Stefan Einarsson, Marta Reuter and Pelle Åberg

Project summary

Between knowledge and ideology: The role of individual actors in reproducing conflicting institutional logics

Academic knowledge and expertise play an increasingly important role in policymaking in contemporary society. Sweden has a long tradition of allowing interest groups to contribute to policy processes. At the same time, recent decades have seen a substantial increase in the number of policy institutes, or “think tanks”, that seek to influence policy by producing research and using it as leverage in public debate. However, we still know relatively little about how these organisations construct, negotiate and organise the relationship between research and advocacy in their work.

 

The aim of the project is to study this important dimension of think tanks’ activities. We focus on Swedish think tanks whose missions encompass both research and advocacy, and whose work therefore involves two distinct institutional logics: those governing the production of knowledge and those governing the production of ideology.

 

Using interviews, document analysis and observations, we examine how individual actors (re)produce and/or renegotiate the relationship between research and advocacy within these organisations, the strategies they employ, and the arenas in which this takes place. The project also examines the practical challenges that organisations may face in simultaneously producing research and achieving policy impact.

 

The study will enhance our understanding of how different institutional logics interact and the role played by individual actors in this interaction. It will also provide greater insight into how knowledge is used as a political tool, and into think tanks and their increasingly important role in Swedish politics.