How do Federal Bureaucrats Get Informed? An X-ray of the Sources of Evidence Used in Policy Work

Abstract

The use of scientific knowledge to support policy has been a debated issue since the emergence of the field of policy analysis (Lerner and Lasswell, 1951; Weiss, 1979). More recently, the evidence-based policy approach (EBP) resumes and extends this debate by advocating for public decision-makers to use scientific evidence about “what works” to improve policy. On the one hand, EBP renews belief in the precepts of instrumental rationality and scientific neutrality as the foundation of policy decisions (Davies, Nutley and Smith, 2000). However, on the other hand, it catalyzes criticism from different analytical schools, such as the argumentative and post-structuralist ones, which provide the basis for different arguments about what would inform and provide the basis for policy.