Ethics and Expertise Beyond Times of Crisis: Learning from international varieties of ethics advice

Governments are not currently following their own ethical advice during times of crisis, and we want to find out why, what this means for policy decision-making and ultimately, how this influences outcomes for citizens. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought these questions to the fore. National government strategies, public debate and public health outcomes have varied substantially. We will examine the specific role of ethics advice in processes of crisis management, navigating expert knowledge, building organisational networks and policy learning in shaping these international differences, using a case study method to compare UK, Germany and Australia. How can government ethics advice be organised in the future to improve institutional capacity and agility, strategic thinking, pluralistic forms of expertise, and responsiveness to diverse publics?

In October 2021, the UK's independent Nuffield Council on Bioethics began to survey the 'ecosystems' of ethics advice in the UK, and leading ethicists in Germany have highlighted that key governmental lessons from the pandemic will only be learnt through considering new institutional arrangements. Australia only very recently developed an ethics framework to inform government decision-making during the pandemic. We investigate the similarities and differences between the institutional organisation of ethics advice in these 3 cases.

Our project investigates:
1. How is ethics advice provided to different national governments organised institutionally?
2. When do issues become 'ethical' in ethical advisory institutions and public discourse?
3. How is ethics advice used and/or not used by governments and policy makers in crisis situations?
4. How can policy-makers and government institutions be supported in navigating ethical expertise?

Since the outbreak of the Covid pandemic, there has been a rapid expansion of social science research on its societal, cultural, economic, political and personal impacts. The nature of this research has been rapid and responsive, and in some cases have changed the research landscape, with ever more attention paid to the relationship between science and policy, and between academic advice, expertise, public opinion and government strategy. Less attention has been paid to researching the development, organisation and impact of advice which is based specifically on ethical knowledge and expertise. This project will be the first to provide new empirical data on the institutional organisation of ethics advice across 3 different national contexts. We will provide new analysis of the contested nature of ethical expertise internationally, and respond to calls from social scientists to develop a new research agenda to inform policy learning processes. Most existing research deals with the 'frontstage' of different governments' policy responses to the multiple ethical challenges posed by the pandemic. Our research aims to shed light on the 'backstage' processes of ethical advice.

Pathways to Impact:
As well as producing academic outputs (1 book, 3 papers, conference presentations, research capacity through career development of research team), findings will be relevant to ethics advisors, ethics bodies, policy makers and the general public. The research will support organisational strategies, lines of communication, reflective practices, decision-making, and public debate. We will produce regular blog articles and 4 policy briefs disseminated through Nuffield Council, German Ethics Council, The Ethics Centre (Australia), and through the International Network for Science Advices (INGSA). We will develop a training resource for civil servants tailored to each country. This will be a series of 4x 2 hour workshops and step-by-step training guidelines, following a format developed by PI Pykett which was disseminated via INGSA. This work benefits from the established experience of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics in developing similar kinds of training.