Eleanor Mackillop
Biographic Data
| ID | 2400121 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eleanor Mackillop |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eleanor |
| FAMILY NAME | Mackillop |
| SIGNATURE | MACKILLOP E |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cardiff University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3345-7499 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Principles for ethical boundary spanning between science, policy and practice
Knowledge brokers have emerged as a key mechanism for facilitating knowledge exchange across institutional and epistemic divides to enable more inclusive, informed, and context-sensitive decision-making. However, despite growing recognition about their value and importance, critical gaps remain related to how knowledge brokers operate that hinders their effectiveness and efficiency in practice. One such gap relates to the ethical dimensions of th…
Do policy actors have different views of what constitutes evidence in policymaking
The role played by evidence in policymaking is hotly disputed and there is no agreement over how evidence is defined. This article examines whether policy actors have different views of what counts as evidence and which factors influence these perceptions (for example, professional background, length of service, organisation setting, cultures of evidence)? In addressing this question, we contribute to the growing research focus on the context of …
Externalising policy advice within subnational governments
The concept of policy advisory systems (PAS) has been applied almost exclusively at national level. This article demonstrates that it can also be employed to analyse the development and dynamics of policy advice in a subnational government. Our empirical study of the externalisation of policy advice by the Welsh Government shows that it has been shaped by distinctive historical, institutional and political factors, and its impacts are different t…
Knowledge brokering organisations
Background: Government-funded knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs) are an increasingly prevalent yet under-researched area. Working in the space between knowledge and policy, yet framing themselves as different from think tanks and academic research centres, these organisations broker evidence into policy. Aims and objectives: This article examines how three organisations on different continents develop similar narratives and strategies to at…
What counts as evidence for policy? An analysis of policy actors' perceptions
Evidence plays a growing role in public administration worldwide. We analyze the perceptions of policy actors, using Q methodology and a structured questionnaire, which reveals four types of profiles. Most policy actors did not fit neatly into an Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making (EBPM) group. Instead, they either had a pragmatic view where context and policy issues influence what counts as evidence, an inclusive position which emphasized the importan…
Does knowledge brokering facilitate evidence-based policy? A review of existing knowledge and an agenda for future research
The claim that evidence-based policy (EBP) produces better outcomes has gained increasing support over the last three decades. Knowledge brokering (KB) is seen as a way to achieve improved policymaking and governments worldwide are investing significant resources in KB initiatives. It is therefore important to understand the range of these activities and to investigate whether and how they facilitate EBP. This article critically reviews the extan…
Leadership in organisational change
The organisational change literature remains dominated by macro- and microexplanatory models which tend to exclude conflict, mess and power in favour of enumerating universalistic steps or, as is the subject of this article, leadership definitions and factors for successful change. In this article, I review and question some of the mainstream literature on leadership in organisational change, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s political discourse the…
The politics of health policy knowledge transfer
Economics is now central to health policy decision making, within government departments and the National Health Service. We examine how and why a health economics academic unit – the Centre for Health Economics (CHE) at the University of York, England – was created in 1983, funded and commissioned to provide research evidence to the British government, specifically the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) and its successors. Building …
Engaging students as co-producers
The teaching of political science has a tendency towards traditional classroom-based learning environments. This article describes the development of an innovative model of student learning that takes place outside the bounded nature of the established curriculum through the creation of a Policy Commission. The Policy Commission established an innovative ‘community of action’ that challenged traditional perceptions of the lone student as a produc…
Quantifying life
Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) are central to healthcare decision-making in Britain and abroad, yet their history is poorly understood. In this paper, we argue that a more in-depth and political history of the QALY is needed to allow a critical evaluation of its current dominance. Exploiting rich data from archives and 44 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and 2018, we employ Multiple Streams Analysis to construct a complex an…
Emphasising the political and emotional dimensions of organisational change politics with Laclauian discourse theory
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore power-resistance plays, or organisational change (OC) politics, from a discourse theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the political and emotional dimensions of these phenomena. Design/methodology/approach – The paper deploys Laclauian concepts of hegemony, fantasmatic narrative and empty signifiers alongside a recently-developed logics of critical explanation approach in the case stud…
How do empty signifiers lose credibility? The caseof commissioning in English local government
This paper critically analyzes how empty signifiers – demands which have been 'tendentially' emptied of meaning to represent an infinite number of demands – gain and lose credibility. I mobilize Laclauian discourse theory and a logics of critical explanation approach to examine the case of an English County Council and its Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) articulating 'commissioning' as an empty signifier in its new reform to address the Governm…
Quantifying life
Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) are central to healthcare decision-making in Britain and abroad, yet their history is poorly understood. In this paper, we argue that a more in-depth and political history of the QALY is needed to allow a critical evaluation of its current dominance. Exploiting rich data from archives and 44 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and 2018, we employ Multiple Streams Analysis to construct a complex an…
How do empty signifiers lose credibility? The caseof commissioning in English local government
This paper critically analyzes how empty signifiers – demands which have been 'tendentially' emptied of meaning to represent an infinite number of demands – gain and lose credibility. I mobilize Laclauian discourse theory and a logics of critical explanation approach to examine the case of an English County Council and its Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) articulating 'commissioning' as an empty signifier in its new reform to address the Governm…
Knowledge brokering organisations
Background: Government-funded knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs) are an increasingly prevalent yet under-researched area. Working in the space between knowledge and policy, yet framing themselves as different from think tanks and academic research centres, these organisations broker evidence into policy. Aims and objectives: This article examines how three organisations on different continents develop similar narratives and strategies to at…
Externalising policy advice within subnational governments
The concept of policy advisory systems (PAS) has been applied almost exclusively at national level. This article demonstrates that it can also be employed to analyse the development and dynamics of policy advice in a subnational government. Our empirical study of the externalisation of policy advice by the Welsh Government shows that it has been shaped by distinctive historical, institutional and political factors, and its impacts are different t…
Engaging students as co-producers
The teaching of political science has a tendency towards traditional classroom-based learning environments. This article describes the development of an innovative model of student learning that takes place outside the bounded nature of the established curriculum through the creation of a Policy Commission. The Policy Commission established an innovative ‘community of action’ that challenged traditional perceptions of the lone student as a produc…
Do policy actors have different views of what constitutes evidence in policymaking
The role played by evidence in policymaking is hotly disputed and there is no agreement over how evidence is defined. This article examines whether policy actors have different views of what counts as evidence and which factors influence these perceptions (for example, professional background, length of service, organisation setting, cultures of evidence)? In addressing this question, we contribute to the growing research focus on the context of …
The politics of health policy knowledge transfer
Economics is now central to health policy decision making, within government departments and the National Health Service. We examine how and why a health economics academic unit – the Centre for Health Economics (CHE) at the University of York, England – was created in 1983, funded and commissioned to provide research evidence to the British government, specifically the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) and its successors. Building …
Emphasising the political and emotional dimensions of organisational change politics with Laclauian discourse theory
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore power-resistance plays, or organisational change (OC) politics, from a discourse theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the political and emotional dimensions of these phenomena. Design/methodology/approach – The paper deploys Laclauian concepts of hegemony, fantasmatic narrative and empty signifiers alongside a recently-developed logics of critical explanation approach in the case stud…
How do empty signifiers lose credibility? The caseof commissioning in English local government
This paper critically analyzes how empty signifiers – demands which have been 'tendentially' emptied of meaning to represent an infinite number of demands – gain and lose credibility. I mobilize Laclauian discourse theory and a logics of critical explanation approach to examine the case of an English County Council and its Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) articulating 'commissioning' as an empty signifier in its new reform to address the Governm…
Leadership in organisational change
The organisational change literature remains dominated by macro- and microexplanatory models which tend to exclude conflict, mess and power in favour of enumerating universalistic steps or, as is the subject of this article, leadership definitions and factors for successful change. In this article, I review and question some of the mainstream literature on leadership in organisational change, drawing on Laclau and Mouffe’s political discourse the…
The politics of health policy knowledge transfer
Economics is now central to health policy decision making, within government departments and the National Health Service. We examine how and why a health economics academic unit – the Centre for Health Economics (CHE) at the University of York, England – was created in 1983, funded and commissioned to provide research evidence to the British government, specifically the Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS) and its successors. Building …
Engaging students as co-producers
The teaching of political science has a tendency towards traditional classroom-based learning environments. This article describes the development of an innovative model of student learning that takes place outside the bounded nature of the established curriculum through the creation of a Policy Commission. The Policy Commission established an innovative ‘community of action’ that challenged traditional perceptions of the lone student as a produc…
Quantifying life
Quality-Adjusted Life-Years (QALYs) are central to healthcare decision-making in Britain and abroad, yet their history is poorly understood. In this paper, we argue that a more in-depth and political history of the QALY is needed to allow a critical evaluation of its current dominance. Exploiting rich data from archives and 44 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and 2018, we employ Multiple Streams Analysis to construct a complex an…
Does knowledge brokering facilitate evidence-based policy? A review of existing knowledge and an agenda for future research
The claim that evidence-based policy (EBP) produces better outcomes has gained increasing support over the last three decades. Knowledge brokering (KB) is seen as a way to achieve improved policymaking and governments worldwide are investing significant resources in KB initiatives. It is therefore important to understand the range of these activities and to investigate whether and how they facilitate EBP. This article critically reviews the extan…
Knowledge brokering organisations
Background: Government-funded knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs) are an increasingly prevalent yet under-researched area. Working in the space between knowledge and policy, yet framing themselves as different from think tanks and academic research centres, these organisations broker evidence into policy. Aims and objectives: This article examines how three organisations on different continents develop similar narratives and strategies to at…
What counts as evidence for policy? An analysis of policy actors' perceptions
Evidence plays a growing role in public administration worldwide. We analyze the perceptions of policy actors, using Q methodology and a structured questionnaire, which reveals four types of profiles. Most policy actors did not fit neatly into an Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making (EBPM) group. Instead, they either had a pragmatic view where context and policy issues influence what counts as evidence, an inclusive position which emphasized the importan…
Externalising policy advice within subnational governments
The concept of policy advisory systems (PAS) has been applied almost exclusively at national level. This article demonstrates that it can also be employed to analyse the development and dynamics of policy advice in a subnational government. Our empirical study of the externalisation of policy advice by the Welsh Government shows that it has been shaped by distinctive historical, institutional and political factors, and its impacts are different t…
Do policy actors have different views of what constitutes evidence in policymaking
The role played by evidence in policymaking is hotly disputed and there is no agreement over how evidence is defined. This article examines whether policy actors have different views of what counts as evidence and which factors influence these perceptions (for example, professional background, length of service, organisation setting, cultures of evidence)? In addressing this question, we contribute to the growing research focus on the context of …
Principles for ethical boundary spanning between science, policy and practice
Knowledge brokers have emerged as a key mechanism for facilitating knowledge exchange across institutional and epistemic divides to enable more inclusive, informed, and context-sensitive decision-making. However, despite growing recognition about their value and importance, critical gaps remain related to how knowledge brokers operate that hinders their effectiveness and efficiency in practice. One such gap relates to the ethical dimensions of th…
Political science (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Public Administration (6 works) · Public Administration (6 works) · Public relations (6 works) · Government (linguistics (5 works)