Perpetual loss and gain: Translation, estrangement and cyclical recurrence of experience based knowledges in public action § Alma Demszky * , Armin Nassehi LMU Institut fu ¨r Soziologie, Konradstr. 6, 80801 Mu ¨nchen, Germany Abstract The ‘‘Knowledge and Policy’’ 1 project illuminates several forms of non-standardised knowledge influencing political decision making. Various terms have been employed by the project teams, but in this article we designate ‘‘experience based knowledge’’ as the common denominator of these knowledge forms. The following article stems from the qualitative synthesis of the country reports of the project. After discussing the problems of defining experience based knowledge we discuss its potentials and limits in policymaking. The analysis emphasises the changing and volatile nature of this knowledge: during translation into policy terms it is transformed almost beyond recognisability. This is not however the end of the process – just the beginning of a new cycle. # 2012 Policy and Society Associates (APSS). Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Citizens expect that political decisions have to be based not only on ethical or political programmes but also on rational arguments. Since the triumphant advance of the ideas of the Enlightenment it is science – representing rationality in its purest form – which has gained ground in political decision making (Habermas, 1981). Labels like information society (Castells, 1997) or knowledge society (Stehr, 2001) try to capture the nature of a society where all areas, including political decision making, are seemingly dominated by the rationality of knowledge. Although the limits of rational decision making have been exposed for decades (Friedberg, 1993) the tendency to perceive ‘‘experts as guarantors’’ in a rationalist manner is still vital today (Cibele, Barroso, & Carvalho, 2010). Politicians rely on experts especially in cases of difficult decisions and both public opinion and the experts themselves expect the political implementation of scientific insights. Governments have to face a growing pressure to carry out ‘‘knowledge-based’’ or ‘‘evidence-based policy’’ even on a European level (Cibele et al., 2010). In our ‘‘age of expertise’’ the dominance of expertise in the decision making process seems to be given (Fischer, 2009). Both decision makers and citizens are highly dependent on expert knowledge, which claims to be independent of time and context. As Fischer (2009, p. 3) comments: ‘‘Modern life depends fundamentally on trusting experts we don’t know – professionals who often move in elite circles socially distant to the lives of everyday citizens and speak www.elsevier.com/locate/polsoc Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181 § Many thanks to Jennifer Smith-Merry for her comments and corrections on this article. * Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 89 2180 2442. E-mail addresses: [email protected](A. Demszky), [email protected](A. Nassehi). 1 This book article has been published thanks to the support of the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme for Research – Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge-based Society theme (contract nr. 028848-2 – project KNOWandPOL). The information and views set out in this article are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union. 1449-4035/$ – see front matter # 2012 Policy and Society Associates (APSS). Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.polsoc.2012.04.006
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Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
www.elsevier.com/locate/polsoc
Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181
Perpetual loss and gain: Translation, estrangement and cyclical
recurrence of experience based knowledges in public action§
The ‘‘Knowledge and Policy’’1 project illuminates several forms of non-standardised knowledge influencing political decision
making. Various terms have been employed by the project teams, but in this article we designate ‘‘experience based knowledge’’ as
the common denominator of these knowledge forms.
The following article stems from the qualitative synthesis of the country reports of the project. After discussing the problems of
defining experience based knowledge we discuss its potentials and limits in policymaking. The analysis emphasises the changing
and volatile nature of this knowledge: during translation into policy terms it is transformed almost beyond recognisability. This is
not however the end of the process – just the beginning of a new cycle.
# 2012 Policy and Society Associates (APSS). Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Citizens expect that political decisions have to be based not only on ethical or political programmes but also on
rational arguments. Since the triumphant advance of the ideas of the Enlightenment it is science – representing
rationality in its purest form – which has gained ground in political decision making (Habermas, 1981). Labels like
information society (Castells, 1997) or knowledge society (Stehr, 2001) try to capture the nature of a society where all
areas, including political decision making, are seemingly dominated by the rationality of knowledge.
Although the limits of rational decision making have been exposed for decades (Friedberg, 1993) the tendency to
perceive ‘‘experts as guarantors’’ in a rationalist manner is still vital today (Cibele, Barroso, & Carvalho, 2010).
Politicians rely on experts especially in cases of difficult decisions and both public opinion and the experts themselves
expect the political implementation of scientific insights. Governments have to face a growing pressure to carry out
‘‘knowledge-based’’ or ‘‘evidence-based policy’’ even on a European level (Cibele et al., 2010).
In our ‘‘age of expertise’’ the dominance of expertise in the decision making process seems to be given (Fischer,
2009). Both decision makers and citizens are highly dependent on expert knowledge, which claims to be independent
of time and context. As Fischer (2009, p. 3) comments: ‘‘Modern life depends fundamentally on trusting experts we
don’t know – professionals who often move in elite circles socially distant to the lives of everyday citizens and speak
§ Many thanks to Jennifer Smith-Merry for her comments and corrections on this article.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49 89 2180 2442.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Demszky), [email protected] (A. Nassehi).1 This book article has been published thanks to the support of the European Union’s Sixth Framework Programme for Research – Citizens and
Governance in a Knowledge-based Society theme (contract nr. 028848-2 – project KNOWandPOL). The information and views set out in this article
are those of the authors only and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union.
1449-4035/$ – see front matter # 2012 Policy and Society Associates (APSS). Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181170
languages that can be difficult to understand.’’ Some authors even speak of ‘‘quasi guardianship’’ of policy specialists
(Dahl, 1989) or even of the ‘‘tyranny of expertise’’ (Illich, 1989; Liebermann, 1972).
But technocratic governance has shown its limits and faces countless criticisms (Everts, Mieg, & Feldt, 2006).
Citizens are no longer satisfied playing the role of the audience, watching experts and political decision makers
debating. Their trust in decisions made without them has faded away (Beck, 1995; Giddens, 1990; Jasanof, 2006)
caused by the ‘‘expert-public gap’’ (Yankelovich, 1991).
In our time, we are thus witnessing the growing self-confidence of citizens who claim to be the experts of their own
needs. The participation of citizens in public policy has grown over the last decades. A shift away from top-down
regulation of a bureaucratic type towards multi-level ‘public action’ has taken place (Osborne, 2006). The term public
action was used in the KNOWandPOL project to stress the non-hierarchical and non-centralised nature of policy
making (Delvaux & Mangez, 2007).2 Citizens and users have begun to demand that their everyday experiences and
expectations for policy be heard (Rethemeyer & Hatmaker, 2008).
Policy analysis has turned towards public action as a facilitator of citizens’ participation, networks and partnership
(Delvaux & Mangez, 2007). Citizen participation and public deliberation seem even to be ‘the’ dominant topic of
political theory and gouvernemental practices (Fischer, 2009). Politics is no longer seen as a central authority to
regulate the society (Nassehi, 2006). Public policies, instead of giving prefabricated solutions to given problems, can
constitute ‘hybrid forums’ or ‘cross-worlds scenes’, which gather experts, locals, users, politicians and citizens, to
enable the creation and discussion of social representations of the world (Delvaux, 2010; Lascoumes & Le Gales,
2007; Muller, 2000) and make ‘reciprocal sense making’ (Freeman, 2009) possible. The mobilisation of knowledge
occurs in a ‘competitive’ space of confluence, of competition and cooperation between actors, between representations
of problems and between courses of policy action. These competitive spaces allow for the cognitive labour of disputing
the delimitation – expansion, exclusion, protection – of knowledge itself and its credibility (Gieryn and Susan, 1999).
2. Methodological remarks
Our project ‘‘Knowledge and Policy’’ dealt with the question of the role of different kinds of knowledge in the
course of political decision making. We searched for answers through the analyses of policy decisions in eight
European countries: Belgium, Portugal, Scotland, Norway, France, Germany, Hungary and Romania. The results
being discussed in this article stem from the synthesis of twelve country reports of Orientation 2 concerning the
involvement of experience based knowledge forms in policy.3 Case studies from the two sectors of the KNOWandPOL
project, education and health, analysed the role of knowledge in a specific policy decision. A list of the case studies is
attached in Appendix A.
The project was committed to a genuinely qualitative research method. The empirical data stem from expert
interviews, document analysis and observation. The synthesis of the reports – whose results are reported here in this
paper – remained devoted to the qualitative orientation of the project. Our aim was not to give a systematic overview of
the countries’ policy culture, but to analyse knowledge subsumed under the label ‘experience based knowledge’ from a
sociology of knowledge perspective. The focus lies on knowledge forms in public action, not on policy making itself.
We want to show the empirical richness of this kind of knowledge.
3. Knowledge or knowledges?
In English, the notion of ‘‘knowledge’’ is used only in the singular – there is ‘‘no such thing as knowledges’’ (van
der Velden, 2010, p. 1, cited in the introduction of this issue). Traditionally it is scientific knowledge by which we
measure all knowledge, because science has established itself as a set of insights in the very core of nature and society,
being free of interest, commitment, ideology or emotions (Gieryn, 1983). This singularity of scientific knowledge
served to undermine and discredit other types of knowledge (Bourdieu, 1981a, 1981b; Callon, 1986).
2 Like Delvaux and Mangez (2007) point out the term ‘public action’ is mostly used in the French-speaking literature about policy making. The
term although has spread among our project, because it stresses many main characteristics of political decision making which are of core interest in
our analysis: we understand policy as (I) complied by multiple actors, (II) involving not only hierarchical, but also interdependent relationships, (III)
non-linear, fragmented and flexible processes.3 All country reports are available on our project homepage www.knowandpol.eu.
knowledge (Agrawal, 2002), traditional knowledge (Zamparo, 1996), local knowledge (Geertz, 1983), residential
knowledge (Kohler, 2006), citizen science (Vetter, 2011) or street science (Coburn, 2005) are only a few of the
countless denominations used to express non-scientific knowledge formats in political decision making (Raymond
et al., 2010).4 Most approaches use binary categories to emphasise the differences between scientific and other sources
of knowledge and miss both the similarities between scientific and non-scientific approaches to the world, and
differences such as subcategories in both cases (Wynne, 2003).
In the understanding of this article, just as in the understanding of the whole project, knowledge exists neither in the
singular, nor in a binary confrontation, but as relational and in constant flow and hybridization (Delvaux & Mangez,
2007). With Callon (1986) hybridization is meant to describe the very nature of knowledge as a heterogeneous blend of
different knowledge elements (Ingram, 2008) in a constantly changing shape – both in the case of scientists and lay
people. All knowledge is a specific ‘representation’ of the world (Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Forurez, 1997), from a
specific and singular point of observation (Harraway, 1988; Nassehi, 2006).
The fact that there exists no one knowledge makes the process of knowledge transfer inevitable. All members of a
community hold personally different representations of the world – which urges all of us to share our specific point of
view with others. Knowledge transfer means unavoidable transformation and translation, knowledge cannot be passed
along like a piece of stone (Freeman, 2009). Like Fuchs states no one lives in one context only and therefore our
society is a society of translation (Fuchs, 2009).
In the following we try to approach a special kind of knowledge, which we nominate ‘‘experience based
knowledge’’ not as a binary opposite to another form of knowledge but in its empirical diversity. The emphasis lies on
the common points of the teams’ reports concerning this form of knowledge, not on the differences. As we will show,
experience based knowledge also has to be translated into policy formats and changes its shape to an extent that
citizens cannot recognise the original contents.
4. Experience based knowledge: towards a definition
In this article we use the term experience based knowledge as an umbrella term for knowledge formats described by
the teams of the KNOWandPOL research. We use this notion as an ideal type (Weber, 1988) to stress similarities
between different empirical appearances of a special kind of knowledge in the teams’ reports – although the empirical
variety is as variegated as reality itself.
As mentioned above, there is a long list of notions describing the knowledge based on individual experience and
practice, especially in the context of users’ or citizens’ involvement in political decision making. Most of the terms
listed above use binary codes emphasising the differences between everyday knowledge and scientific knowledge,
whereby knowledge gathered through scientific methods mostly appears as the measurement tool for all knowledge
(Vetter, 2011). The term experience based knowledge tries to avoid such a binary division, but this intention is not
completely viable. To describe the notion ‘experience based knowledge’, a point of reference is needed to stress
differences and similarities. In the scholarship about knowledge, such a reference point is generally academic or
scientific knowledge. This is due to the fact that at first glance experience based knowledge differs in many aspects
from scientific knowledge – although scientific knowledge itself is never free of experience based knowledge. In
reality it is impossible to draw a strict distinction between scientific and other knowledges (Agrawal, 2002).
Experience based knowledge is non-systematic and based on personal experience. It is a kind of knowledge
inseparably bound to individuals and their lives, but it is also a way of influencing the political agenda and a starting point
for scientific research.5 This kind of knowledge is internalised; it belongs to the person and is difficult to pass on. It is more
experience than knowledge. Experience based knowledge, with elements of ‘tacit knowledge’ (Polanyi, 1985), is
‘‘personal, context-specific and rooted in action’’, while explicit knowledge, like science, is ‘‘transmittable in formal
systematic language expressed in symbols, words and/or numbers’’ (Bartunek, Trullen, Bonet, & Sauquet, 2003, p. 62). It
4 See also the introductory article of this issue (Delvaux, Schoenaers).5 Of course, citizens and local actors do not rely on experience based knowledge alone, because they have academic and other scholastic
backgrounds as well. But the kind of knowledge we analyse in this article is the one which is derived from experience.
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181172
is derived ‘‘from the everyday experiences of lay people in particular contexts’’ (Vetter, 2011). Experience based
knowledge is in many aspects the opposite of the knowledge resources policymakers are used to. Experience based
knowledge also has elements of local knowledge (Fischer, 2009; Geertz, 1983; van der Velden, 2010), because it has
strong connections to its place of emergence and the community it springs from. It is a kind of ‘community-based
knowledge’ (Agrawal, 2002), and has no intentions of being global, universal and objective. ‘‘It is a view from
somewhere, not a view from nowhere.6’’ (van der Velden, 2010, p. 3) Experience based knowledge is not static:
permanent change and dynamism belong to its core features through the interaction with other knowledge systems.
The reports detected several channels through which non-standardised forms of knowledge influence policy – and
are even encouraged to do so. These forms range from the individual experiences of the decision makers themselves to
the involvement of so called ‘local actors’ or ‘users’ in policy. Both try to enrich standardised or scientific knowledge
with lived experience, pragmatism, tacit elements and the awareness of exceptions from rules and models. In its
formats it is composed of examples and anecdotes instead of laws and rules. ‘‘Know-how’’, ‘‘experience on the
ground’’, ‘‘spokesmen for everyday life’’, ‘‘credibility for the action in situ’’ – all of these are descriptions used by the
teams to express these knowledge forms. In the following citation an interviewed ‘user’ of mental health services from
Scotland describes the concept of ‘recovery’, which is based on experience based knowledge, as follows:
6 Alt7 The
action.
‘‘It’s people’s lived experience, which is distinct from concepts and ideology. And it’s an agenda, a policy
agenda. And it’s a topic for research. Multi-faceted. . . There would be people’s individual understandings,
which would be an infinite number of understandings’’ (Smith-Merry, Sturdy, & Freeman, 2010, p. 5).
Bringing experience based knowledge into the sphere of public action brings new dynamics into the political
landscape. Both scientists and policymakers have always referred – if only implicitly – to their own experience based
knowledge. What is new is the fact that this kind of knowledge gains legitimacy. In discussing the emergence of
‘recovery’ as a guiding framework for mental health services in Scotland Smith-Merry describes this new wind which
makes policy more turbulent as follows: ‘‘We have been struck by the way in which taking recovery7 seriously has
meant reassessing the knowledge claims of a range of actors, promoting what people who are service users themselves
know about what they need and relativizing what is often taken to be the more authoritative knowledge of researchers,
professionals and policy makers.’’ (Smith-Merry et al., 2010, p. 35).
Involving experience based knowledge in the course of policy is in many aspects a kind of revolution against the
usual political order. Experience of local actors and their knowledge not only relativizes, but questions the
authoritative knowledge of experts and policy makers. At the same time, the involvement of experience based
knowledge means the involvement of new actors in the course of policy making, and their struggle for recognition.
Hakanson conceives therefore ‘communities of practice’, which are formed through and sustained by common
experiences and common tasks to be fulfilled. The common experiences form a common identity and this promotes the
integration of the knowledge into a common knowledge stock (Hakanson, 2002). The involvement of such
‘communities of practice’ in the decision making process goes hand in hand with their struggle for social and political
recognition.
The strengthening of politically ‘unusual’ forms of knowledge reshapes the power relations as well. As Cibele et al.
(2010, p. 51) note: ‘‘This occurrence reinforces the idea that both the institutionalisation of new knowledge derives from the
production of new power relations, and that the institutionalisation of new power relations leads to new modalities and fields
of knowledge.’’ Status, power relations and knowledge are inextricably bound to each other. To strengthen the positions of
those whom it concerns, be it users or citizens, is to bolster the standing of their knowledge forms – and vice versa.
5. Credibility and legitimacy of two kinds of knowledge
Policy makers sometimes find themselves forced to seek legitimisation of their decisions from outside the political
sphere. One source of such external legitimacy is the inclusion of expert advice in the decision process. Especially in
policy fields which have strong connections to core values and beliefs, such as education, the pressure for external
legitimisation is remarkable. As it is underlined in the Portuguese case study:
hough all knowledge is a view of somewhere, science tries often to rise the impression of being universally valid.
concept of ‘‘recovery’’ in mental health was analysed as a means of assessing user and experience based knowledge involvement in policy
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181 173
8 The
‘‘. . . the public action is interspersed by ideological and religious controversies that are not compatible with
bureaucratic and uniform modalities of decision and execution; the ‘delicacy’ of the topic8 and the controversy
generated in public opinion led the government to reinforce the mechanisms (real and symbolic) of
‘‘knowledge-based policy’’, turning to the ‘experts’ as ‘guarantors’, to compensate for their shortfall of
competences and legitimacy in this area in the eyes of the public opinion.’’ (Cibele et al., 2010, p. 63) Putting the
issue of sexual education onto the political agenda was problematic for Portuguese policymakers because of the
unforeseeable effects it could generate. ‘‘Because what political decision-makers feel, when it is about
something irrational and ideological, is that at some point they will have to provide justification!’’ (Vrancken,
Schoenaers, & Thunus, 2010, p. 51) ‘Justification’ means in this case the legitimacy and authority of the
appropriate expert knowledge.
In the analyses contained within the reports we identified two different resources of legitimacy through external
knowledge: expert knowledge and experience based knowledge. As we will argue, they supply policy with different
kinds of legitimacy.
Decisions based on scientific knowledge can maintain the illusion that they serve the interests of the community and
not the politicians. Scientific knowledge, based on data and/or statistics claims to be able to tell true statements about
society as a whole or about well defined parts of it. The truth claim is based on the ‘logic of big numbers’, from which
science then draws generalised conclusions. The argumentation line is deductive. (Popper, 2007)
Conversely, experience based knowledge does not claim to be based on big numbers. This kind of knowledge
cannot represent the society as a whole and draw deductive conclusions. Experience based knowledge points to the
importance of the very individual and its personal, unique and unreproducible experience. It does not claim to
represent the whole, but the detail. The arguments are not deductive but inductive.
Different kinds of knowledge supply different kinds of support to decisions and their makers: data and scientific
knowledge provide legitimacy through authority and objectivity, whereas experience based knowledge yields
credibility through individuality and subjectivity. The Portuguese report describes the role experience based
knowledge can play in public forums:
‘‘In the parliamentary hearings we can clearly identify the kinds of knowledge used and even how they are
associated with the kinds of actors that are invoked. One area that is dwelt on in the hearing is the local, practical
and tacit knowledge. This is brought to the debate by the teachers, who have their say as spokespersons for the
schools and their projects, and deals with the ‘‘credibility’’ of the action in situ. The teachers affirm the value of
the know-how acquired through experience – ‘‘on the ground’’ as they like to emphasise – (. . .). They champion
a knowledge that can only be recognised in the situation it is used.’’ (Cibele et al., 2010, p. 55)
This quotation underlines the role of ‘‘local, practical and tacit knowledge’’ and points out the type of persons who
are able to claim to posses this kind of knowledge: teachers, who are ‘‘spokespersons for the schools’’ and acquire
experience ‘‘on the ground’’. This kind of knowledge holds weight not through abstract knowledge of scientific
regularity, but through attention to details. This is where it gains strength and ‘‘credibility’’.
6. Reasons for a widening acceptance
What can be the reason for the new role experience based knowledge plays in political decision making processes?
Why can such an uncertain and unverifiable form of knowledge gain acceptance in the field of policy? In the following
section we gather some empirical findings which attempt to explain this: we will argue that there has been a
‘qualitative turn’ with the widening usage of experience based knowledge, that this shows the emergence of a new
democratic ideal, and that this is indispensable in the implementation phase of policy making.
6.1. Qualitative turn
The spreading use of experience-based knowledge seems to reflect a kind of a ‘qualitative turn’ in political practice.
It seems that the hegemonic status and power of pure statistical facts fades and gives place to softer, subjective, i.e.
case study analyses the public debate about compulsory sex Education in Portuguese public schools.
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181174
experience-based forms of knowledge. Purely statistical legitimisation is supplemented by practical credibility. As an
expert of the Scottish Education team puts it in an interview:
‘‘The trouble with data discussions’’ is that they ‘‘tend to be led by people who are quite technically proficient
and of course that immediately removes them from 95% of the population who aren’t.’’ Interviewees are
‘‘dubious about the concept that data is really the thing that will be driving’’ public action (Grek, Lawn, Ozga,
Shapira, & Weir, 2010, p. 23).
Similarly, in the case study of the Scottish Health team 64 individual narratives about mental (ill) health and
recovery were brought together in a DVD and a book and served as one of the driving factors of the implementation of
the policy about ‘recovery’ (Smith-Merry et al., 2010). Here again, we see the credibility of a comparatively small
number of individual experiences instead of a wide statistical basis.
This spreading qualitative turn does not proceed without conflict. Holders of approved and respected expert
knowledge, which was once thought to be the ‘only’ true knowledge, do not want to give over authority to scientifically
unassured subjective forms of knowledge. The Belgian Health team reported about conflicts between ‘‘scientific or
explicit’’ and ‘‘tacit knowledge’’, for example:
‘‘Dialogue actors however feel during the process that public authorities somehow fear tacit knowledge.
Producers of this knowledge indeed have the feeling that the ‘‘noose is tightening’’ on the experimentation they
are conducting. (. . .) The actors denounce the focus on some type of knowledge, called scientific or explicit, and
the severity generated by the associated quantitative research, at the expense of their expertise which, due to its
experiential component, requires some flexibility during the learning process.’’ (Vrancken et al., 2010, p. 77)
Statistical data, quantitative research and traditional research institutes still keep their strong position in the social
and political world and are not willing to lose power to other forms of knowledge. The Belgian Health team identifies
strategies of maintaining this position and conserving the status of traditional scientific knowledge: ‘‘The structural
position of producers of explicit knowledge, which is privileged in terms of visibility, communication and decision-
making, could therefore be an implicit strategy that would manage to indirectly enhance the production of a certain
type of knowledge, in this case explicit knowledge’’ (Vrancken et al., 2010).
6.2. Experience based knowledge as a tool of deliberative democracy
The literature about the role of knowledge in the course of policy identifies a focal point where knowledge – of any
kind – is seen to have a significant impact on policymaking, and this is seen in the phase of issue articulation, especially
through the identification of new alternatives (Delvaux & Mangez, 2007; Kingdon, 1984; Peschek, 1987). In this phase
knowledge has the most impact on identifying and defining problems, shaping public opinion and agenda setting
(Allouch & van Zanten, 2010, p. 9).
The report findings do not contradict this finding, but partially shed another light on why knowledge is used mainly
in the articulation phase of a policy. It is during the articulation phase that experience based knowledge can give a
special credibility to policies. The involvement of experiences of local actors, users, citizens or of the decision makers
themselves can give a sense of wider participation to the whole process of policy or decision making (Conelly,
Richardson, & Miles, 2006).
Politicians and decision makers seek sources of legitimisation and credibility in the involvement of citizens, users
and local actors and their knowledge based on everyday experience. Scholarship about the question of legitimacy in
deliberative processes conceptualises legitimacy not as a given and objective status, but as a process continuously
constructed in practice (Conelly et al., 2006). Deliberative processes, like users or citizens involvement make clear that
the criteria of legitimacy appropriate to modes of representative democracy are not adequate to new forms of
governing. ‘Simple legitimacy’ of representative government through the ballot box ‘‘no longer captures the
complexity of governance’’ (Conelly et al., 2006, p. 267). The authors conceptualise legitimacy as ‘situated’, context-
specific and continuously constructed through discursive processes. The teams’ reports give insights in the practices of
situated legitimacy.
Both Scottish reports, on education and on health, show examples how policy makers themselves define the
possibilities inherent in the participation of users and their experiences in policy. The aim is to ‘‘learn from the
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181 175
uniqueness of each individual’s experience and identify common factors’’ and ‘‘use the evidence to contribute to the
development of policy and practice across all sectors’’ (Smith-Merry et al., 2010, p. 19)
Involving experience based knowledge can also be part of ‘policy consultation’ procedures (Smith-Merry et al.,
2010, p. 3). Indeed, the most prevalent way to involve experience based knowledge is at public forums, hearings or
consultations, named ‘stages’ by the Belgian Health team (Vrancken et al., 2010, p. 45). The stages are ‘‘specifically
designed so that new political ideas come out of the discussion, even when tested, supported or disregarded. Also, due
to the diversity of actors it involves, dialog reflects a real willingness to produce an ‘original political answer’, at the
end of a process designed in such way as to ‘disturb the hegemonic political order’’’. (Vrancken et al., 2010) The
involvement of experience based knowledge in public action is a way to bring new currents to the policy area which is
in the view of the Belgian Health team an ‘‘experimentational component’’ (Vrancken et al., 2010). Its ability to
‘‘disturb the hegemonic political order’’ contributes to the credibility of public action.
6.3. Implementation
As discussed above, the literature identifies the ‘problem articulation’ phase as where external knowledge resources
are primarily involved in the policy making process. Based on the results of the research reports we argue that
experience based knowledge plays not only an important role in the deliberation phase of policy making but is
indispensable in the implementation of a policy.
Policy does not end with a decision taken at a central level, in the form of a new law or of a new regulation.
Decisions also have to be executed, implemented and enacted, they have to be given life. The different terms of this
step9 of the process reflect different approaches to the same topic: laws not only have to be executed in the sense in
which the decision makers have decided, they have to be interpreted and translated into the local circumstances.
Implementation involves much more than simply executing previous decisions or matching goals with means
Implementation or enactment is another important phase where experience based knowledge enters the field. The
Portuguese Education report puts it as follows: ‘‘It was not possible to ascertain to what extent this local
contextualisation had an effect on the formal policy decision at the central level. (. . .) Local influence is felt, above all,
in the ‘‘a posteriori’’ adaptation and reformulation processes (by the local actors) of the centrally decided policies.
Even if they do not affect the regulations, the action of the local actors affects the way the policy is implemented in
each situation.’’ (Cibele et al., 2010, p. 69) Even if experience based knowledge has no measurable impact on central
decision making, it is indispensable during the enactment of a policy.
The Scottish Health report points to another kind of relationship between the local and the central level. The
governmental side can ‘use’ the circuits and networks of local actors and users to spread new knowledge content, such as
the notion of ‘recovery’ in mental health (Smith-Merry et al., 2010). But it is also in the interests of the service directors, to
spread the concept (recovery) among other users and practitioners, which they could not reach directly except through the
central actions of the government. The report of the Scottish Health team describes how the experiences of the users
influenced the policy, and conversely, how users were supported by the government to spread their message:
9 In a
‘‘Our respondents felt that while the recovery message would have spread to some extent without the SRN, it
was important to have it as an official government policy: To be fair. The one thing that having that policy, that
having that arm of a strategy on recovery coming from the government has meant that everybody has been able
to hear that message and I think that was really important.’’ (Smith-Merry et al., 2010, p. 43)
The Scottish case shows that users with their experience based knowledges and decision makers can have various
forms of collaboration and mutual relationship. Both sides can use the other one to spread its contents and points of
view, both can involve the knowledge and experience of the other side – in the ideal case.
7. Limits of political usage of experience based knowledge
Both the strengths and the weaknesses of experience based knowledge stem from its core characteristics: being
based on personal individual experiences and not on large numbers, non-systematised, subjective, and involving
public action approach, implementation is not the third and last phase of policymaking because the entire process is dynamic and non-linear.
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181176
impressions and emotions. Attempts to erase the mutual shortcomings result in the pitfall of losing the very unique
characteristics of experience based knowledge itself by trying to transform it into a systematised form of knowledge.
On the other hand credibility through experience based knowledge raises the question of legitimacy and shows the
limits of democratic involvement of citizens. Moreover there is no guarantee that the suggestions of the users or
citizens will be comprehensively carried out in the decisions which leads partially to disappointment by the actors
involved, as discussed in the next section.
7.1. Systematising experience based knowledge
Knowledge is bound to the environment in which it was produced, and it is difficult to make it understandable in
another field. This is the case for scientific or expert knowledge entering the field of policy making, but it applies to
experience based knowledge as well. The political system cannot deal with problems and questions other than political
ones (Nassehi, 2004, 2006). Therefore it often does not even recognise experience based knowledge as a form of
knowledge. Local actors, citizens or users often feel that policy makers do not take their form of knowledge seriously
enough and search for legitimisation resources, which might lend their knowledge more credibility. The Portuguese
Education team describes this problem as a contradiction between the ‘local combination of knowledge’ and the
‘outside knowledge’ (Cibele et al., 2010, p. 57 ff):
‘‘Local intervening parties search for new modes of generating knowledge that help to endow credibility and
validate their local intervention; in their own terms, ‘‘the need (. . .) to assess the results in a more systematic and
scientific form’’ (as such lending the local dynamic a transnational dynamic of production and legitimisation of
knowledge)’’ (Cibele et al., 2010). Attempts to formalise experience based knowledge through scientific
enquiry, or to make complete recipes of ‘best practices’ out of individual experiences, are examples of such
efforts.
The Belgian Health team describes as well the need of formalising experience based knowledge. In their case study
this need evolved not on the users’, but on the authorities’ side. The scientific support of the Users and Relatives
Associations ‘‘seems tentatively to be expressing the public authorities’ wish to formalize users’ tacit knowledge into a
more explicit knowledge’’ (Vrancken et al., 2010, p. 75). The process of formalisation of experience based knowledge
is emphasised by the Belgian Health report as ‘‘stepping back from what they have lived, which enables them to be
more objective and to have more appropriate contact with the professionals’’ (Vrancken et al., 2010, p. 49).
The need for external credibility and validation points to a systematic contradiction in the involvement of
experience based knowledge. Local actors or citizens, who want to introduce their knowledge in policy, are sometimes
confronted with the problem that their knowledge is not based on greater numbers, but merely on local experience, and
therefore sometimes has less power than scientific knowledge. To resolve this tension, they seek for legitimisation of
their local knowledge through scientific assessment.
This process can be described as ‘scientisation’ and ‘abstraction’, a translation from practices to texts and a
reduction of the inconvenient complexity of experience based knowledges (van der Velden, 2010). Through the
process of ‘particularisation’ the politically ‘useful’ elements of experience based knowledge are being separated from
other knowledges, as well as the context and the milieu it stems from (Agrawal, 2002). The transplantation into other
contexts, in the context of science and policy, means that experience based knowledge gets abstracted from practice
and context – these processes are called ‘particularisation’, ‘abstraction’ and ‘generalisation’ (Agrawal, 2002).
Agrawal calls these processes together ‘scientisation’. The problem with this transformation process is that at the end
through the process of becoming scientific, experience based knowledge will loose its core characteristics and won’t
be experience based knowledge any more.
As in all cases of knowledge transformation, experience based knowledge shows the volatility and mobility of
knowledge. Knowledge is never static, it is always in a changing shape and this is the case for experience based
knowledge as well. Entering the field of policy, experience based knowledge goes through a formalisation and
translation process, where at the end, it no longer appears as experience based knowledge. But as we will argue, this is
not the end of the process, but the beginning of a new circuit.
The translation process is often one of expanding its contents, whereby at the end of this process the original
concept changes its shape to such an extent that the original message cannot even be detected, like a ‘bush telegraph’
(Vrancken et al., 2010). Transporting knowledge elements and their translation is not a linear process with a definite
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181 177
end, but a never-ending process with several new beginnings. The Scottish report quotes a community interviewee who
succinctly articulates this process:
‘‘I think that’s a normal part of the process. I don’t think it’s strange that it happens, and I think every time it
happens the system moves forward but I think in order to keep the system moving forward people have then to
refine things and change things again. So. . .the reality is that we are now beginning to think beyond recovery and
you’ll start to see conferences begin to happen now that are called ‘beyond recovery’ and things like that and a
lot of that is a consumer response to what we see as the start of the next turn off on the journey.’’ (Smith-Merry
et al., 2010)
The quotation captures the very nature of policymaking. Concepts evolve, and have to be translated to enter the
world of policymaking, change their meaning and become loaded until the originators feel that the original context had
been lost: ‘‘Institutionalisation of recovery within these tools has meant the colonisation of a once service user-led
recovery movement by the bureaucratic world of policy which operates with very different rationale and tools.’’
(Smith-Merry et al., 2010, p. 27) A Scottish NGO respondent summarises the feeling of estrangement from a once
‘owned’ concept with the notion of ‘colonisation’. The second part of the quote reflects this – ‘‘bureaucratic world of
policy which operates with very different rationale and tools’’ – by describing the lived experience of functionally
differentiated modern societies and the process of meandering meanings from one social world to another (Luhmann,
1984).
The Scottish Health report describes the concerns of users with how the political system transformed their
experience based knowledge into a ‘model’, which ‘‘comes down as a policy’’ and became ‘‘too bureaucratised’’:
‘‘In terms of Scotland [recovery] needed to [become a policy goal] to work and I think unfortunately along with
that comes this desire, because policy makers are always looking for models, and because recovery has never
been a model for us it has always been a process, I think this desire to find a model I think some of us became
quite antagonistic towards, you know that there was a model that you could fit everybody and that would do
recovery and that’s never been the experience of recovery from a consumer perspective, but it’s what systems
like. Systems like models because you can measure them and work with them in a much easier way’’ (Smith-
Merry et al., 2010, p. 30 ff).
The last sentence summarises the different logics of the ‘system’ and of everyday experience. The political system
needs models which can be measured. The transformation of the original concept into measurable tools and models is
therefore not an undesirable side-effect, which could be avoided. It is the very core of the transformation process,
because the political system cannot handle formats and contents alien to the system. But this transformation goes hand
in hand with the growing discontent of the originators – a basis for the beginning of a new cycle. The Scottish team
summarises this process as follows:
‘‘This reinterpretation or translation of ideas is an ordinary and necessary part of the process of relevant
communities learning what they are and taking ownership of them. Over time, however, a single concept can
become invested with more meaning than it can bear and other more specific ideas emerge to take its place,
galvanising new groups in different ways. So we might think of recovery as simply the next step on the ladder
rather than the end point of our thought and action. And that begs the question as to what should come next’’
(Smith-Merry et al., 2010, p. 41).
7.2. Retroactive legitimisation?
The case studies represented in the reports often raise the question of whether hearings and other forms of including
citizens’ experience based knowledge are merely for reasons of retroactive legitimisation, without really giving basis
for future decisions. This can be seen in the Belgian case study, where the decision is taken without taking into
consideration the recommendations given by the pilot project (Vrancken et al., 2010).
‘‘The politicisation of knowledge’’ and an ‘‘impregnation of knowledge in the policy’’ (knowledgeisation of policy)
(Cibele et al., 2010, p. 66) are notions to describe the idea that knowledge might lose its original independence and
‘purity’ because of a connection between knowledge and policy. The suspicion is raised that through selective
perception only those knowledge elements are being taken into consideration which ‘fit’ into the actual policy. Some
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181178
considerations go even further and fear that consultation forms are only used for ‘‘manipulation’’ (Callon, Lascoumes,
& Barthe, 2001; Hassenteufel et al., 2000). In this view ‘‘the hybrid forum is considered as a simple legitimisation tool.
The decision-makers consult and listen to people, but they do not take into consideration what is being said and
proposed.’’ (Callon et al., 2001, p. 213) Some scholars see different forms of deliberation as a ‘‘political technology’’
to pacify the public in the interest of the governing elites (Foucault, 1989), as an ‘‘official strategy’’ to domesticate
public engagement (Bourdieu, 1981a,b) or even identify participation as ‘‘the new ideology’’ (Cooke & Kothari,
2001).
In a less confrontational manner, the Portuguese Education report comes to the conclusion that consultation
processes which feature non-directive or post-bureaucratic regulation styles have a ‘‘predominantly rhetorical
function’’ (Barroso & Menitra, 2009; Cibele et al., 2010, p. 63).
The question whether consultation and other forms of involvement are only a tool for legitimisation, rhetoric, or
even a mode of manipulation cannot be answered definitively. The Belgian Health report quotes an interviewee who
summarises this dilemma:
‘‘Therapeutic projects were not the first step towards a whole system. Saying that all this is due to a malevolent
master plan would provide decision-makers with more power than what they deserve, but it is definitely a
fundamental trend to think like this’’ (Vrancken et al., 2010, p. 52).
The impression that policy makers listen to all evidence and at the end make decisions which they had wanted to
make from the beginning of the consultation process is often due to the confusing complexity of the social world
(Fischer, 2009) and not to the planned malevolent will of the decision makers. As the Belgium Health team puts it:
‘‘We rejected the idea of planning the use with legitimization purposes. Indeed, legitimization underlies the rationality
of political decision-makers who are opposed to the overall contingency feeling, as far as decision-making and
transversal dialog management is concerned, which has become essential at the end of the experimentation.’’
(Vrancken et al., 2010, p. 77).
The French Education team proposes a comprehensive model of the legitimacy problem (Allouch & van Zanten,
2010). They recall Lindblom (1979) and Gusfield (1981), and postulate that:
‘‘. . .contrary to a perspective that seems rational from an intellectual perspective and desirable from the point of
view of management, politicians and policy-makers do not develop proposals after careful consideration of the
results of evaluations of previous policies in the area under consideration, even less of existing research on the
topic but that they tend to think first in terms of policy proposals and to use research and expertise to support,
bolster and justify their decisions. This is so because policy-makers are more intent in producing proposals that
attract attention and build consensus around them and their political base rather than proposals that will produce
uncertain effects in the middle or long run (Duran, 1996; Latour, 2004).’’ (Allouch & van Zanten, 2010, p. 9)
They argue that this logic is more at work when the political regime is unstable, like in France, and in fields such as
education, which are central to the social integration of the society and therefore very important for the image and
legitimacy of the political leaders (Allouch & van Zanten, 2010).
The disappointment of users and local actors with the neglect of their knowledge and the accusation of being used
for simple legitimating purposes can be read from the point of view of democracy theory differently: all forms of
citizen involvement, like hearings, round tables or forums, can include only the active and ‘loud’ part of the local
actors. This therefore contradicts the democratic aim of representing all citizens. An expert interviewed by the Belgian
Health team expresses both of these problems:
‘‘Therapeutic projects, by nature, are not able to provide recommendations about the whole system structure,
would we have desired it to be so, then we should have configured them differently. [. . .] Obviously, we cannot,
based on the conclusions drawn by a target sub-group that would after all be somewhat casual or random,
extrapolate about the whole mental health care system structure. There is therefore no contradiction here. I feel it
is a bit naıve to think that the reform should systematically have relied on transversal dialog relations’’
(Vrancken et al., 2010, p. 49).
Experience based knowledge is an important element of policy and can contribute to the symbolic constitution of
the world through ‘‘reciprocal sense making’’ (Freeman, 2009). Claims that experience based knowledge was not
comprehensively taken into account simplify the multidimensionality of social reality.
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181 179
8. Conclusion
The relationship between political decision makers, experts and citizens has become more complex in the last few
decades. In a functionally differentiated society policy can no longer sustain the illusion that it is able to solve all
problems of society, ranging from the economy to environmental protection and education. In a differentiated society
all spheres have their own modes of regulation and their own experts (Nassehi, 2006). Policy is not an almighty centre
of the society, but just one of the countless spheres of the functionally differentiated society with its own rules. Policy
can therefore solve no other problems than political ones – but is often forced to do so and make decisions for example
in education and health concerns. The involvement of experts in the decision making process is necessary for several
reasons: one reason is the differentiation of society in separately functioning arenas itself which makes the
involvement of experts specialised in this field inevitable. Another reason is the question of legitimisation: political
decision making needs the technical support of experts to legitimate contended questions. Experts can give decisions
the illusion of neutrality and being free of interests.
But both the definition of experts and the justification of their involvement raise multiple problems. Citizens and
users are no longer willing to accept decisions taken without them. There has been a movement beyond the division of
labour between experts and citizens: citizens are becoming more self-confident at being experts in their own affairs.
New actors (users, lay people) and new forms of knowledge (experience based knowledge) have entered the political
arena.
Both the involvement of experts and citizens raises manifold problems of legitimacy. Experts (including lay
experts) have no legitimation in the sense of representative democracy. This article has shown that new forms and
approaches to the question of legitimacy, such as processual legitimacy and credibility have to be discussed in policy
analyses. The involvement of citizens and their experience based knowledge in political decision making gives
policies another kind of legitimacy which we called credibility.
The involvement of experience based knowledge also makes several translation processes inevitable: experience
based knowledge therefore has to be translated into political dimensions. The need for scientific approval of
experience based knowledge arises through the translation of citizen knowledge into policy formats. Through the
process of scientisation and abstraction experience based knowledge loses its core characteristics and is no longer
experience based knowledge. On the basis of the team’s report from the KNOWandPOL project this article has argued
that this change of contents – sometimes to an extent that the original message can hardly be detected – is not the end of
this process but just a starting point for a new cycle of public policy. The changed contents stimulate the articulation of
new knowledge elements again. The outcome of the involvement of experience based knowledge in political decision
making should not be measured solely by the extent to which the knowledge gets implemented in the policy.
Deliberation and the involvement of citizens and experience based knowledge in itself give an added value to political
decision making through diverse processes of learning and legitimisation.
Appendix A
The Knowledge and Policy project covered the two policy sectors ‘health’ and ‘education’. This fact is mostly due
to the history of the consortium, which was composed of teams stemming from these two sectors. But beside practical
reasons these two sectors of public policy seem to bear basic importance for society as a whole and are immensely
knowledge-intensive.
The country teams had wide ranging freedom in choosing the case studies in the discussed phase of the project,
called Orientation 2. The case studies were carried out between 2008 and 2010. Following case studies have been
analysed by the country teams:
Country/sector
Case study
Belgium Education
The construction of steering and evaluation policy in French-speaking Belgium: a cognitive approach
Belgium Health
Mental Health under Dialog in Belgium. From political innovation to innovation policy
France Education
The role of knowledge in the elaboration and instrumentation of policies of widening participation in higher
education elite institutions in France
France Health
Accountability and Mental Health in France. The impossible and irresistible evaluation
Germany Health
The Amendment of the Bavarian Education Law in 2003: a long way towards inclusion
A. Demszky, A. Nassehi / Policy and Society 31 (2012) 169–181180
Appendix A (Continued )
Country/sector
Case study
Hungary Education
The politics of seating plans. Knowledge and policy in the integrated education public action. Hungary 2002–2010
Hungary Health
They had a dream: making health care providers accountable, or not. Hungarian hospitals at the
crossroad of knowledge and policies
Norway Health
Public Action Empowerment
Portugal Education
Knowledge and public action: sex education in school (1984–2009)
Romania Education
Decentralisation of the pre-university education system
Scotland Education
School self-evaluation in Scotland
Scotland Health
Recovering mental health in Scotland. ‘Recovery’ from social movement to policy goal
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