Policy makers cannot consider all evidence relevant to policy. They use two shortcuts—emotions and beliefsto understand problems and “rational” ways of establishing the best evidence on solutions—to act quickly in complex,multilevel policy-making environments. Many studies only address one part of this problem. Improving the supply ofevidence helps reduce scientific and policy maker uncertainty. However, policy makers also combine their beliefs withlimited evidence to reduce ambiguity in order to choose one of several possible ways to understand and solve a problem.We use this insight to consider solutions designed to “close the evidence–policy gap

In a crisis, almost-instant choices about who to trust or distrust could make a difference between life and death. Trust is necessary for cooperation, coordination, social order, and to reduce the need for coercive state imposition. During a pandemic, people need to trust experts to help them understand and respond to the problem, governments to coordinate policy instruments and make choices about levels of coercion, and citizens as they cooperate to minimize infection. We compare these general requirements with specific developments in the UK and US, identifying: the variable reliance by elected politicians on scientific experts, worrying levels of distrust in elected leaders, and a shift from a trust-based to more impositional forms of government action (with more variation in responses in the US). While trust is difficult to define and measure, these examples show that people miss it when it is gone.

No abstract

Thirty‐five years ago Arnold Meltsner observed that professional policy analysts in the U.S. government undertook several roles in the policy‐making process, the most common of which involved “technical” information processing while others were more “political” in nature. Although still prescient, more recent empirical studies of professional policy work have found little evidence of the predominance of technicians in the ranks of analysts employed in public policy bureaucracies. However, only very weak and partial information exists on the situation in most countries, and descriptions of the nature of policy work often remain primarily normative and lacking in empirical referents. This article reexamines the duties and nature of contemporary professional policy analysis in the Canadian bureaucracy. It reveals that contemporary policy work is constituted by more complex and multisided practices than Meltsner and his followers described. These findings are significant for those wishing to understand, and improve, the nature of policy work in contemporary government. Hace treinta y cinco años Arnold Meltsner observó que los analistas legislativos profesionales en el gobierno de los Estados Unidos se encargan de diferentes tareas en el proceso legislativo, el más común involucraba el proceso de información “técnica” mientras que otros eran de una naturaleza más “política”. Estudios empíricos más recientes del trabajo profesional legislativo han encontrado poca evidencia del predominio de técnicos en puestos analíticos en las burocracias del sector público. Sin embargo, existe tenue y parcial información sobre la situación de la mayoría de los países y la descripción de la naturaleza del trabajo legislativo permanece normativa y carente de referentes empíricos. Este estudio reexamina los deberes y naturaleza de analistas legislativos profesionales en la burocracia Canadiense y revela que el trabajo legislativo contemporáneo está constituido por prácticas más complejas de las que Meltsner y sus partidarios describieron. Estos hallazgos son significativos para aquellos que deseen comprender y mejorar la naturaleza del trabajo legislativo en la gobernabilidad contemporánea.

When, why and how do policy mixes change and evolve? Much of the contemporary interest in such mixes is focused on distinguishing simple policies from more complex policy mixes, evaluating the relationships between single and multiple policy tools within a mix, and developing criteria to assess the likely performance of particular mixes. These are important and necessary analytical tasks. However, another required step in understanding policy mixes is to understand how and why mixes evolve and change over time and to determine whether any changes are an improvement. In this paper, we analyse the development of a complex policy mix in the case of reclamation and remediation of the Alberta oil sands from an earlier ‘simple goal, single instrument’ policy regime to a more complex one. This case study reveals the presence of at least two dynamic processes at work in policy mix development, with significant implications for the nature of the changes that result from them. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment