Evidence-Based Policy Advice? The German Council of Science and Humanities

Two concepts of evidence-based policy

Abstract The notion that public policy should be evidence-based has gained prominence in recent years, attracting both supporters and critics. This article argues that a significant part of this debate stems from the coexistence of two distinct conceptions of what it means to base policy decisions on evidence: evidence as a restriction, which operates as a necessary condition for the admissibility of options; and evidence as a preference criterion, which guides the selection among options already legitimized by political or normative criteria. The article defines these two concepts, analyzes their respective advantages and limitations, and demonstrates that, under plausible assumptions, each approach can be applied in isolation, but hardly simultaneously without practical contradictions. The key contributions offer a normative typology that allows for diagnosing tensions in the use of evidence, positions this distinction in relation to classical typologies in the literature, and guides the institutional design of scientific advisory systems in democratic contexts.

Strengthening international evidence-informed policy making: lessons from the Global South.

Introduction Evidence-informed policy making (EIP) has generated substantial scholarship, but its contribution to the practicalities of policy making in international organisations is limited by the focus on a discreet and generally local level of governance. Furthermore, there is an acute bias in existing EIP literature, with the majority of studies derived from Global North countries. Methods To partially redress this geographic imbalance, the study produces four national case studies drawn from Sub-Saharan Africa, each reflecting on current, live policy processes within those national contexts, which are comparatively summarised within this article. Analytic plan Case studies are examined through an analytical framework based on Langer et al (2020) to identify replicable practices that may inform decision-making across multiple scales of governance, operating under the assumption that policy processes are transboundary and that lessons from national contexts can be translated to the international level. Results Findings emphasise integrating diverse stakeholders through inclusive approaches that enable meaningful participation of underrepresented knowledge. The centrality of political economy in shaping evidence use is highlighted, the need for structured evidence-demand and communication practices, and the value of clear guidelines around evidence categories to strengthen how diverse evidence types are interpreted across governance levels. Conclusion This article extends EIP's analytical reach beyond local and Global North contexts, offering a framework applicable to international policy-making institutions. Findings carry implications for designing inclusive and structured EIP mechanisms at national and international levels, and point to the need for future research that continues to diversify the geographic and institutional scope of EIP scholarship.

It Does Matter. A New Framework on the Influence of Policy Evaluation

Governments worldwide have invested heavily in policy evaluation, providing many policymakers with a steady stream of evidence into the effectiveness, efficiency, or relevance of policies. Yet, despite these investments, systematic knowledge about the actual influence of policy evaluations remains surprisingly limited. This is partly due to the insufficient conceptual differentiation of policy evaluation as a distinct type of policy advice. Building on interdisciplinary evaluation literature and public policy scholarship, the article introduces a new framework designed to enhance our understanding and categorization of the changes policy evaluations bring about in terms of policy, polity, and politics, and how these dimensions interrelate. As a parsimonious heuristic tool, the framework enables a dynamic and comprehensive assessment of the influence of policy evaluations. It contributes to the theorization of policy evaluation influence and offers insights that may inform related research on the influence of expert knowledge, policy advice, and evidence‐informed policymaking more broadly.

Power, politics, and policy agency: towards a Functional Theory of Agency

This article examines how political position shapes policy agency in local policy making. Specifically, it asks: what patterns of policy agency functions do municipal councillors ( regidores ) exhibit in the local policy process? Drawing on the Functional Theory of Agency framework and a sequential mixed-methods design combining a national survey of Mexican municipal councillors with follow-up semi-structured interviews, we analyse how councillors exercise four modes of policy agency: steering, innovation, intermediation, and intelligence. Our findings reveal systematic differences between majoritarian and opposition councillors. Majoritarian councillors dominate commissions, align with mayoral priorities, and primarily act as steerers and brokers of executive policy. By contrast, opposition councillors, who are often excluded from formal decision-making arenas, engage in disruptive innovation, cultivate vertical alliances beyond the municipality, and invest more heavily in knowledge production as a counter-power strategy. These distinct patterns suggest that political position shapes the policy agency functions available to local legislators and influences how they seek to affect policy outcomes. The article contributes to the consolidation of a Functional Theory of Agency by demonstrating how unequal access to formal policy-making authority structures actors’ behavioural repertoires within policy-making processes. It also advances comparative research on legislative actors by showing how local representatives adapt their policy agency strategies under conditions of unequal access to formal policy-making authority.

Does Executive Action Work? Evidence from Military Subsidies to Policing

The Script of the Science–Policy Interface: Performative Routines in Climate Politics

The urgency of political action to safeguard against anthropogenic climate change is widely acknowledged. Much of this urgency stems from environmental scientists’ projections that have consistently shown dire future risks. A key part in providing such projections with political legitimacy is institutional “science–policy interface” (SPI) arrangements, which influence the ways in which environmental knowledge is produced and the ways in which political actors respond. In this contribution, building on the scholarship on the interaction between scientific knowledge and policy, we investigate the “script” of the SPI and its implicit rules. We identify seven wellestablished performative routines that most actors adhere to, often implicitly. Drawing on the literature on the coproduction of knowledge and governmentality, we investigate this script as a technology of governance. On the basis of secondary analysis of academic literature, prior interviews, document analysis, and autoethnographic observations, we show how these routines are upheld and challenged.