Stine Hesstvedt

According to influential theories of modernization and individualization, social class has ceased to be relevant to citizens and their political behaviour in Western countries; class has been proclaimed ‘dead’. The argument is particularly strong at the subjective level where people are thought to no longer identify with social classes let alone relate this identification to politics. Using time-series election study data covering many decades combined with manifesto data from the US, Britain, Denmark, and Norway, we challenge this view and show that levels of class identification have been stable. The relationship between class identification, attitudes to redistribution and vote choice has, however, changed but this appears to result more from political parties’ varying polarization on economic and social issues than from the demise of class in voters’ minds.

The Nordic countries have traditionally been seen to share a distinct and successful governance model, combining high administrative capacity, extensive interest-group involvement and active channels for incorporating expert input in policy making. Starting in the 1980s, this model came under pressure. Yet, while changes to the statist and corporatist elements of this model are well documented, we know less about the changing role of expertise in Nordic governance. Focusing on one key institutional channel for incorporating expert knowledge in policy making, namely government-appointed advisory commissions, this article seeks to compare and account for changes in academic participation in Nordic commissions since the 1970s. Drawing on a cross-national data set covering more than 6,700 advisory commissions and 73,000 commission members, it finds significant cross-Nordic divergence in academic participation on advisory groups. The article offers a historical-institutionalist account for this divergence. It shows how the Nordic countries responded differently to similar political, economic and ideational pressures, leading their commission systems and the role of academic experts within these systems in different directions. In this way, the article makes an important contribution to scholarship on the politics of expertise and policy advice and debates about the Nordic governance model.

Evidence-informed policy-making is seen by many as crucial for formulating effective solutions to the complex challenges facing societies today. However, scholarship on evidence and policy-making has repeatedly noted that the use of evidence in government policy-making is highly uneven across policy areas and organizations. Still, we have surprisingly little systematic empirical knowledge about how government organizations actually differ in the use of evidence in policy formulation, and we lack a solid understanding of what accounts for differences across organizations in evidence use. The article seeks to address these knowledge gaps through an analysis of ministerial evidence cultures. Arguing that the government bureaucracy is not a unified entity but rather a collection of organizations with distinct world views and ways of doing things, we expect to find distinct evidence cultures in different government ministries. Moreover, we contend that the informal norms and practices of evidence use leave empirically traceable marks that can be examined quantitatively across ministries. The article maps evidence cultures across all Norwegian government ministries in the period 2000–2020 based on data on ministries’ commissioning of research reports, appointment of experts to advisory commissions, and references to knowledge sources in white papers, revealing striking and systematic differences in evidence cultures across ministries. It also empirically investigates how different evidence cultures are related to institutional differences in task environment, analytical capacity, and personnel. The article contributes both to literature on evidence and policy-making and to public administration scholarship.

Decision-makers rely extensively on expert groups and commissions for policy advice. Many see in this a growing technocracy or expertization of decision-making. Yet, we know little about the actual influence of these expert bodies in policy-making. When does expert group advice shape policy-making rather than being brushed aside? The article goes beyond existing research by measuring and explaining variation in expert group influence. Using the number of citations to expert group reports in government white papers and later expert group reports as measures of influence, the article analyzes citations to 1545 Norwegian advisory commission reports published 1972–2017. It concentrates on three dimensions of the organization of expert groups as potential determinants of influence: member composition, appointing ministry and resources. The results suggest that expert groups have greater influence when they include more politicians and have a bigger secretariat. The article contributes empirically and methodologically to research on expertise and policy-making.

It is often claimed that parties on the left and right have different preferences for scholarly knowledge. However, little research has addressed whether partisanship actually matters for science advice preferences, particularly in the European setting. Drawing on original data on governmental appointments of academic scholars to more than 1400 public advisory commissions in Norway between 1969 and 2020, this article examines whether the left–right divide matters for cabinets’ consultation of economists and social scientists. The findings reveal that left-wing governments in Norway have consulted scholars of social science—such as sociologists and political scientists—more frequently than right-wing governments. In contrast, partisanship seem to matter less for the consultation of economic scholars, as economists have been extensively used as advisors by both blocs in the period studied. Overall, the article contributes theoretical and empirical knowledge to the politics of science advice.

Governments face a fundamental dilemma when asking expert groups for advice. Experts possess knowledge that can help governments design effective and legitimate policies. However, they can also propose different policies than those preferred by government. How do governments solve this conundrum? Through a mixed‐methods study, the article examines politico‐administrative control with expert advisory commissions in Norway. Arguing that both politicians and bureaucrats can take interest in limiting the gap between political/administrative policy preferences and expert group output, the article examines by what means they seek to control expert groups and how control varies across policy portfolios. It finds that while politicians rely on control by design, bureaucrats use both design and interventions. Moreover, political and bureaucratic controls are stronger in the area of financial/economic policy than elsewhere. The article makes a novel contribution to scholarship at the intersection of public administration and knowledge and policymaking.

We investigate the often-stated, but disputed claim in the political science and political communication literature that increasing media choice widens inequalities in political knowledge. The assumption is that in a high-choice media environment, the politically interested will consume more news while the uninterested will avoid such content, leading, in turn, to widening differences in political knowledge. Although previous studies show that high media choice increases political knowledge gaps in the United States, comparative longitudinal evidence is currently lacking. To fill this gap, we draw on data from four rounds of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Overall, we do not find general support for the high-choice knowledge gap thesis. In most countries, there is no indication that inequality in political knowledge has increased over time. Building on recent insights from political communication research, we question key assumptions of the high choice knowledge gap thesis.