This thesis brings together democratic theory's calls for an understanding of the actually existing democratic state and anthropological work on innovative forms of citizen participation. Building on the work of Joao Biehl and Steven Robins, the research focuses on access to knowledge and claims of expertise as grounds upon which politicians and bureaucrats exclude citizen participation. It argues, using an ethnographic case study of South African student activist group Equal Education, that authors such as Max Weber, Michel Foucault, and James Scott are wrong to imply that citizens cannot train themselves in the technocratic manner frequently deployed by the state's representatives. It also argues, however, that the state's representatives are often not the technocrats they are hypothesised to be or that they claim to be, and their knowledge practices cannot be separated from politics. This makes the process through which citizens establish expertise and credibility with the government more complicated than simply training themselves in the government's knowledge practices. Drawing on the work of Danielle Allen and Francesca Polletta, the thesis thus also examines how questions of personal experience and identity on grounds of lived experience as well as claimed or perceived identity often interact with claims to knowledge, opening up or shutting down citizens' ability to participate. Even when citizens are able to leverage their technocratic expertise to successfully influence policy creation, they may still find it difficult to effectively participate in the implementation thereof beyond external monitoring and accountability enforcement. The thesis concludes that the current democratic theory ought not be so pessimistic about the spectre of a know-nothing citizenry, but nor ought it presume that education and expertise alone will be sufficient for democratic governments to take seriously an involved and engaged citizenry.

As society and business is becoming more complex, the creation and management of knowledge attracts more attention. For intelligence research it offers an alternative perspective on the art and science of intelligence that challenges a previous dominance of strategy and decision-making theories. The article is based on semi-structured interviews with intelligence personnel in four different multinational companies. Through the use of Burke’s pentad this article gives an account of important challenges encountered by intelligence personnel in modern business organizations due to an increasing dependence on different knowledge processes. These challenges are summarized in four central tasks for knowledge activists; that is to initiate and focus knowledge creation, to reduce the time and cost needed for knowledge creation, to leverage knowledge creation initiatives throughout the corporation and to guide knowledge creation by the instigation of complementary reference points. By engaging in these types of activities intelligence workers are able to stage and influence different sorts of analytical conversations, where the insights from these conversations as reformed knowledge govern an evolving strategy in dispersed circumstances. Thus, intelligence workers fulfil their purpose, which in this perspective can be viewed as creating better business in whatever process they engage in.