This book argues that there has been an increase in the use of research by policymakers in the formulation of British state-building policy. The evidence of this linkage is strongest at the conceptual level among policymakers in the UK. It is weaker in its influence on policy within recipient countries.

After an introduction, the book is organized into a “Background” section of three chapters, an “Analysis” section of four chapters, and a “Synthesis” section of three chapters. These chapters vary widely in length and depth. Versions of Chapters 2, 7, and 8 were previously published as articles, and they are the most substantively interesting. Chapters 3 through 6 are methodically descriptive and rather dense with jargon and acronyms, and they seem intended primarily for internal policy audiences. The final three chapters are very short and lack some theoretical depth.

The Background section introduces the concepts of fragility and state building as they have emerged in international development discourse (Chap. 2). These chapters highlight how the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID) has led the way in “research uptake”: increasing funding for research, improving staff research capabilities, and establishing regional resource hubs and databases (Chap. 3). Chapter 4 argues that between 2000 and 2010, British policy evolved from generally avoiding troublesome areas to considering state building in fragile states central to its agenda. The Analysis section consciously uses a mixed-method approach, probing for quantitative evidence of general linkages between research output and British policy documents (Chap. 5), exploring the influence of a specific research finding about the importance of political settlements on policy prescriptions (Chap. 6), investigating the influence of research on policy formulation at the country level in the cases of Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sierra Leone (Chap. 7), and tracing it more deeply in the interplay between research and policy regarding Security Sector Reform in Sierra Leone (Chap. 8). The Synthesis section consists of three short chapters that summarize the potential and constraints for research influence on policy (Chap. 9), provide a cumulative influence framework (Chap. 10), and reiterate the major findings (Chap. 11).

It is significant that this was a report commissioned by DfID specifically to assess the success of its initiative to use research in policy formulation more deliberately. Two of its authors have been deeply involved in the production of policy-oriented research, and the third is investigating the utilization of research in Sierra Leone. They are well placed to conduct this analysis, and the book provides a valuable behind-the-scenes window into the ways that research diffuses into policy. It contributes through its systematic method, its broad communication of state building as a research topic and policy agenda, and its nuanced insights into policymaking at the country level.

To show direct links between research and policy is notoriously difficult, and the authors are to be commended for tackling the enterprise. The initial chapters supply the reader with a comprehensive grounding in the topic of state fragility and reconstruction, as well as an orientation to the government branches and actors implicated in British research and policy on state building. The multimethod approach in the central section is sensible, and the final chapters condense the findings into concise figures for easy consumption.

Because of the commissioned nature of the project, these authors had wide-ranging access to documents and policymakers. The book is useful as a resource for laying out the major actors and works on state building, particularly research centers and freely accessible policy documents. Much as policymakers want concise, digestible, policy implications, college students are eager for less theoretically dense readings. Many of those cited in the book will be helpful in the classroom for their empirical contributions. Major portions of the first and second chapters are excellent background reading for the topic of state building.

The most useful chapters are 6, 7, and 8, where one begins to see the interaction of research and policy in context. Chapter 6 traces the evolution and application of the idea of “political settlements” (bargaining outcomes among contending elites; p. 103), arguing that research played a central role in pushing the concept into policy and mainstream discourse, and yet its understanding was often shallow and incomplete as evidenced by a lack of consistent translation into policy formulation. Chapters 7 and 8 highlight barriers that policymakers face in their use of research, such as departmental cultures, time constraints, competing donor agendas, staff turnover, and risk aversion. They acknowledge that research can be used to justify policies that have already been decided.

For all of its contributions, this is more a policy report than a theory-driven work. Analyzed from an academic perspective, its systematic presentation often obscures more than illuminates, its findings are not unexpected, and its linkages with scholarly literatures are constrained.

Because of its subject, the book reads much like the documents it has been assessing. Terms such as “payback model,” “uptake dimensions,” “force-field analysis,” and “joined-up activities” are unfamiliar to most outside policy circles. The writing hedges and qualifies, finding that research “shaped, interacted with, influenced” policy (p. 175), rather than stating clearly whether it did or did not. Much of the systematic description of background and methods may have been necessary for a report but subsequently might have been streamlined for greater ease of navigation.

After the authors’ impressive effort at collection and analysis, their findings are not very surprising. Policymakers take shortcuts; they may use research when it supports their preferred action and ignore it otherwise. The case in which research most seemed to influence British policy formulation was postconflict Sierra Leone, where the UK had a lead role in essentially uncharted territory of security sector reform. Where the UK’s influence is overshadowed by other donors (e.g. in Afghanistan), it had more difficulty translating research consensus into policy on the ground. On a more mundane level, the book identifies the difficulties researchers have in translating research into usable policy prescriptions, but it does not wrestle with the consequences. Simplification risks distortion.

While many of the authors’ findings mirror theoretical debates in political science, the book does not directly engage with them. For example, the chart on page 206 depicts an idealized process of research uptake in policy, which looks quite a lot like a “norm cascade” led by “norm entrepreneurs” and reaching a “tipping point” in the language of constructivist international relations theorists. The research hubs, policy entrepreneurs, and evidence brokers could have been linked with ideas about epistemic communities, and the tendency of individuals to use heuristic shortcuts and ignore disconfirming evidence could have been grounded in psychological theories of foreign policy decision making. The notion that ideas influence policy and their political or psychological barriers has a long pedigree in international relations literature that, while likely known by these researchers, was not evident in the book.

Critically, the book does not address the most fundamental question in the state-building literature, which is whether fragile states can or should be rebuilt by outsiders at all. While it does provide some caveats (pp. 37, 197), this absence of discussion reveals one of the central constraints in innovation, which is the institutional force that requires continual progression. An institutionalized process based on the belief that existing states can be fixed is not equipped to accept ideas that challenge this framework.

In fairness, the aim of Understanding Influence was not to forge new theoretical ground but very practically to trace the influence of certain research on certain policy outcomes. It did indeed accomplish this goal.