There has been a significant growth in the number of evidence intermediaries or knowledge brokering organisations sitting between research and government and seeking to bridge the perceived ‘gap’ between evidence and policy. Their proliferation has been fuelled by the key assumption of the evidence-informed policymaking (EIPM) movement: that more evidence will lead to better policy. The Wales Centre for Public Policy (WCPP) can be considered a knowledge brokering organisation. Our research seeks to understand how and why these bodies have emerged in different polities and political traditions, what they do, the strategies they employ to inform policy and what impact they have; including the effect that bodies like these and the wider EIPM movement has on accountability and democracy. The findings will inform how WCPP works and organises itself, fill a gap in knowledge around knowledge brokering organisations, and contribute to our understanding of the role of evidence in policy.
The research will contribute a qualitative review of the literature on knowledge brokering and knowledge brokering organisation and an in-depth, critical comparison of organisations in other parts of the world (for example, in Canada, South Africa and other countries) doing work similar to WCPP.
You can read our paper “Does knowledge brokering facilitate evidence-based policy? A review of existing knowledge and an agenda for future research“, published in Policy and Politics (December 2019) by clicking here.
You can read our blog “Knowledge brokering for policy: What do we know?” published in Policy and Politics (January 2020) by clicking here.