Studying expert influence: a methodological agenda

Abstract

Expert communities, advisory bodies and expert bureaucracies are ubiquitous in national and international governance. Yet, we have surprisingly little systematic empirical knowledge about how much influence these experts actually have on public policies. This is partly due to limited methodological innovation in studies of expertise and policy making and a lack of relevant methodological guidance. The article presents a new methodological agenda for studying expert influence. It outlines five methodological strategies for studying expert influence empirically: two existing approaches–process-tracing and surveys of attributed influence–and three novel strategies–quantitative analysis of preference attainment, text reuse analysis and citation analysis. The agenda is aimed at students of expert influence across a wide range of phenomena, including the influence of scientific experts on policy making, the policy impact of expert advisory bodies, and the sway of national and international expert bureaucracies.