Shadow expertise: the role of alternative expert advisory groups during the COVID-19 pandemic

This paper explores the emergence of alternative expert advisory groups during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic. As the threat of COVID-19 became apparent in February-March 2020, governments around the world drew on experts to define the most appropriate policy response to protect population health as well as maintain key economic and social activities. In addition to formal advisory groups convened by governments, experts in some countries formed alternative groups to publicly offer their advice on various aspects of the COVID-19 crisis. In the UK, this was the “Independent SAGE”, an alternative to the official advisory group, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE); in Czechia, “KoroNERV”, an alternative to the National Economic Council of the Government (NERV in Czech). This development allows us to question some of the fundamental assumptions in the literature on epistemic communities (Haas 1992), which too often focuses on a dyadic relationship between policymakers and a single expert group, ignoring other actors. The paper therefore asks: - What does the emergence of shadow advisory groups tell us about the motivation of epistemic communities to aim at influencing policy? - Who are epistemic communities competing with for policymakers’ attention? - What strategies do alternative epistemic communities employ to increase their chances of influencing policy? How do they ensure access to policymakers? In examining these research questions, the paper draws on the body of literature on epistemic communities, which often accepts knowledge as the unquestioned motivation of communities’ members (Cross 2012). In contrast, the political economy of knowledge production would expect at least some motivation to arise out potential rewards policy advice represents for experts’ career and reputational advancement, e.g. increasing “impact” in the Research Excellence Framework in the UK (Bacevic 2020). Finally, the advocacy coalition approaches to the policy process (Sabatier 1988) and later extensions to the epistemic communities literature (Dunlop 2017) recognize that competition of policy actors is part of policymaking and expert groups may resort to advocacy strategies common to any other policy actors. Findings are based on semi-structured interviews with members of the shadow advisory groups, as well as of the official advisory bodies, and policymakers in the UK and Czechia. The proclaimed goals of both of these shadow advisory groups were similar: to provide an alternative and broader interpretation of scientific evidence to the government and the media in order to inform policy. Both claimed not to act as competitors of official advisory bodies but as complements, and some members belonged to both official and shadow groups. Making policy more evidence-based featured prominently among members’ motivations. Both shadow groups resorted to communicating policy advice to the media and social media extensively but individual members also attempted to leverage official and gain personal access to key decision-makers. This paper contributes to the understanding of epistemic communities as specific, but perhaps after all not exceptional, actors of the policy process. It specifically speaks to the theme of the role of experts in healthcare policymaking of the panel.