Comparing ministerial cultures of evidence use: a quantitative analysis

The use of evidence in government policy-making has attracted growing attention in recent years, both among scholars and practitioners. It is often argued that evidence use varies across policy sectors, depending on the specific features of the policy area or of the government departments operating in the field. Yet, so far, we have surprisingly little systematic empirical knowledge about how government ministries actually differ in the use of experts and expert knowledge in policy formulation. Based on an understanding that the government bureaucracy is not a unified entity but rather a collection of organizations with distinct world-views and ways of doing things – derived from differences in mandate, structure or personnel – we expect to find distinct cultures of evidence use in different government ministries. That is, we expect to see significant variation across ministries in the informal norms and practices regarding the use of expert advice and evidence in policy formulation processes. Moreover, we contend that these cultures of evidence use leave empirically traceable marks that can be examined systematically across ministries. More specifically, the paper examines differences in evidence cultures across Norwegian government ministries in the period 1999-2020 by analyzing quantitative data on a) the appointment and composition of policy advisory commissions by different ministries and b) citations of different types of evidence sources in white papers produced by different ministries. Covering more than 500 advisory commissions and 800 white papers, the analysis suggests major cross-ministerial differences in the norms and practices regarding evidence use.