Deconstructing the debate over evidence-based policy

ABSTRACT

The renewed interest in evidence-based policy has been accompanied by a debate on the nature and desirability of the use of evidence in policy-making. At its core, this debate pits rationalist supporters of increased use of information for reasoned decision-making against constructivist critics who argue that policy-making is not based on evidence and that an appeal to evidence is the first step toward a dangerous elimination of human judgment in the policy process. Although this dialog is framed as a debate, it can be shown that opposing voices rarely engage with each other’s arguments. To improve the relevance of the discourse, scholars of public policy must recognize the positive and normative assumptions behind the most common arguments related to evidence-based policy and acknowledge that the ‘sides of the debate’ are, within limits, mostly intellectually compatible.

KEYWORDS:

• Evidence-based policy
• research utilization
• rationalism
• constructivism
• policy formulation and implementation

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Joshua Newman

Joshua Newman is a lecturer in the School of Social and Policy Studies at Flinders University, in Adelaide, South Australia. His research interests include processes of public policy, such as learning and transfer, evaluation, research utilization, and government-business interaction.