Laura Chaqués Bonafont (University of Barcelona and IBEI)

Laura Chaqués Bonafont is Professor of Political Science at the University of Barcelona and Director of the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). In this role, she leads the institute’s academic strategy, research development, and international partnerships, promoting interdisciplinary and globally oriented scholarship on public policy and international affairs. Her research examines how political agendas evolve across time, countries, and policy areas; how experts and interest groups gain influence in the policy process; and how democratic institutions respond to social, political, and economic challenges. She approaches these questions through large-scale comparative projects, innovative datasets, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Together with the Q-Dem team, Prof. Chaqués Bonafont has led the development of new tools and datasets that measure policy attention in Spain and internationally (www.q-dem.com).This work advances our understanding of democratic responsiveness and the media’s role in shaping political processes. She also investigates how interest groups access the policy process, how they interact with policymakers, and how institutional, political, and media contexts shape their influence—highlighting systematic biases, media gatekeeping, and persistent gender inequalities in interest representation. She is currently the Principal Investigator of KNOWPOLIS, a project that advances the comparative study of policy advisory systems (PAS) and their influence on public policy. It examines how institutionalised advisory structures and informal networks generate and circulate expert knowledge; how advisory authority is constructed and contested; and the extent to which advisory systems incorporate diverse and underrepresented voices, including a focus on gender. The project also analyzes how PAS adapt to rapidly evolving technological and regulatory environments, particularly in AI governance, where transnational standards and cross-country learning increasingly shape expert input. Across these projects, she aims to strengthen the link between empirical research and democratic governance, producing knowledge that explains how modern political systems respond to societal demands. Her work has been funded by the European Commission (Horizon Europe), the Spanish and Catalan governments, the European Science Foundation, and the ICREA Foundation, which awarded me the ICREA Academia Prize. She has been a visiting professor at leading institutions including the University of Washington, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and King’s College London. Throughout her career, she has contributed to comparative public policy, agenda-setting theory, gender and representation, and the study of interest groups. She serves on editorial boards, scientific committees, and evaluation panels, and participates actively in international research networks such as the Comparative Agendas Project and the International Public Policy Association.

   Course: The Politics of Policy Advice: Understanding Policy Advisory Systems

This course introduces students to the study of policy advisory systems (PAS)—the institutional, organizational, and relational arrangements through which policy advice is generated, circulated, and used in contemporary policymaking. Moving beyond narrow models of evidence-based policy, the course conceptualizes policy advice as a fundamentally political and institutional process involving multiple actors, forms of expertise, and competing values.

Policy analysis, agenda-setting, interest group activity, and expert knowledge are treated not as isolated phenomena, but as core components of policy advisory systems. The course examines how governments, experts, interest groups, think tanks, political parties, international organizations, and the media interact to define policy problems, shape agendas, and influence decision-making across different levels of governance.

Adopting a comparative and applied perspective, the course draws on empirical examples from health, economic, digital, and crisis governance. Sessions combine lectures, discussion of key readings, and student-led analysis of real-world cases, encouraging participants to critically assess how advisory systems operate in practice.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• • • Conceptualize policy advisory systems and distinguish between key models and typologies.
    • Understand how institutional contexts structure the production and use of policy advice.
    • Analyze how problem framing and agenda-setting operate within advisory systems.
    • Assess the role of interest groups, experts, and think tanks as advisory actors.
    • Compare national and sectoral advisory systems, including crisis contexts.
    • Critically evaluate the political, democratic, and ethical implications of policy advice.

Justification and Rationale

Contemporary policymaking increasingly relies on complex constellations of actors and institutions that produce, interpret, and mobilize policy-relevant knowledge. Governments no longer monopolize policy analysis or advice. Instead, policy advice is generated within policy advisory systems that bring together public administrations, experts, interest groups, think tanks, political parties, international organizations, and the media. Understanding how these systems function has become essential for both scholars and practioners of public policy.

Three developments make this perspective particularly necessary. First, the growing politicization of expertise has challenged traditional technocratic models of policy analysis. Evidence-based policymaking is no longer a linear process in which neutral experts “speak truth to power”; rather, evidence is produced, selected, framed, and contested within political and institutional contexts. Second, the fragmentation and pluralization of advisory actors have reshaped policy influence. While this pluralization can enhance innovation and responsiveness, it also raises concerns about inequality of access, transparency, and democratic accountability. Third, recent crises and global challenges—including the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, digital transformation, and economic instability—have exposed both the strengths and vulnerabilities of existing advisory systems, highlighting the need for analytical tools capable of assessing advice under conditions of uncertainty and urgency.

The course responds to these challenges by offering a coherent framework that integrates policy analysis, agenda-setting, interest group politics, and evidence governance under the umbrella of policy advisory systems. Pedagogically, it bridges theory and practice, equipping participants with both conceptual clarity and practical analytical skills relevant for careers in public administration, policy advisory roles, international organizations, civil society, and research.

In sum, the course addresses a central gap in traditional policy analysis training by foregrounding the politics, institutions, and power relations of policy advice, making it highly relevant in both academic and applied policy settings.