Evidence to Advice in France, Germany, UK: Pandemic Science Advice

• In Event: Political Information, Ideas, and Power in the Pandemic Response to COVID-19

Abstract

Our objective is to understand the role of formal scientific advice systems in the decisionmaking of governments in a governance perspective. What role does the governance of scientific advice systems play in broader decision making?
We used formal documents and media reports to understand the structure of formal advice to the French, German, and UK governments during the COVID-19 pandemic, a crisis that put scientific advice systems under pressure.
In all three systems elected leaders were interested in private advice tailored to their needs and sought it through, for example, consultants. The variation we found was in the extent to which established advice systems had clear accountability which gave them insulation from the immediate demands of the executive, which we call autonomy, and transparent to the public. The German system of advice from independent institutions allowed that advice to be highly influential. In France and the UK, the privacy of advice to the government, and the government’s obvious ability to set the questions advisors answered, limited governments’ ability to draw on advice systems for legitimating policy and biased the scientific advice they received.
In conclusion: Politicians have incentive to prefer private advice tailored to their agendas which can let them make tradeoffs and use science to legitimate their decisions without scrutiny. There is little evidence that governments’ policies gained legitimacy or were much improved by relatively closed private advice tailored to their leaders’ needs. More independent and transparent scientific advice systems can allow stakeholders and voters to determine whether governments “followed science” and hold them accountable for their tradeoffs.

Authors

• Holly Jarman, University of Michigan

• Michelle Falkenbach, Cornell University

• Sarah Denise Rozenblum, Cornell University

• Scott L. Greer, University of Michigan