Evidence, Policy and Wellbeing

Ian Bache

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030213756
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030213763
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Comparative Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book analyses the role of evidence in taking wellbeing from an issue that has government attention to one that leads to significant policy change. In doing so, it draws on contributions from political science, policy theory and literature specifically on the evidence and policy relationship. The book has three main aims: to understand the role of evidence in shaping the prospects for wellbeing in public policy; to inform the barriers literature on the use of evidence in policy; and, to inform the multiple streams approach (MSA) to agenda-setting. While the book focuses on developments at UK government level, a number of the findings and arguments presented here have wider significance, both in relation to wellbeing developments elsewhere and to the theoretical literatures on agenda-setting and evidence use. The book draws on insights from interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders that were undertaken as part of the work of the Community Wellbeing Evidence Programme of the What Works Centre for Wellbeing.

© The Author(s) 2020

Ian BacheEvidence, Policy and WellbeingWellbeing in Politics and Policyhttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21376-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Ian Bache¹

(1)

University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

Ian Bache

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This chapter introduces the idea of pursuing wellbeing government through government policy and identifies the three main aims of the book, which are:

1. 1.
   To understand the role of evidence in shaping the prospects for wellbeing in UK public policy.
2. 2.
   To inform the barriers literature on the use of evidence in policy.
3. 3.
   To inform the multiple streams approach (MSA) to agenda-setting.

It identifies the focus as developments at UK government level, although it indicates that the findings and arguments presented have wider significance.

Keywords

EvidenceWellbeingUKMultiple streams approachAgenda-setting

End Abstract

Emphasising the role of power and authority at the expense of knowledge and expertise in public affairs seems cynical; emphasising the latter at the expense of the former seems naïve. (Solesbury 2001, 9)

Introduction

The idea of pursuing wellbeing through government policy can be traced back centuries but is one that has received renewed attention in recent times in the context of economic crises and seemingly intractable social and environmental challenges. This interest has led to new wellbeing measurement frameworks both within international organisations, such as the EU, OECD and UN, and in a diverse range of national and subnational contexts. The proliferation of new measurement frameworks and alternative indicators of progress has ‘opened up space for discussion about society’s end goals and how to achieve them, creating opportunities for those who question the focus on economic growth’ (Hayden and Wilson 2018, 147). For some, these developments ‘have the potential to bring about a real paradigm shift concerning what we as a society consider to be progress and how, as a consequence, we will shape how we live together’ (Kroll 2011, 1). Ultimately, this could lead to a shift away from the dominant focus on economic goals, which has the pursuit of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ¹ growth at its apex, or at least the development of more public policies that focus on a broader set of concerns. At the level of specific policies, wellbeing analysis can provide an alternative (or complement) to established techniques for policy appraisal and evaluation that draw on the market-based techniques of neoclassical economics (Chapter 3).

In analysing developments, Bache and Reardon (2016) argued that while wellbeing measurement was ‘an idea whose time had come’, this was not yet the case in policy terms. However, they concluded that, in the UK, ‘reluctance to embrace wellbeing in policy has been largely succeeded by interest in “what works” for wellbeing’ in policy (Bache and Reardon 2016, 44). In this context, the accumulation and dissemination of scientific (or ‘research based’) evidence² on how policy might enhance wellbeing is seen as a crucial next step in pushing wellbeing further up the political agenda. This prompted the government to co-fund a What Works Centre for Wellbeing (WWCW)³ in 2015 to help perform this task.

In this context, this book takes up the analysis from where Bache and Reardon concluded, to analyse the role of evidence in taking wellbeing from an issue that has government attention to one that leads to significant policy change. In doing so, it draws on contributions from political science, policy theory and literature specifically on the evidence and policy relationship. The book has three main aims, each of which is discussed further below:

1. 1.
   To understand the role of evidence in shaping the prospects for wellbeing in UK public policy.
2. 2.
   To inform the barriers literature on the use of evidence in policy.
3. 3.
   To inform the multiple streams approach (MSA) to agenda-setting.

While the book focuses on developments at UK government level,⁴ a number of the findings and arguments presented here have wider significance, both in relation to wellbeing developments elsewhere and to the theoretical literatures on agenda-setting and evidence use.

This book draws on insights from a number of projects undertaken by the author in recent years,⁵ but most specifically on interviews with policy-makers and stakeholders that were undertaken as part of the work of the Community Wellbeing Evidence Programme team for the WWCW.⁶ The research design for the new empirical material is set out in Chapter 2.

Scientific Evidence and Agenda-Setting

Scientific evidence has a particular status among forms of knowledge in the policy process, as the ‘dominant language of legitimation and persuasion in today’s liberal societies’ (Goodwin et al. 2001, 15). Its use in policy-making has a long history, but this has intensified in recent decades, spawning a range of related literatures and a variety of terms to capture the processes involved. In the 1990s, the idea of evidence-based policy emerged as ‘both a political slogan and an academic movement’ (Botterill and Hindmoor 2012, 367) that sought to appeal to the notion of ‘what works’ in policy in an empirical sense rather than in terms defined by politics and values. Over time, the idea of ‘evidence-based’ policy has given way to other descriptions that seek to capture the nature of this relationship, such as ‘evidence informed’, ‘evidence-aware’ and ‘evidence-inspired’ (Chapter 2). One feature of developments in the UK has been the creation of ‘What Works Centres’ in particular policy areas,⁷ most recently the WWCW, which indicated both the government’s continuing emphasis on the role of evidence and also its ongoing interest in wellbeing.

Scientific evidence is used in various ways and at different stages of the policy process (Chapter 2), but there are relatively few studies of its role in agenda-setting (Chapter 4). Yet agenda-setting is arguably the ‘most critical’ stage of the policy process (Howlett et al. 2009, 92): one that shapes all subsequent stages. Wellbeing is a particularly apposite case for studying the use of evidence at the agenda-setting stage for two reasons. The first is its position on the agenda as an issue that has the attention of government but one that has not led to significant policy action: in terms of agenda-setting theory, this situation represents the distinction between the governmental agenda and the decision agenda (Kingdon 2011). The second reason is that wellbeing is an issue where the government has clearly signalled the importance of scientific evidence in taking the idea forward in policy.

Much of the literature on evidence use in policy-making remains theoretically under-developed, and scholars have called for greater use of policy theory in this field (below). The MSA is adopted for this purpose as one of the most influential approaches to the study of public policy and arguably the dominant theoretical approach to understanding agenda-setting. The MSA is useful for highlighting the distinction between two kinds of evidence-based activity relating to first the nature of the problem and second the effectiveness of the solution (Cairney 2016, 32). While some consideration is given to the former in this book, the main focus is on the latter.

The MSA identifies three distinct processes or ‘streams’ of activity relating to problems, policy and politics, which operate relatively independently of each other but when brought together present the greatest opportunity for an idea to lead to policy action. Streams are brought together by ‘policy entrepreneurs’ when ‘windows of opportunity’ are opened by events in either the politics or problem streams. The MSA’s particular combination of structure (the three streams) and agency (policy entrepreneurs) has proved remarkably robust and insightful for over three decades.

John Kingdon’s foundational contribution on the MSA, first published in 1984,⁸ has been cited over 20,000 times⁹ and, through its focus on ambiguity in the policy process, ‘seems to have become more relevant and suitable than ever before for the analysis of policy making in advanced democracies’ (Zohlnhöfer et al. 2015, 412). One review of the literature in 2016 found a ‘thriving field of study’ (Cairney and Jones 2016, 53), while another suggested ‘the model thrives in its application in exploring and describing the policy process across all continents’ (Rawat and Morris 2016, 627).

Yet despite its prominent status, it is widely seen to be in need of development (C...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Evidence and Policy
• 3. Wellbeing
• 4. ‘What Works’ for Wellbeing?
• 5. Evidence in the Policy Stream: The Multiple Streams Approach
• 6. Conclusion
• Back Matter