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In Focus, Past Events
Terrorism & Security Governance
On 22 June the Robert Schuman Centre, in line with its mission to promote policy dialogue with the world of practice, held a discussion titled 'Terrorism and Security Governance' involving both well-known academics in...
The Training
7-9 June 2018
This Executive Training Seminar aimed to contribute to a better understanding of different modes and instruments of evidence-based policy-making. It examined recent developments in evidence-based policy-making, data science and policy evaluation, including various tools of impact and implementation assessment, scientific evaluation, strategic foresight, the policy-oriented use of large data resources and data visualisation. The main purpose of this Executive Training Seminar was to provide fresh ideas on how to develop a convincing toolbox for providing evidence for policy-makers, including critical assessments of the limits of empirical and data evidence in defining new policies. Through presentations, case studies, and ‘hands on’ work, participants gained a greater appreciation and understanding of main issues related to evidence-based policy-making.
Evidence-Based Policy-Making
In times of increasing populism and contestation of politics, reliable information plays a vital role for well-informed policy-making based on evidence rather than emotions and fake news. The popular legitimacy of any political system around the world today, perhaps more than ever, thus depends on its effective capacity to successfully deliver good and targeted outcomes as a policy shaper and lawmaker based on facts. These outcomes have to be based on reliable data in order to make political decisions understandable, assessable, sustainable and future-proof. Within the preparatory and scrutinising processes of policy-making, policy proposals, legislative acts and implementation arrangements are increasingly being assessed and evaluated on the basis of factual evidence and statistical data. Such evidence-based monitoring is increasingly recognised as a complex steering mode in itself resulting from changing governance patterns, supra-nationalisation and globalisation. In this view, evidence-based policy-making reflects the need to re-structure the interaction between the political actors of different institutional origin and political levels, and represents an influential policy instrument at the border of the politics and policy dimensions of multilevel political systems.
The Speakers
Erik Akse | Impact Assessment Institute, Belgium
Jonathan Breckon | Alliance for Useful Evidence, United Kingdom
Tracey Brown | Sense about Science, United Kingdom
Paul Cairney | University of Stirling, United Kingdom
Christian Dietrich | European European Union Institute for Security Studies, France
David Mair | European Commission, Belgium
Matthias Rumpf | OECD, France
Gaby Umbach | European University Institute, Italy
You can find the programme of the seminar on the event page.
Policy Brief
Evidence-based policy-making is a complex and multi-dimensional feature of contemporary politics. Insight into political systems, governance techniques, democratic participation, knowledge management, data mining, statistical literacy and negotiation techniques are essential abilities policy-makers and stakeholders need to acquire and perfect in order to perform well in modern policy-making. While it is difficult to develop these abilities ‘on the job,’ moments of reflection and zooming out from daily practice help sharpen views and improve the skills required to understand the interconnected logics of EBPM. The first EBPM Executive Training Seminar conceived by GlobalStat offered a broad
perspective on the field and provided a starting point for deep dive sessions that will support capacity-building on the various sub-aspects of EBPM. Read more in the Policy Brief on ‘Evidence-Based Policy-Making: from Data to Decision-Making’.