LIST OF PANELS

The attention to evidence-informed policy making has reached peak levels in recent decades (Davies et al. 2000). From a rational perspective, evidence informed policy making is commonly assumed to improve government effectiveness and efficiency (Sanderson 2000): knowing whether policies work can avoid improper spending of public money, can improve the implementation of policy measures, and can make governments more accountable. Ample empirical evidence has shown, however, that this rational perspective does not always hold true. The production and use of evidence are often very ad hoc, and strongly politicized. Despite the large body of literature on the role of evidence in policy making, relatively little knowledge exists as to the rational and political dynamics underpinning the production and use of evidence in a multilevel governance context in particular.

Multilevel governance poses substantial questions for scholars interested in evidence informed policy making. Consider federal states, for instance, where political power is divided between autonomous governments on different state levels. Or take international or supranational settings, as the European Union, where many competences and responsibilities are shared between various levels of government. A first series of challenges relates to how evidence is created in such settings, with policy theories (logic models) often spanning across different government levels, policy indicators being potentially differently interpreted at different levels, and data on the functioning of policies being spread across different levels. How then coordinating the evidence production process in such configurations, also knowing that there can exist a different epistemology about what is ‘good’ evidence across different levels (Jasanoff, 2011; Nutley et al., 2013).

Secondly, there is the very political dimension of evidence use in this ‘two-level game’ (Putnam 1988). One can expect that the typical power play often characterizing evidence informed policy-making manifests itself more clearly in a multilevel context. Evidence can likely be used to reach political compromises between different state levels, or can help to overcome the tensions that regularly differentiate multilevel settings. Yet, in the same vein, it is possible that actors in multilevel settings strategically resort to evidence to prevent policy decisions, or jeopardize policy implementation. The question is whether we can indeed discern specific political dynamics that are characteristic to how evidence is used in a multi-level governance setting.

This panel gathers theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions that enhance our understanding of how evidence is produced and used for decision-making in multilevel governance settings. We conceive the panel as a forum to exchange comparative research experience and case studies about this issue, and welcome contributions relating to different institutional settings, policy domains, and countries. To clarify, we approach ‘evidence’ in a comprehensive way: papers can focus on any kind of evidence, such as policy evaluations, think tank reports, scientific studies, etc. We also take a broad stance to multilevel governance, which we define as “negotiated, non-hierarchical exchanges between institutions at the transnational, national, regional, and local levels” (Peters and Pierre 2001: 131).

References:

Jasanoff, S. (2011). Designs on nature: Science and democracy in Europe and the United States. Princeton University Press.

Nutley, S.M., Powell , A.E. & Davies , H.T.O. (2013). What counts as good evidence. Alliance for Useful Evidence, London.

Peters, B. G. and J. Pierre (2001). Developments in Intergovernmental Relations: Towards Multilevel Governance, Policy & Politics, 29(2), 131-135.

Putnam, R. D. (1988). Diplomacy and domestic politics: the logic of two-level games. International organization, 427-460.

Sanderson, I. (2002). Evaluation, policy learning and evidence‐based policy making. Public administration, 80(1), 1-22.

This panel gathers theoretical, conceptual, and empirical contributions that enhance our understanding of how evidence is produced and used for decision-making in multilevel governance settings. We conceive the panel as a forum to exchange comparative research experience and case studies about this issue, and welcome contributions relating to different policy domains, institutional settings and countries. We approach ‘evidence’ in a comprehensive way: papers can focus on any kind of evidence, such as policy evaluations, research reports, etc. Research questions can tackle any aspect of the ‘evidence lifecycle’ and can concern all stages of the policy process.  

Abstracts should include a clear puzzle, research question, outline of the approach, research design, and main contribution of the proposed paper.