Partisanship and Science Advice: Do the Right Prefer Economists and the Left Social Scientists?

It has been claimed that parties on the left and right have different preferences for scholarly knowledge. However, little research has addressed whether partisanship matters for science advice preferences, particularly in the European setting. Drawing on literatures on partisanship and knowledge use, the article examines whether and why we could expect the left-right divide to matter for governments’ consultation of academics in general, and economists and social scientists in particular. Using unique data on appointments of academics to more than 1,200 public advisory commissions in Norway between 1973 and 2017, the findings reveal the following. First, no partisan differences prevail in consultation of academics in general: left and right governments consult academics at the same frequency over time. Second, when controlling for differences in parties’ policy issue attention, there is no difference between the left and right’s consultation of economists. Third, left-leaning governments have tended to consult social scientists – such as sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists – more frequently than right-leaning governments in the period studied. The article contributes with theoretical and empirical knowledge on the politics of science advice.