The role of knowledge in the policy process

Abstract Recent scholarly research into public policy has stressed the role of knowledge in the policy process. The variety of concepts and approaches to the study of knowledge seems puzzling. However, this article argues that the different theoretical approaches have some common ground and that a ‘knowledge perspective’ on the policy process has many advantages. It is suggested that such fields as evaluation research, epistemic communities, diffusion of economic policy paradigms, agenda‐setting and policy learning contribute to a new view of the policy process, in which power and knowledge perform complementary functions. The conclusions discuss the main implications for further research in the analysis of the policy process.