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The Institutional Arrangements for Connecting Evidence and Policy: the Case of Drug Misuse

Isabel Walter

Research Unitfor Research Utilisation, University of St Andrews

Nick Bland

Effective Interventions Unit, Scottish Executive

The Modernising Government agenda stresses the need for policy to be evidence-based. Yet there is still a general perception that research rarely impacts on policy making. Strategies to increase the connection between evidence and policy have typically focused on improving the evidence base and on enhancing communication between researchers and policy makers. By contrast, this paper examines an area that has largely been ignored: the influence of micro-institutional arrangements on the integration of evidence and policy. It examines the development of new institutional arrangements for linking research evidence and policy on drug misuse in England and in Scotland, using data from interviews and documentary analysis. This provides the basis for a re-consideration of a set of propositions from the literature about those features that encourage evidence use. A fine-grained analysis of conducive arrangements in the drug misuse policy area results in a revised list of propositions, which provide some preliminary guidance on those institutional arrangements likely to support evidence-based policy making.

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