A role-playing game. Policy advice and policy work in the Italian central government during the pandemic

In the Policy Advisory Systems (PAS) of the Napoleonic countries, policy work and policy advice do not translate into formal positions or functions. At the same time, policy formulation predominantly involves legal drafting and is traditionally dominated by the ministerial cabinets, which interact with both the politicians and an assorted milieu of bureaucrats and scientists. The Italian PAS is traditionally politicised and dominated by ministerial cabinets, but recent changes in both the political system and in the administrative system contributed to the pluralisation and hybridisation of the system. Thus, the governmental milieu in Italy is widening. Along with traditional ministerial cabineters, a growing number of individual advisors and collegial bodies now contribute to policy formulation with various knowledge and competences. The aim of the paper is to explore and describe how policy advice takes place in such pluralised systems, by putting more attention on actual behaviours and practices rather than on the institutional framework and on formal rules. To better understand this hybrid and situational configuration, we focus on how policy advice works, and we show that evidence-based policymaking becomes a role-playing relationship where cabineters, bureaucrats and advisors may play different roles (e.g. the expert, the strategic thinker, the assembler, the broker). Furthermore, we show that these roles can vary in time and across sectors, so that same individual may play very different roles depending on how he/she uses his expertise and on how he/she interacts with the politicians. To make sense of these findings, our working hypothesis is that policy advice depends on actual practices, and more specifically on policy learning and transfer, on the one hand, and on the political context and bargaining, on the other hand. This role-playing game will be investigated through qualitative data provided by a panel of 21 in-depth interviews to top advisors (cabineters, top bureaucrats, institutional advisors and external advisors) at the level of the Italian central government during the pandemic (government Conte II, 2019-2021). The interviews are analysed through NVivo adopting a grounded theory approach.