Polycentric governance and policy advice: lessons from Whitehall policy advisory systems

In countries worldwide, the provision of policy advice to central governments has been transformed by the deinstitutionalisation of policymaking, which has engaged a diverse range of actors in the policy process. Scholarship should therefore address the impact of deinstitutionalisation in terms of the scope and scale of policy advisory systems, as well as in terms of the influence of policy advisors. This article addresses this gap, presenting a programme of research on policy advice in Whitehall. Building on Craft and Halligan’s conceptualisation of a ‘policy advisory system’, it argues that in an era of polycentric governance, policy advice is shaped by ‘interlocking actors’ beyond government bureaucracy, and that the pluralisation of advisory bodies marginalises the civil service. The implications of such alterations are considered against the backdrop of governance changes, particularly the hybridisation of institutions, which has made policymaking processes complex, prone to unpredictability and at risk of policy blunders.

Policy advisory bodies in Belgium

In Belgium, there are about 250 advisory bodies at the federal level and 46 at the regional level. These advisory bodies tend to be highly integrated into the policy-making cycle. They also seem to rely more on experience-based expertise than on academic expert opinion, which is not surprising in a consensus-based political system with neo-corporatist traits where traditional stakeholder groups possess policy-making powers. This chapter analyses the cross-regional and cross-government variation of the nature and role of advisory bodies. It also discusses how the policy advisory system has become subject of reforms that seek to meet four challenges: restoring political primacy in policy-making, dealing with growing advice competition, addressing the coincidence of expert advice and representative opinion, and securing societal support for policy interventions from groups other than traditional representative organizations.