Change is inevitable, quality is optional, and context matters: dynamics influencing the development of an optimal policy advisory system

Abstract Developments in the policy advisory systems (PAS) literature demonstrate how the traditional models designating key roles for internal public service actors have given way to include a greater diversity of external nongovernmental actors in advice provision. This is reflected in how sustained politicization and externalization trends impact PAS organization and actors’ influence, resulting in a more complex national PAS architecture and functioning. This pronounced hybridity of PAS, both in structure and logic, presents challenges for ensuring relevant and quality advisory content and managing its supply and dissemination effectively. In this article, Craft and Howlett’s model on features of policy advice content and the types of actors supplying it is used to observe the implications of PAS adaptation and change dynamics across different political-administrative contexts. The presence of different types of advice under the conditions of short-term/reactive (e.g., purely political or crisis advice) and long-term/anticipatory (e.g., protocol and routine steering, evidence-based advice) is a useful rubric for surveying how good governance standards and openness have been applied in developing quality policy advice content in both Westminster and non-Westminster contexts.