Advisory bodies and morality policies: does ethical expertise matter?

Governments and parliaments struggle to design biomedical policies: while research and practice make rapid progress, they often trigger value conflicts. One response involves institutionalised ethics expert bodies. Drawing on in-depth empirical research, this article analyses the influence of such expert bodies within the policy advisory system. Specifically, it examines the critical case of the Belgian Advisory Committee on Bioethics (BACB). In spite of an exclusive formal mandate, the BACB’s direct influence on policies is limited. The BACB analysis enables to complement existing theories by highlighting the importance of looking beyond organisational and inter-organisational factors and studying the politico-institutional settings of a particular polity. These settings help better understand patterns of influence and factors affecting the type and level of influence of advisory bodies