Ministerial evidence strategies and knowledge utilization in active labor market and primary education policy in Denmark

We know surprisingly little about how and why ministries use evidence to inform public policymaking. Therefore, we explore how evidence is associated with instrumental knowledge utilization in ministries with different evidence strategies. Based on the theoretical state of the art, we identify analytical challenges in studying knowledge utilization in policymaking and introduce an analytical approach to overcome them. We use 1.200 documents (political decisions and knowledge sources) as data to examine relationships between evidence and decisions in relation to active labor market policy and primary education policy in Denmark in the period from 2016-2021. In doing so, the paper shows variation in aggregate utilization scores for ministries and identifies explanatory factors that help account for these variations including ministerial evidence strategies.