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It has long been acknowledged that adult and lifelong educators have exercised little influence over national education policies. This article addresses the issue, with particular reference to the research elements of policy advocacy. Researchers and policy-makers are distinguished and related as communities of practice and intellectual categories of social function. It is argued that the concept ‘policy-maker’ is too ambiguous to be of either theoretical or practical use, especially since the focus has shifted over the years away from the advocacy of adult education to the implementation of lifelong learning. Also, the concepts of both ‘policy’ and ‘research’ have undergone significant shifts of meaning, so that traditional ideas of the relation between research and policy are now outdated. We live in an age of public scepticism about the political uses to which research is put, and this also needs to be taken into account in the case of lifelong learning. Thus, the relation between research and the policy process needs to be reconceptualised in a future beyond lifelong learning in order to be meaningful, with the focus much more upon process than outcome. Only in this way could adult and lifelong educators expect to have any influence upon national policies.