Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Social policy
and providing fuller accounts of the impacts of different policies, particularly when
individuals are exposed to and affected by multiple policies and programs at once.
The process of developing and framing research studies also involves implicit
assumptions that inevitably influence subsequent findings. For instance, the types
of research questions being asked in a study permit the researchers to ‘discover’
some forms of evidence, but ignore (or fail to discover) others. Furthermore, social
constructivists argue that all ‘truths’ are not necessarily discoverable or knowable.
Thus, there is inevitably an implicit bias in the types of knowledge that are able to
be produced through common and accepted research methodologies, regardless of
their specific methodological leanings.
The extent to which evidence influences policy outcomes is also a cause for
debate. As Colebatch and others have discussed, the policy development process
is inevitably a contest between different types of knowledge, different ideologies
and diverse ideas. 46 It is not driven by evidence alone. Thus, it is unclear what role
evidence does and should play within this contest, and whether this depends on
changing contexts and circumstances (e.g. evidence availability).
In response to the potential shortcomings of evidence-based policy, some have
advocated a shift to the more pragmatic aspiration of being evidence informed. 47
This involves an acknowledgement that there are various forms of evidence, that
evidence is not neutral, and that policy making is also guided by factors other than
evidence alone.
Social policy as an ongoing, iterative process, rather than an end ‘product’
There is an often-held misconception that once social policies are designed, they
move along the policy conveyer belt to be implemented in an apolitical and
exacting manner. However, this view treats social policy as an end ‘product’, which
arguably overemphasises the linearity of the relationship between agenda setting,
policy design and implementation. Ewig and Palmucci stated:
We know from previous studies of implementation that one cannot assume that
policies will simply be implemented as designed, nor is the process of
implementation a linear one from policy passage to simply successful or
unsuccessful. Instead, implementation is an interactive political process involving
political calculations and negotiations among diverse parties who often have
competing political stakes. 48
Most social policies continue to be iteratively designed and redesigned, even if
only in an incremental sense, during their implementation and throughout their
46 Colebatch 2006.
47 For example, see Nevo and Slomin-Nevo 2011.
48 Ewig and Palmucci 2012, 2491.
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