The rise of knowledge brokers: The translation of research evidence into policy and planning - part 2

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

It is noticeable how intergovernmental organizations nowadays enforce global normal-setting by “translating” research evidence into (national) policy and practice. Unsurprisingly, this phenomenon of knowledge brokerage has been dissected by social researchers. Within one generation alone, researchers of global governance moved from documenting unequal access to information to theorizing the impact of the surplus of information on national policy and planning. Rather than merely dismissing decision-makers’ reference to data and studies as yet another political maneuver to legitimize unpopular political decisions, more recent studies examine by whom and how evidence is generated at the global level and then translated or transferred or “pushed” out for political decision making at the national level. Their intellectual project is to ask what counts as evidence, and for whom. They investigate whether there is a hierarchization of evidence for global actors; possibly with randomized controlled trials as their gold standard. In a similar vein, researchers of global governance attempt to assess, for example, the popularity of international comparison in an eco-system in which the recourse to internationality or global connectedness affords to build political coalitions and mobilize financial resources.

The metamorphosis of the World Bank from a financial institution to a knowledge bank with global reach that lends both money and ideas, has been first observed by Philip Jones (2004) and Diane Stone (2000), and then further documented by Gita Steiner-Khamsi (2009), Mike Zapp (2017), Bromley, Furuta, Kijima, Overbey, Choi, and Santos (2021) and other scholars. Similarly, OECD’s ability to exert soft power by means of international comparison and global norm-setting has been well studied by Kerstin Martens and her associates in the policy domain of education (Martens and Jakobi, 2010; Niemann and Martens, 2018), and by other social researchers for other domains (for example, Littoz-Monnet, 2019). The World Bank and the OECD are not alone with first producing international comparative studies based on numbers and rankings, then offering their own interpretation of the findings for generating problem awareness, and finally framing their own global portfolio of interventions as “best practices” for solving the problem or policy issue at the national level. Knowledge-based regulation or governance by numbers has become the standard mode of operation both for international organizations and, at least as a desideratum, for national governments alike.

Knowledge brokerage per se is not new. In fact, the study of knowledge brokerage dates back to Caplan’s two-communities theory (Caplan, 1979). As Cairney (2015) and Mackillop, Downe and Quarmby (2019) astutely point out, the polarization between science and politics sometimes uncritically suggests a juxtaposition between “truth” or “facts” (produced by science) and action or decisions (taken by politics). The individuals or organizations that are dedicated to transferring, translating or “pushing” research, truth, or facts onto political decision makers, that is, bridge the two communities, are referred to as brokers, intermediaries, or boundary spanners. However, the two-communities theory begs for a more complex explanation, because the two spheres are often structurally coupled thereby generating an area of overlap in which “research evidence” for policy and planning is produced by both communities (Steiner-Khamsi, Baek, Karseth, 2021). The nexus or structural coupling between the science and politics is not without its challenges (see also Grek and Ydesen, 2021). As Eyal has pointed out convincingly, the proliferation of evidence-based policy planning has paradoxically added fuel to the crisis of expertise (see Eyal, 2019). Not only has science become politicized and politics scienticized, but science has also become demystified in front of everyone’s eyes:
[t]he very discourse to expertise increases uncertainty and threatens legitimacy because now the public is witness to controversies between scientists. (Eyal, 2019, p. 102).

Eyal writes about three communities or “lanes” with regulatory science or policy studies in the middle lane, situated between “pure science” and “regulation” (Eyal, 2019).

Clearly, the fast advance of associations, think tanks, non-governmental organizations, or government-sponsored institutions that provide analyses of “what works” is remarkable. The phenomenon has triggered an avalanche of publications on knowledge brokerage in recent years. In their systematic review of the literature, Mackillop et al. (2019, p. 339) assert: “These multiple definitions are symptomatic of the growth of the field and of various researchers and disciplines’ attempt at making sense of and implementing/refining these new processes.”

Arguably, the rise of knowledge brokerage is caused by the limited uptake of global public goods in the form of freely accessible databanks, toolkits, studies, repositories of case studies and best practices. Addressing the US context, Christopher Lubienski, for example, contends that there is not a scarcity but, on the contrary, a “surplus of evidence.” In such a “market place of ideas,” there is ample opportunity for new, non-state actors, and specifically the private sector, to serve as intermediaries between research production and policy making:
Into the chasm between research production and policymaking, we are seeing the entrance of new actors—networks of intermediaries—that seek to collect, interpret, package, and promote evidence for policymakers to use in forming their decisions. (Lubienski, 2019, p. 70).

The proliferation of knowledge repositories and databanks and the limited uptake for national policy and planning is an issue of great concern for global actors. The panel therefore also includes experts from international organizations that present their initiatives to strengthen use of research evidence for national policy and planning.

This panel is conducted in two parts. It gives the floor to experts from academe, international organizations, and foundations that in one way or other attempt to bridge research and policy. The panel is organized by NORRAG. In line with NORRAG’s mission of acting as a critical knowledge broker that bridges the Global North and the Global South as well as academe, government, civil society and international organizations, experts from these varied organizations have been invited to present their view, their institutional rationales, and their analyses in the two-part panel.

Sub Unit

• Globalization & Education SIG

Chair

• Kerstin Martens, University of Bremen

Individual Presentations

• Comparing evidence production and use for global policy in education and public health - Moira V Faul, NORRAG, Geneva Graduate Institute; Bart Sebastiaan Gabriel, The Graduate Institute, Geneva; Anna Numa Hopkins, NORRAG, Graduate Institute

• The Uptake of Research Evidence in Kyrgyzstan and Moldova Policy and Planning Decisions - Julia Levin, NORRAG; Jose Luis Canelhas, NORRAG; Zhanyl Bokonbaeva; Ludmila Pavlov, Ministry of Education and Research

• Evidence Production, Promotion and Pollution: Private Interests and Knowledge Brokerage in US Education Policy - Christopher Lubienski

• Lessons Learnt from Promoting Knowledge Production and Utilization in Low and Middle Income Countries - Tricia Wind, International Development Research Centre