From Transfer to Transformation: Rethinking the Relationship between Research and Policy

The most common and enduring explanation for the way research is used (or abused or not used) in policy is the ‘two communities’ theory. According to this theory, the problematic relationship between research and policy is caused by the different ‘cultures’ inhabited by policy makers and researchers. The most common and enduring types of strategies that are put forward to increase research use in policy involve bridging or linking these ‘two communities’. This study challenges this way of thinking about the relationship between research and policy. Four case studies of national public health policy in Australia are used to present the context, events, processes, research, and actors involved in policy making. Three theories are deployed to explore the relationship between research and policy in each of the cases individually and across the cases as a whole. The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) understands the relationship in terms of a power struggle between competing coalitions that use research as a political resource in the policy process. The Policy Making Organisation Framework (PMOF) understands the relationship in terms of institutional and political factors that determine the way data is selected or rejected from the policy process. The Governmentality Framework (GF) understands the relationship in terms of the Foucauldian construct of power/knowledge that is created through discourse, ‘regimes of truth’ and ‘regimes of practices’ found in public health policy and research. ..