Knowledge, policy, legitimacy: configurations where knowledge and policy unite

Panel Chairs:

ERÖSS, Gábor, ISB, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, KNOWandPOL, egabor@socio.mta.hu

Discussant :

VAN ZANTEN, Agnès, OSC-CNRS (TBC)

Abstract:

The formation and shape of the discourses (argumentation, travelling ideas, legitimacy accounts, etc.) and scenes (ministerial cabinets, commissions, workshops, consultations, the EU-financed research projects themselves, etc.) where knowledge and power meet and merge will be the focus of this panel. Panelists will work from the common assumption that the "politisation" of knowledge and the "knowledgeisation" of policy produce somewhat similar effects.

In an era of "evidence-based policy", of "Mode 2", of "governance by numbers", of "audit society" and of post-bureaucratic regulation, knowledge and policy increasingly follow a parallel evolution. This results in constellations/configurations of knowledge as policy, and policy as knowledge. These configurations can take different forms: discourses, tools, procedures, persons, scenes or events (and their combinations), i.e. any phenomena where knowledge cannot be separated from policy-making and vice versa.

Knowledge and policy merge in various ways: as knowledge-based regulation tools (e.g. evaluations, targeting, recommendations of international organisms, best practices), street-level bureaucracy, advocacy groups, expertise, think-tanks, commissions, reports, etc. How do they emerge? How do they function?

It is here that the issue of legitimacy and of "new governance" rises: how do political institutions, along with other political and non-political actors of society, construct and disseminate the discourse of "evidence" and for what purpose? Many of these tools and scenes are oriented towards acting (e.g. benchmarks), but a number of them are oriented rather towards building consensus, i.e. building some sort of legitimacy (e.g. commissions); while, in fact, many are the mixture of the two (e.g. targeting). We also observe a paradox: knowledge is becoming more and more local and/or international, while the question of legitimacy remains predominantly (although not exclusively) national. A new perspective on policies and more largely on public action will be proposed: expertise, targeting, best practices or evaluations will not be considered as simple policy tools but as -scientific, societal and political- legitimacy accounts, discourses in which knowledge and policy merge.