Evidence-based governance in education: The differences between privately funded and publicly funded think tanks are in part due to their diverging tactics in scheduling and timetable

Abstract

AbstractAs the role that publicly owned and private think tanks play in evidence-based governance grows, several parameters that have a bearing on the agenda, schedule and timetable of the think tanks have already been studied. Here we look at the interplay between the funding model (public vs. private) and the analysis intention (the temporal outlook; ex-ante vs. ex-post approach), choosing Lithuanian education policy, system and agents as the study domain. Among other findings, we see that the funding model correlates with the temporal outlook: the investigated representative of private think tanks tends to engage in ex-ante work more intensively, while the publicly funded equivalent is exhibitive of both ex-ante (preparatory) and ex-post (evaluative) research tactic in almost equal measure. We conclude that the private sector may afford the luxury of being more focused and efficient in its information behavior mostly due to the clear and non-debatable ideological commitment. In a deliberative democracy this is rarely possible. It would be of great interest to check whether the same generalizations hold for jurisdictions that are free from the post-Soviet administrative tradition.