Special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis.
Peter Aagaard, Marleen Easton, and Brian Head
We are living in turbulent times. Governments have been confronted by multiple interacting crises, like the COVID-19 pandemic, global warming, and economic instability. All over the world, governments face challenges beyond their control, ranging from financial and political disruptions to pandemics, climate change, natural disasters, and threats to national security. These crisis situations are compounded by inevitable gaps in knowledge and uncertainties. This calls for policy advisors. Policy advisors do not just seek to maximise the efficiency of governance during crises. Policy advising also has implications for democratic accountability and legitimacy.
Our article, just published, forms the introduction to a special issue on policy advising during crises. We collect, connect, and provide an overview of the literature in the field, and seek to build on this knowledge, offering new insights.
Today, policy advisory systems are challenged. The idealized picture of experts as objective and non-partisan is less persuasive to the public. This is because of the partisan reporting through the media of crisis issues, and the very rapid dissemination of information (and disinformation) through social media. Policy advisory systems all over the world must adapt to the new conditions, characterized by unpredictable and fast-moving crisis situations. Governments will choose different paths, but they all need to consider appropriate sources of expert advice during crises, and who participates in the expertise-informed policy conversations in crisis situations. Experts can be trusted insiders, or they can be external commentators. They can be providers or ‘shapers’ of knowledge. For some countries, there is a new normal emerging, featuring more collaborative, stakeholder-oriented, resilient ecosystems of policy expertise. These governments consider more inclusive and flexible forms of engagement with experts and stakeholders.
Do you want to find out more? Read the special issue on crisis and policy expertise (see Table of contents below). Through this issue, we seek to advance our knowledge of the relationship between policy advising and political decision-making in times of crisis, and bring new insights of how policy advisory systems respond to crisis.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at
Aagaard, P., Easton, M., & Head, B. W. (2024). Policy expertise in times of crisis. Policy & Politics DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000016
Table of contents for special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis
Policy expertise in times of crisis
Peter Aagaard, Marleen Easton, and Brian W. Head
Analysing expert advice on political decisions in times of crisis
Peter Aagaard, Sevasti Chatzopoulou, and Birgitte Poulsen
Mapping the changing role of expertise in COVID-19 politics in Europe
Kennet Lynggaard, Theofanis Exadaktylos, Mads Dagnis Jensen, and Michael Kluth
Expert perspectives on the changing dynamics of policy advisory systems: the COVID-19 crisis and policy learning in Belgium and Australia
Marleen Easton, Jennifer Yarnold, Valerie Vervaenen, Jasper De Paepe, and Brian W. Head
Investigating the scientific knowledge–policy interface in EU climate policy [Open access]
Claire Dupont, Jeffrey Rosamond, and Bishoy L. Zaki
The promise and performance of data ecosystems: Australia’s COVID-19 response [Open access]
Cosmo Howard and Bernadette Hyland-Wood
The challenges experts face during creeping crises: the curse of complacency
Ahmad Wesal Zaman, Olivier Rubin, and Reidar Staupe-Delgado
