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blogs.lse.ac.uk http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/29077

Research-based policymaking is complicated or is it?

Having an impact on policymaking with your research may seem like an impenetrable dream when

academics start of think of the tangled web of policy interactions that they must navigate. KirstyNewman explains that the policymakingprocess is easy once you know how.

This article f irst appeared on the LSEs Impact of Social Sciences blog

If youve ever seen a talk by a member of the Research

and Policy in Development team you may well have seen

their rather marvellous slide illustrating the policy

making process. It s tarts with a standard diagram of the

cyclical policy making process (agenda setting leads to

policy f ormulation etc etc) and then each time the

speaker clicks, a new arrow appears indicating the

linkages between stages and various policy-making

actors.

Whats great about it is that as the speaker continues

to speak, the arrows cont inue to appear until the initial

diagram is completely obscured by a tangled web of

interactions. I think it is a perf ect illustration of the

potential complexity of policy making processes that provides the rationale fo r one of the central tenets

of the rapid approach because policy making processes can work in so many dif f erent ways, it is vital

that you understand the particular context that you are working in.

However, unfortunately, I think this potent ial complexity is sometimes used t o justif y another approach

inaction! On a number of occasions I have heard people involved in evidence-informed policy or policy

inf luence projects assert that they cannot/will not understand the policy making context because its too

complicated/complex. I think this is missing the po int. It is true that there are many dif f erent ways in which

policy might be made but they dont all exist in any one context and in f act, sometimes when you look

into the way in which policy is made on a given topic, in a given place, it is remarkably simple.

For example, I know the guy who more or less single handedly wrote the science and technology

monito ring policy of an entire country. He was in charge of the parastatal organisat ion which handles

science issues and so, with input f rom his st af f and advisors, he wrote it befo re feeding it up to relevant

minister who approved it. I know a woman who wrote a parliamentary committee report scrutinisingclimate change policy in her country. She was the parliamentary researcher assigned to the committee

and, since the MPs did not have the time or expertise to write such reports, she wrote it and it was later

signed of f with minor changes by the MPs. As an aside, in both these cases the person in question had

the necessary skills to f ind, synthesize and use the necessary research evidence and thus the policies

were evidence-inf ormed but unf ortunately this is not always the case. But these cases illustrate

thatsome policy making processes are neither complicated nor complex.

So how do you understand the policy making process in your context? Well for s tarters, you need to

know the basics you have no right to complain that policy makers dont understand the basics of

research if you dont understand the basics of policy making! Do you understand what t he basic

f unctions of a parliament are (clue: there are three)? What about the f unctions of government or the civilservice? What is the diff erence between a parliamentary and a presidential systems o f government and

which system does your country have? These were some of the quest ions which we used in an opening

quiz at the International Conference on Evidence-Informed Policy Making and suprisingly f ew people got

the right answers. If you are struggling too, I strongly recommend some Wikipedia browsing!

http://kirstyevidence.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/supply-and-demand-in-evidence-informed-policy/http://kirstyevidence.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/policy-influence-versus-evidence-informed-policy/http://kirstyevidence.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/policy-influence-versus-evidence-informed-policy/http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.odi.org.uk%2Frapid%2F&ei=BZVlUM4gh67RBfD5gZgB&usg=AFQjCNHbDFItZySzOmYDFv-Hc-w3D3095Q&sig2=_jyttmPcr1FThJPha7zcnwhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/29077#authorhttp://nacetem.org/events/report_on_international_conference.htmlhttp://kirstyevidence.wordpress.com/2012/09/21/supply-and-demand-in-evidence-informed-policy/http://kirstyevidence.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/policy-influence-versus-evidence-informed-policy/http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.odi.org.uk%2Frapid%2F&ei=BZVlUM4gh67RBfD5gZgB&usg=AFQjCNHbDFItZySzOmYDFv-Hc-w3D3095Q&sig2=_jyttmPcr1FThJPha7zcnwhttp://www.slideshare.net/ODI_Webmaster/monitoring-evaluation-the-rapid-approachhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2012/12/03/newman-policymaking-complicated/http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/29077#authorhttp://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/archives/29077

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Once youve mastered the basics you are ready to talk to someone in the system. My suggest ion is to

f ind an opportunity to speak to a member of the civil service or a member of parliamentary staf f t hey

are generally great reposito ries of information on how the system works and f ind out who actually

makes policy (and here you will need to be clear on what you mean by policy) in the area you are

interested in.

Please note that none of the above is meant to criticise the great work on complexity, adaptive systems

and development (see f or example this excellent series o f three blogs by Owen Barder). Starting to ask

questions about how policy is made will just be the s tart of your investigative work and I am not saying itwill necessarily be easy or even possible to f ully understand the system. You might f ind it is complicated.

You might even f ind it is complex. But the po int is that there are things you can f ind out and getting even

some information on the context will dramatically improve the success of any intervention.

This article was originally published on Kirstys own blog, KirstyEvidence, and is republished with permission.

Note: This article gives the views of theauthor, and not the position of the British Politics and Policy blog, nor

of the London School of Economics. Please read ourcomments policybefore posting.

About the author:

Kirstyis interested in research and how it can contribute to international development. She works for DFID

but these opinions are her personal views. She is on Twitter@Kirstyevidence.

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