Evidence-based policy (2017)

In this book the author examines the recent spread of evidence-based policy making across the Western world. Few major public initiatives are mounted these days in the absence of a sustained attempt to evaluate them. Programmes are tried and researched and yet it is often difficult to know which interventions, and which inquiries, will withstand the test of time. The evident solution, going by the name of evidence-based policy, is to take the longer view.

Pawson criticizes the dominant approach to systematic review – namely the ‘meta-analytic’ approach and commended an approach that he terms ‘realist synthesis’. On this vision, the real purpose of systematic review is better to understand programme theory, so that policies can be properly targeted and developed to counter an ever-changing landscape of social problems.