Assessment practices in the policy and politics cycles: a contribution to reflexive governance for sustainable development?

ABSTRACT

This article examines systematic assessment practices linked to sustainable development policies. We consider five types of assessment—monitoring, policy evaluation, formal audit, peer review, and specialist reporting—and explore their fate in the policy and electoral politics cycles. In contrast to traditional views of the policy cycle, we note that systematic assessments provide complementary feedback around the entire policy cycle. However, despite this omnipresence, their policy relevance is usually severely limited, inter alia because the policy cycle captures only parts of the political reality. A major concern for politicians (but not necessarily for policy or governance scholars) that goes far beyond the formulation and implementation of policies is the broader cycle of electoral politics that determines the state's political personnel as well as government priorities. Here, we highlight that the findings of systematic assessments are often lost in a cacophony of voices to which politicians are more carefully attuned, such as media responses and opinion polls, implying that scientific evidence is simply ‘overwritten’ with other kinds of evidence representing alternative rationalities and priorities. Despite numerous shortcomings, the true value of systematic assessment practices lies in their potential to furnish ammunition to state and non-state actors interested in securing change.

KEYWORDS:

• Reflexive governance
• evidence-based policy-making
• science–policy interface
• sustainable development
• policy cycle

Acknowledgements

We thank three anonymous reviewers from the Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning and Michael Pregernig for critical comments on a previous draft of the present paper. They propelled us not simply to revise but to rewrite large parts of it. James Meadowcroft acknowledges the support of the Canada Research Chair programme for supporting the research on which this article is based.

Notes

1 Environmental Performance Reviews are carried out by the OECD since 1992 (Lehtonen, 2007, p. 16).

2 For the countless specialist reports produced by the SDC, see the archive website at http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php; for the various publications produced by the German RNE, see http://www.sd-ommission.org.uk/publications.php.

3 http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/presslist.php/119/what-next-for-sustainable-development (accessed 10 December 2011).

4 http://www.nachhaltigkeitsrat.de/en/the-council/fact-sheet/?size=%EF%BF%BDblstr%25D (accessed 10 December 2011).

5 National audit institutions enjoy particularly high legitimacy. Financial audits have a tradition going back several hundred years and are important in ensuring the responsibility of the executive to parliament. Parliamentary committees have considerable legitimacy and their reports derive additional authority if they reflect cross-party support. Statistical offices and government agencies and departments are also generally well regarded. The institutions active in this area with perhaps the weakest authority are sustainable development watchdogs and stakeholder councils. They are relatively recent creations, far from the seat of power. Of course, a reputation for sound assessment can be built (or eroded), and over time institutional actors can increase (or loose) influence.

6 A rare exception to this rule can be found in the Netherlands where it is customary since 1986 for the Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis and the Environment Assessment Agency to assess party election manifestos with regard to their economic and environmental impacts during the election campaign phase since 1986 (Huitema & Turnhout, 2009, pp. 585–590).