Conclusion

Abstract

Ideas matter, but ideas also need to be made to matter. The new social technology of networks is one important mode of making ideas matter. While ideas matter in the formulation of policy, so do interests. Likewise, ideas matter in shaping institutional innovation or reform, but so too institutions exert their own historical and organisational dynamics on patterns of policy. Ideas matter alongside institutions and interests, but increasingly so, information technology has also become an important social and economic force and which entwines all three elements in complex interplays — intertwingularity — in politics and policy making.