Science-policy interactions in Austrian, Dutch, and Swiss climate policy: a comparative account

Scientific expertise plays an important role in the complex field of climate policy. Consequently, science-policy interactions have been institutionalized in many countries. However, science-policy arenas vary considerably across countries. Scholars mainly attribute these differences to the influence of specific political cultures. The literature has primarily compared science-policy arenas of countries with diverging political cultures, whereas comparisons of countries with similar political cultures are rare. The latter is especially true for neo-corporatist cultures. Against this background, we compare the climate science-policy arenas of three neo-corporatist countries, Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Conceptually, we draw on the literature regarding politico-cultural imprints in science-policy arenas. We operationalize national science-policy arenas along four dimensions: the knowledge actors, the organizational formats, the styles of science-policy interactions, and their transparency and visibility. Overall, the three arenas reveal many similarities and much fewer differences. Most similarities correspond to neo-corporatist patterns. However, some similarities consistently deviate from neo-corporatist patterns. Interestingly, almost all differences between the countries match national variations of neo-corporatism. In light of these observations and the specific problem structure of climate policy, we develop research questions to investigate potential explanations for correspondence to and deviation from neo-corporatist patterns.