A Typology of Advisory Bodies in Legislatures and Research Perspectives

Abstract

IntroductionRigorous scientific advice processes are becoming increasingly important and often used to develop evidence-informed policymaking. Most of the work has focused on investigating advisory processes for the Executive rather than for the Legislative branch. In this contribution, we developed a typology and evaluated current and emerging trends in legislative scientific advice processes. AimsThe aims of this work are to i) Develop a typology to inform academics about key characteristics and insights that can lead to new valuable research questions about legislative science advice, ii) Provide policymakers with information about scientific advice processes in legislatures worldwide so that they can use it for developing new or expand legislative advisory processes, iii) Evaluate emerging trends in scientific advice processes in legislatures for future research or practitioners' work.MethodsWe systematically analyzed literature for publications between 2014 and 2020 using Google Scholar, EBSCO, ScienceDirect, ProQuest, and JSTOR. We used pre-defined terminology related to scientific advice in legislatures to search for peer-reviewed articles and complemented the information of the advisory scientific advisory bodies found using cross-references and grey literature. The unit of analysis for creating the typology and subsequent analysis was the legislative scientific advice body itself.ConclusionWe developed a typology that includes 12 categories defined to provide insights about the contextual background, mandate, structure, and process of advice of legislative advisory bodies. The analysis indicates that advisory bodies in different countries have a wide degree of politicization, with many advisory bodies being considerably politicized. Moreover, most of the work focused on advisory units is in western and high-income countries. There are open opportunities for research, such as doing further comparative analyzes and investigating staff roles in advisory bodies. Lastly, we found that foresight and horizon scanning methodologies were increasingly implemented in legislatures for participatory future-forward thinking advice and to set long-term priorities in agendas.