The relevance and impact of political scientists' professional activities outside of universities has become the focus of public attention, partly due to growing expectations that research should... Show moreThe relevance and impact of political scientists' professional activities outside of universities has become the focus of public attention, partly due to growing expectations that research should help address society's grand challenges. One type of such activity is policy advising. However, little attention has been devoted to understanding the extent and type of policy advising activities political scientists engage in. This paper addresses this gap by adopting a classification that distinguishes four ideal types of policy advisors representing differing degrees of engagement. We test this classification by calculating a multi-level latent class model to estimate key factors explaining the prevalence of each type based on an original dataset obtained from a survey of political scientists across 39 European countries. Our results challenge the wisdom that political scientists are sitting in an "ivory tower": the vast majority (80%) of political scientists in Europe are active policy advisers, with most of them providing not only expert guidance but also normative assessments. Show less
Pattyn, V.; Blum, S.; Fobé, E.; Pekar-Milicevic, M.; Brans, M. 2019
Research on policy-advisory systems worldwide has shown that historically dominant sources of advice traditionally located in-house to the government have been increasingly supplemented by other... Show moreResearch on policy-advisory systems worldwide has shown that historically dominant sources of advice traditionally located in-house to the government have been increasingly supplemented by other actors and outside knowledge. However, the vast majority of research has concentrated on the anglophone context. Yet, countries with a consensus-seeking, neo-corporatist tradition provide a special case in terms of policy advice and merit more scholarly attention. What counts as evidence in these countries is the expert rationality of institutional representatives. The position and role of academic research in consensus-based systems is unclear, and is the focus of this article. Can we observe commonalities across consensus-style countries, or do differences prevail? We investigate two typical consensus-seeking countries: Belgium and Germany. To examine the supply side of policy advice, the article reviews current evidence regarding their policy-advisory systems. For the demand side, we present insights from a survey among federal ministerial officials. We find common trends between the two cases but their nature and extent are idiosyncratic. In Belgium, the supply of and demand for academic policy advice is comparatively lower, while the German case exhibits more change in the advisory landscape and institutionalisation of the supply of and demand for academic research. Show less
Policy evaluations can be set up for multiple purposes including accountability, policy learning and policy planning. The question is, however, how these purposes square with politics itself. To... Show morePolicy evaluations can be set up for multiple purposes including accountability, policy learning and policy planning. The question is, however, how these purposes square with politics itself. To date, there is little knowledge on how government ministers present the rationale of evaluations. This article is the first to provide a diachronic study of discourse about evaluation purposes and encompass a wide range of policy fields. We present an analysis of evaluation announcements in so-called ministerial policy notes issued between 1999 and 2019 by the Flemish government in Belgium. The research fine-tunes available evidence on catalysts for conducting evaluations. The Flemish public sector turns out to be a strong case where New Public Management brought policy evaluation onto the agenda, but this has not resulted in a prominent focus on accountability-oriented evaluations. We further show that policy fields display different evaluation cultures, albeit more in terms of the volume of evaluation demand than in terms of preferences for particular evaluation purposes. Show less
Purpose This study of the impact of Belgian Court of Audit on the federal Administration for the 2005 to 2010 period aims to highlight the auditors’ influence on the management of... Show morePurpose This study of the impact of Belgian Court of Audit on the federal Administration for the 2005 to 2010 period aims to highlight the auditors’ influence on the management of governmental organizations through the performance audits they have been conducting since 1998. A set of ten variables allows us to measure the three types of uses of performance auditors’ work by auditees: instrumental, conceptual and strategic uses. Design/methodology/approach A survey was sent out to a total of 148 respondents identified by the authorities of the targeted organizations. 47 usable questionnaires were completed (32% response rate). Findings The Court of Audit’s impact on the audited entities did not provoke radical changes in the auditees’ organizational life but the intervention of the auditors was nevertheless noticeable. The nature of the impact was rather conceptual than strategic or instrumental. And the negative consequences on auditees anticipated in the literature were not observed. Research limitations/implications Given the five-year period covered by the study which was made in 2014 (four years after 2010), it had to deal with the mortality of respondents and the loss of organizational memory. Practical implications The study gives more accurate insights about the influence that Supreme Audit Institutions actually exert on audited Administrations through their performance audits. Originality/value Since Supreme Audit Institutions have been mandated to evaluate government’s economy, efficiency and effectiveness for almost 40 years in the western democracies, it is mandatory that their actual ability to influence Administrations be documented more abundantly and independently by academic researchers. Show less
This chapter investigates patterns in the application of policy analytical techniques by government officials across different types of policy sectors in three subnational administrations in... Show moreThis chapter investigates patterns in the application of policy analytical techniques by government officials across different types of policy sectors in three subnational administrations in Belgium. Even when there is general consensus about the importance of policy analytical capacity, government officials’ deployment of policy analytical tools may vary across policy sectors, both in terms of frequency as well as in terms of type. To explain these variations, the chapter examines the role of three explanatory conditions that were originally identified to account for variance in policy analytical practice at the national level of analysis, but may also be relevant for the diffusion of policy analytical praxis across different types of policy sectors. These conditions are the role of social scientists in a particular sector, the degree of government spending per sector, and the receipt of EU subsidies. The analysis draws on recent survey material in Belgium carried out in three different subnational administrations: the Flemish government administration (Flanders), the administration of the Walloon Regional government (Walloon Region), and the administration of the government of the French-speaking community of Belgium (French-speaking Community). Show less
When the financial crisis hit the Eurozone, Belgium, along with several other countries, postponed its consolidation policies until after the general elections. What followed was the longest... Show moreWhen the financial crisis hit the Eurozone, Belgium, along with several other countries, postponed its consolidation policies until after the general elections. What followed was the longest caretaker rule that any stable democracy had ever experienced. This article analyses the phenomenon of policy continuity and change during this double crisis. It illustrates how the exogenous economic crisis overrode the endogenous political crisis, showing the extent to which international policy determinants expanded the remit of caretaker policy-making. At the same time, our analysis of the nature of caretaker conventions, the nature of multi-level governance, the permanence of administrative personnel, and the re-invention of parliament offers opportunities to draw lessons and deepen comparative research on policy termination and maintenance in the face of crisis Show less
When the financial crisis hit the Eurozone, Belgium, along with several other countries, postponed its consolidation policies until after the general elections. What followed was the longest... Show moreWhen the financial crisis hit the Eurozone, Belgium, along with several other countries, postponed its consolidation policies until after the general elections. What followed was the longest caretaker rule that any stable democracy had ever experienced. This article analyses the phenomenon of policy continuity and change during this double crisis. It illustrates how the exogenous economic crisis overrode the endogenous political crisis, showing the extent to which international policy determinants expanded the remit of caretaker policy-making. At the same time, our analysis of the nature of caretaker conventions, the nature of multi-level governance, the permanence of administrative personnel, and the re-invention of parliament offers opportunities to draw lessons and deepen comparative research on policy termination and maintenance in the face of crisis. Show less
Checklists for evaluation capacity builders include a wide range of building blocks for supporting evaluation activity. Yet, the relative importance of each building block is not clear. The purpose... Show moreChecklists for evaluation capacity builders include a wide range of building blocks for supporting evaluation activity. Yet, the relative importance of each building block is not clear. The purpose of this article is to identify the capacity related factors that are necessary, but not necessarily sufficient, for organisations that wish to institutionalise high quality policy evaluations. To retrieve these factors, we rely on the necessity function in qualitative comparative analysis. We present a study of twenty-seven organisations of the Flemish public sector (Belgium), in which the introduction of policy evaluations is relatively recent. Our case analysis thus sheds an interesting light upon how policy evaluation, and the underlying capacity to evaluate is given shape. Our findings point at evaluation demand as the most necessary prerequisite for fostering evaluation activity, more so than supply related factors. Show less
An evaluation can be conducted in-house or can be outsourcedto an external party. Yet organizations do not always have fulldiscretion to decide on the locus for evaluation implementation.Certain... Show moreAn evaluation can be conducted in-house or can be outsourcedto an external party. Yet organizations do not always have fulldiscretion to decide on the locus for evaluation implementation.Certain attributes often push the organization in one directionor another. Via a systematic pairwise comparison of attributes of18 organizations in the Flemish (Belgian) public sector, we wereable to indicate the conditions that matter most in determiningthe locus of policy evaluation implementation. Our findings canthus enrich existing guidelines on the advantages and disadvantagesof internal and external evaluations. Show less
