In this paper, we try to analyze the role of knowledge in public action without regarding knowledge as a simple instrument in the hands of the more powerful actors or, on the contrary, as an efficient way to avoid the predominance of interests and ideologies. Our conceptual thought starts with an analysis of the knowledge used to put problems and recommendations at the front of the agenda. The circulation of this knowledge is believed as structured by more or less stable knowledge circuits of knowledge. Those circuits are seen as one of the four factors structuring what happens in each of the numerous and interlinked scenes involved in the public action process. This theoretical schema helps to analyze specific case studies, but also variations of the place of knowledge according to time, countries and sectors.
Public action; Circuit of knowledge; Knowledge; Interdependence; Paradigm
