In person icon Peace Research and Policy – Assessing the Intersections

The original purpose of creating the academic discipline of international relations (IR) was to prevent wars. This presumes that IR theory has a direct impact on policymaking. Over the years, this link has become less clear and “much of what we know about the relationship between IR research and policymaking is based on personal anecdotes and untested assumptions” (Paris, 2011: 59). When looking at the literature on the practical impact of IR research, three key assertions emerge (see Walt, 2005). First, that there exists a wide gap between the academic theories and the practical conduct of foreign policy (Walt, 2005: 25; Krasner et al., 2009). Knowledge often fails to accumulate because the main objective of academic debates is not to get resolved. Indeed, “the competitive nature of the academic community inspires controversy. Critique and debate are not only unavoidable but also essential for the advancement of knowledge” (Eriksson and Sundelius, 2005: 58). This, in turn, can impede theories to influence practice since “policy makers typically want unambiguous and confident information that help them choose among a variety of policy alternatives” (Eriksson and Sundelius, 2005: 58). Second, the gap is attributed to the different incentive structures characterizing the field of academic research and policymaking respectively (Walt, 2005: 25; Krasner et al., 2009). As Krasner et al. (2009: 116) mention, “the challenges of making good policy, looking forward with limited information in a world in which political support is critical, are very different from those of academia, where good work depends on arraying compelling evidence to support interesting propositions”. Indeed, hierarchies, requested competencies, quality measurements, and professional ethos are completely different in the two fields and “what is a merit in one culture is not necessarily appreciated in another” (Eriksson and Sundelius, 2005: 57; Krasner et al., 2009: 118). Third, many scholars suggest a trickle-down model when thinking about the link between theory and policy (Lepgold, 1998; Walt, 2005: 25). They perceive most theories as being too abstract for policymakers to take them up directly. Based on that, they say that the link between research and policy can be promoted by working on the transmission channels “so that academic ideas reach the policy maker’s desk more readily” (Walt, 2005: 25). To do so, many scholars have suggested “bridge-building” by think tanks, advisory bodies, working groups, commissions of inquiry, and also through training and teaching (Eriksson and Sundelius, 2005: 62-64). Peace research has often been considered one of the most policy-relevant sub-fields of IR (Goetschel 2016). However, while it is widely accepted that peace research has important implications for peacebuilding policies, it often remains unclear how knowledge of peacebuilding is produced, how exactly it shapes policies and how practical experiences are fed back into knowledge production. In order to address these processes, we propose a workshop to explore four main questions at the intersection of peace research and policy. 1.) What knowledge? The first sub-question assesses the types of knowledge that peace research generates and how they influence policy differently. Peace research draws on different disciplines each with its own methods and contributions. According to Hagman (2014: 9-11), five disciplinary traditions are particularly noteworthy in the field of peace research. First, the applied peacebuilding literature highlights challenges faced by peacebuilding actors and mainly contributes to provide narratives that donors and NGOs can draw on. Second, large N research designs aim to identify recurrent patterns and trends of war and peace. Third, critical peace research scrutinizes international peace- and statebuilding particularly with regard to the imposition of a liberal peace by western actors on conflict societies. They show how peacebuilding is embedded in a global capitalist context and the practical and discursive influence of geopolitics on conflicts. Fourth, anthropologists of violence provide ethnographic accounts of people’s experience in war zones. Thereby, they nuance simplistic readings of war and peace and contextualize them in their social environment. Lastly, the geography of peace, conflict and violence literature assesses the territorial and spatial dimensions of war and peace. From these disciplines, knowledge originates. To structure it, several authors have provided typologies. Walt (2005: 25), for instance, assesses what kind of knowledge policymakers actually use and distinguishes them by the level of influence scholars exert on their production. In increasing order of influence, he identifies factual knowledge, “rules of thumb”, typologies, empirical laws, and theories. Another typology is provided by Hirsch Hadorn et al. (2008) who distinguish three types of knowledge according to how they influence practice. The first is systems knowledge. It is concerned with the origins of problems, underlying structures and social processes and assesses why and how processes occur. Second, target knowledge analyses the actors and their roles, interests, options, strategies, and needs for change. Finally, transformation knowledge focuses on the information needed for changing existing ways of acting at the program or project level. It is therefore the most directly applicable type of knowledge. The proposed workshop will further explore how different research disciplines and types of knowledge influence policymaking and what it means for peace research agendas. 2.) What purpose? One of the main questions in peace research concerns its purpose. In this regard, Cox (1981) has infamously distinguished the problem-solving from the critical approach to research (see also Bellamy, 2004: 18; Lidén et al., 2009: 593; Tadjbakhsh, 2011: 2-4). The problem-solving approach is a “guide to help solve problems posed within the terms of the particular perspective which was the point of departure” (Cox, 1981: 128). Thus, the problem-solving authors devote most of their attention to provide recommendations to policymakers within the general framework of current international peacebuilding approaches (Bellamy, 2004: 19). In turn, the critical approach has as purpose “to become clearly aware of the perspective which gives rise to theorizing, and its relation to other perspectives (to achieve a perspective on perspectives), and to open up the possibility of choosing a different valid perspective from which the problematic becomes one of creating an alternative world” (Cox, 1981: 128). Thus, a critical approach reflects about alternatives to current peacebuilding and challenges predominant views and epistemological assumptions. The question of the exact purpose of peace research remains debated in literature. On the one end of the spectrum, authors argue that “peace research by definition is geared toward application” (Goetschel 2016: 5) and that the question of whether peace research has “the potential to contribute to the reduction of violence or the prevention of conflict” is a quality criterion for assessing it (Goetschel and Pfluger, 2014: 57). On the other hand, authors have also warned against the risks for peace researchers to strive too fiercely for policy-relevance. It has for instance been argued that if researchers are too close to policymakers, “they become little more than commentators on current events, but often without the detailed substantive expertise of journalists or historians” (Lepgold, 1998: 46). Arguments about integrity and credibility have made authors warn against “the siren song of policy relevance” (Eriksson and Sundelius, 2005: 52). Problem-solving research has also often been accused of acting within, and thereby reiterating, liberal peacebuilding seen as the discursive and practical imposition of a specific model by outside actors. In that sense, it is argued that being policy-relevant often “comes at a price of thinking and acting within the orthodox box of the liberal paradigm (Paffenholz, 2014: 44). The above shows that the question of proximity or distance of researchers to policymakers is largely one of balancing. Both extremes might render peace research irrelevant for practice, either because it is too far from the reality policymakers face and therefore not implementable, or is it too close and obvious and therefore loses its comparative advantage of assessing practice from a distance. The workshop will explore this balancing act further, focusing on the inherent tension between critical approaches and practical relevance of peace research. 3.) Whose knowledge? This sub-question asks what counts as legitimate knowledge and for whom. There has been much debate about how knowledge on peace is produced. It has been argued that external actors are often unwilling to renegotiate their concepts of peace and peacebuilding (Goetschel and Hagman, 2009: 64). International peacebuilding actors apply mostly technical knowledge because they are under serious time and financial constraints and need to deliver concrete and measurable results. Thus, they usually do not have the time to acquire substantive context knowledge (Autesserre, 2014: 73). At the same time, the knowledge they have about peace and conflict is often portrayed as being based on “non-negotiable principles that, in a sense, stand outside history and above politics” (Sending, 2009: 5). This non-negotiability is linked to the fact that many authors and practitioners see the insights of the ‘liberal peace’ theory as stemming from a global consensus and do hence not question it anymore (see Paris, 2003; Newman et al., 2009). Local context knowledge, in turn, is often downgraded to simple information, important for international actors to fine-tune their interventions, but not really valued to define peacebuilding priorities in the first place (Hellmüller, 2014). The question asked is not what peace looks like from a local perspective, but how the peace that is designed outside the country can best be implemented locally. This explains why peacebuilding processes are often more strongly influenced by outside expertise than knowledge of what works in a given setting, what already exists in this context, and what people having lived through the conflict might prioritize. Several authors have therefore argued for a more iterative process between local and international knowledge, in which both are valued according to the contribution they can make to better understand the complex reality at hand. This shows that the question of whose knowledge counts as legitimate and is taken up by policymakers remains a highly important one. The workshop will explore the interaction between local and global knowledge focusing on understanding how different actors perceive, understand, and explain peace and how power imbalances influence the knowledge created. 4.) What influence? The last sub-question concerns the influence of research on policy. As Paris (2011: 66) states, “the ideas are visible at their point of ‘departure’ (academic publications) and upon ‘arrival’ (in the policy discourse) but the routes they follow between these two points are obscure”. This leads to the question of what the transmission mechanisms are. One way to think about it is to distinguish between the influence research has on the way people reflect on issues and the influence it has on the way people act. Nutley et al. (2003: 35) distinguish between conceptual use of research that “brings about changes in levels of understanding, knowledge and attitude” and instrumental use of research that “results in changes in practice and policy making”. In that sense, theoretical concepts and ideas help policymakers not only by making directly applicable recommendations on how to act, but also by helping them to put some order when “responding to most disorderly parts of the physical world”, thus helping them to better understand the world (Paris, 2011). Therefore, researchers can help policymakers frame and reframe issues. As Stein (2001: 121) argues, “reframing is not insignificant […]. Defining whether there is a problem at all and, if there is, what it is – what scholars call ‘problem recognition’ – is a significant stage in policymaking”. Moreover, the question is not only how research influences policy, but also when. Eriksson and Sundelius (2005: 65) argue for instance that research influences policy most in times of major change when practitioners are in need for solutions to understand and respond to the changes. The above shows that while there are typologies of transmission channels between research and practice, details on the impact are often still lacking. The proposed workshop seeks to shed light on how peacebuilding research is shared amongst policymakers and how its impact can best be assessed. In sum, the proposed workshop assesses the interaction between peace research and policy by asking 1) what type of knowledge is created, 2) what the purpose of peace research is, 3) whose knowledge is taken up, and 4) what influence peace research has on practice. To be sure, these four sub-questions are not separate, but influence each other. The type and purpose of the knowledge created impact on whose knowledge is taken up and the influence it has on practice. The workshop seeks to provide new insights on these interactions with a particular focus on how the creation of particular types of knowledge influences its influence in policy circles. References Autesserre S. 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