Brodie's Public Policy and Global Governance Blog

I started working recently for the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care. It has surprised me the extent that healthcare policy is based on research and evidence compared to some areas of international public policy. This is likely due to the scientific nature of healthcare and the systems that have been set up to evaluate its delivery but it seems to me that we could use a greater deal of evidence based planning for areas of international public policy that have been heavily dominated by ideological predispositions.

One area that I see a need for greater evidence based planning in international public policy is in the economic realm. Despite the amenable nature of economic policy to evidence based planning it seems that some policymakers have been too eager to defer decisionmaking to their ideological predisposition. The forces of neoliberalism and free market ideology have often prescribed policies that fly in the face of clear evidence. For example, despite decades of failure, until recently, IMF policy has prescribed one size fits all adjustment policies to developing countries based on the tenets of the Washington consensus. Likewise, we have continued to see recurrent financial crises throughout periods of financial deregulation.

I am not advocating that we make policy based on evidence and research alone. Obviously ideological and value based judgements will have a large role to play in any public policy decision. What I am advocating for is a greater use of evidence in the international public policy making arena. Perhaps it is because many international policies populate the sphere of what we would term "high politics" that are often subject to extremely politicized decision making processes. Having said that, I see far too many international policies that have lead to failure over and over again despite clear evidence that we should probably be doing things differently.