Role of Experts in Policy Advice: Lessons of Experience

In the present paper, Professor Islam examines the role of experts in policy advice in order to draw some lessons from his valuable personal experience. Recognizing the highly complex nature of policymaking in a modern state, he suggests that, apart from building up strong public institutions for policy analysis, it is imperative to encourage vigorous debates outside the government among different points of view in order to arrive at the decision by the government. In reality, there always exists a range of unpredictability in policy outcomes; and policy decisions involve some judgment so that policymakers need to be ?exible and wise enough to make mid-course corrections as failures in policy option or implementation become apparent.