Policy Research in an Evidence-Averse Environment

Abstract

It has been a characteristic of the modern state ever since the French Revolution to favor evidence-based policymaking. Indeed, the word statistics refers to the interplay between the development of research methods and the uses of those methods by governments. But the nature of the state, and of knowledge production, and of state-society relations, have all continued to evolve. Unfortunately — but hopefully not necessarily — the current expression of the informational state (Braman, 2006) in the United States is evidence-averse policymaking. Recent inversions of the legal system have brought about a loss of innocence regarding the relationship between policymaking and the facts and about the relative efficacy of governmental processes as described by their formal outlines. It is now clear that those who hope that the results of their research will be used to influence the conditions of our lives must deal not only with government (the formal laws, decision-making processes, organizations, and programs of geopolitically recognized governments), but also with governance (the formal and informal rules, practices, decision-making procedures, and institutions of private and public actors that have structural effects) and governmentality (the cultural habits and predispositions out of which modes of governance and government arise, and by which they are sustained). By the early 21st century, more than 250 scholarly publications had documented difficulties faced by communication researchers in their efforts to engage with the formal processes of governmental decision making. A 2003 collection presented 25 of the most important discussions of the relationship between communication researchers and policymaking in the U.S. context, along with an analysis of the entire then-existing literature. 1 Generalizable features of research policy relations became clear: Research results do not, in themselves, determine policy choices, for value hierarchies, politics, and pragmatic considerations must also necessarily enter into decision making. Research processes can be manipulated for political purposes such as slowing down or delaying decision making altogether, legitimating a decision already made, or providing a surrogate for public opinion or consent on a contested issue. Few politicians have any training in data analysis and often misunderstand, either innocently or deliberately, the results of research. As a genre, scholarship is opaque and inaccessible to policy makers. The institutional rhythm of academic life and research cycles do not line up with the timing of policy cycles. Scholarly reward systems give little due to involvement in policymaking, and so on.

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