Speaking truth to power: the dynamics of knowledge use in policymaking

Knowledge use is at the core of many studies on public policymaking, often driven by a focus on evidence-based policy. The chapter draws upon the existing literature on knowledge and policy processes to map the dynamics through which knowledge enters or fails to enter policymaking. Our focus is on actors’ values, interests, and relations, as well as on policy capacities, evidence types, and institutional arrangements. Depending on the features these elements assume, we show how they can favour or hinder knowledge incorporation into policy processes. Each of these elements takes a different weight in the policy process literature . After illustrating the divide between the objectivist perspective and the subjectivist perspective on the relationship between knowledge and policy, the chapter shows how and to what extent capacities, ideas, interests, institutional arrangements, actors’ relations, and knowledge types influence how knowledge is employed in policymaking, and proposes some guidelines for future research on the dynamics of knowledge use in policymaking.