Inquiry Agents and their Logics for Action

Abstract

Abstract This chapter presents the final two components of the book’s theoretical framework. These relate to inquiry actors and their ‘logics for action’. Focusing on agency first, the chapter makes the case that a range of potentially important actors exist beyond ‘the usual suspects’ who are typically researched in inquiry scholarship. These actors are important because of their capacity to create, transfer, and legitimize policy ideas. The chapter then examines ‘logics for action’. These are preferences about what effective policy knowledge is and how inquiries should best go about capturing it. Some logics are more appropriate for learning about policy than others and when multiple logics are at work in an inquiry there is the potential for conflict.