The work informing this paper has its origins in a colloquium on education policy research held a number of years ago at the University of Edinburgh, UK. This concerned the changing nature of the policy process and the problem of research impact. Subsequent attempts to theorise the area led to work in relation to concepts of advocacy coalition (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993) and strategic policy work (Mulgan 2008). This present paper proposes that understanding of ability to influence public policy needs to be reset within a discussion of the identity, agency and the methodologies and strategies of an emerging network of policy practitioners. It explores a major and ongoing shift internationally in the practices and organisational forms through which public policy is generated and so draws attention to the changing face of ‘policy work’. It raises the question – who are the new policy insiders and how do they generate and gain currency for their ideas? Is there a difference in the ways they go about policy activities as compared to how, for example, education policy researchers would ordinarily do? If, as commentators such as Ball (2007) have argued, we are witnessing an increasingly evident shift away from conventional techniques of co-ordination and control on the part of large-scale bureaucratic state forms and their replacement by more evaluative agencies and discourses, how do these present in relation to policy agenda-setting and policy formation? The answer bears out the idea that the work of governing involves more than the activities of government – reflected in the increasing use of the term ‘governance’ in the literature and discourse of policy and politics internationally – and consequently that policy work increasingly involves the activities of a range of non-governmental and extra-governmental bodies. Additionally, the paper addresses the frustratingly hit-and-miss nature of researching to influence public policy.‘Quality’ is a prized feature of our research (Schuller 2004). But there is no guarantee that quality in research will result in currency within the policy process.Indeed, the disconnection is a staple of debate in this area. And even when research does enter the policy cycle, there is little evidence that its use is in any way consistent (Furlong and White 2001). Education research is not alone in this: policy research in other areas of the social and human sciences is equally challenged by this conundrum–both in Ireland (Laffan 2007) and beyond (Burton 2006; Citi & Rhodes 2007).

The paper is in two parts: a theoretical consideration of the nature and detail of advocacy coalition and how it is understood to operate in a policy process, and an illustrative case analysis of one such coalition in operation around a recent education initiative in Ireland. The paper considers how a new policy work variant seems to be emerging within which the traditional role of public policy research is increasingly in tension with centralist concerns for governance in what McCarthy (2006) describes as our ‘small, open economy’. Much of this is argued to relate to the nature of the advocacy coalitions that Ireland generates and the unique role that our think-tanks assume – both of which are seen to increasingly impact the emergence of new policy work practices. There may nonetheless be lessons to be learnt from the Ireland context concerning the operation of such coalitions elsewhere.

By identifying the key players in a specific advocacy coalition arrangement and illustrating its modus operandi the paper seeks to foreground a number of interesting features and practices associated with advocacy coalition. These include authority and leadership, elasticity/tensile aspects of its activity, and coalition life cycle. In addition, by exploring the nature of the connections within and around this coalition useful insights are gained into issues of opacity, hegemony of values, shallow inquiry, and play of power. Given the singular nature of the case coalition under study, much of this discussion remains formative. However, the paper is likely to have value as an exercise in identifying and assessing existing and alternative policy levers available to a coalition, and strengthen our understanding of newer aspect of policy action inherent in advocacy coalition activity.