Public Policy Workshop 1- Is policy evaluation “politics by other means”?

Arnaud Vagany, a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the London School of Economics and Political Science’s Department of Methodology, gave a presentation on the role of politics in policy research drawing on his own PhD findings.

To what extent is policy research politicised?

Public policies in much of the world are evaluated by the very institutions that conceive them and implement them. This fact alone justifies that the question of the neutrality of these evaluations be asked. Because of this particular institutional set-up, frequent arbitrations between the imperatives of accountability, implementation, efficiency and scientific rigour need to be made, and something must give in.

There are lots of theories showing that the design of a policy reform and its subsequent implementation can reflect political considerations. Likewise, peer-reviewed journals are full of studies showing the effect of the market logic on R&D decisions. But although there are lots of rumours about the influence of politics on policy evaluation, there is still very little evidence of it.