Environmental policy integration (EPI)

A policy system is integrated when policy issues are treated in a cross-cutting way, with actors and institutions involved in managing policy issues across boundaries of discipline, domain, or policy venue (for an overview see [9]). EPI argues for the importance of integration [4], and more recently, the literature on CPI applied these ideas to the particular context of climate change [5, 10] (CPI is not defined consistently in the literature and it is often referred to using the more established term EPI (see [11]). Since CPI is an application of EPI, we focus here on EPI as the general concept). Originally based on the Brundtland Report “Our Common Future” [12], European Union has tried policy integration in various policy issues and has been achieved mainly in the form of environmental policy integration [13]. EPI aims to harmonize economic, social, and environmental issues in order to systematically combine the seemingly incompatible objectives of economic competitiveness, social development, and environmental protection, thus supporting sustainable development [4].

Bornemann and Weiland [14] concluded that “whenever calls for policy integration were made concerning sustainability issues, EPI was the answer.” An important limitation with the EPI concept is that, although it is widely understood the importance of integration, it is often unclear how integration is to be achieved. We therefore need a better understanding of concrete strategies that may promote integration; such an understanding will help develop EPI as an actionable theory of environmental policy. One strategy to achieve integration—and the focus of this paper—is the formation of national-level SACs [15–17].

Scientific advisory committees (SACs)

Scientific advisory committees have become widely used as a relatively stable, institutionalized place for creating a link between science and policy [18] (Glynn et al. 2003). The research on advisory committees over the last decades is broad and diverse, with several different notions existing side by side. “SAC” is a term that has emerged in several newer publications, mostly in the field of health policy [15–17], with serious efforts to reorganise the field and establish a common research line. Groux et al. [16] developed a definition and typology of SACs, which are organised either by the government or civil society organizations as follows: a) they are groups of individuals with relevant expertise, b) these experts provide their expertise to decision-makers, and c) their advice is grounded on research evidence from natural or social sciences. According to Leifeld and Schneider [19], these policy committees at the national level consist of governmental and non-governmental actors which participate in collective policy deliberation, decision-making and implementation.

Following the typologies of Groux et al. [16] and Fischer and Leifeld [20], SACs are understood to be venues where different actors from science and policy-making meet together to consult, deliberate or make recommendations for decisions for the legislative or executive purposes. Notably, climate change is a policy domain that stretches across multiple issues where various type of stakeholders have diverse views and interests. This requires synthesis of knowledge sharing and coordination in policymaking process.

From an organizational and procedural perspective, SACs represent an institutionalized venue with the aim of connecting different sectoral views through the scientific exchange in these respective committees. SACs produce diverse and scientifically-grounded knowledge about a policy issue, which in turn is a necessary condition for optimal decision-making in complex policy fields where various sectors and bodies are involved in governance [21, 22].

In the governmental organizational context, the integration concept is more fruitfully discussed by differentiating between vertical and horizontal integration. Vertical integration is manifest when SACs promote the exchange of different sectoral views, and where the discussion becomes input for the governmental body served by the SAC. Lafferty and Hovden [6] refer to this as vertical integration in reference to the integration in the state-society relationship. By contrast, horizontal integration is Integration among different governmental bodies. The horizonal integration is necessary to achieve the integration across different issues, because SACs are typically organized within each distinct policy issue.

Measurement of vertical and horizontal integration

How can vertical and horizontal integration through SACs be analysed empirically? In this paper, we focus on the formal membership in SACs. SAC members are expected to bring in their expertise, and therefore integration occurs through the communications among those SAC members. By connecting the aforementioned distinction between vertical and horizontal integration, two aspects of the membership are examined.

Vertical integration is measured by asking whether SAC members are recruited from diverse sectors. It is repeatedly observed that in the climate policy domain the interests and worldviews are particularly different between economic sectors and environmental groups [23, 24], but also between national and local governments [25], and scientists and non-scientists [8]. Securing the chances for actors from various sectors to speak out and listen to others in the SACs is a necessary condition for enhancing EPI.

Horizontal integration is measured by asking whether membership in SACs is constructed in a way it crosses boundaries of governmental bodies. Bureaucratic systems are generally developed such that each ministry and its subdivisions are responsible for a particular issue [26]. Committee membership therefore tend to correspond to the governmental body’s boundary of substantive focus. In reality, governmental bodies will sometimes be responsible for the same or inter-related issues. This leads to conflicts among governmental bodies (among ministries in particular) (A typical example is the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry for the Economy). and is a common issue in climate change politics, because environmental, economic, agricultural, and transportation issues are involved. Importantly, these conflicts tend to occur along with the fact that each governmental body has completely different members in their SACs [27, 28]. If there is no exchange of information between the SACs, proposals under discussion will not be optimally coordinated and will therefore not result in an integrated climate policy output. Accordingly, for the integration of expertise across governmental bodies, a certain degree of membership overlaps between the ministries is required, as members can transmit the information from one committee to another. There are certainly many other channels of communication between SACs leading to policy integration, such as personal contacts between members in different committees, or sending the policy recommendation to other committees. However, such subtle evidence is hard to compare in different countries. We argue that membership overlap is a systematic, observable matric of stable and institutionalized communication among different SACs.

Case selection

Our data come from SACs in two different national contexts: Japan and Germany. They are the largest Western industrial nations after the US, sharing a similar size of GDP and population. Japan and Germany are the fifth and seventh largest emitter of the greenhouse gas in the world, respectively [29]. Moreover, they share some institutional commonalities [28, 30, 31]. Both countries are classified as consensus democracies [32], and advisory committees play a significant role in the phase of policy formulation [28].

Now we turn to the question of how we selected the SACs for both countries and define the object of investigation based on existing literature and document research. To begin, we included the following “main committees”(“Wesentliche Gremien“) (In the sense of Art. 3.2 of the Federal Law on Appointment of Executive Bodies (“Bundesgremienbesetzungsgesetz”)) into the data set. In Germany, those committees that are responsible for the government and the parliament were included. In Japan, the corresponding counterpart of these main committees are “shingikai”, and “iinkai” in some cases. By contrast, we excluded the following bodies because their main consultant target is neither the state nor the parliament, but private or third sector organizations (It should, however, be noted that it seems that in Germany the difference between those committees targeted for states and those for private/third sectors are not as strictly differentiated as in Japan. For example, it is quite common that both types of committees to be listed under the same list “Gremien”, whereas in Japan the latter body is completely separated and the latter is regarded as a third body (Gaikaku Dantai). Because of this institutional difference, it is rather difficult to identify the “Aufsichtsrat” equivalent of the third sector organization in Japan). Those excluded bodies are supervisory boards (“Aufsichtsgremien”) (As defined in Art. 3.1 Bundesgremienbesetzungsgesetz), foundations (“Stiftungen”in German, “Zaidan” in Japanese), foundation boards (“Stiftungsrat”in German, “Kansa”in Japanese), supervisory board for private companies such as interest groups or NGOs (e.g. “Supervisory board German energy agency Inc.”, “Aufsichtsrat Deutsche Energie-Agentur GmbH”, or”Gaibu-iinkai”since in Japanese but there is no fixed term for this type of committee), and Committees of the Bundesrat or the Bundestag (as long as they are comprised only by party members).

In Japan, the purpose of the SACs is first and foremost to gather expertise. This is in accordance with the country’s advisory committee law. Many scientists and academics are involved in the committees. These committees consist of private actors who are reappointed every two years. As several reappointments are possible, some members have been appointed to these committees for more than ten years. Regular committees (“shingikai”) are central committees that consist of sections, often also subsections and working groups, and in some cases there are even sub-working groups. Additionally, there are ad-hoc discussion committees (“kentokai” or “kondankai”) that are not formally affiliated with these regular committees. Until the ministerial reform in 2001, advisory committees were often criticized because of their lack of transparency. However, since 2001, almost all membership lists and minutes are publicly available. Still, some criticize that this transparency actually prevents effective discussion, as most members only represent their position to justify their efforts to their fellow groups, which is sometimes referred to as “position talk” (simply arguing the organizational official stance without considering the flow of discussion) [26]. The appointments are made exclusively by administrative staff, which is why these committees are often said to form an inner circle [33].

In Germany, the purpose of the SACs is, in contrast to Japan, mainly to gather expertise, coordinate efforts, and legitimize action rather than gathering scientific information. Regarding the membership of German committees, ministry employees and politicians can also be formal members of such a committee. It is also more common than in Japan for a ministry employee to be an official member of a committee organized by another ministry. The organizational structure of German committees is very flat and there are committees with specific working groups. With regard to transparency, we discovered that in Germany information on these committees is less transparent than in the Japanese case. However, in most cases, a final report is publicly available. If we consider the nomination of the members, we notice that political parties are actively involved in the appointment process. There are both ministerial and parliamentary committees. A recent famous example of the latter is the “Ethics Commission” for nuclear energy policy set up after the Fukushima nuclear accident which had the purpose to give advice and consult on how to deal with nuclear hazards.

Systematic evaluations of SACs are rare (but see [34–36]), therefore our research question in this context is exploratory and is intended to further develop the field. Even though SACs are key forum for discussing and formulating policy proposals in both Germany and Japan [7, 27], there are cultural and institutional differences in terms of the network structure and the organization of SACs. Our research questions (stated in the introduction, above) are based on these considerations.

Measuring vertical integration through membership sectoral diversity

Vertical integration is measured through the diversity of sectors participating in SACs. To describe the sector an actor belongs to, each member is coded according to the following categories: government, science, business, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), media, local governments (i.e., states in Germany and prefecture in Japan as well as cities in both countries), individual university researchers, and political parties (for details see S1 Text).

As an indicator of the sectoral diversity of SAC members, we utilize the inverted version of Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) (Formally, HHI is defined as , where P_i is the proportion of each sector and k is number of categories of sectors). HHI is widely used for measuring the degree of market monopoly. The inversed version of this index (i.e., ) is used for calculating the diversity (e.g., [37, 38]). The diversity index takes the minimum value 1 when all members in a SAC are from the same sector. On the other hand, the diversity index takes the maximum value when the proportions of each sectors member belong to are even.

Measuring horizontal integration through memberships overlap

Horizontal integration is measured through membership overlap across SACs. As a concrete indicator of membership overlap, we use the Dice coefficient of the members in the pair of committees (Formally, let |C_m| and |C_n| be a set of membership of the committee C_m and C_n, respectively. Then, the Dice coefficient of the two committee is, ) that ranges from zero (no overlap) to one (complete overlap). A high Dice coefficient means that there is a high degree of overlap of members between two committees. Accordingly, we conceptualize that a high degree of overlap among committees can be viewed as a high level of horizontal integration. We calculated the Dice coefficient for every pair of SACs in each country.

As an illustration, consider the constellation of SACs in case 1 in Fig 1. Case 1 is the one with no membership overlaps at all among committees, hence no horizontal integration. In Case 2, it is more integrated than case 1 because there are some membership overlaps (actor 3 and 6).

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Fig 1. Illustration of overlap of committee members.

Note: A-F indicates SACs and 1–7 indicates actors. The edges in the upper figures show that the actor is a member of the committees. The number in the bottom figures indicates the Dice coefficient of membership overlaps between committees. Avg. is the average Dice coefficient in each case.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222.g001

Concerning membership, we coded the members of each committee at the organizational level, not the individual (person) level. Two committees are therefore regarded to be sharing members if the members have the same organizational affiliation (even if the individual people are different). The reasoning behind this procedure is that most of the committee members are selected based on their organization affiliation. It is only for the university that we cannot apply the above reasoning, since each researcher may be selected independent of his or her university affiliation. In this special case, therefore, university researchers are treated as individual. Those who do not have any organizational affiliation are also treated as individuals.

Issue of the advisory committee

Horizontal and vertical integration may vary across SACs that deal with different issues. The issues dealt with by a SAC are coded by the authors according to the following categories, recognizing that a SAC may have several issues (see S1 Text for the detail) (To ensure the comparability, one author of this paper who reads both Japanese and German cross-checked the adequacy of the coding in both country data): target (e.g., emission reduction target) (Target means in this context there are specific targets that are defined, e.g., a percentage for the reduction of emissions by a certain date), energy, nuclear, science, technology and development, business and product regulation, local (e.g. local government climate policy) (Local refers to the fact that the committees are concerned with national policy programs that relate specifically to the local level of implementation. This is a specific feature of the German federalism), ethics, and transportation.

Understanding drivers of integration

To identify the factors that result in horizontal integration, we utilize the multiple regression quadratic assignment procedures (MRQAP) tests [39, 40]. MRQAP tests are permutation tests (Among the various permutation methods, we used “double semi-partialling” following the recommendation by Dekker et al. (2007) [39]). for multiple linear regression model coefficients for data organized in square matrices of relatedness among objects. In our case, the observation organized in the matrices is the relation between the committees.

Our dependent variable Y is the degree of horizontal integration measured by the Dice coefficients of membership overlap between advisory committees (Formally, the dependent variable is k×k Dice coefficient matrix Y, which consists of k advisory committees and an entry y_nm in Y is a dice coefficient between the advisory committee n and m). Each entry in the matrix indicates the Dice coefficient between a pair of SACs; namely, how the members in two SACs are overlapped.

For the independent variable, we enter several possible driving forces that can cause membership overlap as listed below. As our dependent variable is a matrix, we also need to create a matrix for each independent variable X, meaning that our unit of observation is the pair of committees. However, for some independent variables, the dependent variable comes from the attribute of each SAC, not a pair of SACs. In those cases, we use the sum method, which is a sum of the relevant attributes of two SACs. Let us take the size of the committee matrix (i.e., X2 in the explanation below) as an example. If number of members in committee A and B is 3 and 5, respectively, the entry for A-B (i.e., x2_AB) of this matrix is 8, meaning that the sum of the number of committee members in A and in B is 8. If this sum method is used, it is specifically indicated.

In the description below, X1 indicates the matrix of the first independent variable. The same logic applies for X2, X3, …, X7 (see S2 Text for detail).

• X1. Same Ministries: Whether two committees belong to the same ministry (coded as 1) or not (coded as 0).
• X2. Size of the committee (sum method): Sum of the number of members in two committees.
• X3. Sectoral diversity of the committee (sum method): Sum of the sectoral diversity index of two committees. Note that the sectoral diversity is the one for measuring the degree of vertical integration in a SAC, as discussed above.
• X4. Same issue: Whether two committees handle the same topic (coded as 1) or not (coded as 0).
• X5. Organizational category (sum method): Sum of the coefficient of the specialization of each organizational category of two committees. In brief, this coefficient indicates how much a particular organizational type is present in a SAC given the country’s average.
• X6. Prominent actor (sum method): Sum of the prominence actor scores in two committees. The prominence of an actor is calculated as the number of committees this actor belongs to. A committee level prominence score is the average of the prominence of committee members.
• X7. Multi-issue actor (sum method). Sum of the multi-issue actor score in two committees. In essence, multi-issue score of an actor is calculated by how wide range of committees in terms of their issues this actor simultaneously belongs to, which indirectly indicates the range of issues this actor can speaks of. A committee level multi-issue actor score is the average of the multi-issue actor score of committee members.

In the calculation, model 1 conducts the regression against the whole set of committees in Japan and Germany. By contrast, model 2 limits the observations to the entries of the matrix that indicates the membership overlap between committees belonging to different ministries. This allows us to specify the factors that result in horizontal integration among ministries. In a similar vein, model 3 limits the observation to the entries of the matrix that correspond to membership overlaps between committees that handle different issues. This allows us to specify the factors that result in the horizontal integration across different issues. The calculation was done by R [41] and R package sna [42].

Results of vertical integration: Sector diversity

As described above, we identified 174 climate change-related committees in Japan and 44 committees in Germany. Table 1 shows the number of committees by ministry. For better readability, we use the simplified names of the individual ministries in both countries (see S1 Table for the formal names).

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Table 1. Number of climate-policy-related committees by ministries in Japan and Germany.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222.t001

In Japan, more than half of the climate change-related committees belong to the Ministry of the Economy. In Germany, by contrast, almost half of the committees are organized by the Ministry of the Environment. This result indicates the difference of the issue ownership of the relevant ministries in Japan and Germany, which also influences the frames of the discussion on climate policy. Judging from the result, climate change in Germany is dealt with more from an environmental point of view, while in Japan the economic issues are more salient.

This interpretation can be also supported from the list of prominent actors, i.e., organizations and individuals which are members of many committees (Table 2). In Japan, only one research institute, the National Institute for Environmental Studies, which is affiliated with the Ministry of the Environment, is in the top 10. There are, however, no other organizations which clearly represent environmental policy issues within the top 10 actors. By contrast, three research institutes (Japan Institute of Energy Economics; Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth; and National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology), and one third-sector organization (Japan Consumer Affairs Advisor-Consultant Association) are affiliated with the Ministry of the Economy. In addition, the Federation of Electric Power Companies that is the industrial association of electricity companies is ranked in the top 10.

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Table 2. Prominent actors in committees.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222.t002

In Germany, the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing and the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, which both represent economic issues, feature in the top 10 list (in the last two positions). The Federal Environmental Agency comes in third place, which is Germany’s main agency for environmental protection. This institution is characterized by its scientific and technocratic expertise in environmental protection. Contrary to the Japanese case, NGOs advocating for the promotion of environmental policy are more strongly represented, namely Öko-Institute and BUND. Another remarkable actor type is the local governments, reflecting Germany’s strong federalism. The independent research institute Fraunhofer Gesellschaft also plays an important role (As for the research institutes, we coded the actors’ affiliations in accordance with their representation at the committees, namely, either the particular sub-institute or the whole institute. As for the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, for example, many members tend to represent a particular sub-institute, whereas members of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft tend to represent the whole institute. Accordingly, in Table 1, the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft may be underrepresented as compared to the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft). with their expertise in the field of energy transformation and climate research. Note, however, that we do not consider how politically important individual committees are, as this is difficult to quantify. It is also possible that some of the prominent actors participate in relatively unimportant committees.

Table 3 presents the degree of vertical integration measured by actor type diversity score. Overall, the German diversity score is 1.5 to two times as high as the Japanese one. In other words, organizations from more diverse sectors participate in German SACs than in Japanese ones. If we consider each category, individual university researchers are the most frequent participants in the committees in each country. However, the composition of each sector differs for both countries. In Japan, scientific organizations, business groups, and university researchers on average account for almost 85% of all participants. By contrast, the percentage of these sectors is much lower in Germany (around 50%). Moreover, in Germany NGOs and local governments (i.e., Länder and cities) on average account for around 30% of all participants, while in Japan only approximately 10%.

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Table 3. Degree of vertical integration in Japanese and German SACs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222.t003

Results of horizontal integration: Membership overlap

Now, we turn to the horizontal integration measured by the degree of membership overlap between the different committees through the Dice coefficient (Table 4). The average Dice coefficient in Japan and in Germany is 0.07, meaning that both countries are equally well integrated in terms of their membership overlap. However, if we limit our observation to the Dice coefficient between the ministries, the average Dice coefficient is lower in Japan (0.02) than in Germany (0.04). In other words, Japanese integration especially occurs between committees that fall under the same ministries, as compared to the German case.

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Table 4. Degree of horizontal integration in Japanese and German SACs.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222.t004

There are also some differences in the degree of overlap among the different issues. In both countries, the Dice coefficient is relatively high in the SACs which handle the topic of nuclear energy (0.08 and 0.12), even more so for Germany than for Japan. The biggest overlap in Japan (0.12) is seen for science. Furthermore, we can derive from the analysis that integration occurs in Japan through explicit target setting (0.10) and energy issues (0.09). In Germany, technology and development (0.23) is an especially strong factor for the integration of different committees. Business and product regulations and adaptation (0.07) and risk management (0.07) are further topics with high horizontal integration in Germany.

The different structure of horizontal integration in both countries can also be visually examined. Fig 2 shows how the degree of membership overlaps across the different committees, where the Dice coefficient was treated as distance (A high Dice coefficient indicates a higher degree of overlap. We converged it into distance by subtracting the Dice coefficient from 1 (namely, 1 minus Dice coefficient)). and plotted based on multidimensional scaling. The closer two nodes (committees) are in the plot, the higher the degree of membership overlap was observed between them. The issue label was superimposed by calculating the average of the positions of the SACs that handle the relevant issue.

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Fig 2. Overlap of memberships among committees.

Note: Each node represents a SAC. The colour of the node represents the ministries the SAC belongs to (white = agriculture; blue = science; yellow = economy; green = environment; red = land; black = cabinet; grey = development; purple = parliament). The distance between the committees represents the Dice coefficient. The closer two nodes are, the more similar are the members in those committees.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222.g002

In Japan (Fig 2A), the clear structure of horizontal integration is readable from the plot. Memberships overlaps in particular between the committees organised by the Ministry of the Economy, the Ministry of the Environment and the Ministry of Education. On the other hand, there is a clear division of committees among the ministries, especially between the ministries of the Economy and the Environment. There are some issues in which this ministerial segregation does not seem to apply, however, including adaptation, local policy and agriculture.

In Germany (Fig 2B), committees are more dispersed, so that there is very little membership overlap overall. Notably, we do observe some similar patterns to the Japanese case as the committees which are organized by the same ministries tend to be placed together. Despite this, even the committees organized by the same ministries are scattered. For example, committees organized by the Ministry of the Environment are clustered in top-right, top-left, and in the middle of Fig 2, suggesting that at least three different clusters of members exist under the committees organized by the Ministry of the Environment. In addition, some SACs, which belong to the different ministries, are in many cases placed close to each other. It suggests that the overlap occurs more for specifically defined topics, regardless of their parent ministries.

Factors leading to membership overlap

Despite these structural differences in the way of integration in two countries’ SACs, we can observe some common factors leading to horizontal integration. In this last subsection, we analyse these factors by applying MRQAP regression by setting the membership overlap among SACs (i.e., Dice coefficient) as dependent variable and the possible factors as independent variables (see method and measurement section).

This analysis reveals some common factors leading to membership overlap (Table 5). Firstly, it is more common for the membership to overlap between committees that belong to the same ministries. This result reveals the existence of actors who have a persistent relationship with a particular Ministry. From the perspective of nominators (e.g., bureaucrats within the ministries), there is a pool of “favourite” members to name.

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Table 5. MRQAP regression on membership overlap among advisory committees.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000222.t005

Secondly, the larger the committee, the greater the chances of the committee membership to overlap with other committees. This is a natural consequence of the first finding.

Thirdly, the nuclear issue leads to a higher overlap of members in both countries. Apparently, this reflects the time of data collection where the nuclear phase-out and its policy integration was intensively discussed in both countries. This is not significant in the German case (possibly because of the smaller number of observations), but still has a positive coefficient. Local policy is also a common factor for integration.

Fourthly, multi-issue actors (i.e., those with knowledge of several issues) seem to lead to higher overlap among committees. This effect is not significant in the German case, but it is still positive. Moreover, this variable is interesting because the effect is larger in the model where the integration between ministries is concerned (model 2 and model 5). In other words, multi-issue and prominent actors serve as policy brokers, especially between the different committees under different ministries.

In addition to these common features, there are interesting differences between the two countries. It is particularly interesting to observe that, in Japanese committees, handling the same issues results in integration among them. However, this effect is not positive in many of the issues in Germany (except for the issue of nuclear, adaptation and development). Seemingly, German committees define the issues in more detail and more generally defined issues do not cause the membership to overlap. The fact that the German committee seemingly define the issues in a narrow way is further supported by the result that individual university researchers have a negative coefficient. Given the general tendency that the university researchers’ expertise is highly specialized, the German researchers appear to attend only committees that fall within their own domain of expertise.