Design of committees for R&D policy modelling

Abstract

Up to date government has elaborated the hierarchical structure of public administration with the use of external advice system, which is called committees. This well-established managerial approach for policy modelling with the primary purpose to advise decision makers has been developed to the wide extent of the needs of policy makers. However, the mission of such institutional arrangements is going to be changed taking in to consideration the society expectation for equity of power sharing between institutional decision makers and policy actors. To understand the phenomenon of participation in policy formation and to use committees more for policy modelling and interest representation instead of policy advice, the social network analysis was applied. The main focus of this study is on R&D stakeholders’ network acting as policy actors. The Lithuanian R&D policy domain and national representation at the EU R&D policy level during the period of 2002-2010 has been chosen for deeper investigation. By highlighting the R&D actors’ network analysis parameters, this study attempts to identify the committee design barriers that have impact on interest representation. The policy actors’ brokerage abilities have been studied.