Politics Of Evidence Research Articles

Evidence-based policymaking in the legislatures: timeliness and politics of evidence in Finland

Scholarship on evidence-based policymaking (EBP) has long called for more a realistic understanding of how politicians use evidence, especially the ways that use of evidence is negotiated with political goals. This article offers a new perspective on this question by drawing from research on legislative organisations. It introduces a new framework for the study of evidence-based policy, developed by reviewing key insights from legislative studies and interpreting their relevance for the study of EBP. It then applies this framework in an interview-based case-study of the Parliament of Finland. Previous studies have identified timeliness and relevance as some of the key barriers to using evidence, and our data focus on how key actors in legislative organisations understand and manage timeliness. Our findings show that timeliness is dominated by short-term reactions to new bill proposals, but the window for timely evidence in the legislatures can vary from months to days. Our study identifies three strategies used in legislative organisations to overcome the problems of reactivity: programmatic work, specialisation and network building. Practices relating to these strategies are discussed across legislators, political parties and committees. Our findings suggest that it is important for research on EBP in a legislative context to go beyond the study of committees and individual legislators, to explore the role of political parties. This strategy allows researchers to discover the often non-linear and indirect ways that evidence can influence policy through political parties.

Why the Great Food Transformation may not happen – A deep-dive into our food systems’ political economy, controversies and politics of evidence

This paper explores the conditions under which the changes leading to the Great Transformation of food systems called upon by a growing number of international experts and development agencies, will (or not) happen. After discussing the meanings of ‘transformation’ in the specific context of food systems, we draw on different elements of political economy to show how various self-reinforcing dynamics are contributing to lock food systems in their current unsustainable trajectories. Those include the concentration of economic and market power in the hands of the Big Food transnational corporations but also other actors’ ideology, policy incoherence, national interests or culturally-embedded aspirations, which together create irreconcilable trade-offs and tensions between divergent individual and societal objectives and prevent the system from aligning toward a more sustainable trajectory. In this context, while innovation is often presented as a ‘game-changer’, we show how the current profit-driven nature of its evolutionary selection creates a random, adirectional, process incapable of steering food systems towards sustainability. We argue that unless those different issues are tackled all together in a resolutely normative, global, and prescriptive manner in which science would have a new role to play, there are serious risks that the Great Transformation will not happen. Based on these analyses, we identify pathways to move the systems past its current locks-in and steer it toward its long-awaited sustainable transformation. In doing so we demonstrate that what is needed is not just a transformation of the food systems themselves, but a transformation of the governance of those food systems as well.

Body-worn cameras, police violence and the politics of evidence: A case of ontological gerrymandering

Public demands for greater police accountability, particularly in relation to violence targeting Black and Brown communities, have placed pressure on law enforcement organisations to be more transparent about officers’ actions. The implementation of police body-worn cameras (BWCs) has become a popular response. This article examines the embrace of BWCs amidst the wider shift toward evidence-based policing by scrutinising the body of research that evaluates the effects of these technologies. Through an intertextual analysis informed by insights from Critical Race Theory and Science and Technology Studies, we illustrate how the privileging of certain forms of empiricism, particularly randomised controlled trials, evinces what Woolgar and Pawluch describe as ontological gerrymandering. In doing so, the emergent evidence base supporting BWCs as a policing tool constitutively redefines police violence into a narrow conceptualisation rooted in encounters between citizens and police. This analysis examines how these framings, by design, minimise racialised power relations and inequalities. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of these evidence-based claims, arguing that they can direct attention away from – and thus can buttress – the structural conditions and institutions that perpetuate police violence.

Human rights impact assessments and the politics of evidence in economic policymaking

ABSTRACT The Guiding Principles on Human Rights Impact Assessments of Economic Reforms envision a policymaking process based on sound empirical evidence, so that the proportionality and legitimacy of reforms can be ‘properly’ assessed. Implicit in this vision is that methodological tools from economics should be drawn on, and adapted, to project or assess human rights impact. This article argues that biases inherent to these tools must be fully understood and addressed in order to meaningfully assess the human rights impacts of economic policy choices. First, it reviews relevant literature on human rights impact assessment, to give context to some of the methodological issues raised in the Guiding Principles. It then interrogates the claim that impact assessments can advance evidence-based policymaking, unpacking this idea with reference to a frame for advancing a more ‘politically informed’ approach to understanding evidentiary bias. Second, it explores bias in neoclassical economics. It does this by unpacking dominant styles of reasoning and policy devices, concluding that meaningful assessment of rights realisation does not easily fit within this cognitive infrastructure. Finally, it outlines a number of strategies that would help advocates of human rights impact assessments to better navigate the politics of evidence and contest economic orthodoxies.

Gun Studies and the Politics of Evidence

This review is about scholarly contributions to a hotly debated issue—gun policy. Teasing apart the politics of evidence within gun politics, it examines both how research agendas shape gun policy and politics as well as how gun policy and politics shape research agendas. To do so, the article maps out two waves of gun research, Gun Studies 1.0 and Gun Studies 2.0. Gun Studies 1.0 emphasizes scientific evidence as a foundation for generating consensus about public policy, and it includes criminological studies aimed at addressing guns as criminogenic tools, public health work aimed at addressing guns as public health problems, and jurisprudential scholarship aimed at adjudicating guns as legal objects. Reviewing how these approaches incited popular debates and public policies that, in turn, shaped subsequent conditions of gun scholarship, the article then turns to Gun Studies 2.0. Instead of taking evidence as self-evident, this body of scholarship tends to prioritize the meaning-making processes that make meaningful—or not—evidence surrounding gun policy. Accordingly, Gun Studies 2.0 unravels the political and cultural conditions of the contemporary US gun debate and broadens inquiries into gun harm and gun security. In addition to discussing areas for future study, this study concludes by encouraging gun researchers to attend to the politics of evidence as they mobilize scholarship not just to inform the gun debate but also to transform it.

Politics of Evidence Based Policy Making: Reporting on SDG 16 in Egypt

ABSTRACTAlthough evidence-based policy making has been advocated for the past two decades, yet the politics encompassed therein, has not been sufficiently emphasized. The following paper presents the case of Egypt’s reporting on SDG 16 implementation as a case in point. SDG 16 is one of the most sensitive goals to report on, especially in developing non-democratic countries. Through reviewing published reports and studies by both international and national agencies, the current research paper explores to what extent Egypt has progressed with the achievement of SDG 16 indicators. Findings point out to deficiencies in government reporting yet the availability of alternative reliable proxy measures. The paper concludes with recommendations for the international community to recognize the politics in evidence-based policy making, and for the civil society, academia and research centers to play a more active role in monitoring and reporting on the politically sensitive indicators of the SDG 16.

Advocacy Research on Homophobia in Education: Claims-Making, Trauma Construction and the Politics of Evidence

Sociology has an ambivalent relationship with advocacy research because the benefits of participation and engagement must be balanced with concerns about bias. The current study uses 10 recent research reports on homophobia in British educational settings, written and funded by campaigning charities, as a case study of contemporary advocacy research. Presenting a sociological analysis of these documents and adopting a social problems approach, claims-making processes in the reports are documented and significant methodological and analytical flaws are identified. Instead of objective research, these reports are campaigning documents that seek to gain media coverage and influence policy. Implications for how the reports should be used as resources for research and social policy are examined, and a more nuanced and sophisticated approach to engaging with advocacy research is called for.

The politics of evidence in online illness narratives: An analysis of crowdfunding for purported stem cell treatments.

This article addresses the growing trend of crowdfunding for unproven stem cell-based treatments. Our analysis uses quantitative and qualitative data collected from two popular fundraising sites to examine how these sites are used to fund purported stem cell 'treatments' or 'therapies'. In addition to mapping the use and success of these online campaigns by people with different health conditions in different locations, we consider the breakthrough restitution story as a key narrative that campaign organisers use to solicit donations. We argue that crowdfunding is a rapidly growing digital space where 'truths' about experimental treatments are constituted and a politics of evidence is unfolding. These developments are to the potential financial benefit of crowdfunding platforms and businesses offering unproven stem cell-based interventions, and to the potential detriment of patients and their supporters.

Politics of evidence: From evidenced‐based policy to the good governance of evidence By JustinParkhurstAbingdon: Routledge, 2017. ISBN: 9781138570382; £36.99 (Pbk).

Politics of evidence: From evidenced‐based policy to the good governance of evidence By JustinParkhurstAbingdon: Routledge, 2017. ISBN: 9781138570382; £36.99 (Pbk).

Rosalind Eyben, Irene Guijt, Chris Roche, and Cathy Shutt. (2015). The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development: Playing the Game to Change the Rules?

Rosalind Eyben, Irene Guijt, Chris Roche, and Cathy Shutt. (2015). <i>The Politics of Evidence and Results in International Development: Playing the Game to Change the Rules?</i>

(Un)contested evidence: scientific literature, systematic reviews and the politics of evidence in the introduction of HPV vaccines in Colombia.

This paper analyses the tensions between scientific literature and systematic reviews in the production of evidence in healthcare. Systematic reviews are devices developed - within evidence-based medicine - to navigate the complexities of scientific literature promising a clear and simple account of the knowledge on a particular issue. However, in practice, systematic reviews have a more complex relation with literature. Systematic reviews are shaped according to the interest of the local groups that produce them. In this paper, I explore the formatting, making and managing of systematic reviews of evidence relating to HPV vaccines in Colombia. This case shows the ways in which systematic reviews mediate between the requirement of presenting the evidence that emerges from the international literature and the necessity of having data locally relevant.

Justin Parkhurst (2017) The Politics of Evidence: From evidence-based policy to the good governance of evidence, Abingdon: Routledge, £36.99, pp. 182, pbk.

Justin Parkhurst (2017) The Politics of Evidence: From evidence-based policy to the good governance of evidence, Abingdon: Routledge, £36.99, pp. 182, pbk.

The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence‐Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence. JustinParkhurst. Routledge, New York, 2017. 182 pp. $49.95 (paper)

The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence‐Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence. JustinParkhurst. Routledge, New York, 2017. 182 pp. $49.95 (paper)

Politics of Evidence and Right to Health Care in India: The Challenges in Fixing Accountability of Medical Doctors in Patient Rights Violations in the Private Health Care Sector in India

Privatization oriented government health care policies have stimulated robust growth of private health care sector in India, without putting in place regulatory architecture that safeguards patients’ rights. The lack of adequate regulatory framework to govern them has put patients to undue disadvantage. This paper, based on primary investigation, analyses the ‘politics of evidence’ that patients are confronted with and are forced to navigate, in redressing ethical and patient rights violations against private medical establishments. The analysis of cases indicates that in the current medico-legal ecosystem is non-conducive to patients and impedes obtaining legally admissible evidence against medical professionals. The prevailing redressal avenues are significantly hostile to patients and unduly favour the private medical establishments who enjoy support and impunity from prosecution under the implicit state patronage. The paper makes a compelling case for a comprehensive regulatory architecture that simultaneously regulates the private medical establishments and safeguards the rights of patients.

Politics of Evidence and Right to Health Care in India: The Challenges in Fixing Accountability of Medical Doctors in Patient Rights Violations in the Private Health Care Sector in India.

Privatization oriented government health care policies have stimulated robust growth of private health care sector in India, without putting in place regulatory architecture that safeguards patients’ rights. The lack of adequate regulatory framework to govern them has put patients to undue disadvantage. This paper, based on primary investigation, analyses the ‘politics of evidence’ that patients are confronted with and are forced to navigate, in redressing ethical and patient rights violations against private medical establishments. The analysis of cases indicates that in the current medico-legal ecosystem is non-conducive to patients and impedes obtaining legally admissible evidence against medical professionals. The prevailing redressal avenues are significantly hostile to patients and unduly favour the private medical establishments who enjoy support and impunity from prosecution under the implicit state patronage. The paper makes a compelling case for a comprehensive regulatory architecture that simultaneously regulates the private medical establishments and safeguards the rights of patients.

Politics of Evidence and Right to Health Care in India: The Challenges in Fixing Accountability of Medical Doctors in Patient Rights Violations in the Private Health Care Sector in India

Privatization oriented government health care policies have stimulated robust growth of private health care sector in India, without putting in place regulatory architecture that safeguards patients’ rights. The lack of adequate regulatory framework to govern them has put patients to undue disadvantage. This paper, based on primary investigation, analyses the ‘politics of evidence’ that patients are confronted with and are forced to navigate, in redressing ethical and patient rights violations against private medical establishments. The analysis of cases indicates that in the current medico-legal ecosystem is non-conducive to patients and impedes obtaining legally admissible evidence against medical professionals. The prevailing redressal avenues are significantly hostile to patients and unduly favour the private medical establishments who enjoy support and impunity from prosecution under the implicit state patronage. The paper makes a compelling case for a comprehensive regulatory architecture that simultaneously regulates the private medical establishments and safeguards the rights of patients.

Editorial: The politics of evidence, data and research in anti-trafficking work

Since the mid-2000s, critical commentators have raised concerns about both the paucity of evidence on important aspects of human trafficking, and the difficulty of obtaining meaningful data. Policy formations, advocacy campaigns, concrete interventions, and popular understandings of human trafficking have all had accusations of wild claims and unfounded assumptions levelled at them. Guesstimates prevail and take on a life of their own in such a context. Calls for more robust evidence to prove or disprove claims about the nature, extent and location of human trafficking, the characteristics of trafficked persons, and the continued investment in particular types of responses have abounded. This has occurred in light of the growing potential for unsubstantiated claims to fulfil the place of rigorous evidence to inform anti-trafficking work.

Epistemological erasure: The subject of abuse in the problematization of ‘elder abuse’

The academic field of literature pertaining to elder abuse emerges largely from gerontology with contributions from a variety of disciplines including geriatric medicine, nursing, public health, law, psychology, sociology and social work. This paper presents a critical review of articles drawn from this literature to identify current directions leading the development of empirical research in this field. The objective measurement of prevalence, the identification and correlation of psycho-social risk factors and practice-based research oriented to intervention and prevention are identified as privileged sites for scientific investigation. These sites are critically analysed in terms of their underpinning rationalities to reveal the operation of a hegemonic post-positivist epistemological framework. This framework enables an expert professional discourse to structure knowledge and the field of inquiry through constructions of the ‘subject of abuse’ as a statistical figure, a factorial subject of risk and universally vulnerable. These modes of representation preclude subjective lived experience and, in doing so, inaugurate an ‘epistemological erasure’ of the embodied subject of abuse. The review attends to the limited body of qualitative research in the field, some of which claims a politicized empiricism of ‘voice’. However, whilst the findings produced by this research suggest theoretically and conceptually fertile lines of inquiry, these have not disrupted or extended the dominant discourses in the field. This paper argues that an epistemological gulf, riven through a politics of evidence, ensures the reproduction of dominant discourses and their attendant limitations in ways that forestall the conceptual and theoretical advancement of the field.

Bringing Together a Community of Voices to Debate a Growing Challenge: A Review of Qualitative Inquiry and the Politics of Evidence

Editors Norman Denzin and Michael Giardina bring together a collection of leading voices from the Third International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry to explore political, social, and methodological contexts of what constitutes evidence in qualitative research and suggest a diversification of evidential criteria. The book also demonstrates the community-building abilities scholarly journals can have in networking together peers and colleagues from around the world to contemplate, discuss, and debate critical issues such as those raised in this text.

Constructing physician-assisted dying: the politics of evidence from permissive jurisdictions in Carter v. Canada

Since the 1990s, there has been a growing global movement to legalise the controversial practice of physician-assisted dying (PAD). In the last twenty years, 13 jurisdictions have decriminalised or legalised PAD which, in turn, have produced new knowledge on the practice. The recent case of Carter v. Canada, which decriminalised PAD in Canada in 2015, provides us with an empirical opportunity to investigate how actors deployed and interpreted this new knowledge. We found that actors used expert evidence from permissive jurisdictions to construct different meanings of PAD as a legalised medical practice. The opponents constructed PAD as a practice accessed by patients who were suicidal, performed by uncaring physicians unskilled in end-of-life care, and loosely regulated through a fallible regime. The proponents used the evidence to construct PAD as a practice borne out of a patient’s rational choice, performed by caring physicians within an environment where end-of-life care had improved since legalisation, and tightly regulated through a regime where participants function as sentries overseeing each other’s actions. In the final analysis, we argue that the proponents’ success in this case contributed to the production and reproduction of a specific cultural script that renders PAD culturally appropriate.