Michal Sedlacko

Bridging the Science-Policy Gap: Development and Reception of a Joint Research Agenda on Sustainable Food Consumption

Abstract To increase the uptake of research findings by policy makers and to encourage European researchers to better reflect policy needs, we facilitated the development of a joint research agenda (JRA) on sustainable food consumption (SFC) involving scientists, policy makers, and other stakeholders. Pursuing interpretive action research and using a number of data sources, we tried to understand how the “fit” between the characteristics of policy makers’ organizational contexts and the attributes of the JRA development process affects the reception of the JRA and its outcomes. Our framework was based on three distinct formations of discursive and material practices related to the use of knowledge in public policy making: bureaucratic, managerial, and communicative. Two dominant patterns seem to be represented in SFC consumption in the European Union: a transition between the bureaucratic and the managerial formation and a highly developed managerial formation with occasional communicative practices. We found that reflecting national policy priorities would help overcome some of the structural barriers between science and policy, whereas other barriers could be addressed by designing the process to better fit with the logics of the three formations, such as the fragmentation of knowledge (bureaucratic formation) or breadth of participation (communicative formation).

Conducting Ethnography with a Sensibility for Practice

This article addresses the problem of adhering to ontology consistent with theories of social practice while conducting ethnographic research with focus on immersion and openness. As a partial solution to this contradiction, I formulate an outline of a ‘sensibility for practice’, a filtering and sense-making device to be used as a fieldwork tool. I believe this goes a long way towards producing a processual and experience-near account of sociopolitical life while remaining true to the theoretical commitments of practice theories. The sensibility for practice consists of four main principles derived from the theories of social practice and that enable us to hold those theories lightly: focus on what people actually do (and the materials they ‘converse’ with); focus on everydayness; focus on the work of assembling, structuring and ordering; and focus on reflexivity. For each of the principles, I identify three specific ‘loci of attention’ that can serve as sensitising concepts during fieldwork. Sensibility for practice represents a narrowed-down approach to ethnographic research that is able to accommodate various strands of practice studies, including the interpretivist, ‘wholist’ as well as associationist stream.

Internal ministerial advisory bodies: An attempt to transform governing in the Slovak Republic

Abstract In the Slovak Republic, a number of internal ministerial advisory bodies, intended to provide high-quality analyses and evidence based policy making for national policy, have been established over the last two years. We have studied how the rational technocratic model of scientific policy advice as a specific mode of governing, acted out through these new institutional sites of expertise, survives in a highly politicised environment of the Slovak public administration. Central to our study was the reconstruction of an intersubjective account central to the work of organising on which the analytical centres and their staff, as well as their patrons, participate. Complementary to this, we focused on intersubjectively shared elements of the analysts’ community and subculture within the dominant CEE public administration culture. The vision of governing with expertise shared by analytical centres rests on the principles of transparency, orientation on professional merit (primarily econometric, analytical skills), voluntarism, conflict avoidance, political opportunism and institutional autonomy. Analytical centres identify themselves as a distinct professional group – in fact, they form a distinct organisational subculture around traits such as demographic characteristics (predominantly young males with economic or mathematical/IT background), symbols, hierarchies, working culture, humour, as well as artefacts. Analysts see their mission in the provision of impartial, objective analytical evidence for informed decision making, yet they negotiate the boundary between politics and expertise on a daily basis, and, as we found, in numerous aspects of analysts’ work politics cannot be entirely bracketed.

Civil Servants and ‘Scientific Temper’: Scholarly Competence for Enactment of New Realities in Professionals’ Practice

Abstract Purpose The chapter questions the low demand for scholarly (scientific research) competence of civil servants through identifying practical and transformative uses of scientific knowledge in professionals’ practice, thus arguing for a particular type of scholarly competence in professional degree programs. Design/methodoloy/approach The chapter conceptually develops a theory of practitioners’ knowing in action that reframes use of scientific knowledge as part of practical inquiry. Findings The chapter formulates the notion of extended ‘scientific temper’ to open up spaces for reflection in the context of everyday professional practice and avoid the pitfalls of technical rationality. It argues for an ontological – as opposed to mere epistemological – dimension of knowing in action. It suggests that changes in practitioners’ stance in line with the extended ‘scientific temper’ enable specific uses of scientific knowledge and help achieve aims of emancipation and transformation. Practical implications The chapter sketches a list of scholarly competencies and principles of didactics of training scholarly competence of civil servants in line with the notion of extended ‘scientific temper’ and post-structuralist paradigms in science. Originality/value The chapter’s value lies in reconceptualising the use of scientific knowledge in relation to everyday professional practice in public administration.

Wie lernt die Politik? Lernen aus Erfahrung in Politik und Verwaltung, by Peter Biegelbauer

References Gee, J. P. 2011. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis; Theory and Method. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge. Nicolini, D. 2012. Practice Theory, Work, and Organization: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schön, D. A., and M. Rein. 1994. Frame Reflection. Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies. New York: Basic Books. Stone, D. 1997. Policy Paradox. The Art of Political Decision Making. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Wagenaar, H., S. Altink, and H. Amesberger. 2013. Final Report of the International Comparative Study of Prostitution Policy. The Hague: Platform 31.

An Overview of Discourses on Knowledge in Policy: Thinking Knowledge, Policy and Conflict Together

Abstract Around the world, there is a growing interest among policy scholars and practitioners in the role of knowledge in relation to public policy. These debates are accompanied by some confusion about what is meant by knowledge or evidence, as well as controversies around the role of scientists and suspicions of increasingly technocratic decision making. Our aim is to provide a useful overview of the major debates in this paper, and to trace six dominant discourses in current research that address the role of scientific knowledge or expertise in the policy process. We distinguish evidence-based policy making, knowledge utilisation, policy learning, knowledge transfer, social construction of knowledge and boundaries, and knowing in practice as separate discourses. We show how they differ in their understanding of knowledge, of the problem to solve in terms of the role of knowledge in policy, of practical implications, as well as in their understanding of public policy and in their ontologies and epistemologies. A condensed and structured representation serves as a basis for conducting comparisons across discourses as well as to open ways for analysis of strategic associations between the discourses. We hope to contribute to extending the discussion of knowledge in policy into the realm of epistemic politics and we suggest several avenues for future research that can draw on a range of concepts from across all of the discourses.