Evidence of democracy? The relationship between evidence-based policy and democratic government

Abstract

The preceding decade has witnessed the production of a substantial volume of scholarship dedicated to exploring
the concept of evidence-based policy – the idea that ‘at the heart’ of properly developed public policy is ‘the best
available evidence’. Concomitantly, ‘evidence’ has secured an unparalleled pride of place (at least, rhetorically)
among policy-makers, who will often refer to the conclusions of ‘the best available evidence’ when seeking to justify
particular decisions. However, a number of additional considerations have been identified as desirably or otherwise
influencing policy-makers’ decisions, including fiscal and time constraints, personal experience, societal values, and
short-term/long-term political strategy, to name a few. Indeed, arguably, policy-makers in contemporary democratic
polities have no choice but to incorporate such considerations into their decision-making if they genuinely wish to
produce a policy proposal that is both politically and publicly viable. Does such a situation problematically impede
the meaningful realization of evidence-based policy? This essay offers some preliminary observations concerning
certain tensions between the idea of evidence-based policy and the practice of democracy and briefly considers the
degree to which those tensions might and should be resolved.