Introduction

Ad hoc advisory expert panels are widely used by governments in the United States and Europe to analyse current policy or propose alternative ones (Egeberg et al, 2003; Figura, 2011; Gehring, 1999; Ginsberg, 2009). Unlike a standing or permanent committee, ad hoc committees are generally tentative and therefore their impact is limited to initial phase and not implementation.

An expert panel is usually composed of independent policy or programmespecific specialists. The panel is mostly employed as an instrument for synthesising information from a range of sources and drawing on a range of viewpoints in order to arrive at overall conclusions (compare Dawood et al, 2011; Gornitzka and Sverdrup, 2008; Hemerijck and Visser, 2003; Iacoboaei, 2008). The main advantage of working with panels of experts is that they offer policy-makers diversity of ideas and innovative directions. However, panels of experts often lead to deadlock and an inability by the participants to reach a consensus.

These panels are often used in Israel, but they have been little studied. It is also unknown whether their recommendations are fully or partially adopted by policy-makers (Figura, 2006; 2011). In this chapter, we introduce, review and analyse two cases of ad hoc advisory panels of experts appointed by the Israeli government in 2011 in order to set a new direction for disability-related policies. The first pertains to the realm of sub-minimum wages for people with disabilities and the second addresses the issue of community residence of people with intellectual disabilities (ID).

The use of committees in public policy

In recent years, there has been extensive use of public committees of experts in examining, reviewing and evaluating government policies (Ejzenking-Qana, 2004; Harari, 1974). The European Community tends to use diversified panels as a central tool of programme evaluation. Public committees are quick, cheap and are considered to be part of the decision-making process which therefore has an impact on European policy making (Egeberg et al, 2003; Gehring, 1999).

It was argued that public committees were perceived by both government and the general public as objective and non-dependent entities (Marchildon, 2001).