In a book to be published this month, “Obliquity – how our goals are best pursued indirectly” British economist John Kay looks at the reasoning behind the notion of evidence-based policy and finds it wanting.
Kay defines evidence-based policy making as a process of determining the goals of a policy intervention, and then looking for evidence to determine the most effective means of delivering those goals. This, he claims, is not a good description of how policy decisions are made in reality, or could ever be.
Having set up his straw man, Kay goes on to knock it down, arguing that this linear description of developing and delivering policy serves more to disorient strategic thinking and discussion than enlighten.
“There is not, and never will be, such a science [of evidence-based policy]” he says in a Financial Times article promoting the book.
Kay offers two distinct propositions: (1) evidence based policy does not happen; and (2) evidence based policy is not what should happen.
On his first point, anyone who has worked in government or social policy research knows that, whilst evidence-based policy has been the exception rather than the rule, things are changing (just have a look at the research pages of the National Policing Improvement Agency for example).
The second point shows Kay’s straw man for what it is – as many who apply research to policy have argued, the process is not about developing be evidence-based policy, but rather evidence informed policy. We are not so naive as to believe policy is or even should be developed on the basis of evidence alone – are we?
Tags: economics, evidence-based policy
Tony – catching up on this late. I used this article in a recent training exercise, as a polar counterpoint to another (also rather polar) article by Tim Harford (See ‘Political Ideas Need Proper Testing’ by Tim Harford at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9fe81752-322d-11df-b4e2-00144feabdc0.html) which argues that social policy ought to be made on the basis of RCTs. There was a lengthy debate in the international development world 20 years ago about the ethics of using RCTs in development interventions because it was effectively doing experiments on citizens with all the voice & accountability issues that came with it. I’m still not sure…
That is the correct blog for anyone who needs to find out about this topic. You notice so much its almost onerous to argue with you (not that I truly would want…HaHa). You definitely put a new spin on a subject thats been written about for years. Nice stuff, simply nice!
This is my second posting as the first somehow magically’ disappeared.