Our first product is a Topic Guide on Politics and Ideas. We have worked intensely to produce it but we know that we need your help to complete our task. We want this Guide to become an opportunity for collaboration that helps to improve what we have produced so far and the questions that still need to be answered.
Why a Topic Guide?
We believe that there is a difference between being better informed and having access to lists of documents. If we want to be better informed about the various views and ideas that affect how we understand and attempt to address the relationship between research and politics then we need to move beyond lists.
Therefore, this Topic Guide is a first attempt to review and filter an ever-growing literature to identify key areas of interest, debates, and knowledge gaps.
What does the Guide cover?
It covers a number of issues such as:
Research agenda and production, including
Key factors that influence the development of research agendas in developing countries
The roles of private actors and philanthropic organisations
Research within the policy process, including:
The political economy of research uptake
The role of narratives and ideas in policy arguments
The difference between evidence –informed/evidence-based policy and policy influence
The various functions and roles of research in different policy contexts
Communication of research, including:
Knowledge translation and brokering and boundary workers
Digital tools and their impact on research, communications and policymaking
The role of the media in informing the public and influencing policy
Monitoring and evaluation of research influence and impact
Capacity building, including:
Approaches to develop capacity to use research
Developing policy influencing capacity
How can you collaborate?
The Guide does not cover all possible topics under the ‘linking research and politics’ field. Nor does it include all the relevant literature. This is why we have not published it yet. We want this to become a collaborative exercise with other researchers and practitioners in developing countries. We would like to think of this guide as a ‘challenge statement’ to encourage you to get involved.
Therefore we ask you to contribute to its further development by:
Suggesting new topics or issues that could be included in a final version
Recommending additional resources (please submit them in the same format as in the Topic Guide: the full citation, a hyperlink to the resource, and a summary)
Contributing to the analysis presented in each section of the Topic Guide by offering your own views and opinion
Encouraging others to participate.
We only ask that you take it seriously and that your contributions are measured and constructive.
You can participate by:
Adding your comments to the pages of each section (this would be the best)
Or by following the debate on Twitter, we will be following
After we have shared all the sections we will review the comments and contributions and revisit the Topic Guide to produce a new version. This one will incorporate your resources and views as much as possible and constitute the first co-developed outputs of this new think net.
Go to the Topic Guide
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