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We interrogate mathematical modelling as an instrument of knowledge co-production by concentrating on the classical probabilistic operationalization of decision-making under uncertainty used for in...

MotivationMalnutrition is the single greatest contributor to the global burden of morbidity and mortality, with the majority of cases arising in low‐ and middle‐income countries. However, the multi‐sectoral nature of nutrition policymaking adds considerable complexity to the implementation of effective programmes. This raises questions about why or how relevant policy change may come about within different country settings. PurposeThis paper examines multi‐sectoral nutrition policymaking from the health sector perspective, specifically focusing on different sectorial perspectives and the role and use of evidence within this. The case study of Ethiopia provides a unique example of the challenging nature of multi‐sectoral nutrition policy‐making, even with a strong coordinating infrastructure. Approach and methodsWe undertook 23 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews held in December 2014 with stakeholders from key health sector organisations, and a related documentary analysis. Participants represented a diverse range of perspectives, including government representatives, policy stakeholders, aid providers from multi‐lateral organisations, and academic researchers. FindingsOur respondents described how nutrition framing in Ethiopia is changing, with greater consideration of overweight, obesity and non‐communicable diseases, as well as undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. However, overweight‐ and obesity‐related concerns are still less evident in key documents. Some health actors described the challenge of enacting structural policy changes when doing so requires engagement from the agriculture sector. Whilst multi‐sectoral plans and infrastructure to address malnutrition are in place, respondents suggested that the mandate for addressing nutrition lying with the health sector was reinforced by the nature of evidence collected. ConclusionThis study of nutrition policymaking in Ethiopia highlights the complex interaction of evidence within different conceptualisations of policy problems and responses. Despite Ethiopia's strategic framework and its progress in achieving terms of nutrition targets, it shares the challenge of countries elsewhere in addressing nutrition as a multi‐sectoral issue. MotivationMalnutrition is the single greatest contributor to the global burden of morbidity and mortality, with the majority of cases arising in low‐ and middle‐income countries. However, the multi‐sectoral nature of nutrition policymaking adds considerable complexity to the implementation of effective programmes. This raises questions about why or how relevant policy change may come about within different country settings. PurposeThis paper examines multi‐sectoral nutrition policymaking from the health sector perspective, specifically focusing on different sectorial perspectives and the role and use of evidence within this. The case study of Ethiopia provides a unique example of the challenging nature of multi‐sectoral nutrition policy‐making, even with a strong coordinating infrastructure. Approach and methodsWe undertook 23 in‐depth semi‐structured interviews held in December 2014 with stakeholders from key health sector organisations, and a related documentary analysis. Participants represented a diverse range of perspectives, including government representatives, policy stakeholders, aid providers from multi‐lateral organisations, and academic researchers. FindingsOur respondents described how nutrition framing in Ethiopia is changing, with greater consideration of overweight, obesity and non‐communicable diseases, as well as undernutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. However, overweight‐ and obesity‐related concerns are still less evident in key documents. Some health actors described the challenge of enacting structural policy changes when doing so requires engagement from the agriculture sector. Whilst multi‐sectoral plans and infrastructure to address malnutrition are in place, respondents suggested that the mandate for addressing nutrition lying with the health sector was reinforced by the nature of evidence collected. ConclusionThis study of nutrition policymaking in Ethiopia highlights the complex interaction of evidence within different conceptualisations of policy problems and responses. Despite Ethiopia's strategic framework and its progress in achieving terms of nutrition targets, it shares the challenge of countries elsewhere in addressing nutrition as a multi‐sectoral issue.

The multi-sectoral nature of nutrition policymaking adds complexity to the implementation of effective programmes. This raises questions about why or how relevant policy change may come about within different country settings. Using a case study of Ethiopia, this chapter examines multi-sectoral nutrition policymaking, reflecting on different sectorial perspectives and the role and use of evidence within these. It draws on 23 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with stakeholders from health sector organisations, and a related documentary analysis. The chapter describes three issues which we argue remain unresolved: the framing of nutrition in Ethiopia; the development of internal nutrition logics in complementary sectors; and the remaining gaps in the evidence base. Despite Ethiopia’s strategic framework and its progress in terms of achieving nutrition targets, it shares the challenge of countries elsewhere in addressing nutrition as a multi-sectoral issue.

This chapter describes how Ministries of Health have been mandated to act as stewards of populations’ health according to the World Health Organization. We argue that this mandate extends to them having (at least partial) responsibility for ensuring relevant evidence informs policy decisions. Yet this requires consideration of the evidence advisory systems serving Ministry needs, particularly whether or how such systems work to provide relevant information in a timely manner to key decision points in the policy process. Insights from our six cases are presented to illustrate the structural and practical differences which exist between evidence advisory systems and how, at certain times, key health decisions may in fact lie outside ministerial authority. These divergent experiences highlight a range of analytical challenges when considering the provision of evidence to inform health decisions from an institutional perspective.

This chapter examines how the political dynamics of aid relationships can affect the use of evidence within health policymaking. Empirical examples from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Ghana illustrate how relationships between national governments and donor agencies influence the ways in which evidence is generated, selected, or utilised to inform policymaking. We particularly consider how relationships with donors influence the underlying systems and processes of evidence use. We find a number of issues affecting which bodies or forms of evidence are taken to be policy relevant, including: levels of local technical capacity to utilise or synthesise evidence; differing stakeholder framing of issues; and the influence of non-state actors on sector-wide systems of agenda setting. The chapter also reflects on some of the key governance implications of these arrangements in which global actors promote forms of evidence use – often under a banner of technical efficiency – with limited consideration for local representation or accountability.

International audience; This paper opens new avenues for reflection on interdisciplinarity via the combinatory perspective that four “young researchers” propose on research evaluation practices, including editorial practices, call for proposals, teaching, recruitment, etc. For instance, all interdisciplinary journals impose specific requirements on their incoming authors. With this paper we wish to take their standpoint in order to highlight, discuss and organize these requirements into a usable product – a compass – that could eventually guide processes of interdisciplinary work evaluation. Therefore, our analysis is driven by the question of how to qualify patterns of interdisciplinarity in order to improve the methodological transparency of evaluation practices. Further, taking the example of editorial practices we start by presenting a brief inventory of the way in which interdisciplinarity gets objectified through practices, from the identification of the authors’ disciplinary background via their institutional affiliations to the acknowledgement of combinatory approaches via the use of bibliometric measures. We then insist on the scarcely fixable, ever-changing character of the construction of interdisciplinary objects. We take this feature as the stepping point to revisit evaluation categories in order to make them more suitable to the dynamic process of interdisciplinary construction. Our goal is not to provide an additional analysis of the interdisciplinary object itself; rather we aim to provide a tool to scrutinize the author’s interdisciplinary intents in relation to his/her own creation of the research object and his/her own objectivation perspective. Therefore, we propose a compass consisting of 5 axes, each reflecting a specific aspect of interdisciplinary practices at the interface between natures/sciences/societies: temporal dynamics of interdisciplinarity, distance between disciplines, collective dimensions of research practice, style of engagement in public debate and extra-academic scope.; Cet article est la réflexion commune de quatre « jeunes chercheurs » sur les pratiques d’évaluation de la recherche interdisciplinaire. Nous souhaitons comprendre comment qualifier des registres d’interdisciplinarité afin d’accroître leur transparence méthodologique. Nous proposons tout d’abord un état des lieux des modes d’objectivation de l’interdisciplinarité. Puis nous insistons sur le caractère continuellement inédit de la construction des objets interdisciplinaires, appelant la création de catégories d’évaluation dynamiques. Nous proposons enfin une boussole à cinq axes afin d’orienter l’évaluation des pratiques interdisciplinaires sur l’interface natures/sciences/sociétés : dynamique temporelle de l’interdisciplinarité, distance disciplinaire des différents corpus, dimension collective de la recherche, formes d’engagement dans le débat public et portée extra-académique.

The use of evidence in policymaking is commonly considered a good practice of democratic governance by improving accountability, effectiveness, and stakeholders’ involvement in policy decisions. The features of this practice, however, remain vague in the general discourse of evidence-based policymaking (EBPM) with the risk of obscuring important governance and legitimacy implications. In policy evaluation especially, the use of evidence can be critical to translate technical measurements of policy achievements into political values for shaping future policy directions. We present a case study based on the health policy review process in Ghana in order to discuss how institutionalized evidentiary practices used in policy evaluation affect structures and processes of democratic governance. Drawing on qualitative interviews with international and local actors, we reflect on how the evidence review process—a process agreed in collaboration with development partners—links to the evidence advisory system and the accountability systems in place. We find that the uses of evidence promoted by international donors within the evaluation process actually creates disconnect with the national accountability system in place, with implications for democratic governance.

The premises of this paper rely on associating policy inertia toward action on climate change with the inadequacy of the classical ‘liability culture’ of evidence-based policy-making to deal with this global environmental challenge. To provide support to this hypothesis, the following discussion analyses the technical properties and the current policy use of Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) of economic-climate interactions. The paper contends that IAM is still not clarified enough as far as its potential for information- production in the framework of policy making processes is concerned, and that this fact is symptomatic of the current inability of societies to undertake the challenge of sustainability. The paper explains the reasons for this disconnect and proposes solutions in the form of a renovated framework of deliberative policy-making.

The parsing of the WTO EC-Biotech is intended to raise substantive issues on the interface between science and law to the extent that the former is brought as legal evidence before courts. The paper contends that the Panel maintains a form of substantial and procedural transitivity between the ability to perform risk assessment and the sufficiency of scientific evidence to legitimate measures of protection, by that preventing States from legitimately undertaking precautionary measures in the absence of scientific evidence. This said, the paper will propose a new way to intend and demonstrate scientific uncertainty in WTO trade disputes

The aim of this paper is to review the basic literature on scientific uncertainty in its statistical paradigm in order to provide enlightenment on one pivotal facet of the precautionary principle, i.e. the allocation of the burden of proof to demonstrate that an activity is not harmful to the environment. The purpose is not to explain a new theory of statistical inference, but to show how regulatory policymaking that is properly informed by scientific expertise and designed to avoid one type of error, may actually make other errors more likely and thus expose the public to danger. This problem is explained in terms of the conceptual as well as operational conflicts that arise when knowledge about statistical-inferential methods is applied to policymaking. The paper argues that this issue can be resolved by first reconsidering the burden of proof as a burden of uncertainty.

International audience; This paper opens new avenues for reflection on interdisciplinarity via the combinatory perspective that four “young researchers” propose on research evaluation practices, including editorial practices, call for proposals, teaching, recruitment, etc. For instance, all interdisciplinary journals impose specific requirements on their incoming authors. With this paper we wish to take their standpoint in order to highlight, discuss and organize these requirements into a usable product – a compass – that could eventually guide processes of interdisciplinary work evaluation. Therefore, our analysis is driven by the question of how to qualify patterns of interdisciplinarity in order to improve the methodological transparency of evaluation practices. Further, taking the example of editorial practices we start by presenting a brief inventory of the way in which interdisciplinarity gets objectified through practices, from the identification of the authors’ disciplinary background via their institutional affiliations to the acknowledgement of combinatory approaches via the use of bibliometric measures. We then insist on the scarcely fixable, ever-changing character of the construction of interdisciplinary objects. We take this feature as the stepping point to revisit evaluation categories in order to make them more suitable to the dynamic process of interdisciplinary construction. Our goal is not to provide an additional analysis of the interdisciplinary object itself; rather we aim to provide a tool to scrutinize the author’s interdisciplinary intents in relation to his/her own creation of the research object and his/her own objectivation perspective. Therefore, we propose a compass consisting of 5 axes, each reflecting a specific aspect of interdisciplinary practices at the interface between natures/sciences/societies: temporal dynamics of interdisciplinarity, distance between disciplines, collective dimensions of research practice, style of engagement in public debate and extra-academic scope.; Cet article est la réflexion commune de quatre « jeunes chercheurs » sur les pratiques d’évaluation de la recherche interdisciplinaire. Nous souhaitons comprendre comment qualifier des registres d’interdisciplinarité afin d’accroître leur transparence méthodologique. Nous proposons tout d’abord un état des lieux des modes d’objectivation de l’interdisciplinarité. Puis nous insistons sur le caractère continuellement inédit de la construction des objets interdisciplinaires, appelant la création de catégories d’évaluation dynamiques. Nous proposons enfin une boussole à cinq axes afin d’orienter l’évaluation des pratiques interdisciplinaires sur l’interface natures/sciences/sociétés : dynamique temporelle de l’interdisciplinarité, distance disciplinaire des différents corpus, dimension collective de la recherche, formes d’engagement dans le débat public et portée extra-académique.