2. • Head of the State vs Heart of Citizens – (Marx in Muller)
• Deafness between government and people
• People (citizen) vs State – Laclau and Mouffe (Radical democratic politics)
• people good, state bad
• Critics vs Reconstructors – Konrad and Szelenyi (Intellectuals on the road
to class power – intellectuals vs sate and working class)
• Theory vs Practice – Habermas (Theory and practise)
• intellectuals good, practioners bad
• theory and practice cannot talk directly to each other
• interpreters, consultants, advisors, ear whisperers
• advocacy, policy briefs, media, social media
• The ‘gap’ is not simply technical, it is conceptual and interest driven
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3. • Muller and Cloete – White Hands and Modernity and Post Apartheid
• Habermas – Forms of constructing mediation space
• Education Policy Units (1989) – from protest to policy
• National Education Policy Investigation (NEPI, 1991)
• National Commission on Higher Education (1995)
• CHET (1996)
• ‘Evidence’ based constructed discourses
• In what Marx calls ‘surplus politics’, evidence does not dictate policy, it
is a starting point for dialogue
• Key is selection of participants – ‘better hearing’
• Discourse is informative for both government and higher education
sector – democracy is strengthening ‘both sides’
• Policy influence – what point of cycle (understanding problem, action
prescription or evaluation/monitoring
• Never write policy and never whisper in ministers ears
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