Policy Capacity, Oppositional Choice and Knowledge Referencing in Parliament - The Case of Denmark

Parliaments are fundamentally important for political decision-making in democracies and knowledge plays an important role in qualifying policy decisions made in parliaments. Yet, there is a surprising lack of studies on what influences references made to knowledge and the use of experts in parliaments. This paper addresses this gap by studying how and why the government and opposition influence the use of knowledge in the Danish Folketing. Two rival propositions are advanced. The first expects the government to draw on its policy capacity to reference knowledge more frequently than the opposition in the parliamentary process. The second, by contrast, expects the power of the opposition to choose whether to contest legislation or to motion alternative proposals to lead to higher levels of references to knowledge by the opposition than the government. The two propositions are studied based on references to knowledge, expertise, and evidence in parliamentary documents, as well as data on experts giving evidence to parliamentary committees.