There are good reasons why social science and evidence-based policy making are not always in tune with each other. The aim of this chapter is to help improve and advance the relationship between the two, but, equally, we do not want to fall into the trap of being naive about the inherently challenging character of the relationship. There are features of the way that policy processes operate and social science works that create tensions in the relationship. It is these tensions that we explore in this chapter.

Evidence provided by social science can be misused by political interests, the media can oversimplify complex research findings and, occasionally, the political leaning of the researchers may inappropriately colour the objectivity of the research or at least those parts of the results that are most widely promoted. We can also view as naive an understanding of the policy process as driven by the rational decision-making model. The policy process is not characterised by temporal neatness. The policy process only rarely follows the linear process of conceptualising the problem, designing an intervention, providing solutions and evaluating that intervention. As all the established policy making models tell us, from the multiple streams framework to punctuated-equilibrium models (for a review, see Sabatier, 2007), the policy process involves a complex set of elements that interact over time. Problems, solutions and political opportunities may all become prominent at different times. It is clear that researchers hardly ever find themselves in the position of problem-solving where there is an agreed view of a challenge and a consensus that something should be done about it. Only rarely will the conditions emerge for a pure problem-solving model: a clear and shared definition of the problem, timely and appropriate research answers, political actors willing to listen and the absence of strong opposing forces. Much more often, social scientists, like many other policy players, struggle to find the appropriate window of opportunity in which to make their impact.

Policy making is a political process and we will show how policymakers themselves view constraints on their capacity to take up and use evidence.