The dos and don’ts of influencing policy: a systematic review of advice to academics

Abstract

Many academics have strong incentives to influence policymaking, but may not know where to start. We searched systematically for, and synthesised, the 'how to' advice in the academic peer-reviewed and grey literatures. We condense this advice into eight main recommendations: (1) Do high quality research; (2) make your research relevant and readable; (3) understand policy processes; (4) be accessible to policymakers: engage routinely, flexible, and humbly; (5) decide if you want to be an issue advocate or honest broker; (6) build relationships (and ground rules) with policymakers; (7) be 'entrepreneurial' or find someone who is; and (8) reflect continuously: should you engage, do you want to, and is it working? This advice seems like common sense. However, it masks major inconsistencies, regarding different beliefs about the nature of the problem to be solved when using this advice. Furthermore, if not accompanied by critical analysis and insights from the peer-reviewed literature, it could provide misleading guidance for people new to this field.

The twenty-first century experimenting society: the four waves of the evidence revolution

“…There has been growing attention to use of evidence to inform policy, with recent reviews of what that literature tells us; e.g., Langer et al (2016), and Oliver and Cairney (2019). However, the main focus of this literature is on the approaches researchers can take to support the use of research findings in policy (e.g., Evans and Cvitanoivc, 2018), such as engage users in the setting of research questions or the production of the research itself.…”

Transforming evidence for policy and practice: creating space for new conversations

“…Thus, we have sociologists of knowledge producing helpful theory about the complex and messy nature of decision-making and the political nature of knowledge (e.g., Lancaster, 2014); but this is not drawn on by designers of research partnerships or evaluators of research impact (Chapman et al, 2015;Reed and Evely, 2016;Ward, 2017). This leaves individual researchers with the imperative to do high quality research and to demonstrate impact, but with little useful advice about how as individuals or institutions they might achieve or measure impact (Oliver and Cairney, 2019), leading to enormous frustration, duplicated and wasted effort. Even more damagingly, researchers produce poor policy recommendations, or naively engage in political debates with no thought about the possible costs and consequences for themselves, the wider sector, or publics.…”

“…Or should this type of dissemination work be undertaken by boundary organisations or individuals who develop specific skills and networks? There is little empirical evidence about how best to make these choices (Oliver and Cairney, 2019), or how these consequences affect the impact or credibility of evidence ; nor is there good quality evidence about the most effective strategies and interventions to increase engagement or research uptake by decision-makers or between researchers and their audiences (Boaz et al, 2011). It seems likely that some researchers may get involved and others stay in the hinterlands (Locock and Boaz, 2004), depending on skills and preference.…”

Global Crisis Leadership for Disease‐Induced Threats: One Health and Urbanisation

“…The last part of this quote, if taken optimistically, is a case of where research evidence on the need for an OH approach has not been met with the appropriate policy response. A weak relationship between evidence and policy is, however regrettable, not uncommon (Oliver and Cairney, 2019). Taken pessimistically, the insights of the interviewee could be taken to be a case of institutional paralysis caused by weak governmental leadership and deniability, which is also not uncommon in times of crisis (Boin et al, 2016), nor when it comes to managing disease‐induced outbreaks (Connolly, 2016).…”