Epistemic communities are more likely to be persuasive when: 1. Scope conditions: there is uncertainty surrounding the issues, or policymakers are unhappy with the past policies 2. Political opportunity structure: they have access to all necessary top decision-makers 3. Phase in the policy process: they seek to influence the term of the initial debate instead of the decision itself 4. Coalition building: share high level of professional norms and status 5. Policy field coherence: respected quantitative data Criticism of [[epistemic communities]]: 1) unproblematic access to policymakers 2) Maybe EC are not better at solving problems 3) What's the motivation? They might have political preference 4) They are influential if they are part of the political coalition As transnational interaction grows, uncertainty abounds, and the role of [[Non-state actors]] become ever more prominent, the intersection of global governance and expert knowledge should be a significant part of the next generation of epistemic community research.