Evidence-Based Policymaking and Public Administration in Denmark

This book discusses how and why different ways of utilising evidence in government ministries affect policy success and failure. Chapter 1 focuses on the key roles that government ministries play in formulating and implementing policy and influencing the use of evidence in policy-making. The chapter first presents the research gaps and questions explored in the book. Then, arguments for why evidence-based policy remains an appealing ideal for political decision-makers are presented. It is then explained why hopes of evidence-based policy might be disappointed lending to moderators of evidence uptake in policy. Based on distinctions between selective and comprehensive evidence input and variation in formal policy decisions and informal policy management, a typology of evidence in policy is presented. The typology allows the book to define different types of evidence utilisation, which guide the focus of the following empirical chapters. The chapter concludes by considering the Danish context and methods applied to study the use and effects of evidence in government ministries based on three case studies focused on public budgeting policy, public school policy and active labour market policy.

How and why has the estimation of dynamic socio-economic effects of policies shaped political decision-making? To address this question, the chapter first presents the prospects and challenges to a rationalist model of evidence-based policy. The chapter shows that criteria developed by the Ministry of Finance for including the dynamic socio-economic effects of policies in forecasting and budgeting have been important for which types of evidence are utilised in socio-economic policy decisions. Despite critiques of the evidence considered when estimating dynamic effects, it is argued that socio-economic policy modelling is a case of evidence-based policy in which evidence has successfully incentivised and shaped formal political decision-making.

Why did evidence-informed policy reform of public schools lead to policy conflict and failure? This chapter first presents a government politics perspective on evidence-informed policy. It is argued that ambitions of more evidence in public school policy promoted the priority of evidence in the policy area. Policy capacity was enhanced in the 2000s and early 2010s inspired by international trends and in response to government ambitions of addressing performance problems through the increased reliance on evidence and performance information. In a 2013 public school reform in Denmark, however, barriers to collecting evidence in combination with a reform of teachers’ working conditions triggered conflict and polarisation. The chapter illustrates the difficulties which can arise in political knowledge management of evidence-informed policies, the powerful dynamics of policy conflict and the risk of taking bold political action in a policy area with organised opposition from key stakeholders. The chapter ends by considering how the Ministry of Children and Education has attempted to limit the damage caused by policy conflict.

How and why did the evidence-based management of active labour market policies shape the practical knowledge of public professionals and policy outcomes? The chapter first considers the tension between a central wish to increase policy performance by imposing evidence and the reactions of public service professionals responsible for implementing policies in practice. On this basis, it highlights the role of Ministry of Employment in accumulating evidence and in performing an evidence-based management of active labour market policy. Unlike the case of public school policy, the level of policy conflict remained low, and reactions from public professionals were limited. The chapter shows the complex relationship between central ministries and local public professionals as well as the challenges involved in achieving desired policy outcomes.

How and why does the use of evidence in different government ministries affect policy success and failure? The concluding chapter summarises lessons from the three preceding empirical chapters to address the main research question of the book. The chapter argues that each type of evidence in policy relates to scientific, political, practical and symbolic knowledge and thereby elaborates the typology of evidence utilisation in government ministries presented in Chap. 1. On this basis, the chapter considers the prospects and challenges of government ministries to use evidence for taming policy problems in light of the prospects of using artificial intelligence. Understanding the interaction with other types of knowledge and the consequences of high-speed information allows a nuanced discussion of the gains and challenges associated with using evidence in public policy in the future.