Beschreibung

"Interests, ideas, beliefs, and values drive policy-making. Furthermore, politicians employ beliefs in order to cope with myriads of information. Beliefs systematise information and provide criteria for assessing information and ending a search for information. Thus, Paul Cairney (2022) argues that the conception of policy-making as being evidence-based misses the main characteristics of the policy process; societal problems are not solved in subsequent stages of the policy process that are led by evidence. Rather, evidence-based policy making represents an ideal that actors may use in order to depoliticise societal problems. Nevertheless, evidence provided by policy advice impacts on the policy process in specific situations, as shown above. In general, evidence can support the argumentation in favour of a policy position. If, in democracies, political actors compete with one another for decision power by applying arguments in political debates, as Joseph A. Schumpeter (1993) argues, evidence-based arguments constitute an advantage over other forms of arguments, for example arguments based on fake news or religious faith, as long as citizens and political competitors appreciate argumentation and decision-making based on evidence." (Text excerpt, IAB-Doku) ((en))