In this thesis I analyze how (macro-)political knowledge is contingent on (micro-)social processes happening at the level of experts. Drawing from sociology of interaction and of knowledge, as well as from recent advances in the field of International Political Sociology, I conduct three analyses focusing on the same case, the monitoring of United Nations targeted sanctions. The unanticipated impacts that many apparently non- political processes have on the production of political knowledge give rise to the view that political knowledge is not simply the expression of a strategy, but rather the product of a clash of strategies. A key objective of this thesis is to develop perspectives and concepts that can inform future studies on political knowledge production.