From Evidence To Decision: Research On Evidence-based Policymaking Process Of Scientific And Technological Policy

Evidence-based policymaking,whose origin and development have profound political,conceptual and legitimacy foundations,comes from responding to the needs of the post-new public management movement.The scientific and technological field requires higher levels of decision-making,and often involves tackling the difficult issues of sophisticated "stuck neck" technology.Therefore,it is necessary to introduce evidence-based insights to realize scientific,standardized and institutionalized policymaking.After further sorting out the relevant literature,we clarified the existing research on evidence-based policymaking from four aspects: historical origin,application methods,research status,and academic responses,and sorted out the international practice in the United Kingdom and the United States.It is found that there is research gap for expanding from developed countries to developing countries,combining the research between science and technology and evidence-based policymaking,and shifting the exploration from causal relationship to causal mechanism.Based on this,the contribution and innovation of this study are established,that is,to expand the research on the evidence-based policymaking process in the scientific and technological field including research sample,research content and research depth.Based on this,the research design is determined and an analytical framework is constructed.This study selects the practice of scientific and technological policy formulation of the country,G province,and G city as cases,supplemented by policy text content to verify and supplement key concepts that may be covered.By sorting out the basic situation of three case,using process tracking to draw a timeline and extract evidence chains,it was found that the process from evidence to policy-making covered three causal mechanism components: evidence research,evidence improvement,and evidence application.By analyzing the performance of the country,G province,and G city in the three causal mechanism components,and combining the types of knowledge involved in the evidence,an evidence-based policy-making process model for scientific and technological policy is constructed.The evidence research stage includes five categories: policy scope,clear positioning,expected goals,policy interaction,and policy convergence,covering professional knowledge,technical knowledge,political knowledge,and local knowledge.The evidence improvement stage covers six categories,including preliminary research,unified will,policy feedback,multi-party argumentation,policy convergence,and policy networks,involving professional knowledge,technical knowledge,political knowledge,and empirical knowledge.The evidence application stage covers five categories: multi-party argumentation,policy adjustment,policy convergence,and policy interaction,and policy legalization,involving professional knowledge,technical knowledge,political knowledge,local knowledge,and public knowledge.The above categories are refined from different key concepts based on category thinking,and the performance of key concepts at different levels of government varies.From a quantitative perspective,the coverage rates of key concepts in the country,G province,and G city are 82.8%,100%,and 96.6%,respectively.G province performs best,followed by G city and the country.From a qualitative perspective,the evidence for formulating national scientific and technological policies is the best,covering the most complete scope and supporting procedures,followed by G Province and G City,respectively.On this basis,summarize and analyze the vertical intergovernmental relations of different levels of government.The first is the correspondence between key concepts.The meaning and boundaries of the same key concepts of inter domain linkage and intra domain deployment,procedural argumentation and subordinate government are inconsistent among different levels of government.The performance of different key concepts such as framework logic,unified will,subordinate government,and prominent characteristics in different levels of government is inconsistent.The second is the decision-making model of different levels of government.The policies issued by the scientific and technological departments of the country,G province,and G city,as well as the practice of conducting preliminary research through commission agency,are relatively consistent.Different levels of government conduct different policy communities,summary and evaluation,procedural argumentation,and strategic objectives,reflecting the national emphasis on overall consideration and regional balance,while local governments take into account the dual roles of self interest and agent,paying more attention to the resource inclination and attention allocation of higher level governments.Finally,based on the analysis of the differences between different levels of government from the perspective of strip and block,it is found that the national scientific and technological policies are characterized by a combination of strip and block,mainly block,while the local governments represented by G Province and G City are characterized by a combination of strip and block,mainly strip.Further explain the explanatory power and scope of application of the model.The model proposed in this study combines two dimensions of what works and what values,what works reflected by political rationality dominated by professional knowledge,political knowledge,local knowledge,and technical rationality refracted by professional knowledge,and what values reflected by public knowledge and citizen participation.According to three cases,the development of what works dimension is relatively complete,while the development of what values dimension is relatively slow.There may be three reasons behind this: the particularity of the scientific and technological field,the confidentiality of actual national conditions,and the degree of public participation at the development stage.This theoretical model is applicable to the formulation stage of medium to long term non-profit or consensus-oriented policies.And technical rationality focuses on providing professional and scientific ideal solutions in the early stage,while political rationality makes political judgments after making feasibility and game compromises in the later stage.The two cooperate to complement each other and jointly promote the formulation and promulgation of scientific and technological policies.On this basis,a theoretical dialogue between the theoretical model of this study and existing models is conducted to explore the shortcomings of this study and the next research direction.