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From “knowledge use” towards “boundary work”: sketch of an emerging new agenda for inquiry into science-policy interaction

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Knowledge Democracy

Abstract

This chapter is about a new agenda for inquiry into the relationships between science and public policy. So far, most research has conceptualised this relationship in terms of knowledge utilisation and downstream impact on the policy process. However, this leads to over-instrumentalisation and serious attenuation of expert advice. Therefore, I propose a new perspective: interaction through boundary work, a concept expressing how expert advice simultaneously demarcates and coordinates science and public policy. Research shows that there are many different types of boundary work depending on various types of policy problems. This chapter concludes with a proposal for a multilevel model, which enables us to understand the variety in types of boundary work, and discriminate conditions of success and failure of boundary arrangements and boundary work practices on several levels of analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Management and Governance, University of Twente’s, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Prof. Dr. Robert Hoppe

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  1. Prof. Dr. Robert Hoppe
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Correspondence to Robert Hoppe .

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  1. Waterbieskreek 40, Leiderdorp, 2353 JH, Netherlands

    Roeland J. in 't Veld

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Hoppe, R. (2010). From “knowledge use” towards “boundary work”: sketch of an emerging new agenda for inquiry into science-policy interaction. In: in 't Veld, R. (eds) Knowledge Democracy. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11381-9_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-11381-9_13

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