Through their policy-relevant research outputs and integration in policy networks, Belgian academics aim to ‘speak truth to power’ (Wildavsky, 1979) and ‘make sense together’ (Hoppe, 1999) in political and public debates about policy problems and options. Gradually they are also becoming involved in evaluating policies. At the turn of the millennium, the federal and regional governments began to move towards institutionalising policy-relevant research in the so-called inter-university research pillars and in middle- to long-term research programmes thematically organised to reflect the priorities decided by respective governments. Besides the structural interfaces that are typical for institutionalised research programmes, there are many other access points for academics to bring their expertise to policymaking. Sectoral academic experts maintain multiple relationships with knowledge brokers. They are welcome contributors to the opinion sections of written and spoken media and some hold positions in the many advisory bodies of the various governments. Several of them are also active in think tanks, or themselves act as consultants in commercial university spin-offs. This chapter analyses the ways in which academics access policymaking in Belgium. The empirical material is based on documents analysis, on a study of knowledge utilisation in labour market and education policies in Belgium (Brans et al, 2004; Florence et al, 2005), and on survey research on knowledge utilisation, focusing on individual perceptions of social science researchers and policymakers (Smet, 2013). The data is supplemented with information on the utilisation of academic research provided by the survey organised for this book.

This chapter is composed of the following sections. In a first section, we demonstrate the importance of research dissemination strategies and structural interfaces for the utilisation of research on the position of immigrant children in education and labour market participation. This section will at the same time reveal the power of divergent policy paradigms in facilitating or blocking knowledge utilisation. The second section draws on the results of survey research, focusing on the perceptions of individual policymakers and academics, about the role of social sciences in policymaking and the obstacles and enablers of knowledge utilisation. Since structural interfaces between communities of researchers and policymakers seem to an important enabler of knowledge transfer in Belgium, the third section engages in a description of the organisation of policy research by the different Belgian governments.