To Bridge the Divide between Evidence and Policy: Reduce Ambiguity as Much as Uncertainty
By P. Cairney, K. Oliver, Adam M. Wellstead. 2016
233 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Policy makers cannot consider all evidence relevant to policy. They use two shortcuts-emotions and beliefs to understand problems and "rational" ways of establishing the best evidence on solutions-to act quickly in complex, multilevel policy-making environments. Many studies only address one part of this problem. Improving the supply of evidence helps reduce scientific and policy maker uncertainty. However, policy makers also combine their beliefs with limited evidence to reduce ambiguity by choosing one of several possible ways to understand and solve a problem. We use this insight to consider solutions designed to "close the evidence-policy gap".
Subfields: General Decision Sciences, Management Science and Operations Research, Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/de6239ffb882765ed3b18b2c3a4dc4dfcd47d321
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In Management Science and Operations Research
In Sociology and Political Science
Citations in the corpus
- Education for AI, not AI for Education: The Role of Education and Ethics in National AI Policy Strategies (2021, background): “While this approach to identifying research questions and producing evidence can be unfamiliar, it will help to reduce ambiguity (Cairney et al. 2016) and provide actionable information for policymaking.”
- Three habits of successful policy entrepreneurs (2018, background): “Scientists often focus on producing more high-quality evidence to reduce uncertainty, using evidence to measure the size of a known problem and the effectiveness of a relevant solution (Cairney et al, 2016; Cairney and Oliver, 2017).”