Interpreting Facts, Verifying Interpretations: Public Policy, Truth and Evidence

Abstract

This article reflects on the relationship between evidence and interpretation in policy-making and policy analysis. It proceeds by critically analysing both David Blunkett’s understanding (as articulated when holding office in the UK Labour government) of the concept of ‘evidence-based policy-making’ and three noteworthy, alternative approaches to understanding the links between facts, evidence, values and interpretive framework — Keith Dowding’s rational choice approach, Alan Finlayson’s rhetorical political analysis and Mark Bevir and Rod Rhodes’s narrative-based form of interpretivism. It argues that all four approaches are underpinned by generalised, fixed claims about the nature of these relationships, when in fact no such generalisable claims are possible. In so doing, it develops an alternative, distinctive understanding of these relationships as changeable and context-specific, bringing into focus more clearly the contested nature of the theoretical assumptions underpinning particular policy-related claims and to the continuous need for political argument — on the basis of facts, evidence, values and interpretation — by both policy makers and analysts.

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