APPLICATION FORM FOR PROSPECTIVE WORKSHOP DIRECTORS

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1 APPLICATION FORM FOR PROSPECTIVE WORKSHOP DIRECTORS If you wish to apply to direct a workshop at the Joint Sessions in Rennes, France in Spring 2008, please first see the explanatory notes, then complete this form, which will serve as the cover sheet for your workshop proposal. This form should be sent with your workshop proposal to the ECPR Central Services. You can do this by either ing both documents as an attached file (in word format.doc or rich text format.rtf) to the ECPR Central Services at ecpr@essex.ac.uk. Alternatively, you can print up the information and send it as a fax to the Central Services, fax: , or submit using the online application form. The deadline for applications is Friday, 16 February Title of proposed workshop: The Politics of Evidence-based Policy-making Subject area: Policy Analysis Abstract of proposed workshop. Maximum of 250 words (suitable for publication in the academic programme leaflet and on the ECPR web site): Evidence-based policy is in good currency. It suggests that policy making should be pragmatic, based on what works best, rather than ideological position. Underlying are fundamental questions. What is evidence and when, how, where and by whom should it be enrolled into policy-making processes? In this workshop, we aim at discussing these questions. Papers should address one of the following subjects: (a) methods of gaining relevant knowledge (which way to gather and present the relevant evidence?), (b) transfer of knowledge into decision-making/politics (especially the conditions for using evidence in policy-making), (c) implementation and effectiveness (does evidence-based policy make a difference in terms of actually solving the problems at stake?). Papers can thus both advance the methodological development or report experiences with evidence-based policy. We welcome methodological papers, case studies, country studies, and comparative research. However, all papers should have an empirical basis for their claims. As evidence-based policy so far is principally a British affair, we aim at opening the discussion, inviting papers from countries where the debate on evidencebased policy is just about to start and the respective attempts are facing different conditions in terms of polity and politics as well as from countries where respective endeavours (by the name of evidencebased policy or with other labels) have been completed and results have been achieved. We also are especially interested in contributions dealing with experiences at the EU-level. Name of workshop director(s): Fritz Sager and Ray Pawson

2 Name and address of institution(s): Fritz Sager Assistant Professor for Policy Analysis and Evaluation Institute of Political Science University of Bern Unitobler Lerchenweg 36 CH-3000 Bern 9 Switzerland Ray Pawson Professor of Social Research Methodology School of Sociology and Social Policy University of Leeds Leeds LS2 9JT UK Telephone number/s: Fritz Sager: ; Ray Pawson: Fax number/s: Fritz Sager: ; Ray Pawson: address/s: Fritz Sager: sager@ipw.unibe.ch; Ray Pawson: r.d.pawson@leeds.ac.uk Please note that the information above is VERY important, as it will be used in all future correspondence and, if the proposal is successful, printed in the academic programme. The proposal should be typed with 1.5 line spacing on three/four A4 pages using this sheet as the first page, and should cover the points outlined in the guidelines ( For further information, please contact either: ECPR Central Services University of Essex Wivenhoe Park COLCHESTER CO4 3SQ Essex, UK Tel: /2497 Fax: ecpr@essex.ac.uk Web: Outline of the topic there is nothing a government hates more than to be well-informed; for it makes the process of arriving at decisions much more complicated and difficult Sir John Maynard Keynes (taken from Skidelski 1992: 630, cited in Solesbury 2002: 93) Some fitfteen years ago, Coleman (1991) asked: Policy Research Who Needs It? Ever since the arrival of New Labour into government in 1997, this question has been answered at least for the UK with the installment of the new paradigm of evidence-based policy. The term suggests a change with past administrations, in the sense that policy making should be pragmatic, based on what works best, rather than ideological position (Campbell 2002: 89). Underlying such rhetoric are fundamental questions.

3 What is evidence and when, how, where and by whom should it be enrolled into policy-making processes? Accordingly, two discussions have evolved in recent years: the first around the question of how research evidence is translated into government policy and the second on how such evidence is ideally gained. The two questions are more closely related than it seems at first glance, as Pawson (2002a: 157) states: "The policy cycle revolves quicker than the research cycle, with the result that 'real time' evaluations often have little influence on policy making. As a result, the quest for evidence-based policy has turned increasingly to systematic reviews of the results of previous inquiries in the relevant policy domain." This shift, however, has not resolved the basic problem of utilization of evidence which remains a question of politics rather than methodology. The debate on evidence-based policy-making links to various strands of research in political science regardings the relationship between knowledge and politics (cf. the section below). We consider the topic politically as well as scientifically relevant and consequently particularly apt for a Workshop at the ECPR Joint Sessions for the following reasons: 1. It is one of the cutting-edge topics in policy research as in the course of increasing outputlegitimation, knowledge is gaining importance as a resource of power and legitimacy. The debate can thus breathe new life into the well-worn threads of technocracy research (cf. below) and link them to newer concepts of policy-making and implementation from the literatures on new modes of governance. 2. There still is little knowledge about whether evidence-based policy actually makes a difference. Not only we are eager to find out whether invoking output legitimacy really is justified in the case of evidence-based policy. There is great need for findings on the impacts of these policies. 3. Evidence-based policy so far is principally a British affair, even though the notion found its way into the EC White Paper on governance from However, policy-relevant information is also needed and policies are also evaluated elsewhere. We consider it most fruitful and important to broaden the discussion by including experiences from countries not as advanced as the UK in the matter in order to gain a comparative perspective. 4. The topic brings together two fields of political science that generally bear rather secluded lifes: theory and methodology. As mentioned above, the main particularity of the evidence-policy debate is that it embraces both the question of how to gain knowledge and how to put it into political practice. The first question is genuinely methodological; the second one is analytical and regards both governance theory and democracy theory (including its normative branch). Relation to existing research: The debate on evidence-based policy and hence our workshop relates to various strands of research in political science. These are: 1. Research and theorizing on professionalism and technocracy, rooting in classic studies such as Habermas (1976 [1963]), Hall (1968) or Scott (1965) and relaunched in the 1990s by scholars such

4 as Fischer (1990), Majone (1989) and Radaelli (1995). Current research on the matter includes Lodge and Hood (2003), Pollitt (2005), Sager (2007b), Weimer (2005) and West (2005). 2. The specific strand of literature on the usability and utilization of evaluation findings ranging from the seminal works by Weiss (e.g.,1987) to current studies such as Cooksy and Caracelli (2005), Feinstein (2002), Henry and Mark (2003), Henry (2004), Simons (2004) or Walter et al. (2006). 3. The broad literature on new modes of governance has a strong affinity to the question of policy specific knowledge cumulated in problem driven networks and the democratic legitimacy of the resulting policy solutions (Peters and Pierre 2000, Sager 2007b). E.g., the roles experts are specifically addressed in the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) by Sabatier (1999) or in the epistemic communities theory (Haas 1992). 4. Finally, the evidence-based policy literature has a very strong methodological facet to it (Pawson 2006; Sager 2007a, Nutley and Homel 2006). The common starting point the various methodological contributions share is the acknowledged inaccuracy of the employed approaches to gather knowledge (Pawson 2002a, Oliver et al. 2005). In a nutshell, whereas numerical meta-analysis is criticized for ending up with "de-contextualized lessons", narrative review is considered to be of little use as it "concludes with over-contextualized recommendations" (Pawson 2002b: 179). It is the aim of the proposed workshop, to pick up these threads and bring them together. Participants: There is a well established scene in the UK embracing both academics and practitioners occupied with the various angles of evidence-based policy (cf. e.g., the Research Unit for Research Utilisation RURU at Contributions from this side are most welcome. However, what we actually strive for is a much broader circle. We especially aim to attract contributions from countries outside the UK where the debate on evidence-based policy is just about to start and the respective attempts are facing different conditions in terms of polity and politics as well as from countries where respective endeavours (by the name of evidence-based policy or with other labels) have been completed and results have been achieved. We also are especially interested in contributions dealing with experiences at the EU-level. Potential paper givers could be Christopher Pollitt, Frank Fischer, Christopher Hood or Martin Lodge among others. Type of paper: Papers should address one of the following subjects: (a) methods of gaining relevant knowledge (which way to gather and present the relevant evidence?), (b) transfer of knowledge into decisionmaking/politics (especially the conditions for using evidence in policy-making), (c) implementation and effectiveness (does evidence-based policy make a difference in terms of actually solving the problems at stake?). Papers can thus both advance the methodological development or report experiences with evidence-based policy. We welcome methodological papers, case studies, country studies, and comparative research. However, all papers should have an empirical basis for their claims.

5 As one of the potential workshop directors is the founder of the approach of realist synthesis, it is important to stress the fact that the workshop by no means is limited in terms of methods or schools of thought. Funding: We do not expect to need extra funding for the workshop besides the usual travel and accommodation expenses which will be covered by the workshop directors institutions. Biographical note: Fritz Sager is Assistant Professor for Policy Analysis and Evaluation at the Institute of Political Science, University of Bern. His latest publications relevant for the workshop theme include a paper on systematic review in Policy & Politics (Sager 2007a); one on Habermas' concept of technocracy in times of Governance in Public Administration (Sager 2007b) and a methodological paper in Evaluation (Befani/Ledermann/Sager 2007) as well as two chapters in a forthcoming compendium on Policy Consultancy (Sager/Ledermann 2007; Sager/Steffen 2007). Ray Pawson is Professor of Social Research Methodology and Research Director of the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds. Publications include A Measure for Measures (1989), Realistic Evaluation (1997) and Evidence- Based Policy: a Realist Perspective (2006). He is best known for his writing on evaluation methodology and evidence based policy, work which has been supported over the years by three UK ESRC senior fellowships. He has held the post of visiting professor at the University of Rome, University of Victoria and the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. He has acted as researcher and consultant on programme evaluation for the various UK government departments. References Befani, B., S. Ledermann and F. Sager (2007). "Realistic Evaluation and QCA: Conceptual Parallels and an Empirical Application", Evaluation 13(2): Campbell, H. (2002). Evidence-based Policy: The Continuing Search for Effective Policy Processes, Planning Theory & Practice 3(1): Cooksy, L., and V. Caracelli (2005). Quality, Context and Use. Issues in Achieving the Goals of Metaevaluation. American Journal of Evaluation 26(1): Feinstein, O. (2002): Use of Evaluations and the Evaluations of their Use, Evaluation 8(4): Fischer, F. (1990). Technocracy and the Politics of Expertise, Newbury Park CA.: Sage. Haas, P. M. (1992). 'Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination', International Organization, 46, Habermas J. (1976 [1963]). 'Verwissenschaftlichte Politik und öffentliche Meinung', in J. Habermas, Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp Hall, R. H. (1968). 'Professionalization and Bureaucratization', American Sociological Review, 33, Henry, G. (2003). Influential Evaluations. American Journal of Evaluation 24(4): Henry, G., and M. Mark (2003). Beyond Use: Understanding Evaluation s Influence on Attitudes and Actions. American Journal of Evaluation 24(3): Lodge, M., and C. Hood 'Competency and Bureaucracy: Diffusion, Application and Appropriate Response?', West European Politics, 26, 3, Majone, G. (1989). Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

6 Nutley SM and Homel P (2006), Delivering evidence-based practice: lessons from the implementation of the UK Crime Reduction Programme Evidence & Policy, 2(1): 5-26 Oliver, S., et al. (2005) "An Emerging Framework for Including Different Types of Evidence in Systematic Reviews for Public Policy", Evaluation 11(4): Pawson, R. (2002a) "Evidence-based Policy: In Search of a Method", Evaluation 8(2): Pawson, R. (2002b) "Evidence-based Policy: The Promise of Realist Synthesis ", Evaluation 8(3): Pawson, R. (2002c) "Evidence and Policy and Naming and Shaming", Policy Studies 23(3/4): Pawson, R. (2006). Evidence-based Policy: A Realist Perspective. London, Sage. Pierre, J., and B. G. Peters (2000). Governance, Politics, and the State. New York: St. Martin s Press. Pollitt, C. (2006). Academic Advice to Practitioners What is its Nature, Place and Value Within Academia? Public Money & Management 26 (4), Radaelli, C. (1995). The role of knowledge in the policy process, Journal of European Public Policy 2(2): Sabatier, P.A. (1999) "The need for better theories", in P.A. Sabatier (ed) Theories of the policy process, Boulder, CO: Westview Press: Sager, F. (2007a). "Making Transport Policy Work. Polity, Policy, Politics, and Systematic Review", Policy & Politics 35(2): forthcoming. Sager, F. (2007b). "Habermas' Models of Decisionism, Technocracy, and Pragmatism in Times of Governance. The Relationship of Public Administration, Politics, and Science in the Alcohol Prevention Policies of the Swiss Member States", Public Administration 85(2): forthcoming. Sager, F., und I. Steffen (2007). "Politikberatung in der Schweiz", in Bröchler, S., and R. Schützeichel (eds.). Beratung der Politik Ein Handbuch. Hagen: UTB: forthcoming. Sager, F., und S. Ledermann (2007). "Valorisierung von Politikberatung", in Bröchler, S., and R. Schützeichel (eds.). Beratung der Politik Ein Handbuch. Hagen: UTB: forthcoming Scott, R. (1965). Reactions to Supervision in a Heterogeneous Professional Organization, Administrative Science Quarterly 10: Simons, H. (2004) "Utilizing Evaluation Evidence to Enhance Professional Practice", Evaluation 10(4): Skidelski, R. (1992). John Maynard Keynes: A Biography. Vol. 2: The Economist as Saviour, London: Macmillan. Solesbury, W. (2002). The Ascendancy of Evidence, Planning Theory & Practice 3(1): Walter I, Nutley SM and Davies HTO (2005) What works to promote evidence-based practice? A cross-sector review Evidence & Policy, 1(3): Weimer, D. (2005). Institutionalizing Neutrally Competent Policy Analysis: Resources for Promoting Objectivity and Balance in Consolidating Democracies, Policy Studies Journal 33(2): Weiss, C.H. (1987) "The circuitry of enlightenment", Knowledge: Creation, Diffusion, Utilization 8: West, W. (2005). Neutral Competence and Political Responsiveness: An Uneasy Relationsship, Policy Studies Journal 33(2):