Policy advice utilization in ministerial cabinets: A combined use of internal and external sources

In Belgium, ministerial cabinets historically hold a central place in the politico-administrative system. They carry out policy formulation for the most part of it. However, given a lack of staff and expertise, ministerial cabinets do not operate in complete isolation and rely on the other actors of the policy advisory system for information supply and advice which are both internal and external to the government, such as ministries, governmental agencies or civil society. They receive and request pieces of advice from these various actors and deal with them to formulate policy proposals. This communication studies the policy advice utilization by ministerial cabinet members when they work at policy formulation. It shows that the utilization of a piece of advice varies according to the source of advice and location of the adviser in the policy advisory system. The demonstration relies on an online survey conducted in 2018 and 2019 which targeted ministerial cabinet members working for 13 ministers in the two Belgian federated governments of Wallonia and Federation Wallonia-Brussels (N=113, overall response rate of 68%). It appears that some sources of advice are more influential than others in policy formulation and that the location in the policy advisory system is influential as well. Ministerial cabinets still heavily utilize advice from the ministries, which points to the persistent importance of advice provision from internal sources. However, advice from external actors such as unions, citizens and organized civil society, or consulting firms have been observed to have a rather high incidence on policy formulation activities too. Although the respondents very often reported on the advice originating from advisory bodies, such advice does not yield comparatively higher utilization scores.