Evidence and Policy-Making: Understanding the Politics and Practices of the Use of Evidence in Policy

Context Evidence-Based Policy-Making (EBPM), its successor Evidence-Informed Policy-Making (EIPM), and Knowledge Transfer (KT) are major concerns for academics and policy-makers. Although we have witnessed over the last few years a push back against the role of experts in policy-making – e.g. the United States under Trump and UK Member of Parliament Michael Gove’s statement that people had ‘had enough of experts’ – policy-makers across the world are ‘thirsty’ for more evidence, knowledge and research to inform or be mobilised to support their policies. Considerable amounts of resources – financial and others – are being dedicated to improving the role and use of evidence and knowledge in policy-making and practice, from international, to national and sub-national levels. New evidence intermediaries such as UK What Works Centres, the Canadian Institute for Knowledge Mobilisation, the Australian Sax Institute and US California Policy Lab have emerged, playing different functions than traditional think tanks, brokering evidence into policy (McGann and Shull, 2018; Rich, 2004; Stone, 1996). This push for the increased use of evidence in policy-making raises important questions for researchers about the politics of evidence and knowledge use, methodological matters and whether these ideas are beneficial for policy-making and society. Aims of the workshop Questions of how knowledge, evidence or research are transferred, translated and exchanged into policy or how they are mobilised into policy are crucial and are the subject of numerous projects and publications in government and academia (Cabinet Office, 2018; White, 2018). The general belief is that more use of evidence will deliver better policy, but this goal remains elusive. With regards to research, the enthusiasm for EBPM and EIPM has meant a plethora of studies seeking to outline and distil ‘what works’, with scholarship often falling into ‘how to’ guides and tips for successful EIPM and KT. Despite numerous EIPM studies, there is still too little research into the most crucial question: What role(s) do evidence, knowledge, research and other types of expertise play in policy-making and how can we make sense of these? This question raises several interlinked issues: • What counts as evidence, knowledge and expertise, and how does this vary across time and space? • What are the structures and practices for evidence use across different countries and organisations? • Who are the key actors in EIPM, and which strategies do they deploy in the policy-making process in relation to evidence, knowledge and expertise? • Which political, societal, organizational and intellectual factors determine the use of evidence in policy? • What are the consequences of the politics of evidence use for democracy, good governance and the distribution of costs and benefits in society? The aim of the proposed workshop is therefore to offer an opportunity to discuss research that systematically and critically investigates the politics and practices of EIPM. Current research The question of evidence use in policy-making is hardly new. Ever since the 1970s, scholars have attempted to conceptualise how expert knowledge influences policy-making and how to improve this transfer. For instance, the two communities thesis argues that experts and policy-makers follow different cultures thus hindering exchange (Caplan, 1979), or Weiss’s (1977) enlightenment thesis according to which knowledge may inform policy in a very informal and often long-term way. Yet, the interest in evidence and policy-making was renewed from the 1990s with the governmental push across Western countries for a greater use of evidence in policy, with for instance the Canadian Federal government programme financing a number of evidence centres in different policy areas and the UK New Labour’s mantra of ‘what matters is what works’. This push gave rise to a growing literature on “evidence-based policy-making” (EBPM) or “evidence-informed policy-making” (EIPM), which has dominated academic discussions about the role of evidence in policy-making. The basic tenet of this literature is that reliable evidence on the effectiveness of policies is integral to sound policy-making (Davies et al., 2000; Head, 2016). Yet, the actual use of evidence by policy-makers is limited and variable. This gap between research and policy is a barrier to better policies. Therefore, this literature is centrally concerned with understanding the conditions inhibiting and facilitating evidence use in policy design. Despite the plethora of EIPM research seeking to analyse and address the question of the use of evidence in policy, the image of the policy process developed by many of these studies is often simplistic and idealistic, positing research evidence as a necessary part of the policy-making process, authors often concluding that ‘more needs to be done’ (see Cairney, 2016; Cairney and Oliver, 2018; Oliver et al., 2014 for critiques of this). The EIPM literature can be found lacking on a number of aspects in relation to understanding the relationship between evidence and policy, notably regarding (1) its lack of acknowledgement of the politics of this relationship and the policy-making process more broadly; (2) its weak theoretical grounding, often reverting to management frameworks of dissemination, knowledge management and social network analysis, in favour of the prescription of ‘how to’ guides and recommendations; (3) its focus on surveys and personal accounts of EIPM rather than methodologically sound, robust and reproducible means of collecting and analysing data; (4) its frequent ideological commitment to the belief that more evidence use will lead to better policy; (5) a lack of evaluation of whether EIPM works and improves policy. Although some recent studies have attempted to inject more politics into the study of the use and role of evidence in policy (Boswell, 2009; Cairney, 2016; Parkhurst, 2017; Smith, 2013), the understanding of politics within the EIPM literature remains rudimentary. Crucially for this workshop, we start from the premise that the policy-making process is more complex than these studies would suggest, involving a multiplicity of stakeholders, interests, relationships and structures that influence how, whether and why evidence is used in policy. Research evidence competes with multiple other factors in the development of policy such as political agendas, electoral tactics, political cycles, interests of other stakeholders, technical, bureaucratic and political feasibility, costs (which has many meanings here), and gripping narratives amongst others (Stoker and Evans, 2016). In EIPM studies, policy-makers are often depicted as a homogeneous group without distinguishing between politicians, administrators/civil servants and government scientists or experts (e.g. government economists or scientific advisors). Yet, these actors play distinct roles in the politics of expertise and bring different premises and considerations to the table. For instance, other research has stressed the key role of bureaucrats as brokers between research-based evidence and politics (Christensen, 2017b; Gains and Stoker, 2011) and the policy influence of expert professions such as economists within government bureaucracies (Christensen, 2017a; MacKillop and Sheard, 2018). Although both EIPM and political and policy studies document and discuss how policy is made, these scholarships have evolved in almost hermetic silos, with very little cross-fertilisation between the two. As a result, the EIPM literature lacks realistic theoretically-informed discussions and methodologically sound analyses of the policy process and of the role played by research evidence in this (French, 2018). At the same time, other literatures in political and policy sciences and sociology offer important theoretical starting points for a better understanding of the politics of evidence use. Recent literature on the different modes of knowledge utilisation in policy-making looks more closely at the political uses of knowledge in policy (Boswell, 2009; Radaelli, 1999). The political science literature on ideas and politics points to the power of ideas in policy debates and discusses the conditions under which academic ideas come to influence policy (Béland and Cox, 2011; Campbell, 2002; Hall, 1989). The work on epistemic communities in international relations stresses the role of expert groups in interpreting and defining solutions to complex societal problems (Cross, 2013; Haas, 1992). Similarly, the sociological literature on professions analyses the dynamics and power of expert professions that are embedded across a wide range of government institutions at the national and international level (Abbott, 1988; Fourcade, 2009). And work in science and technology studies takes issue with the understanding of science as a neutral and objective enterprise, emphasizing the social embeddedness and political character of science (Grundmann, 2016; Jasanoff, 2007). These literatures offer a rich variety of theoretical arguments that can inform the discussion of evidence and policy-making. The workshop thus seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the politics of evidence use by drawing on knowledge from across disciplines and theoretical perspectives. By bringing together research on evidence use in different settings and polities, conducted from different perspectives and using different research design and methodologies, the workshop seeks to paint a picture of where the scholarship as a whole stands on this matter and where future avenues of research may develop. Thereby, the workshop aims to stimulate future research collaboration and publication projects on the topic. References Abbott, A.D. (1988), The System of Professions : An Essay on The Division of Expert Labor, University of Chicago Press. Béland, D. and Cox, R.H. (2011), Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research, Oxford University Press. Boswell, C. (2009), The Political Uses of Expert Knowledge: Immigration Policy and Social Research, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Cabinet Office. (2018), The What Works Network: Five Years On, London. Cairney, P. (2016), The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy Making, Palgrave Macmillan UK, London. Cairney, P. and Oliver, K. (2018), ‘How Should Academics Engage in Policymaking to Achieve Impact?’, Political Studies Review. Campbell, J.L. (2002), ‘Ideas, Politics, and Public Policy’, Annual Review of Sociology, Annual Reviews 4139 El Camino Way, P.O. Box 10139, Palo Alto, CA 94303-0139, USA , Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 21–38. Caplan, N. (1979), ‘The two-communities theory and knowledge utilization’, American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 459–470. Christensen, J. (2017a), The Power of Economists within the State, Stanford University Press, Stanford. Christensen, J.G. (2017b), ‘Bureaucrats as evidence brokers’, Journal Of Public Administration Research And Theory, Vol. 28 No. 1, pp. 160–163. Cross, M.D. (2013), ‘Rethinking epistemic communities twenty years later’, Review of International Studies, Cambridge University Press, Vol. 39 No. 01, pp. 137–160. Davies, H., Nutley, S. and Smith, P. (2000), What Works? Evidence-Based Policy and Practice in Public Services, Policy Press, Bristol. Fourcade, M. (2009), Economists and Societies : Discipline and Profession in the United States, Britain, and France, 1890s to 1990s, Princeton University Press. French, R.D. (2018), ‘Is it time to give up on evidence-based policy? Four answers’, Policy & Politics. Gains, F. and Stoker, G. (2011), ‘Special advisers and the transmission of ideas from the policy primeval soup’, Policy & Politics, Vol. 39 No. 4, pp. 485–498. Grundmann, R. (2016), ‘The Problem of Expertise in Knowledge Societies’, available at:https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-016-9308-7. Haas, P. (1992), ‘Introduction: Epistemic communities and international policy coordination’, International Organization, Vol. 46 No. 1, pp. 1–35. Hall, P.A. (1989), The Political Power of Economic Ideas : Keynesianism across Nations, Princeton University Press. Head, B.W. (2016), ‘Toward More “Evidence-Informed” Policy Making?’, Public Administration Review, Blackwell, Vol. 76 No. 3, pp. 472–484. Jasanoff, S. (2007), Designs on Nature : Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States, Princeton University Press. MacKillop, E. and Sheard, S. (2018), ‘The politics of health policy knowledge transfer: the evolution of the role of British health economics academic units’, Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice. McGann, J.G. and Shull, A. (2018), ‘Think Tanks and Emerging Power Networks’, Think Tanks and Emerging Power Policy Networks, Springer International Publishing, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 3–14. Oliver, K., Lorenc, T. and Innvaer, S. (2014), ‘New directions in evidence-based policy research: A critical analysis of the literature’, Health Research Policy and Systems, Vol. 12 No. 34. Parkhurst, J.O. (2017), The Politics of Evidence : From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence, Routledge, London. Radaelli, C. (1999), ‘The public policy of the European Union: Whither politics of expertise?’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 6 No. 5, pp. 757–774. Rich, A. (2004), Think Tanks, Public Policy, and the Politics of Expertise, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Smith, K. (2013), Beyond Evidence-Based Policy-Making in Public Health, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. Stoker, G. and Evans, M. (2016), Evidence-Based Policy Making in the Social Sciences, Bristol University Press, Bristol. Stone, D. (1996), Capturing the Political Imagination: Think Tanks and the Policy Process, Frank Cass. Weiss, C. (1977), ‘Research for policy’s sake: The enlightenment function of social research’, Policy Analysis, Vol. 3 No. 4, pp. 531–545. White, A. (2018), Evidence That Works : Building the Canadian Evidence Infrastructure for Social Policy. We invite papers addressing questions of the use of evidence, knowledge and expertise in policy-making, and the wider study of knowledge and expertise under other labels (e.g. expert professions, epistemic communities, ideas). We welcome both empirical and conceptual/theoretical papers, as well as papers with a methodological focus. We are especially interested in papers building on policy and politics studies to inform these questions and their study, comparative studies allowing to highlight the contrasting cultures and practices around evidence use and diffusion of particular practices and ideas, methodologically innovative papers, and papers spanning different literatures and scholarships which may help us better understand and critique the role of evidence in policy. The workshop aims to bring together a mix of junior and more senior scholars and to include scholars from a broad range of research fields and countries. Each participant’s paper will be dedicated an hour and a half, including presentation (15 minutes), response by the designated discussant (15 minutes) and group discussion (remainder). Participants will be expected to present work in progress rather than published outputs in order for the session to play its role in developing the participant’s reflection and work. Paper proposals should demonstrate novelty, quality and contribution to knowledge regarding one or several of the themes outlined in the workshop proposal.