Research on Scientific Advise to Policy Makers (WEP) at Bielefeld University's Institute of Science and Technology Studies (IWT) focuses on the relation between scientific expert opinions, policy consulting, and political decision-making processes in the knowledge society from the perspectives of the sociology of science, philosophy, and political science. The unit proceeds from the observation that scientific expertise is increasingly becoming an important basis and benchmark for action and political decision-making going beyond the borders of institutionalized science. Scientific expert opinions and policy consulting are functioning increasingly as a communicative and political resource in themselves - and this is bringing them to the forefront of public debate. As a result, scientific expert opinions and their mobilization for policy consulting have become a determining factor for the social dynamics of the knowledge society. Consequently, it is frequently impossible to separate questions addressing the production, evaluation, transformation, and attribution of expert opinions, and, thus, their reliability and robustness, from questions addressing the representation of social interests - and thereby the legitimacy of political decisions.

Proceeding from these observations, the WEP research unit is working on the following research issues:

1. Epistemic questions regarding the special character of the scientific expert opinion as an expression of its own specific type of knowledge
2. Forms of policy consulting, that is, the institutional structures and arrangements in which scientific expertise for policy consulting is mobilized, organized, and introduced to the policy-shaping process under a range of different situational conditions
3. Actors in political consulting and new "knowledge actors" who cannot be assigned unequivocally to either the political or the academic system such as expertise-based non-governmental organizations (NGOs), science shops, independent think tanks, and intermediary organizations
4. The relation between scientific expert opinions, policy consulting, participation, and the democratic order with reference to democratic forms of governance

The research activities of the WEP unit of the IWT include the organization and implementation of research projects, publications, and scientific conferences along with the formation of national and international research cooperations. In teaching, this IWT field is conveyed through relevant teaching courses, theses, and dissertations. In addition, individual members of the IWT perform practical policy consulting themselves in the field of science and research policy. Within the framework of the research unit, there is a close cooperation with the interdisciplinary workgroup Wissenschaftliche Politikberatung in der Demokratie (in German) [Scientific political consulting in democratic societies] at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences (BBAW), which is also coordinated at the IWT, and with the Research Training Group 724: Entering the Knowledge Society funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).