Knowledge Regimes and Comparative Political Economy

PI：John Campbell标题：知识体制和比较政治经济学项目摘要这个项目探索了政策想法的产生和竞争的过程。在不同的国家，产生各种政策想法的政策研究组织(如智囊团)是如何组织的？他们如何运作并试图影响公共政策？自20世纪80年代末以来，它们发生了怎样的变化？随着时间的推移，它们变得或多或少变得相似了吗？这些问题的答案将通过对从丹麦、法国、德国和美国四个国家的这些组织样本中收集的深入访谈和文件进行分析来得出。在这样做的同时，这项研究还将检验组织和制度变革的两个重要理论，这两个理论多年来一直困扰着社会科学家。一种观点认为，随着时间的推移，某一领域的组织团体倾向于在一组共同的实践上趋同；另一种观点认为，情况并非如此，组织往往会保持其独特性，即使它们发生了变化。这些理论很少得到定性数据的检验。因此，该项目提供了一个独特的机会，不仅可以确定一个组织领域的趋同程度，而且还可以确定所涉及的机制。因此，这项研究将产生几个广泛的影响。首先，它将帮助我们更好地理解组织和制度变革是如何发生的。其次，它将帮助政策研究机构更好地了解其业务与国内外同行的比较。最后，它将为民主决策中一个重要但被忽视的部分--首先产生新政策想法的过程--提供新的见解。

PI: John CampbellTitle: Knowledge Regimes and Comparative Political EconomySES-0813633Project AbstractThis project explores the process by which policy ideas are generated and contested. How are the policy research organizations (e.g., think tanks) that generate various policy ideas organized in different countries? How do they operate and try to influence public policy? How have they changed since the late 1980s? Have they become more or less similar over time? Answers to these questions will be developed through the analysis of in-depth interviews and documents collected from a sample of these organizations in four countries: Denmark, France, Germany, and the United States. In doing so, the research will also test two important theories of organizational and institutional change that have preoccupied social scientists for years. One suggests that groups of organizations in a field tend to converge over time on a common set of practices; the other suggests that they do not and that organizations tend to retain their uniqueness even as they change. Rarely have these theories been tested with qualitative data. Hence, this project offers a unique opportunity not only to determine the degree to which convergence in an organizational field has occurred, but also to identify the mechanisms that are involved. As a result, this research will have several broad impacts. First, it will help us better understand how organizational and institutional change occurs. Second, it will help policy research organizations better understand how their operations compare to their counterparts at home and abroad. Finally, it will offer new insights into an important but much neglected part of democratic policy-making?the process by which new policy ideas are generated in the first place.