Knowledge, epistemic communities, and agenda setting

Abstract

The epistemic communities framework was originally developed to address international decision-making in issues of technical complexity and radical uncertainty. However, the literature that has developed in the two decades since its inception demonstrates that the framing power of epistemic communities reaches beyond novelty and uncertainty and into everyday public policies. Moreover, experts’ involvement in agenda-setting is found at all levels of government – international, national and local – in which they interact not only with elites who make the decisions but also a range of policy actors – notably, interest groups, citizens and courts. To capture this variation, we organize the literature using a model of policy learning that explores how the unique potential of epistemic communities as agenda-setters plays out in the variety of political environments in which they push their interpretations. The first section sets our foundations, defining epistemic communities and outlining their special framing powers. The next section outlines the causal mechanisms that underscore how frames are shared with non-epistemic policy actors. Specifically, we use a recent model of policy learning that distinguishes between epistemic communities’ four main agenda-setting environments and their activities in each. The subsequent section showcases key studies of epistemic communities for each of the four learning scenarios. The chapter concludes by reflecting on the temporal dimensions of epistemic communities’ influence, the limitations of the literature and future avenues for research.