The Praxis of Partnership in Civically Engaged Research

Participatory research approaches evolved from scholars interested in initiating projects that address social problems and in challenging university-led production of knowledge (Wallerstein and Duran 2017). Scholars also noted that a plethora of terms representing a participatory research paradigm are difficult to decipher and have become intermingled (Wallerstein and Duran 2017). How then should political scientists distinguish civically engaged research (CER) in this constellation of scholarship? More important, how should political scientists do CER?This article raises and considers questions central to how scholars can create equitable partnerships with nonacademics for research on improving the governance of social problems. To explore these questions, we compare CER to two common participatory research frameworks: community-based participatory research (CBPR) and research-practice partnerships (RPPs). We first identify guiding principles of CER that are shared across these two frameworks. We then identify areas that distinguish our aspirations for CER from how some researchers describe or implement CBPR and RPPs.