This project is co-ordinated by a research team from the University of Louvain, and involves 12 teams from 8 countries, including two from the University of Edinburgh (CES and the School of Social and Political Studies). The project will explore how knowledge is mobilised in making decisions and addressing problems in these policy areas. There is extensive involvement of policy makers in workshops and seminars and a strong focus on how policy makers learn.

In Europe, information and expertise are now more widely available and distributed than ever before. At the same time, expectations of transparency and public accountability have increased. In turn, the legitimacy of political processes depends on the legitimacy of the knowledge on which they draw. Both social cohesion and effective government depend on integrating knowledge as well as interests. Responding to this new reality, the research is organized around three complementary orientations.

Orientation 1 seeks to map the knowledge potentially available to decision makers, and trace the relationships between those who hold or produce such knowledge and those who take policy decisions.

Orientation 2 analyses decision-making processes as such, paying special attention to the way information and understanding are deployed and learning takes place at different stages.

Orientation 3 is focused on the growing use of regulatory instruments which entail the production and dissemination of information, studying their conception, reception and re-appropriation by the decision-makers for whom they are intended. This integrated project addresses these issues directly in respect of two fields, education and health.

The project is both multinational and multilevel, in that it looks at knowledge and governance problems across eight different countries and in local, national and international domains. We seek to develop an original line of research that synthesises several theoretical and conceptual universes. In drawing on cognitive approaches to public policy, we are determined to avoid both radical academicism and managerial positivism Our key objectives are those of scientific relevance and social and political relevance. The creation of an end user advisory board specifically and the ambitious dissemination plan reflect the intention to develop an integrated project not limited to scientific considerations.