Transcript Knowledge for Decision Making and Strategy

Conceptual and practical insights
on the link between research and
policy – A UNESCO perspective
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• Knowledge and its relationship to action lies at
the heart of the MOST Programme.
• Knowledge that grounds policies on scientific
evidence.
• Knowledge that renders policy-making more
transparent and accountable.
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• UNESCO’s Management of Social
Transformations Programme (MOST) was
launched in 1994.
• First Phase (1994-2003).
• Current Phase 2 started in 2004. Programme is
specifically working on building efficient
bridges between research, policy and practice.
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MOST Governance/IGC Member States (20092011)
• Programme steered by Intergovernmental
Council (35 Member States elected for a 4years term of office) and Scientific Advisory
Committee (6 renowned social scientists
representing the six regions of the world). At
the national level, it encourages the
establishment of MOST National Committees.
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Conceptual and Practical Approach.
• Research Policy Reflections: Promoting participatory,
deliberative methodologies. Making use of ICTs.
• Fora of Ministers of Social Development: Regional and
Sub-Regional Fora. Responding to global challenges.
Generating a novel policy-space in which the researchpolicy linkages can play out fully.
• Policy Research Tool: The MOST Policy Research Tool
provides online access to policy-relevant comparative
information. It enables users to obtain customized
replies to transdisciplinary questions by drawing on
select content from original research documents.
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Building Bridges.
• Foundation Event: High Level Forum:
Internat. Forum on the Social Science Policy Nexus,
Argentina-Uruguay February 2006
• Bringing together policy makers, researchers,
representatives of civil society from more than eighty
countries.
• Four days of discussions organized in the cities of Buenos
Aires, Rosario, Córdoba and Montevideo.
• Innovative space for exchange of opinions, and sharing of
conceptual frameworks.
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Building Bridges.
• IFSP Forum, forums of Ministers of Social
Development in four regions, participation in the
World Social Forums.
• Practical instruments. Spaces for dialogue and
reflection.
• Answer questions like: how to arrange inspiring
events? how to engage politicians and
researchers in in-depth discussion and analysis?
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Innovating the Research Policy Nexus.
EBP, Participation and ICTs.
• EBP is about hard evidence. It knows there are
other sources of knowledge competing for
attention but evidence has to be robust.
• It also seeks to be beyond ideology.
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• The primary goal is to improve the reliability
of advice concerning the efficiency and
effectiveness of policy settings and possible
alternatives. The quest for rigorous and
reliable knowledge, and the desire to increase
the utilization of rigorous knowledge within
the policy process, are core features of the EBP
approach. (Head 2009: 16).
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• Primary concern of EBP is with flows and
exchanges between the producers and the
users of knowledge.
• Increasing the chances of both supply and
demand/take up in the relationship between
research and policy seems to be the key to
hitting the target in the social sphere.
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• There is an underlying administrative rationalism,
which Stone (2002) calls the “rational decision”
model.
• 1 Define goals.
• 2 Imagine alternative means for attaining them.
• 3 Evaluate the consequences of taking each
course of action and
• 4 Choose the alternative most likely to attain the
goal” (Stone 2002: 233).
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• EBP subscribes to a great extent to the
instrumental rationality that underpins the
project of modernity.
• Technocracy and the belief in the fact finding
capacity of the social sciences has failed.
• Dealing with modern day risk and uncertainty
requires more than expertise.
• It requires a collective process of reflection and
deliberation over the processes society has set in
motion.
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Findings of collective volume « Knowledge for
Policy. Innovating Social Research-Policy
Nexus ».
• 1. Flyvbjerg, Van Langenhove and Torgerson:
The social sciences have had enormous
difficulties emulating the natural sciences. The
social sciences deal with the normative. Also
inherent constitutive power (double
hermeneutic, Giddens 1987).
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• 2. Howarth and Griggs, Zittoun, Torgerson
and Flyverg: The role of the social scientist will
have to be re-imagined. Work together with
publics and officials, as an informed mediator,
to facilitate processes of policy change.
• 3. Zittoun, Ladi, Howarth and Griggs:
Discourses are important. They construct
problems, and solutions. Structure public
debate.
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• 4. Carden, Milani: Improving links between social
science and policy involves studying political and
economic context, decision making process and
research-policy institutions.
• 5. Carden: Capacity building within organizations.
Enhanced contact between research community
and policy makers.
• 6. Van Langenhove, Torgerson, Flyvbjerg:
Institutional innovation. Participatory processes.
Deliberative spaces. Use of ICTs.
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• Online Policy Deliberation
• The new information technologies may, for the
first time in the history of industrial societies
under liberal regimes, make it possible to
recreate the perfect information arena, the
agora of Ancient Greece. (European
Information Society Forum Report 1999).
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• The Internet makes possible involving large
numbers of users in a deliberation.
• The Internet provides relatively inexpensive
public access to retrievable data.
• By making it easier for individuals to find and
follow what concerns them personally, we
open the door to political engagement to
virtually everyone.
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• The Internet facilitates lateral, peer-to-peer and manyto-many interactive exchange.
• People discuss issues over a period of hours, days,
weeks or months in an asynchronous fashion.
• Time for reflective debate and the space to develop
evidence and argumentation.
• Participation open to all.
• Online discussion in language closer to ordinary
people.
• Participants encounter new sources of information and
new ways of thinking about issues. (Coleman and
Blumler 2009: 12-13).
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• MOST moving towards creating partnerships
for establishing national spaces of Online
Policy Deliberation in developing countries.
• e.g. German Federan Initiative on Online
Policy Deliberation.
• http://www.dialog-nachhaltigkeit.de/
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The Research Policy Nexus and ICT.
• MOST Policy Research Tool
• The Tool was launched in 2007 with a
collection on “Knowledge for Higher Education
and Research Policy”.
• 2009 5 morecollections were added.
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• Online access to policy-relevant comparative
information.
• Customized replies to trans-disciplinary
questions, drawing on select content from
various documents.
• Knowledge base of the tool: Social science
research reports; Reports of policy
experiences
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Goals:
• Tie knowledge to agency
• Share experience across borders. North-South.
South-South.
• Distil successful practices
Users:
• Government (all levels)
• Policy research teams
• NGOs/civil society
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