The influence of public policy and administration expertise on policy: an empirical study

Academic expertise is a key pillar of governance processes around the world. A goal of policy and public sector actors is to draw on research to improve decision making, and correspondingly, a goal of public policy and public administration researchers is to provide relevant expertise. It is not clear, however, to what extent these goals are achieved. This study uses the Overton database to analyse the influence of public policy and administration research on policy documents (broadly defined as documents published by policy and public sector organisations). It considers which research is cited by policy documents and which organisations cite research more than others to justify their decisions. The findings show that measuring the influence of academic expertise is not straightforward conceptually or methodologically. However, they emphasise the role of different organisation types for achieving a greater correspondence between research and policy. Specifically, our study shows that think tanks use public policy and administration research more often than government organisations when justifying decisions. The findings provide insight into the utility of new policy databases in illuminating how academic experts can influence the ideas and actions of policy and public sector actors.