MODERNISING THE POLICY PROCESS

Abstract

In an increasingly complex world of interrelated problems many governments have tried to modernise their institutional structures and the ways in which they go about making policy. In the UK and elsewhere this has been most apparent in the growing emphasis given to evidence-based policy making in contrast to faith-based approaches and the conviction politics of earlier periods. Much of the debate about the impact and indeed value of this apparently new approach has focussed on the supply side of the equation: on the utilisation of research evidence and how researchers might make their work more relevant and useful to policy makers. Less attention has been paid in these debates to the different ways in which the nature of policy and policy making is conceptualised and how this might affect the relationship between research and policy.

This article takes forward this debate by critically reviewing the theorisation of the policy/research relationship under three different conceptions of policy making: the stages model, the advocacy coalition framework and the argumentative turn. It considers the future of policy research via two questions: who should carry out policy research in which settings; and what skills do they need to do so more effectively?

Notes

1. At the time of writing, a report from The Identity Project at the London School of Economics had just been published. This offers an assessment of the UK Identity Card Bill and its implications and broadly speaking reaches a number of conclusions critical of the government's proposals. It was reported that a senior civil servant attempted to delay publication of the report until after a Commons debate and the Home Secretary described the research as technically incompetent and factually flawed and one of its authors as partisan and biased. The Director of the LSE, Sir Howard Davies, accused the Home Office of ‘bullying and intimidation’ in this matter and the Home Secretary offered no evidence of the alleged flaws in the research but was said to be standing by his comments.

2. Indeed, social researchers in government are now able to study for an MSc in Policy Analyses and Evaluation, awarded by the Institute of Education at the University of London and my own School has for some years offered an MSc in Policy Research which combines the teaching of research and analytic skills with the development of an awareness of the organizational and political context in which policy research takes place.