ArticlePDF Available

Conclusion: Epistemic Communities, World Order, and The Creation of a Reflective Research Program

Authors:
Emanuel Adler at University of Toronto
Emanuel Adler
Peter Haas at University of Massachusetts Amherst
Peter Haas
Download full-text PDF
Read full-text
Download citation

Abstract

Studies in this issue show that the epistemic communities approach amounts to a progressive research program with which students of world politics can empirically study the role of reason and ideas in international relations. By focusing on epistemic communities, analysts may better understand how states come to recognize interests under conditions of uncertainty. According to this research program, international relations can be seen as an evolutionary process in which epistemic communities play meaningful roles as sources of policy innovation, channels by which these innovations diffuse internationally, and catalysts in the political and institutional processes leading to the selection of their shared goals. The influence of epistemic communities persists mainly through the institutions that they help create and inform with their preferred world vision. By elucidating the cause-and-effect understandings in the particular issue-area and familiarizing policymakers with the reasoning processes by which decisions are made elsewhere, epistemic communities contribute to the transparency of action and the development of common inferences and expectations and thereby contribute to policy coordination. International cooperation and, indeed, the development of new world orders based on common meanings and understandings may thus depend on the extent to which nation-states apply their power on behalf of practices that epistemic communities may have helped create, diffuse, and perpetuate.
Content uploaded by Peter Haas
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Peter Haas
Content may be subject to copyright.
http://www.jstor.org
Conclusion: Epistemic Communities, World Order, and the Creation of a Reflective Research
Program
Author(s): Emanuel Adler and Peter M. Haas
Source:
International Organization,
Vol. 46, No. 1, Knowledge, Power, and International Policy
Coordination, (Winter, 1992), pp. 367-390
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2706960
Accessed: 24/06/2008 18:44
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup and
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the
scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that
promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
... The scholarship on expertise is by no means a new phenomenon in political science. Past work has conceptualised the existence of epistemic communities, expertise as a social relationship, and practice-based approaches (Adler & Haas, 1992;Berling & Bueger, 2015). However, little work has been conducted exploring how expertise is understood in specific regional cases such as the Arctic. ...
... The study of expertise and expert communities has vastly evolved over time. First-generation scholars tended to emphasise the contribution of science and technology to cooperation and peace (Haas, 1958), the epistemic community framework (Adler & Haas, 1992), and understood experts as distinct actors. A second-generation approach emphasised the broader meaning of expertise, asking how different types of expertise produced an understanding of world politics, specifically in the realm of global governance (Kennedy, 2001;Kennedy, 2005). ...
... Perhaps one of the most traditional frameworks used to study expertise was through the language of "epistemic communities" that tried to determine whether such groups existed by arguing that a shared community of experts should share particular characteristics such as a shared commitment to a common causal model and set of political values (Adler & Haas, 1992;Cross, 2013). Other words have also been used that indicate a similar type of community of experts such as transnational communities (Djelic & Quack, 2010;Stone, 2017), communities of practice (Bueger, 2015;Adler & Pouliot, 2011) transnational guilds of professionals (Bigo, 2011), or transnational advocacy networks (Seabrooke, 2014). ...
Scoping Arctic expertise: The mismatch between traditional theories of expertise and Indigenous expertise
Article
Full-text available
  • Apr 2024
While much work on expertise has explored the mobilisation and production of knowledge, the development of epistemic communities, and the mechanisms through which expertise operates – little work has been done exploring how expertise is understood across academic literature on particular regional cases such as the Arctic. In this article, I scope a broad literature review of the Arctic, seeking out how expertise has been depicted and framed in academic and theoretical literature. The results are framed around five different themes: (1) expertise serving the interests of great powers, (2) recognition of the overall importance of expertise in Arctic governance, (3) the purpose of experts, (4) science diplomacy and expertise: a murky barrier, and (5) how to study experts, but also find that Indigenous knowledge is often left out of literature that relies upon Western frameworks of expertise. This incongruity suggests that there are two competing conceptualizations of Arctic expertise, one in theory and another in practice – which has consequences for how the region and its expertise are narrated.
View
... As this is a discourse analysis study, this question is answered through reference to various researchers from different academic research spaces at an international level. This group of social scientists would represent an epistemic community, which is defined as a group of researchers with a reputation as impartial experts who play a key role in providing valuable information for the present study [5]. ...
... The concept of epistemic communities [5,42] comprises professionals with recognized competence and experience in a specific area. These conferences, by serving as a legitimized and recognized space that brings together experts and academics with deep knowledge of critical theories of human rights and development, form a network of individuals who share a coherent and founded vision of the challenges and perspectives at the intersection between human rights, development, and social criticism and can be considered an epistemic community. ...
Human Rights and Territories: Academic Perceptions of the 2030 Agenda
Article
Full-text available
  • Jun 2024
This study is the result of the debate sessions held at the 1st International Conference on Human Rights and Territories at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville, aimed at analyzing the impact and the agenda itself in the territorial and local contexts. To conduct the research, five focus groups were organized, focusing on the five elements of the agenda: People, Peace, Planet, Prosperity, and Partnerships, with the participation of over 30 international academics, followed by an analysis of the recorded speeches. The results provide a critical epistemic perspective on the 2030 Agenda and its connection with territories, concluding the difficulty of establishing human rights processes in territories from agendas that are centered from the global to the local level.
View
... We rely on two ideational approaches to formulate hypotheses. The political science literature on central bankers as an epistemic community explains policy change in terms of the influence of a network of experts in a specific area (Adler and Haas, 1992;Haas, 1992;Verdun, 1999). Haas (1992) defines an epistemic community as a 'network of professionals with recognised expertise and competence in a particular domain and an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge within that domain or issue area' (p. ...
... These common views are achieved through interactions amongst members of this network of professionals over time. The epistemic communities' influence often emerges on technical matters; in situations of uncertainty, interpretation and institutionalization are very common in international co-ordination (Adler and Haas, 1992;Haas, 1992). Their influence is even more important when transnational epistemic communities are concerned, since they can display their causal beliefs and policy preferences throughout different countries (Verdun, 1999). ...
From Menace to Mundane: Moral Hazard and the Politics of the European Central Bank's Government Bond Purchases
Article
  • Apr 2024
  • J Common Market Stud
During the Eurozone's sovereign debt crisis, the ideational consensus that shaped the foundation of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was destabilized by disagreement on unconventional monetary policies (UMPs), specifically government bond purchases. In the ECB's 2021 strategy review, however, UMPs were confirmed as standard elements of the European Central Bank's (ECB) toolbox. What happened? One argument frequently presented to question the legitimacy of UMPs is that they undermine the prior objective of the EMU of avoiding moral hazard. We analyse the politics of UMPs by focusing upon how top officials in four major Eurozone central banks have discursively constructed the relationship between the ECB's purchase of sovereign debt and moral hazard. We find that top central bank officials aligned to a large degree on the non-necessary causal relationship between government bond purchases and moral hazard, which reinforced its legitimacy and eventual acceptance as ‘conventional’.
View
... According to Haas (1990, p. 23), learning entails 'the process by which consensual knowledge is used to specify causal relations in new ways so that the result affects the content of public policy'. Based on this, Adler and Haas (1992) developed the EC framework in IR, and Haas (1992, p. 2) defined ECs as 'networks of knowledge-based experts [who are] helping states identify their interests, framing the issues for collective debate, proposing specific policies, and identifying salient points for negotiation'. Relations between ECs and ultimate decision-makers (e.g., governments) are often highly synergistic, with the EC providing the knowledge needed for learning. ...
Non-learning Within a Constellation of Communities of Practice: The Case of the EU and Its Democracy Support in the Arab World
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2024
  • J Common Market Stud
This article addresses the puzzle of why the European Union (EU) struggles to learn from ineffective attempts to support democratization in the Arab world but instead continuously (re-)produces democracy support malpractices. To better understand this phenomenon, we draw from practice theory and conceptualize EU democracy support as practices performed by a community of insiders who act within a complex constellation of communities of practice. Due to the way in which communities function, decision-makers do not critically reflect on the background knowledge on which they base their practices and thus do not learn how to improve them. This constellation model offers a unique take on non-learning within the EU and in (policy-making) groups more generally. We illustrate the proposed conceptual framework through an empirical analysis of EU democracy support in Egypt, showing that the EU performs practices similar to those before the 2011 Revolution due to its inability to learn.
View
... Professional Report-Making Communities IR scholars have long been interested in professional communities and the roles they play for the promotion of cooperation, rationality, and progress in international(ized) policy-making. A key concept is that of the "epistemic community" ( Adler and Haas 1992 ;Haas 1992 ), which was originally developed as a tool for analyzing policy coordination among states, i.e., situations in which states come to agree on a particular policy or set of policies. The concept has also been used by some TJ scholars (most explicitly by Ben-Josef Hirsch 2007 ) to analyze the transnational proliferation of truth commissions pushed by a network of experts activists, most of whom had some association with the ICTJ. ...
Global Hierarchies and Unequal Pressures in the Report-Making of Truth Commissions
Article
Full-text available
  • May 2024
  • Int Stud Rev
In this analytical essay, we situate truth commissions as relevant sites for International Relations (IR) research, in particular on professional communities and knowledge hierarchies. With an empirical focus on report-making, we argue that there is a need to rethink and revise established professional community concepts. While these concepts stress professional communities’ detachment from mundane pressures, we suggest a “pressure lens” to better grasp the key dynamics of expert knowledge production. Based on in-depth interpretive research on three truth commissions—in Sierra Leone, Kenya, and Tunisia—we set out to identify key dynamics in the report-making of truth commissions that contribute to the gap between high expectations and sobering realities regarding truth commissions as “victim-centred” policy instruments. Understanding the dynamics at play requires us to pay attention to unequal pressures—such as time and funding pressures, powerholder interference, and demands voiced by victims and survivors—that bear on the work of experts and professionals who produce truth commission reports. We argue that these pressures and, crucially, the ways in which they tend to play out under conditions of coloniality, are expressions of global hierarchies that shape professional report-making work.
View
... Shared beliefs make action possible because agents agree on the nature of the situation. Shared beliefs about how the world works (markets, security, terrorism, the environment) are fundamental rules of world politics (Adler & Haas, 1992). For example, shared beliefs about whether security is based on military capability or political relationships tell states what is possible and permissible regarding arms control policies (Frederking, 2000). ...
View
View
View
View
Epistemic competition in global governance: The case of pharmaceutical patents
Article
  • Mar 2024
Expert consensus helps policymakers solve complex problems by identifying and legitimizing policy solutions. Yet, persistent hesitation remains among policymakers regarding the technically adequate policy solution despite the existence and mobilization of epistemic communities. This paper contends that more attention should be given to studying the epistemic competition that may arise when multiple epistemic communities grapple with the same problem but have divergent understandings of its technical nature and its adequate policy solutions. Building on Science and Technology Studies and on the literature on polarization, this paper suggests that two social dynamics, namely the mobilization of resources and increased polarization, may complexify the technical disagreement among experts. In turn, these dynamics may lead to a deadlock in the debates, negatively impacting the institutional context where they take place. To illustrate this, this paper analyzes the case of the pharmaceutical innovation system, which has been prone to tensions between experts arguing for strong patent protection and experts arguing for greater flexibility to meet public health needs. This paper builds on a mixed method combining a social network analysis of experts invited to provide their expertise in the WHO-WTO-WIPO Trilateral Cooperation events and on semi-structured interviews with 24 of these experts.
View
Clio and the economics of QWERTY
Article
Full-text available
  • May 1985
"Nowhere does history indulge in repetitions so often or so uniformly as in Wall Street," observed legendary speculator Jesse Livermore. History tells us that periods of major technological innovation are typically accompanied by speculative bubbles as economic agents overreact to genuine advancements in productivity. Excessive run-ups in asset prices can have important consequences for the economy as firms and investors respond to the price signals, resulting in capital misallocation. On the one hand, speculation can magnify the volatility of economic and financial variables, thus harming the welfare of those who are averse to uncertainty and fluctuations. But on the other hand, speculation can increase investment in risky ventures, thus yielding benefits to a society that suffers from an underinvestment problem.
View
View
View
View
Falsification and the Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes
Chapter
  • Sep 1970
Two books have been particularly influential in contemporary philosophy of science: Karl R. Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Both agree upon the importance of revolutions in science, but differ about the role of criticism in science's revolutionary growth. This volume arose out of a symposium on Kuhn's work, with Popper in the chair, at an international colloquium held in London in 1965. The book begins with Kuhn's statement of his position followed by seven essays offering criticism and analysis, and finally by Kuhn's reply. The book will interest senior undergraduates and graduate students of the philosophy and history of science, as well as professional philosophers, philosophically inclined scientists, and some psychologists and sociologists.
View
View
View
Anti-Protection: Changing Forces in United States Trade Politics
Book
  • Sep 1987
Something new has been happening. Over the last decade and a half, special interests that suffer from trade restrictions have mounted more vigorous and increasingly overt political efforts to oppose campaigns for new import restrictions. "Anti-protectionism" has been on the rise. Yet we know surprisingly little about that side of the ongoing policy struggle. This book is the first attempt to our knowledge, at a systematic investigation and analysis of anti-protection political activity in the United States. The questions we explore are of interest in many other countries as well. We offer four main arguments, based on study of 14 episodes in recent US trade policy. 1. Among those who pay for protection, those who matter most in the political process are the special interests that benefit most from the specific trade that would be restricted. 2. There was a sharp increase in aggregate political opposition to product-specific trade protection over the decade from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s. 3. Two primary conditions appear to determine the extent of anti-protection activity: a group's trade dependence and the degree of threat of protection to that interest. Other conditions also can affect group behavior. 4. Anti-protection activity matters. The growing anti-protection phenomenon has made a significant and positive difference in product cases.
View
View
The Third Debate: On the Prospects of International Theory in a Post-Positivist Era
Article
  • Sep 1989
The demise of the empiricist-positivist promise for a cumulative behavioral science recently has forced scholars from nearly all the social disciplines to reexamine the ontological, epistemological, and axiological foundations of their scientific endeavors. The "third debate" in the field of international relations parallels this intellectual ferment and constitutes a still maturing disciplinary effort to reconsider theoretical options in a "post-positivist" era. This essay explores the etiology of this debate and critically assesses its implications for current and future theoretical practices. Although the debate has triggered many different responses, the analysis focuses on only one of them-the optimistic response-which both affirms and celebrates the unparalleled theoretical potentialities presumably created by the present intellectual transition. While acknowledging the considerable promise of the third debate, the essay notes that post-positivism offers nearly as many dead ends as it opens promising paths for future research. The essay issues some warnings concerning hazards of misplaced or extravagant theoretical hopes, and it singles out enhanced reflexivity in the scholarly community of international relations as the notable contribution to date of the current theoretical restructuring.
View