What Is Evidence-Based Policy?
People do not have an analogous natural impulse to value empirically proven “facts” nor the subjective weight of “independent experts” over their emotional well-being and the intimate relationships that form most of their life experience each and every day. This is a fundamental psychological concept known as “belongingness,” which social scientist now believe may motivate most, if not all, human behavior. Viewed in that light, what’s the incentive for the individual to change their views if doing so risks conflict, ostracism and perhaps a long and difficult period of emotional self-discovery?
To keep our faith in democratic rule of law, we must believe that evidence-based policy is possible to practice and eventually master in a transparent, representative legislative process, and that if America’s leaders committed themselves to changing their practices, we could shift away from tiresome bickering towards constructive dialog that produces measurable benefits for citizens.
Just how long and difficult will this transition be? How can we come to reasonable consensus about what is “truly good” for the hundreds of millions of people living an amazing variety of lives and facing a similar variety of challenges in America? What role can technology play to improve policy design, implementation and evaluation?
Further reading
Evidence-based policy applies a feedback loop to public policy very similar to those long used in product and process design. In theory. In practice, however, public policy still abandons or ignores evidence (scientific and otherwise) with disturbing frequency.
While Dan Kahan’s Cultural Cognition project at Yale has begun to explore why political views aren’t influenced by strong scientific evidence, his evidence that individual motivations for retaining demonstrably ‘false’ views are culturally based only complicates the problem.
If an individual constructs their personal and social identities around a set of beliefs, invalidating those beliefs can threaten both the individual and their friends and family. When people feel threatened and act on fear, extreme behavior or ideas may seem acceptable, or even vital to reestablish security for those close to them.
Tufte, Edward. Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. Prentice-Hall, 1974.
Binswanger-Mkhize et al. Local and Community Driven Development. World Bank, 2010.
Gertler et al. Impact Evaluation in Practice. World Bank, 2010.
Glennerster et al. Running Randomized Evaluations. Princeton University Press, 2013.