Who Gives Expert Advice? Empirical Evidence From Swedish Policy-Making

Abstract

Experts play a central role in national and international policy-making. Despite their expanding influence, there is little systematic information about who gives expert advice and their demographic composition. This study contributes to addressing this empirical gap by applying a benchmark-based approach developed for studying political representation to examine the descriptive representation of experts formally involved in Swedish policy processes. Using detailed administrative data on the entire adult population in Sweden (including information on their parentage), I identify academic experts appointed to governmental policy investigations and compare their demographic composition to multiple reference groups. The findings show that academic experts are demographically unrepresentative not only of the general population, but also of parliamentarians, government ministry staff, and the already socially homogeneous academic community from which they are appointed. Regression analyses with fixed effects show that the underrepresentation of academics with working-class backgrounds and first-generation immigrants is not explained by differences in year, age group, fields or university affiliations. In contrast, these structural factors do account for the observed gender disparities, suggesting a different mechanism of exclusion for women.