Appeals to evidence for the resolution of wicked problems the origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias

• Published in: Policy sciences Vol. 49; no. 4; pp. 373 - 393
• Main Author: Parkhurst, Justin O.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer Science + Business Media 01.12.2016; Springer US; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Bias; Cognition; Cognitive psychology; Decision making; Economic Policy; Frame analysis; Government; Polarization; Policy making; Political Science; Political Science and International Relations; Political Science and International Studies; Psychology; Public Administration; Public policy; Rationality; RESEARCH ARTICLE; Social policy; Studies; Values; United Kingdom > UK; Evidence and policy; Evidentiary bias; Wicked problems; Intractability; Cognitive bias
• ISSN: 0032-2687; 1573-0891
• DOI: 10.1007/s11077-016-9263-z

Wicked policy problems are often said to be characterized by their ‘intractability’, whereby appeals to evidence are unable to provide policy resolution. Advocates for ‘Evidence Based Policy’ (EBP) often lament these situations as representing the misuse of evidence for strategic ends, while critical policy studies authors counter that policy decisions are fundamentally about competing values, with the (blind) embrace of technical evidence depoliticizing political decisions. This paper aims to help resolve these conflicts and, in doing so, consider how to address this particular feature of problem wickedness. Specifically the paper delineates two forms of evidentiary bias that drive intractability, each of which is reflected by contrasting positions in the EBP debates: ‘technical bias’—referring to invalid uses of evidence; and ‘issue bias’—referring to how pieces of evidence direct policy agendas to particular concerns. Drawing on the fields of policy studies and cognitive psychology, the paper explores the ways in which competing interests and values manifest in these forms of bias, and shape evidence utilization through different mechanisms. The paper presents a conceptual framework reflecting on how the nature of policy problems in terms of their complexity, contestation, and polarization can help identify the potential origins and mechanisms of evidentiary bias leading to intractability in some wicked policy debates. The discussion reflects on how a better understanding about such mechanisms could inform future work to mitigate or overcome such intractability.