The previous part, ‘Constructing Meaning through Policy Work,’ emphasized the ambiguities of policy-making, but the enactment of policy realities remained rather ‘local.’ Chapter 4 mainly focused on the construction of meaning in concrete ‘learning networks’ that were formed in order to redevelop buildings. Chapter 5 focused on working relations between economic experts and policymakers within (and around) one organization, the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. Although the next two chapters also emphasize policy enactment, they deviate in a few major ways. First of all, they are less ‘local’ in the sense that they describe policy practices that cut across many institutes, agencies and organizations. Although the perspectives are clear – the roles of two ‘hybrid’ science and policy institutes are highlighted (the Rathenau Institute, and the National Initiative for Sustainable Development) – these institutes have had to work with many other actors and parties in order to accomplish certain goals.

Secondly, the chapters are less ‘local’ in the sense that it was difficult to localize the issues that were being addressed. In the two chapters, the hybrid institutes encountered difficulties in finding and fixing the issues. In both cases, the issues were only clear in a very general sense: the Rathenau Institute had to advise members of the Dutch Parliament about future ‘sustainable water management’ in the Netherlands, while the National Initiative for Sustainable Development was called upon to improve the Netherlands as a ‘sustainable society.’ These grand, vague goals not only produced major ambiguities – what does it mean? It also produced tensions between finding the right technical expertise and the appropriate political rationales, or, in Heclo's terms, between ‘puzzling’ and ‘powering,’ and between changing ideas about the future, as well as stable and institutionalized ideas and interests on the part of the parties involved. Their accounts are much more institutional than the ones we have thus far looked at.

Lydia Sterrenberg and Anne Loeber, who were themselves very involved in shaping the policy practices mentioned, both show and analyze what happened and what was done to arrive at certain goals, as well as the mistakes that were made. In fact, they mainly show how policy work involves institutional management, in the sense of attracting attention, influencing agendas and concerns, involving the right parties, and finding channels for securing a follow up.