Policy-making and innovation
How to stand a better chance of policies surviving contact
with reality?
Benedict Wauters
Director for innovation and impact evaluation
ESF dept. / Flemish Ministry of work and social economy
The idealised view of (evidence-based) policy-making
Electoral promise
+ negotiation in
formation of
government
(problem, need)
Lobbying,
consultation
(options)
(by officials)
ROAMEF cycle from UK Treasury, Green book, 2011
=Politics
(external context
to be
understood and
managed)
Evidence-based policy?
• Evidence can only be an input in a political process:
– need to take wider political situation and authority of
players into account
• getting policies agreed and implemented depends on
interactions between a plurality of actors with separate
(competing) interests, goals, strategies,…
• where there is no single clear rationale for any policy but each
actor has different understanding of the problem
– need to decide based on “values”
• as evidence rarely spells out a clear course of action
Politicians’ perspective
• Politicians complain about:
– existing departmental policies being retrofitted to new
goals / problems
– being “overmanaged”: only given constrained or lowest
common denominator options
– being involved too late after a policy was already
brokered
– not being challenged by civil servants
Civil servants’ perspective
• Civil servants complain about:
– politician’s coming in with new plans without clear/valid
link with problem
– policies driven ad hoc by events (crisis, media, …),
anecdotes (e.g. letter from a citizen) or “bad hair” days
– not being able to get at how politicians see policy
problems /goals / principles
– politicians not being open to evidence
Common ground?
• All appear to agree on:
– need to engage in “directed exploration” of politicians and
departmental policy advisors
• Ensure better consideration of policy problem and goals
• Engage in iterative, honest discussion how to achieve them
• Taking into account evidence
– typically poor connections between policy advice and
delivery experience leading to unrealistic predictions of
behaviour of targeted people
– no policy can be designed perfectly = need for capacity and
opportunity to adapt
Who’s missing in this
Adviser
Adviser
picture?
Adviser
Politician
DIVERSITY…
Implementers
What’s missing in this
picture?
…IN CONTEXT
“Most of my colleagues are really really scared about
what would happen if we really took a hard look at
what happens when our policies or regulations or
services meet the citizen, because as you know, no
strategy and no policy survives meeting reality.”
Christian Bason
http://graspmag.org/urbanism/design-thinking/why-we-need-design-in-policy-making/
How to engage?
?
?
?
Senge, The necessary revolution p. 250-262
10
How to engage?
PEOPLE SPEAK THEIR
MINDS BUT DO NOT
CHANGE THEIR
MINDS!
?
?
One step forward = confront (‘name
the elephant in the room’): leads to
either “deafening silence” or endless
debate; people listen but only to win;
result is retreat into smoothing over
or a forced compromise (e.g. by
voting) where no one is happy (us
versus them)
Senge, The necessary revolution p. 250-262
11
Requires ability to endure
discomfort as what you say/hear
may be an “ugly truth” that we
would prefer NOT to say/hear
How to engage?
Listen NOT to win but because
you are really interested in the
other (client, colleague,…) =
authentic, meaningful,
“heartfelt” conversation. Implies
vulnerability. Thinking with head
and heart.
?
To get out of the feeling of being trapped, we need “above the line” discussions
Senge, The necessary revolution p. 250-262
12
How to engage?
The more perspectives we can take, the more the “we”
starts to come to the forefront.
Discover each other’s
individual meaning
No pressure to agree!
Discover new meaning
together: shared visions
Senge, The necessary revolution p. 250-262
13
No place for empathy in
politics?
The core business of a politician
The age of empathy?
Taking the minister, advisors and
implementers on an ethnographic journey
into people’s lives…
The age of empathy?
Say hi to persona’s!
The age of empathy?
Join the brainstorm…
HOW
CAN
WE?
The age of empathy?
Prototype with diversity…
Fail fast and cheaply!
What about “evidence”?
Policy-making revamped?
Case studies of (parts of) a process (with/out counterfactual)
Case studies of
parts of a process
Case studies
of elements
of parts of a
process
(when predictions hold sufficiently)
(unanticipated
mechanisms, scope
conditions)
(when predictions hold sufficiently)
Constructing
Ethnography, GT*
Constructing
(issues)
(a, b, c)
(a, b, c)
(unanticipated
mechanisms, scope
conditions)
(unanticipated
mechanisms, scope
conditions)
(a, b, c….)
(a, b, c)
Mechanism based IF-THEN
hypotheses under “realistic” scope
conditions
(a, b, c)
Gradually more
sophisticated
“rough” prototype(s) /
Mechanism RCTs
Etc…
Constructing
Ideation (of mechanism based IF-THEN
hypotheses under “imagined” scope
conditions)
Mechanism
based IF-THEN
hypotheses
under real
scope
conditions
(typical cases)
Gradually more sophisticated “live”
prototypes
*GT = grounded theory
OK, that’s
Policy-making revamped?
probably pushing
it right now 
Case studies of (parts of) a process (with/out counterfactual)
Case studies of
parts of a process
Case studies
of elements
of parts of a
process
(when predictions hold sufficiently)
(when predictions hold sufficiently)
Constructing
Etc…
(unanticipated
mechanisms, scope
conditions)
Just
Ethnography,
GT* some key-words:
Constructing
(a, b, c)
(unanticipated
mechanisms, scope
conditions)
Mechanism
-contextualised (instead of
based IF-THEN
hypotheses
randomised)
under real
scope
Mechanism based IF-THEN
conditions
-concrete (instead hypotheses
of abstract)
under “realistic” scope
(typical cases)
conditions
-iterative (instead ofGradually
one-shot)
more sophisticated “live”
prototypes
-theory-based
(instead
of blackGradually more
Ideation (of mechanism based IF-THEN
sophisticated
hypotheses under “imagined” scope
box)
“rough” prototype(s) /
conditions)
Constructing
(issues)
(a, b, c)
(unanticipated
mechanisms, scope
conditions)
(a, b, c….)
(a, b, c)
(a, b, c)
*GT = grounded theory
Mechanism RCTs