Reviewed by: The Role of the Policy Advisor: An Insider’s Look Ming Li The Role of the Policy Advisor: An Insider’s Look edited by Nadia Verrelli, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. Expert advice is instrumental to the success of government policies. Governments everywhere spend considerable amounts of money on eliciting advice from experts. This book, devoted to the role of advisors in policy-making processes, is a welcome addition to the scant literature that offers practical perspectives on this issue. It is a compilation of papers presented at a special conference in honour of Ronald L. Watts, Principal Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Political Studies at Queen’s University. Six panelists from six different countries discussed the role of experts in policy-making processes based on their previous experiences as policy advisors. This book is of interest to both policy-and theory-minded readers. It offers useful ideas to policy-makers to improve the way they elicit advice, and interesting questions to theorists to study by formal modelling. The panelists and participating members of the audience considered the following main issues: how the protocol in which expert advice is sought affects the effectiveness of policy-making; how the nature of issues and other factors affect the acceptability of advice to the government; and how the advisors should be held accountable for the consequences of their advice. The book is divided into four chapters: Introduction, Part I, Part II, and Conclusion. In the Introduction, the editor, Nadia Verrelli, offers a concise discussion of the subjects covered in the book. In Part I, the panelists discuss their experiences as policy advisors and their opinions on the aforementioned issues. In Part II, members of the audience raise their own questions and the panelists respond to them. In the Conclusion, Professor Watts offers a summary of the panel discussion and raises some interesting points of his own. There is more agreement than disagreement among the panelists. They agree that the best vehicle for seeking advice (consultancies, think tanks, commission inquiries, or roundtables) depends on a variety of factors: the nature of the issue (Rudolf Hrbek), political considerations (Nico Steytler), the time frame of policy-making (Cheryl Saunders), and so forth. In particular, technical issues create the least difficulty in the advising process, while politically charged issues are laden with problems of conflicts of interest, both material and ideological. Long-term advising relationships are more productive than one-shot ones, as the former facilitates trust and reduces conflicts of interest. They also agree that the way that advisors are held accountable for their advice is not directly through financial rewards/penalties, but indirectly through its impact on their reputation among peers (Hrbek, John Kincaid, and Saunders). Steytler also raises the related point that accountability must be ensured by transparency of the advising process, even though transparency during or right after the policy-making process may not be desirable. The vehement resistance of former US Vice President Dick Cheney to the mere release of the names of his Energy Task Force is a salient demonstration of the difficulties of holding advisors accountable. One point covered in the book is policy advising under federal systems, which is especially relevant to Canada. As pointed out by Fossas, Kincaid, and Saunders, federalism complicates policy advising, as there are many legitimate decision-makers and possibly competing nationalist ideologies. The need to convince a majority of such decision-makers and avoid veto by minorities makes it difficult for recommendations to be adopted. On the other hand, as suggested by Kincaid, Saunders, and Watts, this could be an opportunity as well, as there are multiple [End Page 518] points of access for experts. For example, if experts have their ideas rejected at the federal level, they can still sell them to the provincial and state governments, which can then be used as laboratories for these policies. I want to point out that issues arising in policy advising have long attracted the attention of economic theorists, myself included. Theorists have spent considerable effort identifying ways to address conflicts of interest of the experts (e.g., diversified committees, multiple rounds of communication, and disclosure requirements or lack thereof). For theorists, reading...
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Jul 5, 2024
Jacqueline Young + 7
Open Access