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This article demonstrates how attributes of policy fields shape parliamentary oversight across policy fields. Building on the accountability literature, the study develops the argument that parliamentarians will more likely oversee policy fields where cooperative forms of governance are more present, since these policies are more difficult to assess and have a higher need of legitimation. Using the example of policy evaluation demand by members of parliament in Switzerland, the study suggests that parliamentarians seek more control in a policy field, where public activities are more often delegated to nopublic actors or the need for legitimation is particularly high. Both effects increase with the policy field's closeness to science. These findings could be very relevant in order to understand how attributes of policy fields shape political institutions.

AbstractScientific evidence has become increasingly important for the decision-making processes in contemporary democracies. On the one hand, research dealing with the utilization of scientific knowledge in the political process has pointed out that decision-makers learn from evidence to improve policies to solve problems. On the other, scholars have underlined that actors learn from evidence to support their political interests regardless of how it affects the policy problem. One conventional insight from the policy learning literature is that higher salience of a policy issue makes it much less likely that decision-makers use evidence in an "unpolitical" way. Nevertheless, only few studies have investigated systematically how differences regarding issue salience between policy fields impact on how decision-makers learn from evaluations at the individual level. Using multilevel regression models on data from a legislative survey in Switzerland, this paper shows that salience and technical complexity of policy issues do not automatically lead to less policy learning and to more political learning from policy evaluations. Nevertheless, this article's empirical analysis also points out that issue salience increases policy learning from evaluations if the policy issue is technically complex. Our findings contribute to research on policy learning and evidence-based policy making by linking the literature on policy evaluation and learning, which helps analyzing the micro-foundations of learning in public policy and administration.

AbstractIn this article, we inquire to what extent different manifestations of trust are associated with public support for evidence informed policy making (EIPM). We present the results of a cross‐sectional survey conducted in the peak of the second COVID‐19 wave in six Western democracies: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United States (N = 8749). Our findings show that public trust in scientific experts is generally related to positive attitudes toward evidence‐informed policy making, while the opposite is the case for trust in governments and fellow citizens. Interestingly, citizens' assessment of government responses to COVID‐19 moderates the relationship between trust and attitudes toward EIPM. Respondents who do rather not trust their governments or their fellow citizens are more in favor of EIPM if they evaluate government responses negatively. These findings suggest that attitudes toward EIPM are not only related to trust, but also strongly depend on perceived government performance.

Evaluations are considered of key importance for a well-functioning democracy. Against this background, it is vital to assess whether and how evaluation models approach the role of citizens. This paper is the first in presenting a review of citizen involvement in the main evaluation models which are commonly distinguished in the field. We present the results of both a document analysis and an international survey with experts who had a prominent role in developing the models. This overview has not only a theoretical relevance, but can also be helpful for evaluation practitioners or scholars looking for opportunities for citizen involvement. The paper contributes to the evaluation literature in the first place, but also aims to fine-tune available insights on the relationship between evidence informed policy making and citizens.

There is an increasing implementation of digital education programs at the local government level. While internal factors are widely believed to increase the success of such programs, there is little evidence on whether the program structure influences implementation. Using the example of the program "education numérique" (EDUNUM) in the canton of Vaud, we conducted six case studies in the framework of which we talked to thirty school representatives that participated in this education program. The findings show that one of the most important success factors of the EDUNUM project is related to the individual knowledge and resources of the organization implementing the program. The focus of the courses on "unplugged" activities carried out without the use of screens, such as computers and tablets, and the explicit effort of the program instructors to adapt the content of courses to teachers' needs have contributed to the high appreciation of courses by the teachers. Our results show that the implementation of the program can be successful even when the organization structure is unbalanced. These results highlight the need for more research into the implementation of digital education programs that provide digital literacy skills to a new generation of citizens. AbstraktIn jüngster Zeit sehen sich lokale Regierungen vermehrt gezwungen digitale Bildungsprogramme in den Schulen einzuführen. Zwar wird allgemein davon ausgegangen, dass interne Faktoren den Erfolg solcher Programme erhöhen, doch gibt es kaum Hinweise darauf, ob die Programmorganisation die Umsetzung beeinflusst. Am Beispiel des Programms "Education numérique" (EDUNUM) des Kantons Waadt führten wir sechs Fallstudien durch, in denen wir mit insgesamt 30 Schulvertretern gesprochen haben, die an diesem Bildungsprogramm mitmachen. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass einer der wichtigsten Erfolgsfaktoren des EDUNUM-Projekts mit den individuellen Kompetenzen und den Ressourcen der externen Organisation zusammenhängt, die das Programm umsetzt. Der Schwerpunkt der ...

AbstractThis article evaluates whether economic hardship affects social capital in Europe. Comparing 27 European countries, it evaluates the impact of personal experiences of economic hardship on engagement in voluntary associations as a cornerstone of civic and democratic life. Empirical analyses of the Eurobarometer data indicate that individual economic hardship has indeed a negative effect on associational volunteering in Europe. However, the result is qualified in two respects. First, it is found that the effect of individual economic hardship is contingent upon education. Second, this effect mostly refers to volunteering for associations providing solidarity goods (Putnam groups). These results have broader implications for understanding how economic hardship shapes the social capital within democratic societies.

This paper demonstrates how policy-specific characteristics affect inter-municipal cooperation. We investigate if a municipality's cooperation activity in a policy area hinges on whether the policy is considered relevant or politicized by local officials. Using data from two surveys of Swiss local administrators and officials conducted in 2017 that include detailed questions on public service provision, we find that the perceived relevance of a policy for a municipality is associated with more inter-municipal cooperation whereas perceived politicization goes along with less inter-municipal cooperation. These results suggest that policy-specific characteristics play a crucial role for understanding inter-municipal cooperation.

AbstractDoes anxiety affect how public officials process policy information? It is often argued that the increasing number of policy failures can be explained by a lack of policy learning by decision makers. While previous studies show that socioeconomic and partisan variables are related to the perception of policy information, little attention has been paid to the role of emotions, such as anxiety, in the policymaking process. In this paper, we investigate the impact of anxiety on the policy learning of local office holders at the individual level in Switzerland. We introduce the Marcus' Affective Intelligence Model—which examines how emotions affect individuals' information processing—to the policy learning literature. To test the expectations of the model, we draw on novel experimental data collected among local elected officials from the 26 Swiss cantons. In the experiment, we randomly display anxiety‐inducing images along with policy information. We provide evidence that anxiety has a positive causal effect on learning. Considering potential moderators of this effect, we show that the relationship is not conditioned by the strength of priors or the perceived complexity of public policies. However, these variables are substantially correlated with policy learning. Our findings have important implications for better understanding how information influences policymaking.

Background: Evaluations are a useful tool to learn more about the effectiveness of public measures. In the era of evidence-based policymaking, recent research suggests that quality is an important determinant of the utilisation of evaluations. Despite this claim, hardly any empirical study has investigated whether the quality of an evaluation – measured by a meta-evaluation – influences its perceived utilisation by decision makers.
Aims and objectives: This article asks how the quality of an evaluation study is related to its perceived use, and investigates the relationship between the quality of an evaluation, assessed through a meta-evaluation, and how the evaluation is perceived and accepted by the parties concerned.
Methods: The basis for the empirical analyses were 34 external evaluations, conducted from 2006 to 2014, of upper secondary schools in the canton of Zurich, as well as a standardised survey conducted among 307 representatives of these schools (teachers, administrators, members of quality development teams, and the heads of school oversight commissions).
Findings: We conclude that the quality of the evaluation, as assessed in a meta-evaluation, is not particularly associated with the perception of evaluation quality and the perceived use of the evaluation. The perceived quality, however, is related to the perceived impact of an evaluation.
Discussion and conclusion: These findings are relevant for evaluation research and practice, since they show that the quality of an evaluation and evaluation use do not necessarily go hand in hand.