The Politics of Evidence-Based Policymaking (Open Society Foundations)

Speaker: Dr Paul Cairney, Professor of Politics and Public Policy, University of Stirling, Scotland, UK

Description of series: This podcast includes a series of guest lectures to discuss the book The Politics of Evidence-Based Policymaking. I wrote the book in 2016 then wrote a very large number of blog posts to explore different aspects: EBPM | Paul Cairney: Politics & Public Policy (wordpress.com). Some of my talks were recorded as videos (or podcasts stored on external sites), and most are available here: ANZSOG | Paul Cairney: Politics & Public Policy (wordpress.com)

Description of this episode:

From the blog post to accompany the talk: Evidence Based Policy Making: 5 things you need to know and do (click for the whole post)

‘Evidence based policy making’ is a good political slogan, but not a good description of the policy process. If you expect to see it, you will be disappointed. If you seek more thoughtful ways to understand and act within political systems, you need to understand five key points then decide how to respond.

Decide what it means.

EBPM looks like a valence issue in which most of us agree that policy and policymaking should be ‘evidence based’ (perhaps like ‘evidence based medicine’). Yet, valence issues only command broad agreement on vague proposals. By defining each term we highlight ambiguity and the need to make political choices to make sense of key terms:

Should you use restrictive criteria to determine what counts as ‘evidence’ and scientific evidence?

Which metaphor, evidence based or informed, describes how pragmatic you will be?

The unclear meaning of ‘policy’ prompts you to consider how far you’d go to pursue EBPM, from a one-off statement of intent by a key actor, to delivery by many actors, to the sense of continuous policymaking requiring us to be always engaged.

Policymaking is done by policymakers, but many are unelected and the division between policy maker/ influencer is often unclear. So, should you seek to influence policy by influencing influencers?

Respond to ‘rational’ and ‘irrational’ thought.

‘Comprehensive rationality’ describes the absence of ambiguity and uncertainty when policymakers know what problem they want to solve and how to solve it, partly because they can gather and understand all information required to measure the problem and determine the effectiveness of solutions.