Is it time to give up on evidence-based policy? Four answers

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richard frenchRichard D. French

This blog post was originally published on the Discover Society – Policy and Politics blog on 2 January 2019.

I have watched an enthusiastic, well-intentioned lobby for evidence-based policy on my campus for several years. However, I frequently reflect that if I were to opine publicly on evolutionary biology, or astrophysics, with as little knowledge of the subject as various scientifically trained persons hold forth on public policy, I would soon be read out of the intellectually reputable part of the university community – and rightly so.

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The Role of Public Sector Boards

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Thomas SchillemansThomas Schillemans

For many organisations providing important public services, such as education, health care or community services, non-governing boards serve as the primary accountability mechanisms for daily management. The ‘boardisation of the public sector’, as Wilks described this, has evolved considerably. In my country of residence the Netherlands, for instance, the guesstimation is that we have almost 50,000 positions on those boards, six times as many as in democratically elected local councils. A large proportion of those positions have been created in the recent past. This would suggest that the board model is a major success.

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How are social impact bonds created and implemented?

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Lowe_Kimmitt_Wilson_Gibbon2Toby Lowe, Jonathan Kimmitt, Rob Wilson, Mike Martin* and Jane Gibbon

This blog post was originally published on the Discover Society – Policy and Politics blog on 4 December 2018.

In 2010, the UK’s Ministry of Justice established the first Social Impact Bond (SIB) – a new policy tool, designed to link the outcomes of social interventions to payments. The idea was that the financial risk of these interventions would be borne by a private investor rather than public funds. In our recent research article published in Policy & Politics, we set out to offer one of the first detailed accounts of how these mechanisms are created and implemented. Our results highlight three levels of analysis (macro, intermediate and micro) where tensions and congruencies can be found.

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Meeting the Challenge of Populism: The Future of Governance and Public Management

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Gerry StokerGerry Stoker

This blog post was originally published on the Discover Society – Policy and Politics blog on 6 November 2018.

In my recent Policy & Politics article, I explore the question of whether the governance paradigm can survive the rise of populism.

The governance paradigm that came to the fore from the 1980s onwards reflected a sense that the conditions for governing in contemporary democratic states were undergoing some profound changes. It encouraged the use of new policy tools: networks and markets. For its advocates, its style of working was not only more effective, but more democratic because it allowed a wider range of people direct influence over making decisions.

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Free research articles for APPAM 2018 from Policy & Politics on improving policy-making by engaging with evidence

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Sarah Brown 1Sarah Brown,
Journal Manager of Policy & Politics

In celebration of this year’s APPAM theme of improving policy-making by developing and engaging with evidence, we bring you the latest and best of our research on this topic. From our prize-winning article on Evidence translation: an exploration of policy makers’ use of evidence by Jo Ingold and Mark Monaghan, which defines a new conceptual model of evidence translation highlighting the crucial role evidence plays in the policy process, to Richard French’s exploration of answers to the question whether it is time to give up on evidence based policy.

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Policy & Politics Highlights: our Winter collection

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Sarah Brown 1Sarah Brown,
Journal Manager of Policy & Politics

Policy & Politics Highlights collection 1 November 2018 – 31 January 2019.

For our Winter Highlights collection from Policy & Politics, we’ve chosen three of the most popular articles from our recent special issue on Practical Lessons from Policy Theories.

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Do elites in a society exercise disproportionate and unacceptable levels of influence during collective decision making processes to secure undue benefits for themselves?

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Waheduzzaman et al
Wahed Waheduzzaman, Sharif As-Saber and Mohotaj Binte Hamid

Countries around the world have been facing numerous challenges in promoting citizen participation in the governance process. Among them, elite capture is considered to be a significant stumbling block that undermines this process. ‘Elite capture’ is where elites in a society exercise disproportionate and unacceptable levels of influence over collective functions and manipulate decision making processes to secure undue benefits for themselves (see Wong, 2012).

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Democracy needs more than just voice: coping with communicative plenty

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Ercan_Hendricks_DryzekSelen A. Ercan, Carolyn M. Hendriks and John S. Dryzek

Imagine a crowded restaurant that is starting to get noisy. The noise at each table begins to rise as people try to make themselves heard. Eventually the noise becomes so loud that nobody can hear anything. Here’s a familiar context where there is plenty of expression, but precious little listening, and not much good conversation.

The noisy restaurant is a metaphor, we believe, for what we see in contemporary democracy where citizens have plenty of opportunities to express their views and opinions about anything that concerns them, but there is no guarantee and little likelihood that these views will be listened to, reflected upon, and/or taken up by decision-making bodies.

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Do contract characteristics impact on private investment in public-private partnerships? Evidence from China

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Wang etalHuanming Wang, Bin Chen, Wei Xiong and Guangdong Wu

Over the past three decades, many developed and developing countries have witnessed the increasing provision of public goods and services through private firms. With the New Public Management movement, state monopolies in many infrastructure sectors have been relaxed and privatization has been utilized as an alternative way of delivering public services. Private-capital investment has been allowed to build, operate and maintain components of the infrastructure through various types of cooperation between the public and private sectors. As a result, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become a prominent part of the local government landscape. Advocates have emphasized the advantages of private investment in PPP infrastructure projects: enhanced efficiency, cost savings, improved effectiveness, better quality of services, and reduced government overheads.

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Understanding academic impact: fear and failure, stealth and seeds

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Matt FlindersMatthew Flinders

This blog post was originally published on the Oxford University Press Blog on 8 August 2018.

Failure is an unavoidable element of any academic career. For all but a small number of ‘superstar über-scholars’ most of the research papers we submit will be rejected, our most innovative book proposals will be politely rebuffed, and our applications for grants, prizes and fellowships will fall foul of good fortune. There is, of course, a strong correlation between ambition and failure in the sense that the more innovative and risky you try to be, the bolder the claims you try to substantiate, and the ‘bigger’ the journal you try to publish in the higher your chances of rejection.

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