Across the world, politicians call on experts for advice both during major crises and in everyday policy-making. Political leaders' reliance on scientific advisors during the coronavirus pandemic is only the latest example. But to what extent do experts actually influence public policies? Curiously, this question is often neglected in existing research.

Yet, how much influence experts have matters for our democracies. Political leaders need experts to tackle complex societal challenges, and ignoring expert advice can hurt the quality of public policies and citizens' trust in government. Yet, in today’s polarised societies, we see a growing distrust in experts and criticism of the influence of the knowledge elite on public policies. Not only may experts be biased and make mistakes. Relying more on experts also often means listening less to citizens and other legitimate interests in a democratic society.

The project 'INFLUEX: Influence of experts on public policy’ tackles the question of expert influence in policy-making head-on. The project aims to define, measure and explain the policy influence of different expert actors, such as expert advisory bodies and national and international expert bureaucracies. To measure expert influence, the project draws on unique data on policy-making processes and uses creative new methods such as citation analysis and ‘plagiarism’ analysis. It also examines the normative question of how much influence experts ought to have in a democracy and how the involvement of experts in policy-making should be organised.

At a time when some leaders claim that 'people have had enough of experts' and others urge us to 'listen to the experts', INFLUEX will produce novel insights that can help us reconcile democratic and knowledge-based governance.

• citizen trust
• democratic governance
• public policy