Introduction: science-informed or expert policy advice in the Netherlands

The traditional view casts policy analysis as advice on the authoritative choices that undergird public policies by public servants in a public bureaucracy to political authorities. Because this governmental, instrumental and cognitive conception provides an incomplete view (Radin, 2000), policy-related activities are now more broadly referred to as ‘policy work’ (Colebatch et al, 2010; Kohoutek et al, 2013). This concept captures a broader set of roles and activities in the making of public policies under conditions of networked governance. This chapter's focus is on a special category of policy workers: people working as scientific experts for public policy in advisory bodies and/or knowledge centres. Their capacity and status as experts is precisely derived from their credentials and position in, or knowledge of, science. Qua experts, they are specifically tasked with translating or processing scientific evidence and thought into policy advice. This category of policy workers, apparently because of their scientific expertise, stays rather close to the traditional cognitive role of a policy analyst. However, different from all other types of policy workers, their role obliges them to act as ‘boundary workers’ between science and policy/politics.

The Netherlands has many such expert policy advisers as boundary workers because the country has a highly developed, complex and diverse infrastructure for scienceinformed policy advice. Through the Legal Framework for Advisory Bodies (Kaderwet Adviescolleges) of 1996, the Dutch have legally regulated the frequent use of science-informed policy advice by national government. The law stipulates rules for the establishment, composition, modus operandi and terms of reference of so-called permanent advisory bodies. These bodies have either formally strategic or technical-specialist functions. In addition, there are temporary advisory bodies, established for between four and a maximum of six years, devoted to politically salient but midterm issues. Finally, there are ad hoc or one-off commissions, devoted to a single issue (no yet covered by a permanent or temporary body), which require only a ministerial decree for their establishment.

Apart from the Framework Law for advisory bodies, there are bureaucracy-related sites and arrangements for science-informed policy advice. First, there are the socalled departmental ‘knowledge chambers’.