Suchergebnisse

Background:Government-funded knowledge brokering organisations (KBOs) are an increasingly prevalent yet under-researched area. Working in the space between knowledge and policy, yet framing themselves as different from think tanks and academic research centres, these organisations broker evidence into policy.
Aims and objectives:This article examines how three organisations on different continents develop similar narratives and strategies to attempt to inform policymaking and build legitimacy.
Methods:Using documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews, it shows how the organisations construct their credibility and legitimacy, and make sense of their emergence, activities and relationships with policymakers.
Findings:The study responds to the lack of political focus on many existing studies, examining how KBOs make sense of their origins and roles, articulating notions of evidence, and mobilising different types of legitimacies to do so. The research also addresses an empirical gap surrounding the emergence and activities of KBOs (not individuals), analysing organisations on three different continents.
Discussion and conclusions:KBOs developed similar narratives of origins and functions, despite emerging in different contexts. Furthermore, they build their legitimacy/ies in similar ways. Our research improves our understanding of how a new 'tool' in the evidence-informed policymaking (EIPM) arsenal – KBOs – is being mobilised by different governments in similar ways.

AbstractEvidence plays a growing role in public administration worldwide. We analyze the perceptions of policy actors, using Q methodology and a structured questionnaire, which reveals four types of profiles. Most policy actors did not fit neatly into an Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making (EBPM) group. Instead, they either had a pragmatic view where context and policy issues influence what counts as evidence, an inclusive position which emphasized the importance of considering a range of different types of evidence, or a political perspective where power relations and politics influence what counts as evidence. Our research also illustrates how different actors in the same community can have different perceptions of evidence, and how this can change over time due to experience and career trajectory.

In recent years ministers in the UK have regarded external inspection as a key driver of improvement in public services and an important instrument of good governance. Detailed data analysis of the operation of Audit Commission inspection of English local authorities since April 2000 demonstrates significant variations in inspection scores in different types of authorities, in different years and in different services. These findings raise important questions about the consistency with which inspection criteria are being applied and the reliability of the evidence on which inspectors are basing their judgments about a council's capacity for improvement. This in turn casts doubt on the capacity of the current model of improvement to make service providers more accountable to the public, which central government claims to be one of its key policy objectives. The paper uses data from the shadowing of inspections in five local authorities and elite interviews to explore the practice of 'inspecting for improvement'.

Award schemes have proliferated in the public sector worldwide – yet there is little analysis of their role in improving public services through celebrating performance and sharing good practice. This paper theorizes this development, establishing a research agenda to examine the functioning, attractiveness and effectiveness of award schemes, which may be classified as being threshold or competitive schemes. The paper examines a major English competitive award, the Beacon Scheme, and focuses initially on its attractiveness to applicants. The research constructed a database of applications and awards of all English local authorities over six years as well as using interviews and observation. The analysis examined trends over a changing policy context, along with differences in application rates across eligible authorities and perceptions of the scheme. The analysis is used inductively to construct criteria by which the attractiveness of award schemes and their effectiveness in service improvement can be conceptualized.