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The aim of this paper is to make a meta-theoretical contribution to conceptions of how power and governance operate in contemporary policy-making. Most approaches to governance generally brush aside the actual mechanics of how influence is wielded and social change effected. To fill this gap we argue that society is managed increasingly through epistemic governance, which works on actors' perceptions of the world and its current challenges. Our point is that regardless of which actors we assume to be influential in affecting public policies, they operate by utilizing a limited number of strategies, in broad paradigmatic as well as in focused practical dimensions. The epistemic work actors are engaged in focuses on three aspects of the social world: (1) ontology of the environment, (2) actor identifications, and (3) norms and ideals, or constructions of what the world is, who we are, and what is good or desirable. As such, we suggest ways to move beyond more or less structuralist explanations of sources and forms of power to reveal the strategies of power at play in attempts to influence policy change in the contemporary world.

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This article discusses the interplay between empirical research and theory in constructionist or cultural studies qualitative research. In cultural studies, theories are seen as different frameworks, not as universal theories about social mechanisms. That is why instead of generalizing understandings, cultural studies and other constructionist approaches aim to particularize understandings of the social. The latter implicates the local, while the former indirectly aims to obviate the local. Instead of assuming that any corner of social reality leads to the traces of some universals to be pointed out in the final analysis, in cultural studies a case study is understood to reveal a local and historically specific cultural or "bounded" system. Because more generally applicable theories are seen differently in this framework, theorizing also assumes another form, which is discussed in the light of concrete examples from the author's own fieldwork.

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