International Epistemic Community Research Articles

Fractures overseen: soviet medical experts splitting from the international epistemic community during the interwar period

ABSTRACT Soviet medical science went through a deep and systematic transformation. Initiated in the very early days of the Communist regime, a moment of disrupting and isolating impact uprooted it from its former organizational and epistemic foundations and re-adjusted the expert output and modus operandi to state needs. Professional identities, paradigmatic approaches and everyday practices resulting from these were transformed and forcibly aligned with the expectations of the new powerholders, aligned with the newly formulated party-bound loyalties and secured by the broad array of severe sanctions. This article systematically approaches the dark side of the Soviet interwar transformation in medicine with a special focus on a sample of psychiatric experts. The paper analyses the entanglement between domestic pressures exercised upon scholars by the emerging totalitarianism, forcing them to detach and considerably re-adjust their international ties, while nonetheless trying to remain a part of this cross-border epistemic community. While international contacts did not cease entirely, their expanse, intensity and the very mode of cooperation had to change dramatically so as to fit the new regime´s vision upon medicine. International networks were re-appropriated for the sake of promoting the success of the Communist state, with scholars functioning as involuntary ambassadors of the regime. Though perfectly compatible with the practices and outputs of their fellow experts elsewhere across the globe while exposed to the permanent pressure of political terror at home, Soviet public health and its experts became deeply transformed and detached in manifold ways from their peers and their medical science. Largely overlooked, the early fractures of the interwar period carry on into the Cold War-influenced second half of the twentieth century.

Luso-Brazilian geographies? The making of epistemic communities in semi-peripheral academic human geography

This article provides the first overview of the dialogues between Brazilian and Portuguese geography throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. We expand current debates about marginal geographies in the growing field of global histories of geography by arguing that the Luso-Brazilian case reveals how international epistemic communities can be formed between semiperipheral geographic communities. We call attention to the role that science funding plays in the making of epistemic communities in semiperipheral spaces where political instability prevails, by allowing the creation of platforms of dialogue between geographic academies, such as international conferences, scientific journals, and research projects.

Race, the Canadian Census, and Interactive Political Development

This article explores the erratic history of counting by race on the Canadian census. It argues that the political development of racial classifications on Canadian censuses has been shaped by the interactions among evolving global ideas about race, the programmatic beliefs of international epistemic communities of statisticians and census designers, and domestic institutions involved in the administration of the census. First, Canadian census designers drew from shifting global conceptions about the nature of race and racial difference, which normatively defined the legitimate ends of race policies. Second, Canadian census designers often paid heed to the programmatic beliefs of the international statistical community about the appropriateness of collecting racial data. Finally, evolving political institutions involved in the administration of the census mediated these transnational ideas, molding them to fit the Canadian national context through institutional and cultural translative processes. Theoretically, this research makes the case that focusing on interactive political development can augment the theoretical toolbox of American political development, enabling a more comprehensive picture of the emergence, dynamism, and persistence of the Canadian racial order.

Innovation and Its Discontents: Pathways and Barriers in the Diffusion of Assertive Community Treatment.

Originating at the county level in Wisconsin in the early 1970s, Assertive Community Treatment is one of the most influential mental health programs ever developed. The subject of hundreds of research studies and recipient of enthusiastic backing from private advocacy organizations and government agencies, the program has spread widely across the United States and internationally as a package of resources and management techniques for supporting individuals with severe and chronic mental illness in the community. Today, however, ACT is associated with a rising tide of criticism challenging the program's practices and philosophy while alternative service models are advancing. To trace the history of the Assertive Community Treatment movement, a diffusion-of-innovation framework was applied based on relevant concepts from public policy analysis, organizational behavior, implementation science, and other fields. In-depth review of the literature on ACT design, management, and performance also provided insight into the program's creation and subsequent evolution across different settings. A number of factors have functioned to fuel and to constrain ACT diffusion. The former category includes policy learning through research; the role of policy entrepreneurs; ACT's acceptance as a normative standard; and a thriving international epistemic community. The latter category includes cost concerns, fidelity demands, shifting norms, research contradictions and gaps, and a multifactorial context affecting program adoption. Currently, the program stands at a crossroads, strained by the principle of adherence to a long-standing operational framework, on the one hand, and calls to adjust to an environment of changing demands and opportunities, on the other. For nearly 50 years, Assertive Community Treatment has been a mainstay of community mental health programming in the United States and other parts of the world. This presence will continue, but not in any static sense. A growing number of hybrid and competing versions of the program are likely to develop to serve specialized clientele groups and to respond to consumer demands and the recovery paradigm in behavioral health care.

Cinquant'anni di esperienza nella formazione di esperti per il controllo degli armamenti: l'International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts (Isodarco)

Disarmament is a critical field of present international relations, and analysis of independent experts may allow civilian society to maintain an informed control on it. For their educations, since 1966 the International School on Disarmament and Research on Conflicts (Isodarco) has organized international interdisciplinary residential courses on the questions related to arms control. Some 3000 young scientists took part at least in one of the 70 events organized. With its continuing activity, Isodarco contributed to the creation of an international epistemic community in the field of disarmament and arms control.

How international is the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers? A social network analysis perspective

Drawing on an analysis of the geographies of interactions in paper and panel sessions during the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in 2005 and 2013, this paper seeks to complement ongoing research on (the lack of) actual international engagements in putatively ‘international’ academic geography. We use a social network analysis framework which, rather than accepting that the mere (rising) presence of international scholars points to internationalization, benchmarks the observed level of international and intra-national interactions in paper and panel sessions against a randomized model. Results show that the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers is inward looking in the sense that intra-national ties are at least twice more likely to be realized than international ties. Furthermore, in spite of being an increasingly internationally diverse conference in terms of its participants, this tendency towards being inward looking has deepened between 2005 and 2013. Human geography sessions are more inward looking than sessions focusing on modeling, methods and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The propensity towards intra-national interactions in sessions is found for almost all countries ‘participating’ in the conference. Results are used for a tentative interpretation of the meaning ascribed to the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers. We conclude by discussing the limitations of our analytical framework and evaluating ongoing difficulties in the creation of more international epistemic communities.

Interest, networks and institutions: Socio-legal analysis of recent welfare legislation in Serbia

The article deals with the influence of organized social groups and their interests on laws and public policies. The subject of the analysis is new Serbian social legislation with 2011 Law on Social Protection being the subject of the most detailed analysis. Two methodological tools were used: (1) analysis of documents and (2) semi-structured interviews with key actors involved in shaping laws and public policies. Using policy network and institutional analysis we identify social groups and their interests that shaped welfare policies. Particular attention is devoted to the role and influence of international epistemic communities. In this article we analyze in detail the redistributive and ideological dimensions of policy networks involved in drafting and adoption of laws and public policies that are in the focus of this analysis.

From ‘Safety Nets’ Back to ‘Universal Social Provision’

This short article draws upon a number of recent reports from several international organizations to argue the case that, at least at the level of discourse, the tide has turned from the period in the 1990s when a targeted and means tested safety net future for welfare policy especially in the context of development was being constructed. Now even within the World Bank there is some evidence that the case for a universal approach to social welfare provision is again being recognized. This shift suggests that one locus of the struggle for the future of national and international social policy continues to be the international epistemic community of social policy analysts working for and advising international agencies.

Reform in the international food aid regime: the role of consensual knowledge

The principles and norms adopted by the regime governing food aid in the 1950s have changed substantially during the subsequent three decades. Explaining the changes necessarily includes analyzing the efforts of an international epistemic community consisting of economic development specialists, agricultural economists, and administrators of food aid. According to the initial regime principles, food aid should be provided from donors' own surplus stocks, should supplement the usual commercial food imports in recipient countries, should be given under short-term commitments sensitive to the political and economic goals of donors, and should directly feed hungry people. As a result of following these principles, the epistemic community and other critics argued, food aid often had the adverse effects of reducing local production of food in recipient countries and exacerbating rather than alleviating hunger. The epistemic community (1) developed and proposed ideas for more efficiently supplying food aid and avoiding “disincentive” effects and (2) pushed for reforms to make food aid serve as the basis for the recipients' economic development and to target it at addressing long-term food security problems. The ideas of the international epistemic community have increasingly received support from international organizations and the governments of donor and recipient nations. Most recently, they have led to revisions of the U.S. food aid program passed by Congress in October 1990 and signed into law two months later. As the analysis of food aid reform demonstrates, changes in the international regime have been incremental, rather than radical. Moreover, the locus for the change has shifted from an American-centered one in the 1950s to a more international one in recent decades.

The emergence of cooperation: national epistemic communities and the international evolution of the idea of nuclear arms control

An American epistemic community played a key role in creating the international shared understanding and practice of nuclear arms control. In the absence of nuclear war, leaders' expectations of nuclear war and of its control were affected by causal theories and abstract propositions and models which, given their “scientific” and technical nature, were developed by an epistemic community. This study, which emphasizes the roles played by epistemic communities in policy innovation and in the diffusion of understandings across nations and communities, analyzes how the theoretical and practical ideas of the arms control epistemic community became political expectations, were diffused to the Soviet Union, and were ultimately embodied in the 1972 antiballistic missile (ABM) arms control treaty. In contrast to those studies that have concentrated primarily on the workings of international epistemic communities, this study stresses the notion that domestically developed theoretical expectations, which were worked out by a national group of experts and selected by the American government as the basis for negotiations with the Soviets, became the seed of the ABM regime. Moreover, by suggesting that the arms control epistemic community was really an aggregation of several factions that shared common ground against various intellectual and policy rivals, this study sheds light on the question of how much coherence an epistemic community requires. The political selection of new conceptual understandings, followed by their retention and diffusion at national and international levels, suggests an evolutionary approach at odds with explanations of international change advanced by structural realism and approaches based on it.