Circulation of Knowledge: Assessing Different Types of Interactions with Experts

Past studies have broadly analysed the role of external experts in shaping security policies by examining, for instance, how an assemblage of experts becomes highly relevant for a particular issue or by assessing the influence that such experts exercise on specific topics. Similarly, scholars have also explored different aspects regarding experts’ interactions with different types of practitioners, including bureaucrats, diplomats and militaries. Yet, despite this increasingly rich literature, no comprehensive research has been conducted with the explicit aim of comparing those interactions in a common context, for a common issue or for actors driven by overall common purposes. By building on the literature on sociology of expertise, this paper intends to fill this gap by exploring the interactions between think tanks and NATO, focusing separately on the bureaucratic, the diplomatic and the military part of the alliance.