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Eight - Translation across borders: connecting the academic and policy communities
- Edited by Keri Facer, University of Bristol, Kate Pahl, Manchester Metropolitan University
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- Book:
- Valuing Interdisciplinary Collaborative Research
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 05 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 05 April 2017, pp 173-190
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Summary
Introduction
In this chapter we look at the legacy of a set of Connected Communities (CC) projects which made connections between the ‘research community’ of academics and the ‘policy community’ of civil servants based at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), UK. They had the potential to leave behind something which might have significant effects at a national scale, – ‘impact’ in the current policy jargon. We make a distinction here between ‘legacy’ in a very broad, everyday sense of ‘anything handed down by … a predecessor’ (OED, online edition) and ‘impact’ with its specific policy meaning of ‘an effect on, change or benefit to the economy, society, culture, public policy or services, health, the environment or quality of life, beyond academia’ (HEFCE, 2015). Colloquially, the ‘impact agenda’ refers to the increasingly insistent pressures on the academy to achieve demonstrable impact; in this sense it is an external pressure which may reinforce or conflict with academics’ own commitments to achieving social change through their research.
The three interdisciplinary projects created ‘policy briefs’ for the DCLG, the UK government department responsible for localism, local government, housing, planning and related functions in England. As a central government policy-making body, DCLG is continually in search of robust, research-based evidence to support its work. The policy briefs were to be short and accessible reviews of research relevant to policy on localism. In particular they were intended to identify novel insights from the Arts and Humanities in order to broaden the range of ideas available to policy makers.
Projects in focus in this chapter
The legacy explored here is that of three CC projects, commissioned to create ‘policy briefs’ to inform policy making in DCLG. Their topics, agreed between the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and DCLG, were local representation, co-production of local services, and accountability in the context of decentralisation and fiscal austerity. In this chapter we refer to these as ‘the representation brief’, ‘the co-production brief’ and ‘the accountability brief’.
The principal written outputs were Connelly et al, 2013 (representation), Durose et al, 2013 (co-production), and Richardson and Durose, 2013 (accountability). The latter two project teams overlapped in membership, while the representation brief project was entirely separate.
The project through which this legacy was explored was called Translation across Borders.
Twelve - Translation across borders: exploring the use, relevance and impact of academic research in the policy process
- Edited by Dave O'Brien, University of Edinburgh, Peter Matthews, University of Stirling
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- Book:
- After Urban Regeneration
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 01 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 11 November 2015, pp 181-198
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Summary
Introduction
Complex social and governance problems have engaged academic researchers ever since the closely linked emergence of public welfare policy and associated academic disciplines in the post-Second World War era (Lindblom and Cohen, 1979; Fischer, 2003). In the UK's recent past, governments’ demand for research rose as both New Labour and the post-2010 Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition sought to portray their policies as being based on objective analysis, rather than ideology (Nutley et al, 2007; HMG, 2013). In parallel, pressure rose on academia to demonstrate the utility of its research, constructed as having ‘demonstrable economic and social impacts’ (HEFCE, 2009: 7) and requiring the planning of ‘pathways to impact’ (RCUK, 2011). The 2007 economic crisis, and ensuing public sector austerity measures, further increased the pressure on academia to justify its cost to the public purse through its contribution to solving society's problems. As discussed in Chapters One and Three, this prompted new relationships between academics and policymakers: programmes such as ‘Connected Communities’ were devised with government priorities in mind, and cuts in government research budgets reinforced other trends promoting the co-production of policy-relevant knowledge.
This chapter draws on four ‘Connected Communities’ projects: three that produced ‘policy briefings’ (Connelly et al, 2013; Durose et al, 2013; Richardson and Durose, 2013) for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and the ‘Translation Across Borders’ ‘legacy’ project (2014–15). All reflected the DCLG's desire for new knowledge to guide post-regeneration policy development and delivery. The move away from area-based initiatives towards the decentralisation of budgeting and planning, as part of a fundamental rescaling and reimagining of the relationships between citizens and the central and local state, has heightened the importance of grappling with some very old political theory problems of how to understand and reinforce accountability and representation. This has provided fertile ground for new relationships with the academy, and some researchers – ourselves included – have stepped into this arena, aiming not only to help solve problems, but also to shape agendas by influencing how key issues are understood.
However, the emphasis on evidence-based policy and impact has brought to the fore long-standing mutual frustrations over academics’ perceived inability to produce usable outputs, and policymakers’ perceived inability to use academic research in appropriate and responsible ways (Lindblom and Cohen, 1979; Owens, 2005; Smith and Joyce, 2012).