How not to bridge the gap in international relations

Over the past decade or more, an increasing number of US initiatives and institutions has taken on the challenge of promoting policy-relevant research and bridging the academia-policy divide. Much of the emphasis of such programmes has been on how scholars can better engage the policy community and the broader public. Less attention has been paid to the pitfalls to avoid when seeking to bridge the gap. In this article, we argue that the more that scholars are engaged in producing and disseminating policy-relevant research, the more essential it is to consider how they can build a set of bridging standards to accompany their ideas. We identify four key dimensions of how scholars engage in policy and public debates and discuss how paying careful attention to these four 'I's-Influence, Interlocutors, Integrity and Inclusion-can mitigate the most egregious instances of falling prey to a cult of relevance in bridging the gap. We then explore these factors in a discussion of two case-studies that highlight challenges that arise for those scholars who seek to contribute to policy and public debates: the applications of theories to US foreign policy surrounding the so-called democratic peace; and the efforts of international relations scholars to contribute to peace-building in post-conflict states. This article identifies the four key dimensions of how scholars engage in policy and public debates. Paying careful attention to these can help avoid common pitfalls when 'bridging the gap'. These four factors are applied to two case-studies: theory and policy in the US on 'Democratic Peace' and the 'cult of relevance' problem for scholars trying to contribute to peace-building in post-conflict states.