Special issue blog series on Policy Expertise in Times of Crisis

Ahmad Wesal Zaman, Olivier Rubin and Reidar Staupe-Delgado

The policy literature has generally presented crises as urgent public threats with clearly demarcated ‘focusing events’. As a result, most studies have identified the main challenges faced by expert agencies involved in evidence-based policymaking as managing uncertainty, time pressure and communication. However, less focus has been devoted to analysing the concrete challenges faced by expert agencies during creeping crises. Creeping crises are characterised by spatial and temporal fragmentation and elusiveness, which create an additional challenge for expert agencies: how to get the crisis on the political agenda.  

Comparing two global creeping crises: climate change (CC) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR), our recently published article in Policy & Politics, highlights two distinct strategies for influencing policymaking. Our analysis showed how two expert agencies, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), pursued different strategies when setting the global agenda and influencing policymaking. Our findings showed that the WHO’s approach to policymaking regarding AMR was mostly guided by top-down, science-led, formal engagements and strategies. This approach has successfully increased the salience of the global challenge of AMR, providing strong, evidence-based solutions. But it has been less successful in promoting the challenge onto the global political agenda.