Blogs, perspectives and opinion
The use of expertise in the Scottish referendum debate: build them up to knock them down?
In a wonderfully perceptive article from 1999, German sociologist Peter Weingart identifies two paradoxes surrounding the use of science in political debate (and we can apply this to expertise more generally). First, late modern societies show an unprecedented dependence on expert knowledge to assess the risks and consequences of political action.
Can we democratise decisions on complex issues?
Professor Albert Weale FBA (UCL) writes about the challenges of knowledge democratisation and mini-publics.
The travelling inspector? Education policy and the making of Europe
The travelling inspector is a new phenomenon –although education in Europe has always ‘travelled’, inspectors were firmly rooted and derived influence from their local and authoritative standing as education ‘connoisseurs’.
Open policy making: procedural or instrumental?
One of the questions at the SKAPE launch on Thursday was whether the UK government was pursuing open policymaking for procedural (increasing involvement, democratic engagement in the policymaking process) or for instrumental reasons (getting better results).
Why real policy impact is so difficult to evidence
By Christina Boswell Many of us recently went through the painful experience of trying to evidence the impact of research on policy, as part of
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