In the context of the Crossover project, I am writing a short note on the key challenges of effective policy-making.
One of the well-known problems is that in some cases, the “right” policies are not adopted because “citizens would not understand”.
Can you help me identifying the best example of such situations?
For instance, can is there evidence that carbon emissions have not been sufficiently cut because of this?
Any other example?
Policy and technology: a "longue durée" view 
June 16, 2012 at 2:37 pm
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.
June 16, 2012 at 2:40 pm
(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)
June 27, 2012 at 10:59 am
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.