Epistemic Communities: A Reply to Toke

Dunlop, Claire A.

doi:10.1111/1467-9256.00123

Cited by 34 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…Surveying the EC approach, Haas (2007, p. 801) listed the EC presence of epistemic communities in a range of multilateral environmental agreements, but this focused on international environmental law and brief overviews rather than detailed research findings. It has been argued that the concept has not advanced far since its inception (Davis Cross, 2013;Dunlop, 2000). Accordingly, this work explicitly assesses the EC research outputs and also provides explicit propositions on which to build a future research agenda.…”

Section: Assessing the Ec Research Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instrument constituencies and epistemic community theory

Zito

2017

Policy and Society

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This contribution fleshes out the insights that the epistemic community (EC) approach can make to studying the public policy process and to how policy instruments are formulated and implemented. This contribution places the EC concept in the context of how policy instruments evolve and are supported by a separate network type, the instrument constituency (IC). It studies the conceptual differences between the EC and IC, analyses the conceptual progress and research output of the EC literature, and then reviews the EC literature to develop new analytical propositions about how epistemic communities, in relation to instrument constituencies, shape instrument change. This contribution then explores the value of these network concepts and propositions by examining four United States federal environmental policy instruments. It concludes that there is strong evidence for the role of ICs, and to a lesser extent, ECs, and that such public policy analysis would benefit from a greater network conceptualization.

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Section: Assessing the Ec Research Recordmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instrument constituencies and epistemic community theory

Zito

2017

Policy and Society

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“…Despite the presence of a healthy empirical literature using the idea of an epistemic community in different ways and in conjunction with different approaches, only in a handful of studies have related any findings back to framework itself (Dunlop, 2000a;Radaelli, 1995;Zito, 2001). Significantly, none of these interventions address the central mechanism that underpins epistemic communities'…”

Section: Troductiomentioning

confidence: 99%

Policy transfer as learning: capturing variation in what decision-makers learn from epistemic communities

Dunlop

2009

Policy Studies

157

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Almost two decades ago, Peter M. Haas formulated the epistemic communities framework as a means of exploring the influence of knowledge-based experts in international policymaking. Specifically, the approach was designed to address decision-making instances characterized by technical complexity and uncertainty. Control over the production of knowledge and information enables epistemic communities to articulate cause and effect relationships and so frame issues for collective debate. Remarkably however, we still know very little about the variety of ways in which decision-makers actually learn from epistemic communities. This article suggests that variety is best captured by differentiating between the control enjoyed by decision-makers and epistemic communities over the production of substantive knowledge -or means -that informs policy on the one hand and the policy objectives -or ends -to which that knowledge is directed on the other. The implications of this distinction for the types of epistemic community-decision-maker learning exchanges that prevail are elaborated using a typology of adult learning from the education literature which delineates the four possible learning situations. Section one of the article examines how the epistemic communities' framework currently organizes and captures variation in decisionmaker learning, outlines a possible learning typology and addresses the likely criticisms of this enterprise. The potential usefulness of this typology requires empirical investigation; section two of the article uses the comparative study of US and EU decision-makers' interaction with the epistemic community that formed around the regulation of the biotech milk yield enhancer bovine somatotrophin (rbST) to explore how the learning types identified in the model play out in practice. The third and concluding section examines how well the learning types measure up against three of the main desiderata for assessing such schema.KEYWORDS epistemic communities; knowledge production; policy learning; policy transfer; bovine somatotrophin (rbST); biotechnology. 3 I TRODUCTIOThough the epistemic communities concept enjoys good currency across political science 1 , nearly two decades after it was first unveiled (Haas, 1990(Haas, , 1992a, the epistemic communities' framework continues to buck the academic trend of conceptual revision through empirical investigation observed in similar approaches (notably, the study of policy communities and the advocacy coalition framework). Despite the presence of a healthy empirical literature using the idea of an epistemic community in different ways and in conjunction with different approaches, only in a handful of studies have related any findings back to framework itself (Dunlop, 2000a;Radaelli, 1995;Zito, 2001). Significantly, none of these interventions address the central mechanism that underpins epistemic communities'influence -the ability to assume control over knowledge production and in doing so guide decision-maker learning.It is clear that epistemic commu...

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“…Unlike the other approaches, however, the epistemic communities approach focuses on understanding the roles that scientific experts in particular play in policy making (Dunlop 2000).…”

Section: Transnational Epistemic Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influencing Policy Transnationally: Pro‐and Anti‐Tobacco Global Advocacy Networks

Farquharson

2003

Aust J Public Adm

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Using the global tobacco advocacy networks as a case study, this article argues that the Advocacy Coalition Framework (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1999), which theorises how advocacy coalitions affect policymaking domestically, and Keck and Sikkink's research into transnational advocacy networks (Keck and Sikkink 1998) can provide insights into the mechanisms of how transnational advocacy networks impact both local and intergovernmental policymaking. I argue that by combining aspects of each of these approaches, all sides of a policy situation can be analysed. I contrast these approaches with the epistemic communities approach (Haas 1992), suggesting that, for the tobacco policy system, the epistemic communities approach provides less insight than the other two.Many policy researchers have investigated the roles played by policy networks in the policy process (recent examples include Keck and

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Epistemic Communities: A Reply to Toke

Cited by 34 publications

References 20 publications

Instrument constituencies and epistemic community theory

Instrument constituencies and epistemic community theory

Policy transfer as learning: capturing variation in what decision-makers learn from epistemic communities

Influencing Policy Transnationally: Pro‐and Anti‐Tobacco Global Advocacy Networks

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