28/02/2019 The politics of evidence-based policymaking | Science | The Guardian

The politics of evidence based policymaking

When presenting evidence to policymakers, scientists and other experts need to engage with
the policy process that exists, not the one we wish existed.
Paul Cairney
Thu 10 Mar 2016 06.46 GMT

E
vidence-based policymaking is now central to the scientific agenda: most researchers
need to demonstrate that they are making an impact on policy, and want to help
bridge the evidence-policy gap. Ongoing debates over energy policy are one of many
examples in which scientists bemoan a tendency for policymakers to produce
ideological rather than ‘evidence based’ decisions, and do their best to change their
minds.

Yet these efforts will fail if scientists and other experts fail to understand how the policy
process works. To do so requires us to reject two romantic notions: first, that policymakers will
ever think like scientists; and second, that there is a clearly identifiable point of decision at
which scientists can contribute evidence to make a demonstrable impact.

To better understand how policymakers think, we need a full account of “bounded rationality.”
This phrase describes the fact that policymakers can only gather limited information before
they make decisions quickly. They will have made a choice before you have a chance to say
“more research is needed”! To do so, they use two short cuts: rational ways to gather quickly

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28/02/2019 The politics of evidence-based policymaking | Science | The Guardian

the best evidence on solutions to meet their goals; and irrational ways - including drawing on
emotions and gut feeling - to identify problems even more quickly.

This highlights a potential flaw in academic strategies. The most common response to
bounded rationality in scientific articles is to focus on the supply of evidence: to develop a
hierarchy of evidence, which often privileges randomised control trials; to generate
knowledge; and to present it in a form that is understandable to policymakers.

We need to pay more attention to the demand for evidence, taking more account of lurches of
policymaker attention, often driven by quick and emotional decisions. For example, there is
no point in taking the time to make evidence-based solutions easier to understand if
policymakers are no longer interested. Successful advocates recognise the value of emotional
appeals and simple stories to draw attention to a problem.

To identify when and how to contribute evidence, we need to understand the complicated
environment in which policymaking takes place. There is no “policy cycle” in which to inject
scientific evidence at the point of decision. Rather, the policy process is messy and often
unpredictable. It is a complex system in which the same injection of evidence can have no
effect, or a major effect.

This system contains many actors presenting evidence to influence policymakers at many
levels of government; networks, which are often close-knit and difficult to access because
bureaucracies have operating procedures that favour particular sources of evidence over
others; and a language within policymaking institutions indicating what types of thinking have
greatest traction (such as “value for money”). Social or economic crises can prompt lurches of
attention from one issue to another, or prompt policymakers to change completely the ways in
which they understand a policy problem. However, changes to well-established ways of
thinking in government are rare, or take place only over longer timeframes.

This highlights a second potential flaw in academic strategies: the idea that the impact of
research can be described as a set-piece event, separable from the policy process as a whole.
Instead, we need to focus on long-term strategies: investing the time to find out where the
action is, and how to exert influence as part of a coalition of like-minded actors looking for
opportunities to raise attention to problems and solutions.

Unfortunately, these insights mostly help us identify what not to do. And the alternatives may
be difficult to accept (how many scientists would be comfortable making manipulative or
emotional appeals to generate attention for their research?) or deliver (who has the time to
conduct research and seek meaningful influence?). However, only by engaging with the
practical and ethical dilemmas that the policy process creates for advocates of evidence, can
we produce strategies that are better suited to a complex real world.

Paul Cairney (@CairneyPaul) is professor of politics and public policy at the University of Stirling
p.a.cairney@stir.ac.uk. This post is based on his new book The Politics of Evidence Based
Policymaking, which was launched this week by the Alliance for Useful Evidence. More details are
available on his website.

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