Worth Melting for? How Epistemic Communities Unfreeze Deliberations and Shape Policy Learning

Epistemic communities are defined by their aspiration to influence policy preferences thanks to their expert competence. This study examines a sudden change in perceived expert competence during a crisis and its effect on deliberations, expert influence, and policy outcomes. Our case study is the school closure debate during the Covid‐19 crisis in the Netherlands. Using data from media sources, official documents and 19 elite interviews, we find that an epistemic contest between two epistemic communities weakened overall expert certification and triggered the emergence of a reflexive learning environment, in which deliberations flourished. In this new, ambiguous and pluralised context, the epistemic community that emphasised different types of knowledge and exercised restraint in their recommendations was ultimately more influential with policymakers.