http://shailajafennell.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/what-we-need-to-know-about-the-body-of-evidence-on-poverty-reduction/?preview=true&preview_id=13&preview_nonce=182242a1e9

This was an attempt to take politics seriously.The problem is that it does not lead to simple and workshop-able solutions:

When I joined ODI in 2004 I remember thinking that if we were saying that ‘not enough policy was based on evidence’ and hence the need for us to help researchers communicate it better we should at least know how much was enough. I am an economist at heart, you see.

I asked this question a few times more but never really too loudly as it sort of challenged the industry we were creating around this very simple idea that policy need MORE evidence.

Ironically we have developed an entire industry promoting the use of evidence based on a hunch… Anyway.

Anyway, I am not quite sure that policymakers do not use evidence. I think the problem is that it is often not ‘our’ evidence. And in a world in which donors keep asking researchers to demonstrate their impact this is simply unacceptable. How dare they? Not use OUR evidence?

Well…. Maybe there is such a thing as a hierarchy of evidence, or the perception of credibility, or, well, power.

(3 posts on how there is no gap between research and policy:
http://onthinktanks.org/2011/07/04/never-mind-the-gap-on-how-there-is-no-gap-between-research-and-policy-and-on-a-new-theory-part-1-of-3/)

The theory of change diagram.. Oh how simple it all looks… reminds me of something else. The use of the word policymakers is very telling of our industry/sector. Years ago (I recalled this annecdote in a book on think tanks and political parties in Latin America, by the way, published by International Idea) I heard a discussion between an Argentinian and an Indian panelist at one of these bridging research and policy events: the Argentinean keep talking of politicians and the Indian kept correcting him saying ‘ I think you mean policymakers’. The Argentinean thought about it for a moment and replied: ‘well, it’s all the same’.

You see, in Spanish the word for politics and policies is the same. And for most of the developing world the idea that a policymakers is a neutral civil servant (a technocrat) is simply preposterous. Laughable. Still, we insist with this ‘politics matters’ narrative but then develop a theory of change that does not even have the decency to mention politicians and politics… ‘Incentives’ being a technical code word for needing to hire a consultant to help with some framework to put ‘audiences’ in a table or something like that. Political economy analysis, they call it now…

I insist: Politics is politics and one has to live its consequences to really get it. Until then we are never really going to grasp how politics (and all that other stuff) affect the way that people make choices (public or private).

The solution, as I said in a comment to the evidence based policy debate, is not to train researchers on how to communicate (although this is useful) but to make a serious commitment to invest in education and the capacity to make informed choices: including to dismiss evidence that does not fit our ideologies. Just like we do in the rich world…

It will take time, it will mean lots of ‘intermediaries’ and consultants will lose their jobs, but it will deliver societies capable of making their own mistakes, learn from them and get on with it.

…. Not surprising then that you conclude that: Well, duh… I usually do too.

Our experience with the now defunct (but still relevant) ‘Make Trade Fair’ campaign, was that we needed to speak with technocrats in the Minstries of Agriculture, Trade, Planning and Foreign affairs, relevant embassy trade advisers (and ambassadors) in Brussels and Geneva; trusted policy institutions; random academics working for CIDA/SIDa/DIFD etc who had connections with said ministries; equally random World Bank/IMF/EU commission folks in-country; friendly journalists etc etc….to get the Minister of Trade to take a position on one policy recommendation!

If the diagram shown above were in 3D, we would be able to show the other layers that must be represented if advocates are to truly understand how policy makers decide (or don’t) on a position. Our big ‘AHA’ moment was working with legislative committees in parliament – they are great at opening doors and you can shamelessly play to egos by packaging policy recommendations in sound bites –
‘stop stealing our gold’?

So how do you boost demand? One corridor conversation at a time …with the increasingly educated technocrats now found in the corridors of developing country governments. Advocates should take heart, it’s not all uphill anymore!

1Politicians are often driven by factors other than reseach based evidence.

2 Most research cannot help but be based on some key Value based assumptions.

Do we all pack up and go home or just accept that we are operating in an unequal and unfair world of values and ideas. Perhaps the best we can is try and be upfront about our own values and bias and then seek to persuade and influence policy knowing that those in power will accept or reject for reasons that may well not get you a pass rate on an MA in development studies.

I think the issue of incentives is key. Why should policy makers make use of our knowledge – what’s in it for them, or how do we make it worthwhile? I think we also need to recognize that policy makers do make use of other forms of “knowledge” in making their decisions such as practical experience and political realities – it might well be that an approach recommended by theory or research findings is not politically or technically feasible but the policy maker not the researcher is the one who knows this.
Getting researchers and policy makers to talk to each other and work together more is an important step here.

I actually visited this project towards the end of last year and developed a story of change, starting from when they started, cataloguing all the major events associated with the bill, and dynamics around key actors at different times and what they did until when the Bill was passed in parliament. What we learnt from this process was that the photo-book research-based evidence was a critical piece in the dynamic that contributed to the “tipping point” towards actual passing of the bill with other contextual factors being equally important for identifying what works under what circumstances. They are part of the story, and these stories of change often involve other actors that are usually not acknowledged in project reports and impact evaluations.

We have also learnt from implementing the Governance and Transparency Fund project across six African countries over the last five years that another important distinction is about how you engage with policy-makers at different levels of government. We’ve found evidence can be very effective at pushing local officials and policy-makers into taking action in low accountability contexts. This blog talks a bit more about getting the right combination of evidence and relationships: http://www.mwananchi-africa.org/news/2012/11/12/accountability-is-based-on-relationships-but-data-helps-too.html

I’m currently working on a major synthesis report which will pull together lessons from supporting accountability, with research-based evidence – hope this will be a contribution to the debate from a long term observation of grassroots politics and change.