Abstrakt
This chapter analyses governmental and departmental advisory bodies as a part of the policy advisory system in the Czech Republic whose primary aim is to improve the situation in a related policy area through providing the government with relevant policy advice. The main proposition of this chapter is that there is more than one way in which the government sets up its advisory bodies and, consequently, there are various kinds of advice that the advisory bodies provide the government with as well as different roles they play in the policy-making process.
Our analysis is based on the assumption that the role of the advisory bodies and the nature of the policy they produce are to some degree determined by their formal framework (and especially by some of its missing aspects such as an explicit balance provision or broader participation of the public). As such, the current institutional framework of the Czech advisory councils seems to comprise several internal paradoxes and in fact gives the government broad leeway for strategic employment of these councils, presenting their advice supporting government policies as a product of broad expert consensus.
The analysis of the three selected advisory bodies proved a high level of dynamism which was reflected in the role they played in the policy-making process. While the advisory bodies exerted only limited direct influence on the policy-making process, their indirect impact was relatively strong, particularly through cooperation with departmental officials and the news media which paid close attention to their activities.
We identify several factors that may contribute to success or failure of the policy advisory bodies: - a high level of uncertainty; a high level of centrality of the issue within the government's policy agenda; definition of the advisory body's activity; and inclusion of knowledge other than scientific knowledge into the policy advice.