© 2013 Jana-Axinja Paschen and Ruth Beilin, The University of Melbourne
This paper was accepted for publication by Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy in May 2014
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0263774X15614170]
‘Avoiding the certainty trap’:
A research program for the policy-practice interface
Jana-Axinja Paschen [corresponding author]
School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne.
E-mail: jpaschen@unimelb.edu.au
Ruth Beilin
School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Melbourne.
E-mail: rbeilin@unimelb.edu.au
Abstract
This paper outlines the rationale for a research focus on how meaning emerges from the
interfaces between research, policy and practice. In exploring where different constructions of
risk, resilience and landscape occur in the policy and practice discourses surrounding current
developments in Victorian bushfire policy, this paper goes beyond simply advocating better
science-policy-practice relationships by demonstrating the challenges of operationalizing
adaptive governance principles. Our findings stress that change can arise from interacting
discourses on the policy-practice interface. Yet, while this may be the most adaptive moment in
the policy process, producing multiple insights and alternative options, it is vulnerable to
institutionalised discourses that obstruct flexible practice. Complex socio-ecological issues such
as bushfire, we argue, require more explicit engagement with the processes of practice inherent
in policy formulation. The paper offers co-productive research strategies as contributing to more
flexible governance arrangements to improve adaptive policy design.
Keywords: policy implementation, practice, socio-ecological resilience, adaptive governance,
cooperative research