Scientists and policy influence: a literature review

This literature review provides a broad overview of the disparate literatures relevant to looking at the role and influence of science in policy-making. It takes as a foundation the starting assumptions made by political scientists about what drives policy-making in modern democratic government (comprehensive rationality, bounded rationality and incremental analysis) and finds while many have strengths and weaknesses, comprehensive rationality and its associated models provide the weakest framework. Bounded rationality and incremental analysis models provide a far stronger basis for scientists to think strategically about how their research might fit into broader policy processes.