The two worlds of policy research and academic research (in economics) sometimes do intersect, but for the most part, they appear to me to be quite different arenas of inquiry, with different epistemologies and types of truth claims. This blog is about those differences as I see them, having worked in both domains.
Firstly, policy research is primarily concerned with impacting society. To say something meaningful about that subject matter, policy research needs to be mindful of society’s multi-faceted nature – the economic aspect, yes, but also the social-cultural and historical aspects. That is, policy research needs to be properly inter-disciplinary, and it also needs to begin with the understanding that social reality does not unfold in a law-like, necessary manner, as academic research, typically grounded in mathematical models, often tends to portray. Rather, social reality is understood to be a contingent affair – it is conditioned by history at multiple time scales (long, medium, short).
For example, if the problem is one of how to bring migrant workers under the purview of formal social protection, then the historical development of social protection policy and the conjuncture at which social protection policy presently stands, should be important determinants of any systemic solution. It is not appropriate to suggest systemic solutions as if that history did not exist.
Secondly, discourse matters in policy research. The conceptual categories used to construct policy frames can have tremendous psychological valence for all actors, whether they are policymakers or the beneficiaries. And therefore, good policy research strives to study the evolution of policy discourse. It strives to understand the interplay between discourse and policy formulation and between discourse and policy success. This allows policy research to achieve some understanding of how the discourse itself needs to be acted upon. In other words, the rhetorical dimension of policy making is fully within the purview of the policy researcher in a manner that it is not for the academic researcher.
For example, if one traces the arc of development policy in India since Independence, one finds that at critical junctures, policymakers have sought to frame their objectives using the rhetorical device of trinities. From the Congress’ roti-kapda-makaan in the 1960s to the BJP’s bijli-sadak-paani in the early 2000s to the Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s JanDhan-Aadhaar-mobile in 2014, these trinities tell their own story about India’s development since they demonstrate the evolution of policy objectives from final ends to enabling means. This kind of perspective is quite helpful in guiding present-day policy research, whereas it is of passing relevance for academic economists, for whom talk is cheap and it is actions that matter.
Finally, policy researchers are accountable before a very wide variety of stakeholders. Academic researchers are accountable before their own in-group. This makes for very divergent sociologies of research practice. Whereas the policy researcher is compelled to seek buy-in from different quarters that may employ wildly different vocabularies, the academic researcher need primarily, if not only, concern themselves with the scientific language that their peers speak. This means that policy research is necessarily less rigorous than academic research but by the same token, it also affords more room for conceptual and rhetorical innovation.
For example, if policy research on financial customer protection is to be judged positively for its efficacy, then it needs to inspire public and private sector actors to take action to protect customers. On the other hand, if an academic study were to elucidate the same topic, then its merits or demerits are primarily adjudicated on the basis of a particular scientific episteme by other academic economists.
So, to repeat, if policy research often sits oddly alongside academic research (in economics), then that is because they are two quite different arenas of inquiry. Whether that is a good or bad thing is something that I might write about some other time.
