Politics, Policy, and the UK Impact Agenda: The Promise and Pitfalls of Academic Engagement with Government

Abstract

This is an open-access draft of an article accepted for publication inInternational Studies Perspectives: It represents the version that the journal accepted for publication, but has not undergone copyediting or production AbstractThe "Impact Agenda" of the UK Research Excellence Framework has major implications for the relationship of International Relations (IR) scholars, and social scientists more generally, to government policymaking -not just in Britain, but around the world. This article demonstrates that, at its worst, the Impact Agenda may struggle to capture the true contribution of scholarship to the public good, incentivize sub-optimal forms and modes of research, erode academics' property rights, see atomized academics exploited or harmed by powerful institutions, and jeopardize scholars' intellectual integrity and independence. The article also suggests, however, that these vulnerabilities can be managed by the resolution of certain key questions pertaining to scholarly conscience and expectations of reward prior to pursuing "Impact." Given that the pursuit of international peace and societal progress through teaching and research is the reason many of us choose to become professional IR scholars, the article concludes with some reflective "tips" for achieving policy influence from early in an academic career.

Flipping the Academic Conference, or How We Wrote a Peer-Reviewed Journal Article in a Day

“…Those who, for a whole variety of reasons, work more 1 REF refers to the UK Research Excellence Framework -a semi-regular audit of research productivity in the UK. Each academic's research outputs over the previous five to seven year period are scored on a four-point scale and academic departments are allotted government research funds based upon the department's grade point average (Blagden 2018). slowly often find themselves leaving the academy, or existing on its margins.…”

Experimenting with institutions in a 21st century age of “post‐truth”

“…In doing so, these initiatives ignore processes involved in reaching these outputs. These initiatives seek to remove the on‐the‐ground effects of research, the struggles and tensions of the research process hidden from results, and gradual culture shifts towards long‐term change as part of iterative, dynamic institutions—all of which are difficult to quantify as an “effect on, change or benefit […] beyond academia” (REF2021, , p. 68) to demonstrate REF impact (see Blagden, ; Wainwright et al, ).…”

The Moral Foundations of Public Engagement: Does Political Science, as a Discipline, Have an Ethics?

“…The core argument of this article is that demands for ‘making political science matter’ have very rarely, if ever, distinguished between Levels 3 and 2. At the same time, the distinction between Levels 2 and 1 embraces arguments about the credible limits of political scientists, the role of public intellectuals and the emergence of academic ‘punditry’ (for a discussion, see Blagden, 2019); even a focus on Level 2 reveals the manner in which individual political scientists do not share the same opportunities in terms of engaging with the impact agenda due to long-standing issues in relation to inequality, diversity and inclusion within the discipline. The gendered nature of impact expectations and interpretations is an issue that speaks to the moral foundations and ethics of the discipline (Dunlop, 2018; Yarrow and Davies, 2018).…”

“…Indeed, to the extent that our vocation is scholarship and research, we should probably stay close to the cloister and wander over to the public square only rarely. We realize that this runs against the grain of ‘knowledge mobilization’ and all the pressures coming from funding agencies and within university departments to make our research ‘relevant’, but these pressures are sufficiently strong that they are likely to compel our attendance in the public square (now public sphere) irrespective of our personal preferences (Blagden, 2019).…”