Comments on: Help needed: Right policies that are not adopted because citizens would not understand

By: Tiago Peixoto

Tiago Peixoto — Wed, 27 Jun 2012 10:59:52 +0000

Had citizens been involved in the design of these policies maybe their adoption would not be such a problem. At least they would help to frame the problem and the corresponding policy in a suitable manner. In general, the issue you raise suggests to me that part of the problem is with the policymaking process itself, and not limited to citizens’ understanding of these policies.

By: Jamal Shahin (@jshahin)

Jamal Shahin (@jshahin) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 14:40:12 +0000

(can’t work out how to edit post…). But let’s not forget that the “right policy” is also rather a contentious term: who says that the questions asked in the first place were the right ones (and thus the ‘correct’ evidence gathered in order to solve the policy problem)

By: Jamal Shahin (@jshahin)

Jamal Shahin (@jshahin) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 14:37:10 +0000

David thanks for this! I am sure that there are loads and loads of these instances where policies were driven not by ‘evidence’ but by something else (we could call it ‘politics’ for short). Immigration policies would be another field that immediately springs to mind.