Policy Analysis and Policy Advisory Bodies: The Case of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Councils (FARMCs) in the Philippines

Policy analysis is conventionally understood as a technocratic exercise grounded in legal, scientific, and economic expertise and undertaken primarily within formal state institutions. This paper challenges that assumption by arguing that policy analysis is better understood as an institutional practice shaped by organisational position, authority, and the forms of knowledge considered legitimate. Hybrid policy advisory bodies, situated between state and society, analyse policy differently—not because they possess less expertise, but because they draw on different epistemic resources. To examine this claim, the paper analyses the Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Management Councils (FARMCs) in the Philippines following the Philippine Supreme Court's Mercidar ruling, which relaxed longstanding restrictions on commercial fishing within municipal waters and generated significant legal, ecological, and political uncertainty across coastal communities. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork across the Philippines, including interviews, documentary analysis, and comparative case analysis, the study compares how FARMCs, local governments, and inter-local governance bodies interpreted the ruling, diagnosed policy problems, mobilised different forms of evidence, and justified their policy responses. The findings show that formal government actors relied primarily on legal-administrative reasoning, whereas FARMCs grounded their analyses in experiential ecological knowledge, livelihood impacts, and community deliberation. In doing so, FARMCs functioned not simply as consultative institutions but as sites where competing forms of expertise were translated into locally legitimate policy responses. Their analytical practices demonstrate that policy analysis extends beyond technical assessment to include interpretation, mediation, and knowledge co-production under conditions of uncertainty. By shifting attention from who participates in policy councils to how policy analysis is produced within hybrid organisations, the paper contributes to scholarship on hybrid governance, policy advisory systems, and collaborative governance. More broadly, it argues that recognising experiential and relational expertise expands prevailing conceptions of policy analysis and provides a richer understanding of governance in decentralised and environmentally contested policy settings.