Joshua Myers and Hilde Coffé investigate the effect of having a STEM background on both the likelihood of MPs proposing a STEM Private Members’ Bill and the proportion of proposals an MP dedicates to such bills. They find that having a STEM background …
Category: politics
American Expat? You can vote today in Dem Primary!
Are you an American who is living temporarily or permanently outside the USA? You can vote in the Democratic Primary! Even better, it is fast and easy, and you can do it today! It’s this easy: Join Democrats Abroad to get an ID number: https://www.democratsabroad.org/join Download your ballot: https://www.democratsabroad.org/primary Fill in and email the PDF […]
Party political conferences – A key site for research impact
Party political conferences provide a unique opportunity for academics to engage with politicians and the policymaking process, as well as a variety of different stakeholders in any given policy issue. In this post, Dr Grace Lordan, Professor Tony Travers, Dr Anna Valero and Megan Marsh describe how academics and the public affairs team at LSE have used party political conferences […]
Evidence matters, but ideas shape policy in more fundamental ways than we might realise
Evidence-based policy-making can be problematic in practice, especially if the evidence is uncertain. Based on a case study concerning the formation of a national-level policy position in Ireland in response to an EU initiative, Niamh Hardiman and Saliha Metinsoy suggest that policy makers’ decisions may well be guided by beliefs that go beyond the direct evidence available. Ideas can be so deep-rooted that they […]
A New Politics of Knowledge? Exploring the contested boundaries between science, knowledge and policy.
Kat Smith and Richard Freeman argue it’s time to start bringing together the diverse and innovative thinking around the complex relationships between science, knowledge and policy. If we really want to understand how research does, and might, impact on policy and society more broadly, we need to combine the lessons available from sociological studies of knowledge, political science and anthropology […]