ABSTRACT
In Section 2, it was argued that given ‘external’ factors – such as formally institutionalised rules or formal institutional settings as well as actor constellations – do not directly determine a knowledge order. Rather, we argued that to actually structure a knowledge order these ‘external’ factors have to be made relevant so that they take on meaning in the formation of a knowledge order by the actors subject to them. For this recursive process, the mechanisms outlined in Section 3.2 are crucial as they employ particular interdependencies in the interaction of involved actors by which a knowledge order is formed, reproduced and sometimes also transformed. In other words, it is by means of these mechanisms that the institutionalised forms of coordination and actor constellation in the process of ‘contentions on the utilisation of knowledge, the power to define it, and the legitimacy of knowledge claims’ (Weingart 2003, 139; translation by the authors) are developed; moreover, the results of this process are also constituted, namely particular assumptions about how the world functions (and should function), thus giving meaning to these institutionalised forms of coordination and making them relevant for the development of a knowledge order.
