Autonomy and control are important dynamics in each advisory system. Autonomy is important because it ensures independent and critical advice and allows advisors to ‘speak truth to power’ (Wildavsky 1989; Pielke 2010). At the same time, government control is also an important aspect (Van Twist et al. 2015; Craft and Halligan 2015; Halligan 1995) to assure that advices are on-topic, on-time, in the right format, and relevant for government decision-making,- and policymaking processes. This paper describes the trade-off the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom make with regard to the level of ‘autonomy’ and ‘control’ of their policy advisory bodies. We make a distinction between legal, economic, and operational means (Künneke 1991) through which autonomy is stimulated or control is exercised on a managerial and policy (primary processes) level of policy advisory bodies.

doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55269-3_61, hdl.handle.net/1765/104854
Erasmus University Rotterdam

Bressers, D. (D.), van Twist, M., van der Steen, M., & Schulz, J.M. (J. M.). (2017). The contested autonomy of policy advisory bodies. In The Palgrave Handbook of Public Administration and Management in Europe (pp. 1189–1211). doi:10.1057/978-1-137-55269-3_61