The imperative to “link knowledge and action” is widely invoked as a defining characteristic of sustainability research. The complexities of sustainability challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss mean that linear models of knowledge and action, where knowledge is produced first (by researchers) then “applied to” action (by policy actors), are considered insufficient. Researchers have developed more dynamic, open-ended and collaborative forms of policy engagement such as transdisciplinary and co-production research. Although promising these approaches often remain captive to linear assumptions that hinder their transformative potential. We contribute by providing a relational model of knowledge and action rooted in contemporary practice theory. A practice-based approach suggests the primary task of participants in transdisciplinary interventions is to find workable solutions to situations of dynamic complexity that are fundamentally indeterminate and unpredictable. Knowledge is not “applied to” action, but drawn upon, produced and used from within the situation at hand, allowing researchers and policy actors alike to better harness the emergent character of situational developments and outcomes. A practice-based approach provides a conceptual language that captures the experienced complexities of intervening for sustainability, reconfigures the nature of “actionable knowledge,” and identifies appropriate modes of evaluation for transdisciplinary and co-produced research.

Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes' interpretive political science hardly needs an introduction to policy scholars. Their approach, philosophically sophisticated and grounded in a realistic appraisal of the nature of governing in modern liberal democratic societies, is of considerable significance to anyone in political science, public administration or planning with an interest in interpretive methods. Focusing on the concepts of meaning holism, anti-representationalism, tradition, dilemma and decenteredness, I briefly describe the philosophical foundations and substantive theory of interpretive political science. The main part of the essay consists of a critique of interpretive political science. My argument is that the key concept of practice is underdeveloped. The point of a philosophy of practice is to integrate belief and action to the point where they form one organic activity system for the purpose of moving about effectively in the world. Bevir and Rhodes' insistence on keeping belief and action separate and, in addition, on privileging belief as the major driver of change and adaptation to changing circumstances, inserts a deep inconsistency into their work; an inconsistency that, to my mind, becomes manifest in the relative paucity of their own empirical work. I conclude the essay with a brief exposition of what a practice-based, posthumanist approach to policy research entails (centering on the concepts of agency, the dialectic of resistance and accommodation, temporal emergence and cultural extension) and of what its practical implications are for policy analysis.

This introductory article sets out the twin goals of this special issue: “Advancing the Commonsverse: The Political Economy of the Commons”. The first is to introduce the innovative work of David Bollier and Silke Helfrich in theorizing and researching the commons. The second is to explore the possibilities and constraints of the commons and the process of commoning as they unfold in real-world political-economic settings. Bollier and Helfrich have formulated a remarkable, ‘in-the-round’, moral-empirical theory of the commons. In their social ontology, peer governance and moral economy commons form a subversive alternative to the capitalist order. Bollier and Helfrich’s theory restores an older tradition of a moral critique of capitalism in the tradition of “moral economists” such as Karl Polanyi and H.P. Tawney. It raises important questions about the socio-ethical foundations of our society and economy, the relationship between civil associations and the state, and the nature of the state. In the final part of this introduction, we discuss the complex relationship between the commons and the state. We frame this relationship as one of mutual dependency and argue for the careful redesign of our institutions of public administration and democratic governance to make them more receptive and accessible to the creative powers of the commons. Finally, we introduce the contributions to this special issue, including a reflective concluding essay by David Bolllier.