Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making: The Elusive Search for Rational Public Administration

Evidence‐based policy making has been criticised as a revival of the ‘rationality project’ in which democratic politics is regarded as rent‐seeking and a deadweight loss to society. In response, the evidence‐based policy movement has failed to articulate a defence in which the rationality animating the policy process is situational and contextual rather than unique and authoritative. This article traces the movement's motto –‘what works?’– to the American pragmatist movement, whose influence on Harold Lasswell and New Labour in the UK was substantial. This article argues that the ambition for evidence‐based policy‐making should be seen in terms of the transition from a single, unique and universal rationality toward multiple rationalities that vary according to different policy making contexts. Interpreted in such terms, evidence‐based policy making can avoid several of the main criticisms, and offer strong potential to contribute to solving policy problems.     

Bridging the Gap between Evidence and Policy Makers: A Case Study of the Pew‐MacArthur Results First Initiative

Developing ways to bridge the long‐recognized gap between researchers and policy makers is increasingly important in this age of constrained public resources. As noted by recent scholarship, progress toward evidence‐informed policy making requires both improving the supply of research that is reliable, timely, and relevant to the policy process and promoting demand and support for this information among decision makers. This article presents a case study of the Pew‐MacArthur Results First Initiative, which is working in a growing number of state and local governments to build systems that bring rigorous evidence on “what works” into their budget processes and to support its use in resource allocation decisions. The initiative's experience to date is promising, although creating lasting and dynamic evidence‐based policy‐making systems requires a long‐term commitment by both researchers and policy makers.     

Policy networks,politics and decentralisation policies in Ghana

Policy‐making is a political process involving a network of actors with varied interests. This article uses policy network as an analytical framework to understand the politics of decentralisation policy‐making in Ghana from the perspective of interactions among interest groups. The article is based on a research study, which utilised semi‐structured interviews and documentary sources in its data collection. It argues that the lack of progress in decentralisation in Ghana can be explained by the politics surrounding government–interest group relations. The article also provides evidence to indicate how varied interests represented within the decentralisation policy networks affected politics and in turn influenced decentralisation policy‐making and outcomes. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Theory and Practice of “Nudging”: Changing Health Behaviors

Many of the most significant challenges in health care—such as smoking, overeating, and poor adherence to evidence‐based guidelines—will only be resolved if we can influence behavior. The traditional policy tools used when thinking about influencing behavior include legislation, regulation, and information provision. Recently, policy analysts have shown interest in policies that “nudge” people in particular directions, drawing on advances in understanding that behavior is strongly influenced in largely automatic ways by the context within which it is placed. This article considers the theoretical basis for why nudges might work and reviews the evidence in health behavior change. The evidence is structured according to the Mindspace framework for behavior change. The conclusion is that insights from behavioral economics offer powerful policy tools for influencing behavior in health care. This article provides public administration practitioners with an accessible summary of this literature, putting these insights into practical use.     

Politicians,Media Moguls and PayTV: Pay‐TV Policy‐making in Australia 1977‐1995

This article explores the major influences on pay‐TV policy‐making in Australia from the late 1970s, when the issue was first discussed in the context of proposals to establish a domestic communications satellite, up until the introduction of pay‐TV in Australia in 1995, thereby placing current developments in the pay‐TV industry in context. The article argues that among larger broadcasting and telecommunications issues, pay‐TV has never been ‘the main game’. For both Coalition and Labor governments, the expansion of existing free‐to‐air television services in regional Australia and the introduction of competition in telecommunications have been much more important policy priorities than the introduction of pay‐TV. Furthermore, because pay‐TV policy‐making largely took place in this wider policy context, the structure of the broadcasting and telecommunications industries also shaped pay‐TV policy outcomes.     

Lessons to be learnt? The role of evaluations of active labour market programmes in evidence‐based policy making

The interest in results‐based policy formulation requires us to examine the impact of evaluations. This article focuses on the production and use of impact evaluations of UK active labour market programmes. It is intended to be useful for non‐evaluators and for those working in developing and transition countries. The UK provides a case study where there is good evaluation data, available expertise and high‐level political commitment to evaluation. However, obstacles remain in the generation and use of impact data. The article seeks to identify the opportunities and difficulties faced in the UK, and it considers the implications for other countries. It suggests that the measurement of impact concepts will prove difficult in countries that do not have sound administrative data, comprehensive labour market statistics and well‐established macroeconomic and tax‐benefit models. Furthermore, the use of evaluation data may be limited by a range of factors, most crucially those emanating from the legislative and policy‐making environment. The conclusion is that if knowledge‐based policy management is to be improved, changes in evaluation methodology will only be effective if supported by changes in the wider government environment. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Revising Road Safety Policy: The Role of Systematic Evidence in Switzerland

In recent years, interest has grown in promoting and employing “evidence‐based policymaking.” This has been accompanied by an increase in available information about the performance of public policies. While existing research concludes that evidence about “what works” rarely prevails in democratic politics, it is inconclusive about which conditions affect the relevance of such evidence in decision‐making processes. This article aims first to clarify these conditions, and second, to present empirical findings from two case studies of road safety policy revision. The findings show how the creation and diffusion, as well as the political context, affect the role evidence plays in legislative policy revision in Switzerland.     

National Policy‐Making in Indigenous Affairs: Blueprint for an Indigenous Review Council

This article examines the dearth of any representative Indigenous role in national Indigenous affairs policy‐making and suggests a remedy. After making the case for a specific Indigenous place in national policy‐making, the article considers the reasons for the failure of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), the body that filled this brief for a decade and a half. The article then considers three possible ways of ensuring an Indigenous role in the policy‐making process: a replacement for ATSIC with specific policy powers; set seats for Indigenous representatives in federal parliament; and the creation of a new elected body whose role would be to review Indigenous affairs legislation. The article concludes that the latter proposal in particular is worth trialling as it would ensure a significant Indigenous voice in national policy‐making while learning from the mistakes that led to ATSIC's demise.     

What makes evidence‐based policy making such a useful myth? The case of NICE guidance on bariatric surgery in the United Kingdom

There is widespread skepticism among policy scholars and practitioners about the move to rationalize policy making: The naive vision of “evidence‐based policy” is often contrasted with the reality of “policy‐based evidence.” Yet, the language of evidence‐based policy making (EBPM) continues to dominate policy debate about complex and contested issues. In this paper, I explore this apparent paradox by looking at what makes EBPM such a useful myth for all sorts of policy actors. I do so with reference to the pioneering work of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), focusing specifically on its work in relation to bariatric surgery, a suite of controversial and drastic weight loss procedures. I show that the myth of EBPM has political, pragmatic, and procedural utility in practice, allowing the organization to set and administer guidelines on this uncertain, complex, and contested treatment in ways that sustain buy‐in and enable ongoing contestation.     

Overlapping games and cross‐cutting coalitions in the European Union

Despite hopes of theoretical convergence between the disciplines of comparative politics and international relations, the integration of explanations of the European policy‐making process and of the process of European integration is yet to be accomplished. This article looks at how decision‐making crises could be the focal points with which to explore the no‐man's land where comparative politics and international relations could meet each other. The article will highlight the structural ambivalence of the EU policy process and the collision of functional areas and territorial politics over multidimensional decisions. It will also show that the interplay of overlapping policy games, cross‐cutting coalitions and poor coordination mechanisms at all levels can go a long way to explaining the oscillations between path‐dependency and policy instability.     

Outcome‐focussed planning in Australian local government: How council plans and cultural development plans measure up

Contemporary public policy increasingly emphasises a focus on outcomes, the difference that occurs in the lives of citizens from policy and activity of government. Other contemporary imperatives for effective planning include: recognition of the values of the community whom plans serve, direction towards goals and objectives, utilisation of evidence, articulation of theories of change that underpin planning and responsiveness to evaluation. This article reports a desk‐based research project to assess how local government planning documents meet these imperatives. Two documents are examined for 67 councils across Australia: the major strategic document, council plan or other‐named document and the cultural development plan (CDP) or other‐named document that directs staff and investment aimed at cultural enrichment of the LGA. Findings indicate that the majority of councils’ documents appeared only concordant with one or two of these planning imperatives. No plan addressed more than three. Overall, council plans and cultural development plans did not clearly indicate their responsiveness to values of their communities, nor include objectives that formed measurable steps towards goals or formally refer to the use of evidence in decision‐making. No plans included theories of change to underpin decision‐making. This analysis indicates clear areas of improvement for planning for local governance.     

Building informal knowledge‐sharing relationships between policy makers and academics: Insights from a PM&C engagement project

This article outlines an innovative project to encourage knowledge sharing and engagement between academics and a policy team within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C). The project was designed to enhance policy advice by drawing on a group of academics outside the policy ranks to act as a sounding board, to question, and provide differing perspectives within the policy process of crafting advice to government. External expertise and particularly academic research has the potential to improve evidence‐based policy but often fails to be specific or timely for those at the “pointy end” of policy decision making. An informal knowledge sharing framework has the potential to improve the exchange of information through confidential and targeted conversations between researchers and public servants as one way of overcoming these barriers.     

A Norm of Evidence and Research in Decision‐making (NERD): Scale Development,Reliability, and Validity

Evidence‐based management is on the rise as a strategy to promote more rational decision‐making and effectiveness in governance and public service delivery. To understand how widespread the use of evidence is among managers in various settings, and why evidence is emphasized more in some settings than others, it is necessary to have a good measure of the use of research and evidence in management decision‐making. This article reports on the development and testing of a new multi‐item scale, Norm of Evidence and Research in Decision‐making (NERD), that can be used across organizational and functional settings to assess evidence‐based management practices within an agency. The results indicate that the scale is internally consistent (reliable) and that it correlates with criteria of the underlying construct (valid). The article concludes with a discussion of the potential utility of the scale for advancing research and understanding about the use of evidence by public and nonprofit managers.     

Toward More “Evidence‐Informed” Policy Making?

The quality of public decision making depends significantly on the quality of analysis and advice provided through public organizations. Champions of “evidence‐informed” policy making claim that rigorous evaluation practices can significantly improve attainment of cost‐effective outcomes. After decades of experience, performance information is more sophisticated, but evaluation practices and capabilities vary enormously. Public agencies gather and process vast amounts of information, but there has been little analysis of how this information is actually utilized for policy and program improvement. This article examines how government agencies use evidence about policy and program effectiveness, with attention to four themes: (1) the prospects for improving “evidence‐informed” policy making, (2) the diversity of practices concerning evidence utilization and evaluation across types of public agencies and policy arenas, (3) recent attempts to “institutionalize” evaluation as a core feature of policy development and budget approval, and (4) the relationships between public agencies and nongovernmental sources of expertise.     

Open Data for Science,Policy, and the Public Good

Supporters of open data believe that free and complete access to research data is beneficial for science, public policy, and society. In environmental science and policy, open data systems can enable relevant research and inform evidence‐based governmental decisions. This article examines the unlikely case of Brazil's National Institute for Space Research's transition toward an open data model. Considering Brazil's young democracy, incipient practice of government transparency and accountability, and lacking a tradition of science‐policy dialogue, this case is a striking example of how open data can support public debate by making information about forest cover widely available. The case shows the benefits and challenges of developing such open data systems, and highlights the various forms of accessibility involved in making data available to the public.     

A New Era for Think Tanks in Public Policy? International Trends,Australian Realities

Although the powerful have always sought advice from the knowledgeable, it took the appeal of the policy sciences movement of the late 1940s and onward to build and consolidate a veritable industry of policy analysis and advice. ¹ One of the hallmarks of this development was the advent of institutes that were exclusively devoted to produce research‐based policy arguments and to inject these into the policy‐making process. These organisations were referred to as ‘think tanks’. Half a century later, the project of the policy sciences movement has been amply criticised, and has mutated into various philosophies of policy analysis, each harbouring distinct and often conflicting perspectives on the nature and role of (scientific) knowledge in the battle of arguments that is public policy‐making. The first wave of the policy sciences movement's privileging of science‐based policy has not disappeared. In fact it is currently experiencing a revival under the banner of ‘evidence‐based policy’. But it has to compete with other views of public policy‐making which deconstruct the authority claim of scientific knowledge, emphasising instead its contestability. Yet there are now more organisations that refer to themselves, or can be labelled, as ‘think tanks’ than ever before. Why? And what does it mean to be a ‘think tank’ in the post‐positivist era and in the increasingly boundary‐less, highly networked societies of today? This article first surveys recent developments in the world of think tanks as reported by the international literature on the subject, and then examines the implications for understanding the nature and role of Australian think tanks.     

The Policy Power of the Westminster Parliament: The “Parliamentary State” and the Empirical Evidence

Drawing on several large research projects, and using both quantitative and qualitative evidence, this article assesses the policy influence of the Westminster parliament. Frequently dismissed as powerless in both academic and more popular accounts, we instead show evidence of an institution with significant policy influence, at successive stages of the policy process. Conventional accounts have focused too much on the decision‐making stage, to the exclusion of parliament's role at earlier and later policy stages. Critics have also focused disproportionately on visible influence, overlooking behind‐the‐scenes negotiations and the role of anticipated reactions. Based on analysis of over 6,000 parliamentary votes, 4,000 legislative amendments, 1,000 committee recommendations, and 500 interviews, we conclude that Westminster's influence is both substantial and probably rising.     

Improving Policy Effectiveness: Land Use Planning in a Devolved Polity

Improving public policy efficiency and effectiveness in land use planning is an established priority on the prevailing political agenda in the UK. Practical measures to enhance policy formulation in local land use development plans in Scotland offer an interesting case study of an attempt to improve policy consistency, and to secure efficiency gains in policy authorship. This article considers the specific focus on the drafting stage of public policy‐making drawing on insights provided by research into the production of model policies in Scotland. It questions the extent to which such an initiative will promote a more robust public policy‐making discipline in light of the policy cycle. The discussion of the case study illustrates a practical attempt by central government to enhance public policy‐making at the local level, while raising questions about the dangers of invoking a technocratic and instrumentalist approach to policy analysis.     

Evidence Based Policy: Principles of Transparency and Accountability

This article provides a practical guide for improving the quality of evidence‐based policy. Rather than adopting an approach that gives priority to particular types of research methodologies, this paper argues that evidence drawn from any methodology will improve if standards of transparency and accountability are followed in the process of gathering, analysing, interpreting, and presenting evidence for policy. The papers details what these standards of transparency and accountability mean in practice, how these standards can be achieved, and possible limits to their adoption.     

Evidence for Tackling the Complexities of Water Governance

Water policy and management decisions are increasingly challenged by uncertainties associated with climate change, changing demographics, and social values. This article discusses how research by water governance scholars supports and complements Rob M. Skinner's arguments about the complexities of water planning and policy making and the importance of stakeholder engagement. Specifically, it focuses on how this decision‐making context shapes the ways in which evidence is used and understood in water governance. To conclude, this article draws lessons for practitioners about the limitations of using evidence in water governance.