Not Just Steering but Weaving: Relevant Knowledge and the Craft of Building Policy Capacity and Coherence

The whole process of royal weaving is comprised—never to allow temperate natures to be separated from the brave, but to weave them together, like the warp and the woof, by common sentiments and honour and reputation, and by the giving of pledges to one another; and out of them forming one smooth and even web, to entrust to them the offices of State. (Plato 1892:517–8) This paper explores the theory and practice of building policy capacity and coherence and in particular focuses on its epistemological and ontological aspects and assumptions. It argues that designing for capacity and coherence has been overwhelmingly concerned with improving the instrumental rationality of policy‐making through a more systematic and strategic use of knowledge. However, I argue that this instrumentalism has meant that designing has worked within a very tightly constructed epistemological regime which has tended to neglect non‐instrumentalist approaches to policy knowledge and learning. I review some of these non‐instrumentalist approaches and suggest that they provide both a critique of the dominant paradigm and offer alternative ways of framing the problem of building policy capacity and coherence.