The Politics of Evidence-Based Policy Making

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Cairney
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Science ◽  
Good Evidence ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Evidence Based Policy ◽  
Policy Environments ◽  
Hierarchy Of Evidence ◽  
Scientific Principles

“Evidence-based policy making” (EBPM) has become a popular term to describe the need for more scientific and less ideological policy making. Some compare it to “evidence-based medicine,” which describes moves to produce evidence, using commonly-held scientific principles regarding a hierarchy of evidence, which can directly inform practice. Policy making is different: there is less agreement on what counts as good evidence, and more things to consider when responding to evidence.Our awareness of these differences between science and policy are not new. Current debates resemble a postwar policy science agenda, to produce more scientific and “rational” policy analysis, which faced major empirical and normative obstacles: the world is not that simple, and an overly technocratic approach to policy undermines much-needed political debate. To understand modern discussions of EBPM, key insights from previous discussions must be considered: policy making is both “rational” and “irrational”; it takes place in complex policy environments or systems, whose properties should be understood in some depth; and it can and should not be driven by “the evidence” alone.

Evidence-based policy making and social science

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerry Stoker ◽  
Mark Evans
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Best Friends ◽  
Evidence Based Policy ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Will

This chapter looks at the tensions between the making of public policy and the offering of evidence from social science. Social science and policymaking are not natural ‘best’ friends. Policymakers express frustration that social science often appears to have little of relevance to say and social scientists will regularly complain that policymakers are not interested in using their evidence. Yet the two groups appear, almost against the will of the participants in them, to be thrown together. Policymakers are told to evidence their policies and social scientists are urged to step up to provide that evidence. The aim of this chapter is to help improve that situation by identifying some of the main blockages on either side of the social science and policy making fence and see how they can be addressed.

Can Complexity Move UK Policy beyond ‘Evidence-Based Policy Making’ and the ‘Audit Culture’? Applying a ‘Complexity Cascade’ to Education and Health Policy

2011 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Geyer
Keyword(s):  
Health Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Policy Response ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Visual Metaphor ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Audit Culture ◽  
Education And Health ◽  
Evidence Based Policy ◽  
The Uk

For much of the twentieth century UK public policy has been based on a strong centralist, rationalist and managerialist framework. This orientation was significantly amplified by New Labour in the 1990s and 2000s, leading to the development of ‘evidence-based policy making’ (EBPM) and the ‘audit culture’ – a trend that looks set to continue under the current government. Substantial criticisms have been raised against the targeting/audit strategies of the audit culture and other forms of EBPM, particularly in complex policy areas. This article accepts these criticisms and argues that in order to move beyond these problems one must not only look at the basic foundation of policy strategies, but also develop practical alternatives to those strategies. To that end, the article examines one of the most basic and common tools of the targeting/audit culture, the aggregate linear X-Y graph, and shows that when it has been applied to UK education policy, it leads to: (1) an extrapolation tendency; (2) a fluctuating ‘crisis–success' policy response process; and (3) an intensifying targeting/auditing trend. To move beyond these problems, one needs a visual metaphor which combines an ability to see the direction of policy travel with an aspect of continual openness that undermines the extrapolation tendency, crisis–success policy response and targeting/auditing trend. Using a general complexity approach, and building on the work of Geyer and Rihani, this article will attempt to show that a ‘complexity cascade’ tool can be used to overcome these weaknesses and avoid their negative effects in both education and health policy in the UK.

scholarly journals Big Data’s Other Privacy Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Grimmelmann
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Evidence Based Policy ◽  
Privacy Problem

Chapter in:Big Data, Big Challenges for Evidence-Based Policy Making 211 (Kumar Jayasuria & Kathryn Ritcheske eds., West Academic 2015) (page proof PDF)

scholarly journals Miasmas, mental models and preventive public health: some philosophical reflections on science in the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Trisha Greenhalgh
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Relative Weight ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Science And Policy ◽  
Hierarchy Of Evidence ◽  
John Snow ◽  
History Of ◽  
Support Policy ◽  
Preventive Public Health ◽  
Based Medicine

When the history of the COVID-19 pandemic is written, it is likely to show that the mental models held by scientists sometimes facilitated their thinking, thereby leading to lives saved, and at other times constrained their thinking, thereby leading to lives lost. This paper explores some competing mental models of how infectious diseases spread and shows how these models influenced the scientific process and the kinds of facts that were generated, legitimized and used to support policy. A central theme in the paper is the relative weight given by dominant scientific voices to probabilistic arguments based on experimental measurements versus mechanistic arguments based on theory. Two examples are explored: the cholera epidemic in nineteenth century London—in which the story of John Snow and the Broad Street pump is retold—and the unfolding of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and early 2021—in which the evidence-based medicine movement and its hierarchy of evidence features prominently. In each case, it is shown that prevailing mental models—which were assumed by some to transcend theory but were actually heavily theory-laden—powerfully shaped both science and policy, with fatal consequences for some.

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