Great Expectations: Can Social Science Evaluate New Labour's Policies?

In: Evaluation: the international journal of theory, research and practice, Band 7, Heft 3, S. 305-330

Abstract

The UK Labour government has offered a hand of friendship to the academic research community and to social science in particular. It has rejected anti-intellectualism in government and sought to promote policy made on the basis of evidence. In particular, it has introduced piloting of policies prior to national implementation. This article draws on the experience of four of the largest pilot evaluations undertaken to date, and considers the extent to which the research community has been able to contribute effectively to determining whether Labour's policies work. Five sets of inhibitors are identified and discussed relating to the policy-making process, the characteristics of particular policies, the mechanisms for commissioning and also designing evaluations and the orientation of the social science community. The article concludes that success to date has been severely limited and that to continue evaluating new policies as at present is unsustainable. Evidence-based policy cannot be limited to the use of evidence; policy making has to accommodate the production of evidence. An alternative scenario is presented that might facilitate such an accommodation.