Bridging policy and science action boundaries: information influences on US congressional legislative key staff decision making in natural resources

Abstract

This paper provides a framework to evaluate how policymakers interact with information, make decisions, and act upon policy-related information. To explore the influence of information in bridging water policy knowledge boundaries and linking policy decision making and action, the authors conducted a grounded theory study of key congressional legislative staff in the US House and Senate involved in federal water policy development and oversight. Federal legislative water policies are largely shaped and developed by senior congressional legislative staff, whose policy priorities, decisions, and actions are influenced by policy-related information. Three conceptual themes emerged from the study as common priorities for legislative staff: (1) developing trusted relationship-information networks; (2) prioritizing relevant stakeholder interests; and (3) maximizing efforts to achieve desired results. While the use of policy information is largely determined by the staff's multiple principal-agent roles, competing interests and other constraints, results of this study suggest that information quality criteria can be useful as heuristic tools for both intuitive judgments and reasoning of legislative decision makers and for transferring knowledge across science-policy action boundaries.

Producing actionable science in conservation: Best practices for organizations and individuals

“…However, other actors or stakeholders (especially those with different disciplinary or professional backgrounds) could have conflicting views about what knowledge is valid for use in decision‐making (Irwin & Wynne, 1996; Suryanarayanan & Kleinman, 2013). Recent work in this area suggests that coming to a consensus around legitimacy of evidence requires sustained interactions and a willingness to learn about the values, rules, and behaviors of other participants (Clark, van Kerkhoff, et al, 2016; Cook et al, 2013; Petty, Gongwer, & Schnabel, 2018). This suggests that the behavioral determinants of actionable science identified in this paper could also lead to stronger consensus around what counts as “good” or “legitimate” evidence—however, given the nature of our interview pool and the content of our interviews, we cannot claim this from our results.…”

Science communication in Congress: for what use?

“…Congress is predominantly an institution of generalists, not specialists. Elected representatives rely on staff as their principal agents to act on their behalf, staying abreast of new information and vetting it for use by the office within portfolios of specific issues, such as health, environment and natural resources, energy, education, and agriculture (Petty et al, 2018). Staff also lead the development and writing of new legislation (Montgomery and Nyhan, 2017), often in collaboration with external interest groups or other offices.…”

Information use in public administration and policy decision‐making: A research synthesis

“…In other words, the variability of key aspects of information being considered when data use is concerned is high, with just a handful of features recurring more frequently. The most frequent features being studied are: information content (19 studies focused on that feature alone, and 6 additional articles investigate content in conjunction with other information features) (e.g., Bel et al, 2021; Blom‐Hansen et al, 2021; DeLeo & Duarte, 2022; Harrits, 2019; Hong & Kim, 2019; Mizrahi & Minchuk, 2020; Walker et al, 2018; Wang & Niu, 2020) and information purpose (18 studies) (e.g., Choi & Woo, 2022; George & Desmidt, 2018; Korac et al, 2020; Meyfroodt & Desmidt, 2021; Micheli & Pavlov, 2020; Nitzl et al, 2019; Ruijer et al, 2023; Tantardini, 2022), followed by evidence‐based information (16 studies with exclusive focus and 1 study with an additional focus) (e.g., Hall & van Ryzin, 2019; Head, 2016; Petty et al, 2018; Turner et al, 2022; Wagner et al, 2021), information relativity (16 studies) (e.g., George, Baekgaard, et al, 2020; Holm, 2017; Hong et al, 2020; Petersen et al, 2019; van der Voet & Lems, 2022), information availability (10 studies) (e.g., Boer et al, 2018; Wit & Bekkers, 2020), and framing of information (10 studies interested on framing alone and an additional study interested on its framing and purpose) (e.g., Belardinelli et al, 2018; Mikkelsen et al, 2022; Porumbescu et al, 2021).…”