Intersectoral variation in knowledge and evidence use: Evidence from external policy advice

Key to understanding how and why knowledge is used (or not) in policymaking is to explain why knowledge utilization differ across sectors. The predominant approach of national-level or agency-specific modeling of knowledge use reifies the unique experiences of sectors and public organizations that shape the motivations and strategies for producing and using policy knowledge. Studying sectoral variation can unlock an often-ignored understanding on how the nature of policy subsystems that occupy policy sectors shapes how the government consumes different kinds of knowledge and evidence. This paper examines how subsystem politics affects the use of policy knowledge and evidence across policy sectors. The paper develops a framework that links subsystem politics with the type of policy knowledge and evidence. It characterizes subsystem politics as a function of the level of development of the subsystem (i.e. whether nascent or mature) and the level of state involvement (i.e. institutionalized vs non-institutionalized). Policy knowledge is also differentiated according to nature of the knowledge claim as either a) epistemic (scientific, research-based), b) tacit (professional expertise) or c) phronetic (lay evidence). Together, subsystem politics and degree of state involvement in the delivery of goods and services can be used to generate hypotheses in how knowledge use differ across sectors. On one hand, mature subsystems tend to be governed with strong professional norms, unified with coherent belief systems that more or less seek instrumental rationality. Mature subsystems are more likely to be interdependent and collaborative. When there is high degree of state involvement, they would require more tacit knowledge based on bureaucratic, technical expertise; but when sectoral performance is contingent upon greater non-state involvement, they favor epistemic knowledge based on research. On the other hand, nascent subsystems tend to be weakly coordinated and the early subsystem formation require greater political bargaining between state and non-state actors. Nascent subsystems faced with greater state involvement would use knowledge for network formation and thus, would require more lay evidence. When state is less central, nascent subsystems ‘satisfice’ and a greater variety of knowledge would be used. The paper will test these hypotheses using an analysis of 3,342 government bids for external policy consultants between 2007 and 2015 in the Philippines. Government bids represent the appetite of subsystem for external for-contract knowledge. Preliminary comparison of 20 policy sectors reveal a significant variation in the use of external policy consultants across these sectors, with mature subsystems like Health, Environment, Agriculture accounting for more than half of the bids. Further quantitative and qualitative analysis hopes to bring out the differences in terms of the types of policy knowledge sought in these bids.