Knowledge demand: the political drivers of policy advice

In the policy advice literature, there have been two main ‘waves’ of research focus. In the first wave, the focus of scholarly attention tended to focus on single policy advice actors. A key innovation was offered by Halligan, who sought to frame policy advice within a policy advisory system. In later research, Craft and Wilder called for a ‘second wave’ of research which also sought to integrate factors such as policy content, context, and ideational compatibility but also reflect the increasingly polycentric advice landscape. This chapter contributes to the second wave by focussing on the political drivers of ‘demand’ for policy advice, which remains a neglected part of the scholarship on knowledge demand. This chapter sets out a framework for understanding the political drivers of knowledge demand, by focussing on four main dimensions: (1) individual/elite, (2) electoral/regime stability, (3) ideological, and (4) interests/institutional drivers. By disaggregating the political drivers, we can better understand the political forces that shape the ‘demand’ dynamics in policy advisory systems.