Epistemic politics of the strategic state - The role of evidence-based policy-making in the reforms of the Finnish core executive

One of the most popular manifestations of epistemic politics in the last decades has been evidence-based policy-making (EBPM), a widely spread policy model included in the global catalogue of good governance. As EBPM is adopted globally, it may be interpreted by governments and organisations differently, and also mutate through these processes (e.g. Peck & Theodore 2015). Advocated by international organisations, such as the OECD, EBPM informs the way democratic institutions, such as national governments, are encouraged to reform their work. As such, EBPM has implications on democratic governance. However, there is still limited understanding in research literature about the ways in which EBPM is embedded in governance in empirical settings, and about the implications the adoption of EBPM has on the functioning of democratic institutions and on democratic governance. These are the themes explored by the proposed paper. The paper studies the role of EBPM in the efforts of the Finnish centre of government, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Ministry of Finance, to reform the work of Finnish governments from the 2010s onwards. Several consecutive Finnish governments have endorsed a more “knowledge-based” policy-making, which can be interpreted as a Finnish manifestation of EBPM. The paper asks a) what type of governance is advocated by these reforms, b) what is the role of EBPM and knowledge in this governance, and c) discusses the implications “knowledge-based” policy-making may have. The paper discusses how EBPM has been connected in the Finnish case, but through the influence of OECD also more widely, to the ideas of managerialist strategic governance and stronger steering from the centre or the whole-of-government approach in administrative reform. The paper argues that in the Finnish core executive, EBPM has been embedded in the project of developing a ‘strategic state’ (e.g. Elomäki et al. 2021) with the goal of centralising power and redirecting the work of the executive by streamlining decision-making towards strategic targets. In this constellation, knowledge and its production are understood as strategic resources of the government. While EBPM is used to legitimate policy-making and is defended as a transparent and accountable form of governance, EBPM-influenced strategic governance may also strengthen a more output or results-oriented, technocratic understanding of governance, which may have adverse effects in terms of democracy. Empirically, the paper focuses on the long-running efforts to reform the work of Finnish governments, particularly on the introduction of strategic steering into government work and the comprehensive reform of research institutes and funding, both exemplifying the entry of EBPM into Finnish policy-making. The data of the study consists of civil servant interviews and policy documents related to the reforms. Methodologically the paper applies the logics approach (Glynos & Howarth 2007) and analyses logics characterising the governance of the ‘strategic state’ and ‘epistemologies’ (cf. Jasanoff 2005) of knowledge-based policy-making.