A Theoretical Perspective on the Roles of Political Scientists in Policy Advisory Systems

Abstract

This chapter presents a theoretical perspective for studying the policy advisory roles of political scientists, drawing upon literature on knowledge utilization and policy advisory systems. It first proposes a locational model as a heuristic tool for mapping the advisory activities of academic political scientists in the academic, government and societal arenas, and the intersections between these. For comparative purposes, it considers policy advisory systems as on the one hand reflecting civic epistemologies and political-administrative social systems within countries, and on the other hand as being subject to such global trends towards the externalization and politicization of advice. Secondly, it defines what policy advice is, how its content may vary, and how, to whom, and at which levels of government it is communicated. Thirdly, in order to distinguish engagements and activities of individual academics engaging in advisory work, the chapter construct a typology of four advisory roles: the pure academic, the expert, the opinionating scholar, and the public intellectual.