Introduction

Academics—those who hold permanent faculty positions at universities and colleges—have a somewhat privileged place when it comes to public policymaking and analysis in liberal democracies such as Canada. Unlike bureaucrats, they are not burdened by the responsibility of representing an official position with which they might not agree. Unlike politicians and corporate actors, they are free from the need to produce immediate results. These and other freedoms also impose a heavier responsibility on academic experts to advocate for good policy that is the result of careful analysis that goes beyond simple technical advice, and that is developed in the service of norms (Cairns, 1995, pp. 288–289; Lasswell, 1951, pp. 9–10). It is sometimes suggested that this creates two separate and distinct worlds of policy research (see for example, Caplan, 1979). In one, academics sit comfortably in their ivory towers attempting to generate knowledge aimed at creating a perfect world. In the other, public servants sweat away in the trenches of government searching for information that can be employed to analyze situations and develop workable policies that will meet the needs of less than perfect people and that will, hopefully, make the world a little less imperfect.

In this chapter we will see that there is indeed some truth behind this view. However, it is also substantially false. The problem is that the two communities’ argument ignores the large number of individuals and organizations that constitute a third community interested in policy inquiry (Dobuzinskis et al., 2007). Labelled “knowledge brokers,” these are neither disinterested academics, nor are they the ultimate public policy decision-makers, such as senior public servants and political leaders (Lindquist, 1990). It is impossible to understand how knowledge is utilized without adequately taking account of this large group of actors (McNutt, 2005, p. 35; Lomas, 2007, pp. 130–131). Knowledge brokers, as the title suggests, have one foot in the academic camp, where science is used in an effort to generate knowledge and information, and one foot in the policymaking camp, where knowledge and information are acted upon. Knowledge brokers are found both in the state and the myriad of organizations that try to influence the state, as well as in universities and colleges.