CSPN special edition on policy

Why focus on policy?

The world in 2016 faces serious and interconnected challenges that are likely to reshape the nature, focus, and extent of research activity in the coming decades. The scale and pace of recent social change has been remarkable, with the influence of momentous geo-political trends – mass migration, climate change, globalisation, and the information revolution – as well as the consequences of more specific catastrophic events – 9/11, 7/7, the Madrid, Mumbai and Paris attacks, as well as the Syrian conflict, natural disasters, and the rise of political populism across the West – combining to reshape the political environment.

Against this backdrop, the failure of ‘the experts’ to provide practical solutions to major social problems has become a popular trope. When, during the UK’s Brexit referendum campaign, the Justice Minister Michael Gove observed that ‘people in [the UK] have had enough of experts’ he gave voice to the feelings of distrust and alienation that many outside academia hold. A failure to understand the function and role of research on the part of the public, and the failure to make a relatable and easily understood case for its continuation on the part of universities, have allowed research to be cast as an ‘Ivory tower’ activity, somehow disconnected from the ‘real world’. This need not be the case.

While Silke (2001) is correct to observe that terrorism research is largely driven by governmental policy concerns, Loader and Sparks (2010) note that, in many cases, the expansion of university provision has coincided with ‘the decline of a receptive constituency within government’ (Loader & Sparks, 2010, p. 14) by whom research findings may be utilised. The reasons for this are numerous, spanning research philosophy, dissemination format, and availability, but perhaps the most obvious is summarised neatly by Goodwin (2013): ‘Policymakers and academics are different breeds who speak different languages’.

In the UK, an indication of the magnitude of this problem – and policy-maker thinking as to the solution – may be found in the increasing focus on impact in research, exemplified both in the Stern review and the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, as well as in the drive for public engagement that has become a key demand of research funding over the last decade. However, while such shifts are to be welcomed, for academics to address the complex challenges facing the world and rebuild public trust, a more focussed approach is required.

We believe that it is incumbent on researchers to move, as Gerring and Yesnowitz note, from undertaking ‘social science for social science’s sake [to] Social science … for society’s sake’ (2006, p. 112), producing research with a clear focus on implementation and public benefit. While it is true that this is not analogous to producing research in the service of government policy, and that consequently academic researchers may sometimes be called to ‘speak truth to power’ (Wildavsky, 1989), an increasing number of researchers have strayed from this fundamental goal.

Indeed, with the emergence of Critical Terrorism Studies and the identification of both ‘assembling … information and data that would solve or eradicate [terrorism]’ (Jackson, Gunning, & Smyth, 2007, p. 7) and the ‘embeddedness’ of researchers within state institutions and ‘sources of power’ as core problems, scholars have moved away from engaging policy-makers to focus on largely theoretical research.

Such moves are not to be encouraged. While there is, clearly, a place for research investigating the relationship between the state and terrorism, definitions, and the role of power relationships, an outright rejection of engagement with policy-makers in pursuit of such utopian political horizons is clearly not in the public interest. Indeed, as policy-makers require guidance when formulating policy, by vacating the field academic researchers have become directly responsible for policy shaped by conjecture and poor research evidence.

As Blond (2013) correctly notes, the sort of ‘vast systemic forces’ that are often the focus of research on terrorism and extremism occupy a space where ‘individual innovation or initiative can exercise very little effect’. As a result, research seeking solely to address these forces is likely to preclude meaningful impact, begging the question: ‘so what?’ Particularly given the climate in which contemporary higher education operates – with reduced research funding and a greater focus on public benefit – such a position will be hard to defend.

More than this, as security policy is, in most Western states, enacted by governments legitimised by democratic elections, it would seem churlish to suggest that academic researchers should seek to challenge the core philosophy on which policy is predicated. This is not to say that academics should not draw attention to the inconsistencies and problems that bedevil policy, as such activities clearly have value. However, to build – and persist in – a research agenda based on the idea that both policy-makers and the public are fundamentally wrong is either foolish or supremely arrogant.

As a result, we contend that academic research should seek to respond to social context, and to accept (and work within) established political realities including – in the context of security policy – the security policy framework provided by government. Moving towards such a policy-orientated social science should not be understood as a regressive change, or an unquestioning acceptance of flawed orthodoxies, but rather, should be conceived as a unique opportunity for those engaged in research to build a dialogue with policy-makers to produce a ‘ …  better politics … cognizant of its location in the field of power that is its very object’ (Wacquant, 2011, p. 447).

To further these goals, the Crime and Security Policy Network (CSPN) was established in 2014 to provide a space for discussion of research that emphatically seeks to support policy-makers in addressing the many and varied crime and security challenges faced by contemporary societies. This special edition, produced with the support of the Society for Terrorism Research, forms part of the network’s ongoing work towards this goal, drawing together a collection of papers that, while widely variant in focus, research approach, and disciplinary tradition, are united in their common focus on supporting evidence-based policy-making.

By presenting these papers together, not as a cohesive corpus of work focussed on a single thematic topic, but as a cross-cut of the kind of research taking place across the CSPN, we hope to offer an insight into an emerging academic agenda that, we believe, has potential to deliver significant public benefit such that the charge of irrelevance and the question ‘so what’? may be firmly, and decisively, refuted.