Policy Analysis in 750 Words: power and knowledge

This post adapts Policy in 500 Words: Power and Knowledge (the body of this post) to inform the Policy Analysis in 750 words series (the top and tails).

One take home message from the 750 Words series is to avoid seeing policy analysis simply as a technical (and ‘evidence-based’) exercise. Mainstream policy analysis texts break down the process into technical-looking steps, but also show how each step relates to a wider political context. Critical policy analysis texts focus more intensely on the role of politics in the everyday choices that we might otherwise take for granted or consider to be innocuous. The latter connect strongly to wider studies of the links between power and knowledge.

Power and ideas

Classic studies suggest that the most profound and worrying kinds of power are the hardest to observe. We often witness highly visible political battles and can use pluralist methods to identify who has material resources, how they use them, and who wins. However, key forms of power ensure that many such battles do not take place. Actors often use their resources to reinforce social attitudes and policymakers’ beliefs, to establish which issues are policy problems worthy of attention and which populations deserve government support or punishment. Key battles may not arise because not enough people think they are worthy of debate. Attention and support for debate may rise, only to be crowded out of a political agenda in which policymakers can only debate a small number of issues.

Studies of power relate these processes to the manipulation of ideas or shared beliefs under conditions of bounded rationality (see for example the NPF). Manipulation might describe some people getting other people to do things they would not otherwise do. They exploit the beliefs of people who do not know enough about the world, or themselves, to know how to identify and pursue their best interests. Or, they encourage social norms – in which we describe some behaviour as acceptable and some as deviant – which are enforced by (1) the state (for example, via criminal justice and mental health policy), (2) social groups, and (3) individuals who govern their own behaviour with reference to what they feel is expected of them (and the consequences of not living up to expectations).

Such beliefs, norms, and rules are profoundly important because they often remain unspoken and taken for granted. Indeed, some studies equate them with the social structures that appear to close off some action. If so, we may not need to identify manipulation to find unequal power relationships: strong and enduring social practices help some people win at the expense of others, by luck or design.

Relating power to policy analysis: whose knowledge matters?

The concept of‘epistemic violence’ is one way todescribe the act of dismissing an individual, social group, or population by undermining the value of their knowledge or claim to knowledge. Specific discussions include: (a) the colonial West’s subjugation of colonized populations, diminishing the voice of the subaltern; (b) privileging scientific knowledge and dismissing knowledge claims via personal or shared experience; and (c) erasing the voices of women of colour from the history of women’s activism and intellectual history.

It is in this context that we can understand ‘critical’ research designed to ‘produce social change that will empower, enlighten, and emancipate’ (p51). Powerlessness can relate to the visible lack of economic material resources and factors such as the lack of opportunity to mobilise and be heard.

750 Words posts examining this link between power and knowledge

Some posts focus on the role of power in research and/ or policy analysis:

• Policy analysis for marginalized groups in racialized political systems
• Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) Decolonizing Methodologies 
• Carol Bacchi (2009) Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? 

These posts ask questions such as: who decides what evidence will be policy-relevant, whose knowledge matters, and who benefits from this selective use of evidence? They help to (1) identify the exercise of power to maintain evidential hierarchies (or prioritise scientific methods over other forms of knowledge gathering and sharing), and (2) situate this action within a wider context (such as when focusing on colonisation and minoritization). They reflect on how (and why) analysts should respect a wider range of knowledge sources, and how to produce more ethical research with an explicit emancipatory role. As such, they challenge the – naïve or cynical – argument that science and scientists are objective and that science-informed analysis is simply a technical exercise (see also Separating facts from values).

Many posts incorporate these discussions into many policy analysis themes.

• Reflecting on your role as a policy analyst compares pragmatic and critical approaches to policy analysis.
• Entrepreneurial policy analysis warns against a too-strong focus on the agency – rather than the unequal status and resources – of successful political actors.
• Who should be involved in the process of policy analysis? highlights the tensions between ‘evidence based’ and ‘co-production’ approaches (regarding who should be involved, and how to prioritise evidence)

See also

Policy Concepts in 1000 Words: Power and Ideas

Education equity policy: ‘equity for all’ as a distraction from race, minoritization, and marginalization. It discusses studies of education policy (many draw on critical policy analysis)

There are also many EBPM posts that slip this discussion of power and politics into discussions of evidence and policy. They don’t always use the word ‘power’ though (see Evidence-informed policymaking: context is everything)

Policy Analysis in 750 Words: Who should be involved in the process of policy analysis?

This post forms one part of the Policy Analysis in 750 words series overview.

Think of two visions for policy analysis. It should be primarily:

• ‘evidence based’, or
• ‘co-produced’.

These choices are not mutually exclusive, but there are key tensions between them that should not be ignored, such as when we ask:

• how many people should be involved in policy analysis?
• whose knowledge counts?
• who should control policy design?

Perhaps we can only produce a sensible combination of the two if we clarify their often very different implications for policy analysis. Let’s begin with one story for each and see where they take us.

A story of ‘evidence-based policymaking’

One story of ‘evidence based’ policy analysis is that it should be based on the best available evidence of ‘what works’.

Often, the description of the ‘best’ evidence relates to the idea that there is a notional hierarchy of evidence according to the research methods used.

At the top would be the systematic review of randomised control trials, and nearer the bottom would be expertise, practitioner knowledge, and stakeholder feedback.

This kind of hierarchy has major implications for policy learning and transfer, such as when importing policy interventions from abroad or ‘scaling up’ domestic projects.

Put simply, the experimental method is designed to identify the causal effect of a very narrowly defined policy intervention. Its importation or scaling up would be akin to the description of medicine, in which the evidence suggests the causal effect of a specific active ingredient to be administered with the correct dosage. A very strong commitment to a uniform model precludes the processes we might associate with co-production, in which many voices contribute to a policy design to suit a specific context (see also: the intersection between evidence and policy transfer).

A story of co-production in policymaking

One story of ‘co-produced’ policy analysis is that it should be ‘reflexive’ and based on respectful conversations between a wide range of policymakers and citizens.

Often, the description is of the diversity of valuable policy relevant information, with scientific evidence considered alongside community voices and normative values.

This rejection of a hierarchy of evidence also has major implications for policy learning and transfer. Put simply, a co-production method is designed to identify the positive effect – widespread ‘ownership’ of the problem and commitment to a commonly-agreed solution – of a well-discussed intervention, often in the absence of central government control.

Its use would be akin to a collaborative governance mechanism, in which the causal mechanism is perhaps the process used to foster agreement (including to produce the rules of collective action and the evaluation of success) rather than the intervention itself. A very strong commitment to this process precludes the adoption of a uniform model that we might associate with narrowly-defined stories of evidence based policymaking.

Where can you find these stories in the 750-words series?

1. Texts focusing on policy analysis as evidence-based/ informed practice (albeit subject to limits) include: Weimer and Vining, Meltzer and Schwartz, Brans, Geva-May, and Howlett (compare with Mintrom, Dunn)
2. Texts on being careful while gathering and analysing evidence include: Spiegelhalter
3. Texts that challenge the ‘evidence based’ story include: Bacchi, T. Smith, Hindess, Stone

 

How can you read further?

See the EBPM page and special series ‘The politics of evidence-based policymaking: maximising the use of evidence in policy’

There are 101 approaches to co-production, but let’s see if we can get away with two categories:

4. Co-producing policy (policymakers, analysts, stakeholders). Some key principles can be found in Ostrom’s work and studies of collaborative governance.
5. Co-producing research to help make it more policy-relevant (academics, stakeholders). See the Social Policy and Administration special issue ‘Inside Co-production’ and Oliver et al’s ‘The dark side of coproduction’ to get started.

To compare ‘epistemic’ and ‘reflexive’ forms of learning, see Dunlop and Radaelli’s ‘The lessons of policy learning: types, triggers, hindrances and pathologies’

My interest has been to understand how governments juggle competing demands, such as to (a) centralise and localise policymaking, (b) encourage uniform and tailored solutions, and (c) embrace and reject a hierarchy of evidence. What could possibly go wrong when they entertain contradictory objectives? For example:

• Paul Cairney (2019) “The myth of ‘evidence based policymaking’ in a decentred state”, forthcoming in Public Policy and Administration(Special Issue, The Decentred State) (accepted version)
• Paul Cairney (2019) ‘The UK government’s imaginative use of evidence to make policy’, British Politics, 14, 1, 1-22 Open AccessPDF

• Paul Cairney and Kathryn Oliver (2017) ‘Evidence-based policymaking is not like evidence-based medicine, so how far should you go to bridge the divide between evidence and policy?’ Health Research Policy and Systems (HARPS), DOI: 10.1186/s12961-017-0192-x PDF
• Paul Cairney (2017) “Evidence-based best practice is more political than it looks: a case study of the ‘Scottish Approach’”, Evidence and Policy, 13, 3, 499-515 PDF