly all felds of public policy are within the scope of political scientists. Topics attracting less attention in advising are addressed not only by specialized political

**Fig. 16.9** Topics of advice (*N* = 2354). (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

scientists but also by generalists indicating political science, public policy or public administration as their main feld in the discipline.

In the same way that the policy agendas of countries vary, there is some variation in the advisory topic listings of political scientists between countries. Next to the pooled data, the specifc topic listings of advisory activities also are available for 12 countries included in this book. While the primary knowledge home basis and focus on average for all countries, government and public administration is not the most attended theme of advice in Germany, Hungary and the United Kingdom. Demand and supply of advice in Hungary show busier traffc on social welfare issues, and this is international affairs in Germany and the United Kingdom. By contrast, more than average attention for government and public administration we fnd in the Netherlands (51.2%), Belgium (46%) and Spain (42.1%), while Italy is at the average level, Norway somewhat below, and Turkey (21%) and France (19.7%) fall considerably below it. Social welfare scores higher in Denmark and Spain. Political scientists in France apply their knowledge to many different topics—the distribution of attention between them is more even than in most other countries. In Turkey, the felds of civil rights and gender, migration, ethnic minorities and culture together are the largest theme of advice, with 37% almost twice as much attended to compared to government and public administration. This also is the case when including the topic of social welfare in Hungary.

One reason for the higher level of attention to government and administration in Belgium and Spain may be connected to issues around the federal state. We already saw that in these countries, the subnational level of advice is equally prominent or even more prominent than the national level. In the unitary state of the Netherlands, democratic and administrative reform are almost constantly on the political agenda (with 51.2% it has the highest score comparatively), and their salience in advising relates to the multiple attempts to depoliticize decision making. As a main topic, international relations shows the least variation in attention in advice across the countries in this book (between 17% and 30%, compared to 17.7%–51.2% for government and public administration). This does not imply however that political scientists in these countries all venture to the international stage for advice, as more often they advise their own governments on this topic. This applies particularly to Germany, where international relations is the most prominent advisory topic, but as we saw there are less than average connections to international or European institutions for delivering this advice. Also in France and Norway, the part of the political science community specialized in international or European affairs is not strongly oriented on exporting their knowledge for advice.

## 16.4 Political Scientists in the Policy Advisory System

The different dimensions of advising help in mapping the ways in which political scientists across countries in Europe are oriented when engaging in advisory activities. It is a combination of history, institutional design of the political system at large and characteristics and trends within the policy advisory system.

History plays a part in viewpoints and motivations for engaging or staying at a distance. In Germany this appears to have two different effects, one is a concern and 'watchdog function' for the state of democracy engrained after World War II. Despite the salience of the EU for this country, political scientists are comparatively strongly oriented on domestic levels of governance. The other effect is the tradition of autonomy of academia, which draws scholars more into its inner sphere. Hence Germany has more pure academics than the European average. In Denmark, it may be the strong tradition of positivism in political science that produced the very large proportion of experts, with emphasis on evidence over opinion or advocacy. This tradition appears more visible in Denmark than in Norway, the other Scandinavian country highlighted in this book. Furthermore, the transition away from communism in the 1990s in Easter Europe is another historical factor that provides context for advisory orientations and behaviour of political scientists, one of which is advisory participation in the transition process itself. But the broader survey results and the chapters on Albania and Hungary do not point into one single direction. One part focuses on the domestic institutions and public arena, another part of the political science community feels more comfortable reaching out internationally. This also applies to political scientists in Turkey, who experience a different kind of regime change. But the use of international venues is limited to part of the political science community, it is not a mainstream orientation. Another historical factor with changes in its impact is the 'partitocracy' (Cotta, 2015; De Winter et al., 1996) in countries such as Belgium and Italy, where political parties are less prominent as recipients of advice than may be expected given this 'partitocratic' legacy. In both countries, parties are more important access points for advice via their executive and legislative branches than via the party organization. In this way, the lower level of prevalence of parties as such makes the two countries stand out less in a comparative perspective on advisory activities of political scientists.

#### *16.4.1 State Structure*

What appeared more clearly and unequivocally from the comparative discussion of advisory dimensions is the state structure, federal or unitary, and to a lesser extent also EU-membership, in the orientation on levels of governance. Federal countries attract more advisory attention of political scientists to the subnational level. Political scientists in seven out of the nine EU-member states included in this book deliver advice at the European level of governance more than average. And they also do this in the wider international environment. But not the two largest EU-member states France and Germany, where knowledge of the European Union and the international stage of politics are delivered more at the domestic level to recipients. Here, one line of argument could be that in larger countries the scholarly community of political scientists looks more inward at domestic recipients for advising and in small countries it is more outward looking, but the United Kingdom does not ft this pattern. And while Albania is the smallest country analysed more in detail in this book, the route for political scientists towards international arenas of advice is quite selective.

#### *16.4.2 Trends*

The country chapters placed political scientists as a category of academics in the context of the domestic policy advisory system, including advisory connections to the international or European stage. Exporting knowledge to foreign governments, international organizations or think tanks may come from push or pull factors, as for instance in Hungary and Turkey where tensions rise between academics (and political scientists in particular) and the political regime. The prominence of civil rights, migration, ethnic minorities and cultural issues on the advisory agenda of mostly opinionating scholars also is an indication. Next to opinionating, expertise may also follow an outside route by being transferred indirectly via international actors for building up capacity and a policy relevant body of knowledge, as in Albania. But the national communities of political scientists not only vary in their international engagement. They also take different positions at the intersection of academia, the internal sphere of government and the arena of public and private organizations, groups and the broader audience.

The empirical patterns on the dimensions of advising help placing political scientists in the policy advisory system of their country. Most countries show prominence of recipients in the arena of civic, nongovernmental and to a smaller extent also private organizations and groups. These countries are not only the democracies with a recent tendency towards authoritarianism, but also those where this broad arena is more structurally involved in policy making, as in Scandinavia, Germany and the low countries with their corporatist legacy. With respect to the internal government sphere, countries vary in the prominence of bureaucrats, and somewhat less in the specifc intersections of academics with executive or legislative politicians and political parties. Overall, parties are less prominent users of knowledge than often assumed, in particular in the two typical cases of 'partitocracy' in this book: Belgium and Italy (Cotta, 2015; De Winter et al., 1996). The governmental sphere in many countries, of all types, has seen considerable externalization of advice, opening a window for political scientists along many other categories of experts. But what stands out from our fndings on the topics of advice is that in some countries this externalization of advice happens less for the most essential theme of political science knowledge: the structure and functioning of government and public administration. While civil servants are prominent recipients in France and the United Kingdom, they in particular seem to resist knowledge transfer by academics on the fundaments of their own organization and functioning. The Grandes écoles, Oxford and Cambridge already taught them about this.

With these bureaucratic reservations as an exception, externalization in almost all countries brought more access points for academic political science advice. But politicization of science and advice also increased in most countries. This has a qualifying—or sometimes disqualifying—effect on academic political science knowledge in the policy process. And this factor in turn has effect on the position and role of political scientists within the advisory system. Some may withdraw or remain in a role as pure academics, others keep speaking the factual truth to power as experts, while still others more openly voice opinions or advocacy. Public intellectuals may be the most infuential, but they are few.

## 16.5 Revisiting the Simple Model of Advisory Roles

Now that we have taken a deeper and comparative look at the dimensions of advising, it is time to revisit the simple model of advisory roles and see how our fndings may inform its further development. This is relevant not only for understanding the advisory activities of academic political scientists, but for the analysis of advisory relationships of academics more generally. The distinction between pure academics, experts, opinionating scholars and public intellectuals appeared useful for mapping academic views and external behaviour and comparing countries. But each of these four ideal types may contain some variation in profles.

We saw that about one-third of the political scientists never takes initiative for bringing messages into the traditional or social media. While this is a defning characteristic of the pure academic (and to an extent of the expert as well), a more passive orientation still can include exposure from time to time. A pure academic may receive journalistic calls for explanation or interpretation on a matter on which she or he is knowledgeable. Such exposure may be connected to a news item or be published on the science page of a newspaper. It is not advice, opinionating or advocacy. The rise of relevance and impact criteria in fundamental research funding also increases the response from academics to invitations for exposure and public visibility (Smith et al., 2020). This becomes clear when analysing the involvement of political scientists in media debates via interviews or requested interpretations or comments on news items, presented in Fig. 16.10.

Pure academics are less visible, but not invisible, in the media. Also experts do feature in media debates, with emphasis on providing evidence. Conversely, if opinionating scholars and public intellectuals may be expected to be very active or even passionate about bringing their messages into the public sphere, media are not the only venue used by them. Both categories contain a signifcant percentage not participating in media debates. In short, exposure to the media happens in all role types, but it differs in degree. It must be distinguished from advisory or opinionating activities. One group of political scientists may have broad repertoire of active engagement in which the media are just one venue, and for another group some visibility may help strengthening the scholarly reputation.

Even political scientists who shield themselves off from public exposure are not void of values in their choices of research subjects and their orientation on the phenomenon they want to understand. Studying

**Fig. 16.10** Involvement of role types in media debates (*N* = 2354). (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

bureaucratic processing or the way an electoral system functions not just springs from scientifc curiosity but often derives from some concern, or at least, an appreciation that administrative or representative matters have an impact on the political order and the state of democracy. In such cases, the normative underpinnings of pure academics are more implicit compared to their colleagues who are active externally to the university. As Pielke (2007, p. 7) notes, scientists always must make a choice on how they relate to the decision-making process. For this reason, he speaks of 'stealth issue advocacy' (2007, p. 3) that comes with preferences for research topics and analysis of the causes of problems. Next to the public visibility of political scientists, also, underlying values make that all role types have common properties. And as with visibility, the variation lies in the degree to which this is expressed.

Some variation within the role types, so the extent to which a political scientist is a 'typical' expert or a 'typical' opinionating scholar and so on, comes with the intensity of activities used as indicators of the ideal types. As pointed out in Chap. 3, we used a threshold approach in order to distinguish the types empirically. But beyond the threshold, some political scientists of a specifc role type do their external work with more fervour than others. For this reason, we should see the categories as areas on a continuum, where one type fows over into the next. And the profles are also more mixed when we consider the patterns found on the additional dimensions of advising. Take the formality or informality of advice. In Chap. 2 we argued that the expert may profle mostly (but not exclusively) in formal fashion, while the opinionating scholar would be inclined to engage more informally (but not exclusively). Our caution with drawing specifc profles for the advisory role types in Chap. 2 appears justifed, as in Fig. 16.11 we can see that the formality or informality of advice connects to the role types only to a degree. Experts are relatively more often oriented on formal advising arrangements than the other two types, but experts also are more often mainly or entirely *informal*. Conversely, the opinionating scholar is much less frequently informal than a specifcally profled role type would lead us to expect. The mixed repertoire of the public intellectual, with more than 60% of this type of political scientists combining formal and informal ways of advising, conforms to what could be expected for this profle. The reality is one of varying degrees between the role types, and not always in the direction of a theoretical profle.

Similarly, the recipients of advice are less exclusively connected to the role types than a theoretical argument would suggest. In such an argument experts would link mostly to civil servants and advisory bodies for

**Fig. 16.11** Role types and formality or informality of advice. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

technical knowledge and information exchange, and opinionating scholars would profle more with (party) political actors and civil society organizations and groups. Figure 16.12 demonstrates that, as with the formality or informality of advice, public intellectuals ft the theoretical profle of allround advisers. But experts are not so selective in their access points for advice and display, at a lower level of intensity, a pattern of orientation on recipients similar to opinionating scholars. Experts only have a slight preference for bureaucratic actors over political actors, which is the reverse for their opinionating colleagues. External stakeholders already were found to be prominent as a category of recipients, indicating they are directly relevant to policy making or entered the scope of political scientists when party political actors in government or parliament have become less receptive to their advice and knowledge. The prominence of external, social stakeholders appears for all three types of advisers.

While the fndings for these different dimensions of advising often point into the direction of what could be expected to be the role profles, it is also clear that these are not cases of straightforward pattern matching. The fndings tell us two things for the evaluation of the simple model of advisory roles. The frst is that advising as an external activity of political scientists, or of any group of academics, is truly multidimensional. Advisory

**Fig. 16.12** Role types and recipients of advice. (*Source*: ProSEPS survey data)

role types include a broader range of choices than can be contained in a simple theoretical model, and the choices that occur are not always mutually exclusive between the roles. For advisory orientations and activities of academics to be better understood and to make theoretical progress, it is necessary to further investigate the dimensions of advising. The range of recipients, for example, is not static but depends both on the orientations of academics and on how broader political and social trends impact on the demand for scientifc evidence in the policy process. The state of knowledge about this can be improved not only by large scale survey research but also by well selected case studies, comparatively or focusing on typical or critical cases of academic policy advice processes. The dimensions of advice and reasons for engagement (or abstention) can subsequently be connected also to impact the use or neglect of political science knowledge and advice. They matter also for the competencies and skills of the students we teach and train.

The second conclusion we can draw from the analysis is that the four role types with variation between and within them are positions on a continuum. One type fows into the other type as members of the population shift in their characteristics along the different dimensions of advising. Between abstention and passionate advocacy by political scientists there are many points on the dimensions of advising, between no activities and continued engagement, no visibility and spotlight, hidden and open channels, recipients within government or public targets in society, and between factual work and political or social beliefs as a driving force. The points on these dimensions may not all co-vary. Patterns between them can be mixed as we saw when comparing the role types to choices about formality or informality and types of recipients. But by and large, all dimensions open up to disclosure and exposure of political science knowledge and ideas.

Figure 16.13 presents a multidimensional model of advisory roles in which our four ideal types are elaborated into, relatively from each other, more closed and discrete or more exposed and oriented on the societal arena and public channels.

Thus more extravert pure academics differ from their introvert colleagues in some degree of media visibility. Likewise, exposed experts have a broader forum of knowledge delivery than their discrete colleagues, and advocates venture into the societal arena with all kinds of stakeholders more than their counterparts providing opinions at some interval. The public intellectual stands apart as the single most exposed on all dimensions of advising.

**Fig. 16.13** Multidimensional model of advisory roles. (*Source*: Author)

### 16.6 Outlook

Academic political scientists in Europe are quite extrovert in their attitudes and activities. They live part of their professional life outside the 'ivory tower' of the university, engaging in policy advisory activities of all kinds. The vast majority of university-based political scientists across the countries in this book responds to advising requests and delivers opinions with lower or higher frequency. Few are all-round public intellectuals, most develop a modest portfolio of external activities bringing knowledge and viewpoints to all kinds of users, or potential users. Opinionating scholars are most visible, both in terms of the proportion of political scientists engaging in this activity and in terms of the channels and messages used. At the same time, most also are careful or cautious about their messages. Expressive activity is not their primary business. Backing up advisory statements with evidence is important. When evidence and facts are the primary tools of the trade, political scientists profle as experts, the second largest group in the scholarly community of political scientists.

The feld of specialization within the discipline and experience in political or administrative offce draw some political scientists more into advisory work than others. The respondents from the 12 countries in this book occupy more space in public administration and public policy compared to the overall survey, and this may make them more active in advisory roles. Experiences in political or administrative offce before or during the academic appointment similarly may infuence advisory work. Most countries where political scientists have a higher than average experience in such offce external to the university also have a lower proportion of pure academics (Albania, Norway, the United Kingdom, the main exception being Hungary, see Fig. 3.7 in Chap. 3), and conversely, lower than average experience rates in external offce go mostly with more prominence of pure academics within the national political science community (this is most visible in France, Germany and Italy). The domestic policy advisory system is the context where these substantive specialization and professional experience factors bear on advisory engagement.

Despite variation between countries, the general background variables relating to individual characteristics of respondents make a large difference to the extent and nature of engagement. Age, gender and type of employment contract each have a strong predictive effect. Age and status of employment relate to the professional life cycle, in that older, more experienced scholars with a permanent academic position are more active in advising than their younger colleagues at the department of political science. These factors interact with gender, but the relevance of gender for advisory engagement is also particularly strongly socially constructed. Female political scientists abstain more often, and when engaging they take an expert role, staying closer to evidence and less reaching out to the public environment. This apparent gender gap occurs widely across all spheres of professional affliation, and it requires more systematic attention within the academic political science community.

Representative issues at the sending end of the chain of knowledge production and dissemination are not the only bottleneck. At the receiving end, whatever the degree of welcoming, it is the actual use of advice that must be part of attempts and strategies for relevance and impact. This book did not deal with knowledge uptake and use in policy making, but for political scientists it is important to attend to this part of the story (Bandola-Gill et al., 2021). As Head (2015, p. 7) found, arranging ongoing interactive relationships with receivers appears more effective for knowledge use than unilateral transfers by academics. While part of the engagements with policy makers can be considered arranged, especially the more formal ones, such arrangement is not a given. This is empirical research ahead, and it may build on the work of Talbot and Talbot (2015) and others such as in the project on Governments, Academics and Policymaking (GAP). Use of advice by political scientists also depends on the roles played by other advisory actors such as consultants and on the available slots within advisory bodies for political scientists. Other scientifc disciplines also may be a competitor in advising involvement, such as economics and law.

The internationalization of academic life reinforces discovery and scientifc progress. But it also may have an inverse relationship with active advisory roles, because internationalization of scholarly work draws much of the attention into it. The international mobility of scholars may reduce their capacity and access points to recipients. As we saw, recipients of political science advice are predominantly domestic organizations. For a knowledge migrant working in academia, it takes time to settle down in a national policy advisory system. International profling and domestic relevance may show a tension. And as we saw, advising at the international level overall is least frequent compared to the national and subnational level. Thus socialization within a country is important for advisory activities (even though the most internationally mobile scholars may be the ones active at the international level of advising).

As a matter of principle, the authors in this book did not take a normative point of departure by suggesting that one role type is superior to another. Pure academics are neither 'dysfunctioning' academic professionals nor are they the only true kind of scholars in the contemporary university system. Similarly, experts, opinionating scholars and public intellectuals are not, in themselves, loyal or disloyal, good or bad professionals for their university home basis. Neutrality towards the role types in this comparative analysis also is important because the national context of academic organization and the policy advisory system can nurture a particular role type and its further development more than another type.

But such neutrality does not mean indifference to values. Political science not only studies the authoritative allocation of values (Easton, 1965), the discipline itself also is loaded with values. This is as much true in countries where democracy seems stable and unthreatened as in countries where populism and authoritarianism in political regimes are gaining ground. It may be that unfree elections and persistently introvert and unaccountable behaviour of administrative organizations will make all or most political scientists signal that something must be done. But what scholars of agenda setting have called the hidden face of power (Bachrach & Baratz, 1962; Lukes, 1974) is about all those less expressed and visible cases where political power has consequences for participatory and distributive issues. The choice of an object of research in political science can be driven by a concern, and what distinguishes political analysis from political reasoning is its systematic approach to evidence and argumentation.

This brings us to a fnal point about relevance of political science knowledge. Senn and Eder (2018) distinguish political, civic and professional relevance of political science. Given the size of the group of political scientists across countries in Europe that engages in advisory relationships with politics and the public, it is necessary to see how this political and civic relevance relate to professional relevance. Writing about foreign policy, George (1994) indicates how better awareness of types of knowledge produced by academics can help bridging the gap with policy makers. One lesson from this book project is that the professionalization of political science should include not only academic standards on theory testing or development and technical skills but also an orientation on how and why research topics are selected in the frst place and how knowledge can be diffused more effectively and be brought to use outside the academic sphere itself. Compared to the already low percentage of pure academics among university-based political scientists, the proportion of purely academically oriented graduates when ending their master programmes is even considerably smaller. Some 95% pursue a career outside the university.

Connecting political and civic relevance to professional relevance clearly challenges what and how we instruct our students and have us think carefully about the competencies and skills they bring to their frst environment of employment. To re-address Aristotle's typology of knowledge, graduate education in political science and its subfelds should include *techne* and *phronesis* next to the *episteme* with which it is already much involved. To consider more systematically what works (*techne*) and what must be done (*phronesis*) may link knowledge and skills more strongly to the practice in which graduates will work. This is not a devaluation of academic education. Learning from analyses of engagement and locations within a policy advisory system and interactions with knowledge and advice as currency may be more oriented on practice, but it still is academic training. Thus graduate programmes, for example, may pay attention not only to data science as a technical approach to collection and management of large scale data, but also to issues of ownership and authority drawn from such data. Likewise, causal argument and empirical analysis help students build their evidence basis for any role as expert or affliations that may involve problem solving or advocacy, but the capacity to switch between supply and demand sides in knowledge production and delivery does not come naturally. It requires that graduate students are trained for this boundary work. This would involve design thinking and skills of writing policy briefs and communication in diverse organizational or public settings. While much scholarly work is becoming increasingly specialized, the political and broader social reality in which knowledge circulates is taking a more sceptical position towards scientifc knowledge, or sometimes even disqualifes it from a mindset that moved to 'posttruth' argumentation (Brans & Blum, 2020). Against this turn of knowledge denial and alternative facts in the policy process, it is key to include strategies and approaches to effective knowledge in academic education programmes. For academic programme innovation, this means that political scientists are professionally trained in disclosing and communicating their knowledge to users of all kinds. But also the national and international associations of which many political scientists are members do well to take policy advisory skills serious. They also have a role to play for maintaining and strengthening the relevance and impact of political science to politics, society and the world of professions.

#### References


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## Appendix: The Public Visibility and Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe: A Pan-European Survey

*José Real-Dato, Marleen Brans, and Arco Timmermans*

*Included below are all the survey questions used in this volume. They are a selection from the entire survey which also covers questions on the institutionalization and internationalization of political science as a discipline. To limit space use in this book appendix, some questions have been reformatted. The survey questions are presented in three sections: (a) Public visibility of political science; (b) Advisory or policy advocacy role and (c) Personal information.*

## Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science (ProSEPS) COST Action CA15207 Survey

Welcome to the Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science COST Action Survey.

The survey is intended to detect the social visibility of political scientists in their country, their role as policy advisors and their level of internationalization. We really hope that you can spend about 20 minutes of your time to respond to all the questions.

© The Author(s) 2022 397 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9

#### *(a) Public Visibility of Political Science*

**[Q1] Overall, how do you evaluate the visibility in public debates/ discussions of the research produced by political scientists in your country?**

*Please choose only one of the following:*


**[Q1b] Regarding the visibility of political scientists in comparison to other academics or public intellectuals, would you say that in your country:**

*Please choose only one of the following:*


#### **[Q2] In the last three years, did you take part in public debates in the media?**

*Please choose only one of the following:*


#### **[Q2a] If yes, please, can you specify which media…**

*Please choose all that apply:*

□ Contributions to TV programmes

□ Radio programmes

□ Newspapers/magazines (including online outlets)

□ Contributions to other online media (Twitter, Facebook, blogs, video-blogs, YouTube channels, etc.)

**[Q2b1] If yes to contributions to TV programmes, please, specify the average frequency of your interventions on TV programmes related to political issues (during the last three years).**

*Please choose only one of the following:*

□ At least once a week

□ At least once a month

□ At least once every three months

□ At least once every year

□ Less frequently

**[Q3a1] If yes to contributions to TV programmes, these have taken place:**

*Please choose only one of the following:*

□ Mostly on local, provincial or regional outlets

□ Mostly on national outlets

□ Mostly on foreign outlets

### **[Q2a2] If yes to contributions to radio programmes, they have taken place:**

*Please choose only one of the following:*

□ Mostly on local, provincial or regional outlets

□ Mostly on national outlets

□ Mostly on foreign outlets

#### **[Q2b2] If yes to contributions to radio broadcasts related to political issues during the last three years:**

*Please choose only one of the following:*

□ At least once a week

□ At least once a month

□ At least once every three months

□ At least once every year

□ Less frequently

## **[Q2b3] If yes to contributions to newspapers or magazines (including electronic ones and news portals) during the last three years:**

*Please choose only one of the following:*

□ At least once a week

□ At least once a month

□ At least once every three months

□ At least once every year

□ Less frequently

**[Q3a3] If yes to contributions to newspapers or magazines:** *Please choose only one of the following:*

□ Mostly in local, provincial or regional outlets

□ Mostly in national outlets

□ Mostly in foreign outlets

### **[Q4] If yes to contributions to newspapers or magazines (including online ones and news portals) during the last three years:**

*Please choose all that apply:*


**[Q5\_5] If yes to contributions to other online media, how frequently have you participated during the last three years in discussions about political issues through Twitter, Facebook, or professional/personal blogs?**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item:*


**[Q5d] To what extent do you agree with the following statements?**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item: Fully agree—Somewhat agree—Somewhat disagree—Fully disagree*


**[Q6] On a scale where 0 means that 'Participation of political scientists to public debate is not recognised at all for career advancement' and 10 means that this is 'very much recognised and relevant', where would you place the country where you work?**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item:*


*(b) Advisory or Policy Advocacy Role*

**[Q8] How often, on average, during the last three years, have you engaged in any of the following advisory activities with policy actors (policymakers, ministry offcials, interest groups, political parties, etc.)?**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item:*

*At least once/week—at least once/month—at least once/year—less frequently—never*


□ Recommendations for policy alternatives.

□ Forecasts and polls.

□ Value judgements and normative arguments.

**[Q9] If engaging, with which actors did you engage in knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities during the last three years?** *Please choose all that apply:*

□ Executive politicians

□ Legislative politicians

□ Political parties

□ Civil servants

□ Advisory bodies

□ Think tanks

□ Interest groups in the private and corporate sector

□ Other civil society organisations and citizen groups

□ International organisations

**[Q10] At which level of governance did you engage most frequently in policy advice or consulting activities during the last three years?**

*Please choose all that apply:*

□ Sub-national

□ National

□ EU level

□ Transnational/international

**[Q11] Please rate your engagement in direct knowledge exchange, advisory or consulting activities, during the last three years, on a scale from entirely informal (e.g. personal talks) to entirely formal (e.g. appointment in advisory committees, expert councils etc.).**

*Please choose only one of the following:*

□ Entirely informal □ Mainly informal □ Informal and formal □ Mainly formal □ Entirely formal

**[Q13] Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the channels below to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item:*

*At least once/week—at least once/month—at least once/year—less frequently—never*

□ Executive politicians

□ Legislative politicians

□ Political parties

□ Civil servants

□ Advisory bodies

□ Think tanks

□ Interest groups in the private sector

□ Civil society organizations and citizen groups

□ International organizations.

**[Q12] Over the past three years, how frequently have you used any of the modes below to provide policy advice and/or consulting services?**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item:*


#### **[Q14] Please indicate your level of agreement with each of the following statements:**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item: Fully agree—Somewhat agree—Somewhat disagree—Fully disagree*


### **[Q15] With which substantive policy areas is your advice concerned?**

*Please select at most 3 answers:*


#### **[Q16] Which categories best describe your area of expertise?** *Please select at most 3 answers:*

□ Public policy □ Political science □ Public administration □ Economics □ Finance □ Environmental policy □ Environmental science □ Energy and infrastructure □ Health policy □ Urban studies □ Social policy and welfare □ Gender studies □ Other areas (please specify):

#### **[Q17] How important are the following reasons for your engagement in advisory or consulting activities?**

*Please choose the appropriate response for each item:*


#### *(c) Personal Information*

#### **[Q19] What is your highest university degree?**

*Please choose only one of the following:*

□ Master's degree or equivalent


### **[Q20] What is the feld of specialisation of your highest university degree?**

*Please select at most 3 answers:*


## **[Q21] Age (year of birth)**

*[Your answer must be between 1920 and 2000. Only an integer value may be entered in this feld] Please write your answer here:*

#### **[Q22] Have you held political or administrative offces outside academia before or during your academic appointment?**

*Please choose all that apply:*


□ Position in a frm company (including your own)

□ No, I have not held any position outside of academia

#### **[Q23] Could you indicate your current academic position?** *Please choose only one of the following:*

□ Non-permanent contract □ Permanent contract

**[Q18] Gender** *Please choose only one of the following:*


## Index1

#### **A**

Academic arena, ix, xi, 6, 16, 18, 19, 21, 28, 32, 117, 138, 140, 151, 191, 199, 208, 227, 241, 284, 285, 316, 368, 393 Academic autonomy/ freedom, 11, 160 Academic education, 393, 394 Academic publications, 146, 235, 293, 374 Academic self-governance, 244 Academic sphere, *see* Academic arena Ad hoc advisory committees, *see* Advisory bodies Advice content, *see* Topics of advice Advice frequency, *see* Frequency of advice Advice mode, *see* Mode of advice (formal/informal) Advice recipients, *see* Recipients of advice

Advising, *see* Advisory activities*,* demand for, supply of, dimensions of, frequency of, revisited model of, simple model of Advisors, 9, 71, 72, 77, 79, 85, 88, 89, 93, 96, 105, 107, 111, 114–116, 123, 127, 162, 167, 184, 185, 187, 188, 198, 206–208, 210, 214, 215, 218–221, 226, 257, 259, 261, 262, 267, 268, 280, 284, 300, 308, 313, 321–323, 325, 327, 336, 373, 397, 406 Advisory activities, 119, 142, 371 causes and consequences of policy problems, 25, 119, 142, 165, 168, 210, 322, 371, 401 demand for, 35 dimensions of, 10, 29, 31, 34, 35, 42, 44–51, 227, 364, 365, 370–382, 384, 385, 387–389

1Note: Page numbers followed by 'n' refer to notes.

© The Author(s) 2022 409 M. Brans, A. Timmermans (eds.), *The Advisory Roles of Political Scientists in Europe*, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86005-9

Advisory activities (*Cont*.) evaluation of policies and institutions, 210, 238, 401 forecasts and polls, 77, 119, 142, 210, 323, 371, 402 frequency of, 50, 77, 94, 148, 189, 263, 265, 269–272, 287, 296, 370, 371 provision of data and facts, 25, 77, 94, 119, 142, 169, 174, 177, 189, 210, 238, 246, 247, 349, 371, 401 recommendations for policy alternatives, 25, 119, 142, 169, 210, 402 revisited model of, 34, 385–389 simple model of, 10, 34, 42, 62, 365, 385–389 supply of, 182, 208, 255, 262, 381 value judgements and normative arguments, 25, 51, 94, 119, 124, 126, 169, 210, 238, 263, 289, 322, 371, 402 Advisory bodies Belgium, 91, 100, 376 The Netherlands, 17, 91, 376 Norway, 226, 239, 242 *See also* Advisory committees Advisory committees, *see* Advisory bodies Advisory councils, *see* Advisory bodies Advisory role types, 7, 10, 29–32, 42, 50–52, 74, 75, 77–79, 81, 93, 95, 118, 123, 126, 148, 162, 170, 171, 174, 175, 177, 187–189, 193–195, 197, 205–222, 228, 229, 235, 238, 245, 261, 263, 267, 268, 285, 286, 296–300, 302, 318, 325, 347, 353–355, 365, 366, 368–372, 382, 384–393, 398 in Albania, 10, 67–81

Belgium, 85–107, 375, 376 Denmark, 111–128 Europe, 123, 370 expert, 10, 17, 42, 73, 87, 112, 132, 157, 184, 207, 225, 261, 280, 314, 341, 365, 402 Germany, 171 ideal types, 34, 35, 50, 94–96, 121, 162, 169–172, 182, 266, 325, 350 Italy, 209–217 The Netherlands, 279–303 opinionating scholar, 29–32, 42, 50–52, 74, 77, 78, 81, 94–96, 105, 107, 118, 123, 124, 126, 148, 172, 175, 177, 184, 189, 193–195, 197, 198, 210, 213, 228, 229, 245–248, 280, 285, 297–300, 302, 318, 324, 325, 327, 350, 365, 368–371, 376, 383, 385–388, 390, 392 public intellectual, 7, 10, 29, 31, 32, 42, 50–52, 74, 75, 77, 78, 81, 93, 95, 118, 126, 162, 171, 174, 175, 177, 187, 189, 193–195, 197, 198, 208, 210–213, 228, 229, 235, 245, 261, 263, 267, 268, 285, 286, 296–300, 318, 325, 347, 354, 365, 368–371, 384, 385, 387–390, 392, 398 pundit (*see* Advisory role types, opinionating scholar) pure academic, 10, 29–32, 42, 50–52, 74, 78, 79, 81, 93, 95, 118, 123, 126, 148, 162, 169–171, 175, 177, 188, 189, 193, 194, 205–222, 228, 229, 238, 245, 261, 263, 286, 296–299, 302, 318, 325, 347, 353–355, 365, 366, 368–370, 372, 382, 384–386, 389, 391–393

Spain, 266, 268 United Kingdom, 350 Advocacy, 4, 6, 17, 23, 30, 31, 35, 48, 71, 72, 76, 115, 118, 148, 195, 240, 280, 293, 297, 302, 364, 366, 368, 371, 374, 376, 382, 384–386, 389, 394, 401, 406 Advocate, *see* Opinionating scholar Age, effects on advisory role types, 364 Agenda items everyday agenda items, 309, 311, 316, 317, 321, 322, 327 Agenda setting, *see* Stages of policy making Agentifcation, 230 Albania, 10, 11, 43, 53, 55, 60, 67–81, 366, 368, 376–378, 382–384, 391 Alternative for Germany, 173 Anglo-saxon (tradition), 227 Arenas, *see* Policy advisory arenas Aristotle, 5, 25, 393 Athens, vii, viii Aubin, David, 22, 24, 88, 90 Authoritarianism, 5, 384, 392 Authoritarian system tendency, *see* Authoritarianism

#### **B**

Bakir, Caner, 310, 312–314, 317 Bandola-Gill, Justyna, 28, 187, 254, 260, 391 Belgium, 10, 85–107, 366, 368, 375–377, 381, 382, 384 Bino, Blerjana, 73 Bleiklie, Ivar, 229, 238 Blogs and social media, 353 Blum, Sonja, 18, 19, 35, 85, 89, 93, 160, 162, 177, 208, 227, 243, 263, 301, 307, 309, 316, 342, 394

Bolukbasi, H. Tolga, 311–315 Boundary organizations, 151, 300 Boundary-spanners, 345 Boundary work, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 32, 33, 42, 62, 293, 394 Brans, Marleen, 17–19, 22, 24, 85, 88, 89, 92, 93, 208, 227, 243, 263, 301, 307–309, 313–316, 342, 394 Brexit, 10, 341, 377 Bundestag, 173 Bureaucracy, 90, 135, 183, 226, 229–231, 242, 310, 313 Bureaucratization, 227

#### **C**

Cabinet Offce, 340 Career advancement, 4, 6, 45, 107, 124, 126, 127, 162, 260, 301, 372, 401 incentives, 11, 43, 112, 162, 265n10 of political scientists, ix, 11, 12, 43, 45, 124, 125, 208, 262, 271, 295, 303, 401 *See also* Employment status Centralism, *see* Centralization of decision making Channels of advice blog pieces or entries in social media, 122 policy reports/briefs, 121 publications, 26, 77, 81, 96, 146, 165, 239, 373 research reports, 77, 81, 96, 239 traditional media articles, 146, 165, 239 Civic engagement, 346 Civic epistemology, 22, 157, 158

Civil rights, 49, 191, 208, 216, 217, 222, 268, 290, 297, 378, 379, 381, 383, 404 Civil servants, 22, 27, 47, 49, 90, 111, 117, 123, 126–128, 134, 135, 144, 145, 165, 195–197, 206, 214, 238, 240–242, 244, 246, 258, 259, 263, 265, 266, 284, 291, 293, 320–321, 327, 328, 352, 375–377, 384, 387, 402, 403 Civil service, 17, 20, 22, 99, 106, 134, 151, 207, 230, 235, 238, 242, 257, 258, 291, 293, 312, 337 Civil society (organizations/actors), 17, 18, 21, 22, 27, 47, 49, 61, 71, 73, 76, 88, 99, 117, 123, 126–128, 136, 144, 146, 151, 165, 185, 194, 196, 197, 214, 240, 284, 291, 312, 315, 320–322, 324, 327, 328, 347, 352, 375, 377, 388, 402, 403 Communication channels, 353 Communism/communist, 5, 68, 69, 368, 382 Comparative agendas project, 49, 263, 269, 378 Comparative politics, *see* Political science subdisciplines Consensualism, *see* Consensus democracy Consensus democracy, 86–88, 283, 286 Consensus-seeking style, *see* Consensus democracy Consensus-style politics, *see* Consensus democracy Consultancy, 17, 28, 77, 81, 89, 94, 102, 106, 119, 123, 137, 138, 142, 163, 163n2, 164, 169, 185, 188, 189, 210, 239, 284, 289, 314, 317, 323, 339, 348–350, 371

Consultancy companies, *see* Consultancy Consultancy frms, *see* Consultancy Consultancy services, *see* Consultancy Consultants, 21, 22, 28, 72, 185, 207, 208, 221, 242, 302, 392 *See also* Consultancy Consultation, 72, 73, 137, 138, 258n4, 315 Consultative bodies, *see* Advisory bodies Consultative organs, *see* Advisory bodies Consulting industry, *see* Consultancy Content of advice, *see* Topics of advice Contract, *see* Employment status Corporate actors/sector, 24, 27, 47, 61, 76, 78, 80, 134, 146, 214, 215, 240, 284, 345, 352, 375, 402, 403 Corporate organizations, *see* Corporate actors/sector Corporativization, 227 COST action CA15207, x, 9, 42, 226, 397 *See also* Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science (ProSEPS) Craft, Jonathan, 8, 17, 19, 111, 112, 159, 207, 209, 214, 226, 241, 259, 284, 307, 313, 335–337

#### **D**


Democratization, 5, 70, 71 Denmark, 10, 55, 58, 59, 111–128, 366, 368, 376, 377, 381, 382 Discrete expert, *see* Expert Donors, 70, 73, 76, 77, 187

#### **E**

Economists, 9, 34, 90, 90n2, 99, 107, 115, 116, 127, 128, 161, 194, 207, 208, 211, 218, 241, 242, 246, 257, 338, 380 Eisfeld, Rainer, 68, 69, 160, 177, 334 Electoral behaviour, *see* Political science subdisciplines Electoral reform, 77, 98, 143, 191, 217–219, 261, 268, 273, 352, 378 Employment contract, *see* Employment status Employment status, 70, 168–170, 172, 176, 212, 273, 370, 391 permanent/tenure, 167 temporary, 162 Endowed professorships, 284 Engagement desirability of, 372 normative, 43, 94, 119, 142, 264, 286, 318, 368 *See also* Advising Episteme, *see* Knowledge types Epistemological tradition, 17 ESRC, 340, 346 EU studies, *see* Political science subdisciplines European Affairs, 382 European integration, 70, 77 Europeanization, 284, 309, 313, 314, 327, 328 European political scientists, 172, 308, 320, 366, 372

European Union (EU), 6, 10, 26, 42, 47, 49, 69, 77, 79, 98, 101, 117, 144, 165, 167, 186, 191, 208, 216, 222, 244, 263, 268, 269, 290, 314, 314n2, 315, 317, 320, 352, 377–379, 382, 383 Evidence-based advice, 186, 326 policy, 339 policy making, 23, 72–73, 89, 184, 208, 221 Evidence-free policy making, 85, 89 Evidence-freed policy-making, 89 Evidence-informed policy making, 71 Evidence types, *see* Knowledge types Expert, 389 committee(s), 114, 121, 127, 284, 354 co-optation of, 184 expertise, 7, 8, 23, 24, 29, 49, 73, 75, 88, 98, 99, 105, 106, 112, 119, 121, 123, 126, 127, 134, 135, 137, 138, 144–147, 151, 152, 157, 158, 174, 175, 183, 184, 188, 200, 206, 207, 209, 211, 214–217, 225, 227, 229, 235, 240, 246, 262–264, 270, 272, 273, 282, 284, 289, 290, 309, 315, 316, 370, 372, 380, 383 *See also* Advisory role types Exposed expert, *see* Expert Exposure of political scientists, *see* Visibility of political scientists/science Externalization of policy advice external advisor, 22 External lay arena, 344 External stakeholder arena, 16 *See also* Societal arena Extrovert pure academic, *see* Pure academic

#### **F**

Facts, 63, 89, 98, 106, 107, 115, 119, 121, 125, 127, 135, 160, 161, 167, 176, 189, 206, 213, 214, 216, 220, 231, 242, 248, 257, 258, 291–293, 298, 311, 315, 322, 325, 326, 338, 344, 352 *See also* Evidence-based Federal electoral district, 86, 97, 103–105, 107 Federalism effects on level of advising, 167 Federal system/state, *see* Federalism Federalism, 175, 267, 377, 381 Fifth Republic (France), 134, 137 Flanders, 87, 92, 103, 107 Flinders, Matthew, 254, 336, 339 Fobé, Ellen, 88, 90–92, 159 Forecasts and polls, *see* Advisory activities France, viii, 10, 44, 52, 55, 58–60, 91, 131–152, 367, 376, 377, 381–384, 391 Frequency of advice, 43, 44, 50, 95, 169, 263, 265,

#### **G**

Galanti, Maria Tullia, 214 Gender, effects on advisory activities, 170, 198 advisory role types, 34, 75 Gender politics, *see* Political science subdisciplines Gieryn, Thomas, 15, 18, 20, 338 Gouglas, Athanassios, 17 Government structure/organization, 22, 273, 285, 290, 336 *Grandes Ecoles*, schools of higher learning, 134, 135 *Grands Corps* of the State, 134

269–272, 296

#### **H**

Halligan, John, 8, 15–17, 19, 24, 112, 159, 205, 207, 241, 336, 337, 342 Hassenteufel, Patrick, 17, 25, 132, 136 Head, Brian, 28, 35, 391 Heinsius, Daniel, 281 Higher education, 335, 338, 339, 346, 355 Howlett, Michael, 8, 17, 111, 112, 159, 205, 207, 209, 214, 226, 259, 284, 307, 308, 313, 335, 336 Hungary, 5, 10, 52, 55, 58, 60, 181–201, 367, 368, 376, 377, 381–383, 391 Hustedt, Thurid, 16, 22, 111, 208,

## **I**

308, 336

Ideal types of advisory roles, *see* Advisory role types Illiberal democracy, 181, 184 Impact, 334, 335, 339, 342–347, 350, 353–355 acceleration accounts, 339 agenda, 335, 344, 345, 347, 354, 355 Incentives for advising, 192, 355 Informal interaction, 126 Institutional reform, 105, 133, 149–150, 220, 259n6, 261 Instrument for Pre-Accession Assistance (IPA), 314, 314n2 Integrated Planning System (IPS), 71, 210–218, 221, 222 Interest organizations/groups, 8, 47, 49, 58, 61, 71, 72, 76, 78, 87, 91, 94, 98, 100, 106, 111, 112, 117, 120, 143, 146, 166, 190,

195, 214, 215, 227, 231, 235, 240, 256, 263, 266, 284, 288, 292, 317, 352, 376 Internal governmental arena, 117, 185, 227, 316, 344 *See also* Governmental arena International advising, 392 International conferences, 3, 6, 123 Internationalization, 345 of advising (*see* International advising) of political science, 6, 45, 132, 186, 194, 282 International organizations, 21, 27, 47, 76, 77, 81, 100, 117, 186, 188, 194–197, 214, 266, 267, 376, 383 International relations, *see* Political science subdisciplines Introvert pure academic, *see* Pure academic Italy, 10, 44, 52, 59, 60, 205–222, 367, 377, 381, 382, 384, 391 Ivory tower, 247, 302, 365, 390

#### **J**

Jasanoff, Sheila, 22, 157, 158 Judges, 114, 115, 310 Jungblut, Jens, 160, 177

#### **K**

Knowledge dissemination, 6, 373 Knowledge-exchange, 339 Knowledge production supply demand, 78, 79, 177, 199, 394 Knowledge statements, 25, 27, 35, 92 Knowledge types, 25, 29–32, 46, 370, 393 *episteme*, 25, 29–32, 46, 370, 393 *phronesis*, 25, 29, 30, 33, 46, 370, 393

*techne*, 25, 29, 30, 32, 46, 370, 393 Knowledge utilization/use, 18, 22, 293, 392

#### **L**

Lawyers, 9, 34, 127, 161, 183, 207, 242, 246, 380 Legal scholars/law professors, *see* Lawyers Legislative branch, 137, 138, 375, 383 Level of advice (subnational, national, international, European), 215, 381 Level of governance, 27, 49, 117, 194, 200, 216, 239, 320, 328, 377, 383 Lijphart, Arend, 87, 282, 283, 336 Lindquist, Evert, 26, 46 Lobbying, 76, 230 Local government, 76, 92, 98, 127, 183, 184, 206, 231, 235, 246, 259, 264, 272, 319, 377, 406 *See also* Political science subdisciplines Locational model of policy advisory system, 16, 225

#### **M**

Majoritarian democracy, 336 Media, 342, 344, 350, 352, 353 *See also* Public media Media debates (involvement in), 233, 385, 386 Michelsen, Svein, 229, 238 Ministerial adviser, 137, 339 Mode of advice (formal/informal), 43, 96, 164, 165, 197, 199, 236, 267 Molnar, Gabor, 186 Motives/motivations for engagement, 103, 142, 174, 192, 294, 295, 351, 373

#### **N**

Napoleonic administrative tradition, 17, 134, 311 National Centre for Universities and Public Policy, 340 Neo-corporatism, 87, 135, 231 *See also* Corporatism Neo-pluralism, 231 The Netherlands, 5, 7, 10, 17, 58, 59, 91, 279–303, 367, 368, 375–377, 381 Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG), 281 New public management (NPM), 138, 235 Non-governmental organizations (NGOs), 21, 27, 49, 72, 73, 75–77, 81, 91, 186, 195, 209, 266, 317, 345 Nordic model of government, 241 Normative arguments/judgements/ statements, 23, 25, 51, 52, 77, 93, 94, 101, 118, 119, 124, 126, 142, 148, 167, 169, 172, 174, 175, 177, 189, 210, 211, 238, 246, 261, 263–265, 289, 322, 323, 325, 350, 365, 368, 371, 402 *See also* Normative engagement Norris, Pippa, 43, 369 Norway, 10, 42, 55, 58–60, 112, 225–248, 366, 368, 376–378, 381, 382, 391

### **O**

Open Society Foundation, 69 Opinionating scholar, 27–32, 42, 50–52, 74, 77, 78, 81, 94–96, 105, 107, 118, 123, 124, 126, 148, 172, 175, 177, 189, 193–195, 197, 198, 210, 213,

228, 229, 245–248, 280, 285, 297–300, 302, 318, 324, 325, 327, 365, 368–371, 376, 383, 385–390, 392 Opinionator, 30, 31, 96, 211, 212, 261, 263, 265, 267, 268, 347, 353, 354 *See also* Advisory role types; Opinionating scholar Opinion provider, *see* Opinionating scholar Outreach, *see* Engagement

## **P**

Parliament, 61, 76, 77, 86–88, 115, 133, 138, 149, 150, 158, 159, 162, 172, 176, 207, 230, 255, 256, 263, 292, 316, 343, 352, 353, 388 Parliamentary committees, 26, 81, 88, 90, 207, 209, 231, 316, 344 Parliamentary hearing(s), 90 Parliamentary Offce for Science and Technology (POST), 352 Parliamentary system, 309–311, 310n1, 313 Parliament members, 76 Partitocracy, 85, 86, 88, 106, 382, 384 *See also* Partitocrazia Partitocrazia, 377 Pattyn, Valérie, 18, 88, 89, 91, 92, 157, 159, 283, 300 Pegida, 173, 174 Peters, B. Guy, 24, 134, 135, 225, 229, 230, 334 Phronesis, *see* Knowledge types Pielke, Roger, A., 27, 28, 386 Planning bureau, 282 Pluralism, 136, 144, 150, 231, 293, 327

Pluralization, 23, 85, 86, 88, 89, 106, 159, 231, 284 Policy advice defnition of, 24, 25 use of, 85, 159, 226 (*see also*  Utilization) *See also* Channels of advice*;* Frequency of advice; Mode of advice; Topics of advice Policy advice utilization, 18, 22, 151 Policy advising, *see* Policy advice Policy advisory arenas academic arena, 18, 199, 208 governmental arena, 90, 126, 208, 209, 316–317 (*see also* Internal governmental arena) intersections of, 21, 24, 91–92 societal arena, 18, 91, 185, 208, 316, 317, 321 (*see also* External stakeholder arena) Policy advisory system, 334–339, 342–344, 346, 353, 354, 356 competitive, 89, 313, 321 defnition, 8 non-competitive, 327 pluralist, 183, 313 Policy advocacy, *see* Advocacy Policy analysis, 349 Policy areas, 352 Policy briefs, *see* Channels of advice Policy communities, 231 Policy cycle, *see* Stages of policy making Policy engagement, 340, 347, 355 Policy evaluation, 349 *See also* Stages of policy making Policy formulation, *see* Stages of policy making Policy implementation, *see* Stages of policy making Policy-makers, 335, 340, 344, 345, 347

Policy making, 337, 338 evidence-based, 23, 72–73, 89, 126, 184, 186, 221 evidence-free, 85 evidence-freed, 89 evidence-informed (*see*  Evidence-based) Policy networks, 231, 312 Policy problems analysis of, 24, 238, 247 causes of, 25, 142, 165, 168, 210, 322, 371 recommendations for, 25 solutions for, 17, 247, 310 Policy professionals, 111, 115 Policy relevance, 339 Policy reports, 353 Political-administrative/politicoadministrative relations, 20, 116, 127, 229, 244 Political agenda, 10, 26, 72, 80, 88, 217, 291, 296, 364, 380, 381 *See also* Stages of policy making Political cleavages, 235 Political economy, *see* Political science subdisciplines Political fragmentation, 160 Political institutions, viii, 58, 116, 194, 256, 264, 272, 311 *See also* Political science subdisciplines Political offce (by political scientists), 195 Political parties, 27, 49, 58, 61, 71, 72, 76, 78, 85, 87, 91, 94, 98, 100, 103, 105, 116, 117, 120, 143, 145, 162, 165, 166, 190, 195, 197, 206, 208, 214, 235, 240, 256, 260, 263, 266, 283, 286, 288, 291, 292, 297, 321, 328, 345, 352, 375–377, 382, 384

Political party organizations, *see* Political parties Political science, 316, 333, 338 advisory roles of, 132 history of, 232 impact of, 334, 394 independence of, 284 institutionalization of, 5, 42, 254, 281–282, 297 professionalization of, 365, 393 relevance of, 163, 172, 175, 182, 255, 273, 393 size of, 163n2, 258 *See also* Political science subdisciplines Political science associations, 43 Association Française de Science Politique (AFSP), 131 Dutch Association of Political Science, 281 Dutch Association of Public Administration, 281 European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), 43 German Political Science Association (DVPW), 160 International Political Science Association (IPSA), 70, 281 Political science subdisciplines, x, 4, 8, 9, 11, 17, 25, 44, 49, 58–62, 67, 68, 70, 71, 77, 92, 98, 107, 111, 118, 132, 134–136, 138, 140, 143, 145, 146, 158, 165, 174, 182–184, 186, 188, 194, 206–209, 216, 217, 219, 222, 228, 229, 231–235, 255–261, 259n6, 264, 268, 272, 274, 279–281, 286, 287, 289, 290, 293, 299, 300, 302, 308, 316, 319, 324, 327, 339, 340, 342, 352, 355, 378–381, 384, 391 comparative politics, 104 electoral behaviour, 104, 264

EU studies, 58 international relations, 132 local government, 264, 272, 319 political economy, 319 political institutions, 58, 116, 264, 272, 311 political theory, 58, 62, 98, 158, 174, 194, 228, 233, 319, 327 public administration, 4, 11, 49, 140, 186, 381 public policy, 4, 11, 49, 140, 186, 381 security studies, 98 social science methods, 194 Political scientists, i, 4, 15, 41, 67, 85, 112, 132, 157, 182, 207, 225, 254, 279, 307, 334, 363, 397 visibility of, 46, 293, 386, 397, 398 *See also* Political science, advisory roles of Political studies, *see* Political science Political theory, *see* Political science subdisciplines Politicians, 349, 352, 354 Politicisation, 12, 22, 23, 85, 86, 88, 89, 99, 112, 159, 183, 184, 206, 207, 226, 227, 243, 247, 256, 286, 302, 309, 312–314, 323, 326–328, 376 of science/research, viii, 284, 384 Politico-administrative regime, 229, 230 Pollitt, Christopher, 112, 113, 225, 229 Populism, 158, 172–176, 392 Positivism/neo-positivism, 382 Post-communist/m, 185 Power and Democracy Research Project, 113, 114 Presidential bureaucracy, 310 Presidentialization, 309, 312 Presidential system, 309, 310, 312, 318

Pritoni, Andrea, 208, 217–219 Private actors*, see* Corporate actors/sector Private sector, 345, 349, 352 Professionalisation, 339 Professionalization and Social Impact of European Political Science (ProSEPS), x, 4–6, 9, 27, 32, 42, 43, 45–48, 51–54, 56, 57, 59–63, 75, 118, 232, 245, 247, 254, 256n3, 263–268, 265n10, 308, 309, 314, 318, 320, 322, 325, 327, 334, 335, 346, 347, 352–354, 364, 366, 367, 380, 397 *See also* COST Action CA15207 ProSEPS survey items respondents response rate sample questions background variables, 45–48, 51–53 Public administration, *see* Political science subdisciplines Publications, 353, 354 Public commissions, 113–116, 123, 125–127, 228, 231, 241, 242 Public committees, *see* Public commissions Public engagement, 286–295, 347, 354 Public good, 355 Public intellectual, *see* Advisory role types Public media, 7–10, 24, 26, 28–32, 42, 43, 46, 48, 50, 71, 77, 78, 81, 87, 88, 91, 92, 96, 99, 105, 106, 116, 121–128, 146–148, 150, 162, 165, 173, 174, 176, 177, 184, 186, 188, 198, 208, 209, 217, 228, 233, 239, 240, 245, 247, 257, 284–287, 293, 296, 319, 324, 341, 342, 352, 353, 373, 374, 385, 389, 398, 399, 401 newspapers/magazines, 29, 47, 88, 91, 104, 115, 116, 122, 160,

172, 172n4, 173, 209, 218n2, 219n3, 221, 324, 353, 385, 399, 400 radio programmes, 398, 399 social media (twitter, facebook, blogs, video-blogs, youtube), 24, 26, 31, 46–48, 77, 81, 122, 128, 147, 209, 217, 239, 293, 319, 324, 353, 373, 374, 385, 399, 400 tv programmes, 398, 399 Public policy, *see* Political science subdisciplines Pure academic, *see* Advisory role types

### **Q**

Quantitative, 339

#### **R**

Radio (programmes), *see* Public media Real-Dato, José, 254 *Rechtsstaat*, 229 Recipients of advice advisory bodies, 88, 195, 197, 214, 291, 296, 375, 376, 387 citizen groups, 375 civil servants, 27, 145, 195, 197, 214, 265, 291, 328, 375, 387 civil society organizations, 99, 144, 194, 196, 197, 214, 291, 324, 375 executive politicians, 27, 76, 195–197, 214, 265, 321, 328 interest groups in the private sector, 215 legislative politicians, 106, 195, 196, 214, 292, 321, 328 political parties, 27, 76, 195, 197, 214, 291, 292, 328, 376 think tanks, 76, 194–197, 214, 291, 320, 324, 375, 376

REF2014, 334, 335, 340, 342, 344–346, 352, 353, 356 Reforms administrative reform electoral reform, 98, 143 Regime parliamentary system presidential system change, 309 Regime political regime hybrid regime authoritarian regimes, 328 Regional government(s), 183, 207 Relevance of political science, 172, 182, 255, 273, 393 Research Council of Norway (RCN), 226, 242–247 Research Excellence Framework, 334, 339, 342n2 Research impact agenda Social and political impact REF, 355 Research institutions, 44, 52, 116, 117, 206, 226, 231, 240 Research programme commissioned applied funding, 89 Research reports, 353 *Ressortforschung* (departmental research), 159 Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences, 284

### **S**

Scandinavia, 384 Scandinavian administrative tradition, 225, 229 Science for democracy, 160 Scientifcation of politics, 23, 284 Scientifc Council for Government Policy (WRR), 282 Security studies, *see* Political science subdiscplines Segmentation, 231, 280, 282, 300 Social capital, 73, 121 Social media, *see* Public media Social movements *see* Political science subdisciplines

Social science methods, *see* Political science subdisciplines Social scientists, 9, 81, 124, 141, 167, 176, 240–242, 285, 337 Social welfare, 49, 118, 144, 191, 206, 207, 290, 297, 379, 381 Societal arena, 16, 18, 20, 91, 92, 185, 208, 209, 227, 284, 309, 316, 317, 321, 389 Societalization, 309, 313, 327, 328 Spain, 10, 52, 55, 59, 253–274, 376, 377, 379, 381 Special advisers, 337 *See also* Ministerial adviser Squevin, Pierre, 311 Stages of policy making, 17, 24–26, 70, 71, 77, 89, 136, 206, 211, 217, 227, 257, 258, 282, 284, 309, 311, 312, 314, 317, 327, 349, 350, 393 State expertise, 134, 147 State-society relations, 229, 311, 327 Statism statist policy advisory system statist policy advisory style, 133 Sweden, 5, 32, 113

#### **T**

Teaching, 4, 6, 7, 12, 44, 56, 69, 80, 135, 139, 160, 161, 187, 212, 282, 286, 370 *Techne*, *see* Knowledge types Television programmes, *see* Public media Tenbensel, Tim, 15, 25, 29, 32, 46 Tenure, *see* Employment status Thatcher, 336, 338 Think tanks, 8, 17, 21, 27, 30, 47, 49, 69, 72–73, 75–77, 81, 89, 91–92, 97, 99, 104–106, 111, 115–117, 127, 136, 138, 139, 145, 146, 150, 151, 165, 182, 185–188, 194–197, 200, 207, 208, 214,

215, 240, 256, 259, 260, 263, 266, 291, 315, 315n3, 318, 321, 322, 324, 325, 327, 328, 337, 338, 343–345, 347, 352, 354, 375–377, 383, 402, 403 Timmermans, Arco, 25, 26, 283, 290, 365 Tools of engagement, 343, 345, 347 Topics of advice civil rights, political rights, gender issues, 49, 144, 165, 191, 208, 213, 216, 217, 222, 268, 290, 297, 378, 379, 381, 383, 404 government and public administration, 98, 118, 143, 191, 258, 261, 268, 352, 378, 381, 384 immigration, 144, 165, 174, 208, 216, 217, 222, 268, 290, 297 international affairs (including European Union), 49, 98, 118, 144, 191, 268, 269, 283, 290, 352, 378 Training courses, 353 Trust, 72, 79, 80, 121, 152, 209, 230, 231, 341 Turkey, 10, 42, 52, 53, 59, 201, 307–328, 367, 368, 376–378, 381–383 TV programmes, *see* Public media

#### **U**

Unitary state (centralized state government), 229, 381 United Kingdom (UK), 10, 11, 22, 43, 58, 59, 333–356, 367, 368, 375–379, 381, 383, 384, 391 United Kingdom in a Changing Europe, 341 Universities, ix–xi, 4–7, 9, 11, 12, 20, 21, 27, 31, 33, 41–46, 50, 56,

58, 62, 63, 68–70, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 86, 87, 90, 92, 97–99, 102, 104–107, 116, 117, 135, 139, 158, 160–163, 170, 174, 186, 187, 208, 212, 219, 220, 226, 232, 233, 238, 240, 244, 247, 258, 258n5, 259, 264, 272, 279, 281, 282, 287, 301, 308, 314–316, 339, 340, 342n2, 363, 364, 369, 370, 386, 390–393, 405, 406 Universities Policy Engagement Network, 340 University education, 281 Utilization, *see* Policy advice utilization

#### **V**

Van Parijs, Philippe, 103, 104, 104n5, 378 Visibility of political scientists, 46, 293, 386, 397, 398

#### **W**

Weiss, Carol H., 15, 18, 35, 254 Welfare State, 113, 231, 244, 283, 378 Westminster administrative tradition, *see* Westminster-type government Westminster-type government, 241 Wildavsky, Aaron, 7 Wittrock, Björn, 25

#### **X**

Xhindi, Nevila, 72, 73

#### **Z**

Zittoun, Philippe, 17, 25