[Editor’s note: This post originally appeared at Research to Action. It was written by Nicholas Benequista, a researcher with an interest in media, social movements and how to build better connections between theory and action. He is currently working on a PhD thesis about Kenyan journalism with the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He tweets about media and international development at @benequista.] When working o

Some of the arguably most fundamental, longest-lasting changes in the world economy resulted from the policy influencing efforts of an entrepreneurial scholar. The advent of laissez-faire liberalism in England was a strategic endeavor pursued by none other than Adam Smith, according to James A. Morrison. This post builds on Morrison’s account of Smith’s influence to illustrate how the power of policy ideas has historically relied to a great extent on long-term strategic engag

[Editor’s note: This post is the last one of a series that introduced our Topic Guide. Please feel free to check the insight our Topic Guide offers on how research agendas are produced, on the politics of how research is used in policy, on communicating research, and on monitoring and evaluation. For each of these themes, the Topic Guide is packed with relevant resources, each with a short summary.] This section of the Topic Guide covers two important aspects of Capacity Deve

The subject of monitoring and evaluation is central to any effort to attempt to improve the connections between policy and research (or politics and ideas). Funders, particularly those focused on funding research, are keen to know if and how the research they funded influenced policy. In recent years the emphasis has been on finding measurable indicators that ‘demonstrate’ and ‘quantify’ the contribution of a piece of research on a policy change. Methods and tools like Outcom

As I wrote in a previous post, think tank’s directors need to deal with a huge diversity of issues: from budgetary choices, to communicational ones; from organizational engineering to staffing and leadership. Moreover, they are always interacting with a broad range of stakeholders, both at the internal and external “front”: donors, policy makers, political leaders, media, private sector, other colleagues; and the Board and staff. After some years holding such a demanding posi