Knowledge co-production promoting policy change in time of decentralization: a comparison of two cases from Brussels

The nexus between policy change and learning has attracted an extensive theoretical debate, since the seminal Hall’s typology of orders of change. Defined as the capacity to act collectively for policy-making, policy knowledge is crucial because actors have to know how to cooperate sharing a common understanding of the policy issue at stake. This challenge is even more relevant in the case of decentralisation when policy competencies are transferred to local governments and new policymakers established. In this context, the paper argues that the co-production between newly established policymakers and experts is more likely to lead to policy change within the filter of the dominant policy paradigm. For this purpose, two cases from Brussels are presented and compared about the local water management system and a new rail junction. This approach opens the theoretical issue of the knowledge-democracy nexus about the involvement of non-expert stakeholders.