Evidence-Based Policymaking and Global Governance: An Examination of the Role of the Policy Studies Organization and ECOSOC
Keywords:
Evidence-based policymaking, Global governance, ECOSOC, Policy studies organization, Epistemic communities, Policy networks, Institutional effectivenessAbstract
Transnational challenges, such as climate change, global inequality, pandemics, digital governance, and institutional legitimacy crises, are becoming increasingly complex, therefore, the demand for evidence-based decision-making has become an important developing normative and practical issue in the area of global governance. The Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) is the principal organ of the UN responsible for coordinating policy processes across all areas of economic, social and development issues. However, despite ECOSOC’s ability to make decisions concerning how the world addresses these problems, it has been widely criticized for being unable to translate expert knowledge into tangible policy outcomes. Therefore, this paper will examine the role of the Policy Studies Organization (PSO), a Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) serving as a knowledge intermediary and its evolving relationships with ECOSOC to provide evidence-based decision-making support. The article makes the case that the relationship between the PSO and ECOSOC represents a paradigmatic shift in global governance in that epistemic actors, policy networks and knowledge brokers are now influencing institutional performance beyond the confines of more traditional state-centric models of governance. To examine the mechanisms through which the PSO supports ECOSOC’s policy agenda-setting, facilitates the diffusion of policies across member states and encourages institutional learning within ECOSOC; this research employs theoretical frameworks from institutionalism, policy network analysis and critical political economy. Furthermore, this article identifies structural obstacles to the application of evidence-based policy in multilateral institutions including those created by power disparities, political conflict, and bureaucratic resistance to change. Finally, this research contextualizes the PSO-ECOSOC relationship in terms of existing scholarly debates surrounding the intersection of knowledge and power in global public policy, contributes to scholarship exploring reforms in global governance, and offers evidence-based recommendations to improve the legitimacy, effectiveness, and relevance of multilateral organizations vis-a-vis the SDG Agenda.
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