Do Policy Makers Use Academic Research? Re-examining the “Two Communities” Theory of Research Utilization

Event Details

Date:

Friday, 01 May 2015

Time:

11:30 am - 12:45 pm

Room:

442

UQ Location:

General Purpose North 3 (St Lucia)

URL:

Event category(s):

Full Description:: It has long been theorised that academics and policy makers are citizens of separate ‘communities’, with little interaction between them. These communities are said to speak different languages, have different (and often conflicting) priorities, operate under unique systems of incentives and rewards, and follow different timeframes of activity.

Multiple empirical studies over the last 40 years have seemingly confirmed this hypothesis, and it is often used to explain why there appears to be little uptake of university research in the development of public policy.

However, research from a recent project at UQ, in which over two thousand Australian public servants were surveyed and in-depth interviews were conducted with 125 senior public sector managers, suggests that the relationship between policy and academia involves more than two communities, with significant interaction, and that there is considerable potential to improve on the existing relationships.

Dr Joshua Newman completed his PhD at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, and has been a research fellow in the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland since 2013.
His interests include policy success and failure, policy learning and transfer, and interaction between the public and private sectors.