Bureaucrats, politicians and the power over policy-making

Government-appointed commissions are important tools in the policy process in the Nordic countries, which lay the groundwork for major policy reforms. But the jury is still out regarding who controls these commissions: Are they primarily tools for government bureaucracies to pursue their policy agenda or rather vehicles for politicians to realize their policy ambitions? And how does the relative power of the bureaucracy vs ministers over commissions as policy-making vehicles vary across ministries? The paper examines these questions through a quantitative analysis of citations to commission reports in Norwegian government white papers across varying governments. We examine two competing hypotheses: If politicians are in the driver’s seat, we would expect reports commissioned by left-wing governments to be cited more frequently in white papers submitted by left-wing governments than in white papers from right-wing governments (and vice versa). By contrast, if the bureaucracy has the upper hand, we would expect reports commissioned by left-wing and right-wing governments, respectively, to be cited at an equal rate in white papers issued by left-wing and right-wing governments. We test these hypotheses across all Norwegian government ministries. The paper contributes to discussions about the varying influence of bureaucratic actors over policy-making.