Scientific policy advice: An attempt to structurize types of organizations on the international level

For most liberal democracies, scientific expertise is an important ingredient of political decision-making. Scientific forecasts and assessments of, for example, poverty or social mobility, the impact of exhaust fumes on public health or the risks of viral outbreaks, help governments to weigh arguments and decide on policy measures. But how exactly does scientific knowledge make its way into politics?

Scientific policy advice can take many shapes, ranging from official statements by scientific academies to informal conversations between researchers and policy officers. In this article, we are particularly interested in organized forms of science policy advice. Looking at 20 organizations in Europe, North-America and Oceania, we provide an analytical lense which allows us to categorize and compare scientific advisory bodies. In the end, we present a taxonomy of types of advisory organizations globally that can be used in order to understand the differences among them. In this contribution, we will describe what inspired us to create our own taxonomy of advisory formats and dive into the characteristics of advisory organizations and how they can be systematized.