This guide helps policy-makers reflect on how policy and regulation can affect people, businesses and community, as well as its broader economic and competition impacts. The Australian government’s rigorous approach to policy-making seeks to ensure that the costs and benefits of new policy are understood...

Corporations play a major role in Australian democracy. They lobby governments for favourable policy outcomes. They make substantial donations to political parties and sometimes run overtly political advertising campaigns. This paper reviews the federal policies of political parties to identify which policies – if any...

The aim of this project is to coax more evidence-based policy decisions by all tiers of government by reviewing and rating 20 high profile government decisions against the Wiltshire business case criteria. The 2022 report is the fifth in the series. For the first time...

Blueprint Institute worked with Per Capita as part of the Evidence-Based Policy Research Project's 2022 iteration. This analysis used the Wiltshire Criteria to assess the evidence base for 20 federal and state bills.

Transparency is a prerequisite to enabling evidence-informed decision-making. In this study, the authors apply a transparency framework to assess the transparency of evidence usage in provincial policies issued by the governments of Ontario, British Columbia and Saskatchewan, and compare transparency in policy-making across the Canadian...

This report aims to provide policy-makers with an opportunity to revisit, review and reflect on environmental policies in the United Kingdom over the years. In doing so, the intention is that lessons can be learnt from the successes and failures of previous environmental policies.

Through public policies, governments have enormous potential to shape the lives of their citizens. This publication contains a number of stories of iconic public policies that 'worked', that delivered public value, received broad political and public support, and have remained viable for decades.

This project investigated the role of science in the policy-making process in order to deepen understanding of the science-policy interface and the ways in which the scientific basis underpinning policy might be strengthened to better support good environmental decision-making.

The widespread availability of data and analytics has extended into the public sector and policy-making. This policy brief summarises the various methods being used in practice to value datasets and how they compare.

In this discussion paper, the author argues that understanding the way things have been done in the past allows the aspiring politician to adopt a state of mind that provides the best guidance for addressing the challenges that lie ahead.

This book analyses what is distinctive about introducing and implementing successful public policies in Canada - one of the world’s wealthiest economies, and one of its most politically decentralised and regionally diverse federations.

Net zero is a huge national mission in the United Kingdom that will require policies from the whole-of-government to pull in the same direction. This report, which draws on a roundtable held in February 2022, explores how that objective might be achieved.

This review draws on a survey of professionals working in and with federal agencies to develop a more comprehensive understanding of how the government uses analytics, the outcomes of these efforts, and the challenges agencies face in their work to further develop analytical capabilities.

The role of state regulatory agencies is to execute and enforce the statutes passed by state legislatures. Agencies do this by writing and implementing administrative rules that elaborate on unspecified details of requirements found in law. These rules themselves have the force and effect of...

In February and March 2022, Evidence for Democracy hosted 25 early-career researchers for their inaugural Science to Policy Accelerator program. This article outlines some of the program’s key takeaways about public policy, and how scientists and researchers can contribute to the science policy ecosystem in...

Lack of consistency and coordination has long been noted as a failing of UK government policies, but it has previously been difficult to assess the extent of the policy discontinuity. In this paper, the authors present evidence from text analysis of a startling lack of...

In this report, Jonathan Slater, who was the most senior civil servant in the Department for Education (UK) from 2016 to 2020, writes that while public engagement is a core part of the role of local government policy-makers, it is not seen as important for...

The civil service is central to government in the United Kingdom. But it lacks a clear identity, defined responsibilities and a system of oversight and accountability. This report proposes a new statutory role for the civil service to reflect its permanence, values and objectives, and...

Successive governments have struggled to tackle many of the biggest policy problems the country faces. This report examines the causes of persistent failures and sets out recommendations as to how government – both ministers and officials – could change to make policy better.

This book offers the first overview of the ‘wicked problems’ literature, often seen as complex, open-ended and intractable, with both the nature of the ‘problem’ and the preferred ‘solution’ being strongly contested. It contextualises the debate using a wide range of relevant policy examples, explaining...

Building on research and analysis published by Grattan Institute since it was founded 13 years ago, this report identifies reforms to boost incomes, improve health and education, create better transport links, make housing more affordable, generate meaningful progress on climate change, and strengthen Australia’s political...

This project organised and hosted four two-hour online workshops in September 2021 to bring together policy-makers and evaluation practitioners to highlight evaluation methods and analysis, and the evaluation of energy technologies, programs and policies. The workshop focused on energy efficiency and renewable energy.

This disability analysis tool has been designed to help policy practitioners explore the disability implications of policy. The toolkit is designed to help provide frank and robust advice to decision-makers through the inclusion of a disability lens.

Policy-making is a complex and nuanced process, where policy actors must make sense of constantly evolving information in order to deliver policies that best serve the needs of the people. In this study, the authors apply a framework to assess the transparency of evidence use...

This edited volume presents ten policy reform case studies - from regional forestry agreements to activity-based funding in Victorian hospitals - to identify critical factors that may be relevant to Australia's current climate policy impasse.