Policy as assemblage

In this article, the author tells the story of her search for appropriate tools to conceptualise policy work. She had set out to explore the rela tionship between the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and Australia’s education policy, but early intervie w data forced her to reconsider her research question. The plethora of availabl e models of policy did not satisf actorily accommodate her growing understanding of the messiness and complexity of policy work. On the basis of interviews with 18 policy actors, including former OECD officials, PISA analysts and bureaucrats, as well as documentary analysis of government reports and ministerial me dia releases, she suggests that the concept of ‘assemblage’ provides the tools to better understand the messy processes of policy work. The relationship between PISA and national policy is of interest to many scholars in Europe, making this study widely relevant. An article th at argues for the unsettling of tidy accounts of knowledge making in policy can hardly afford to obscure the untidiness of its own assemblage. Accordingly, this article is somewhat unconventional in its presentation, and atte mpts to take the reader into the messiness of the research world as well as the polic y world. Implicit in this presen tation is the suggestion that both policy work and research work are ongoing attempts to find order and coherence through the cobbling together of a variety of resource