University of Canberra
Professor Botterill’s research builds on extensive experience in public policy in the Australian Public Service, as a policy officer in two industry associations and as an adviser to two Federal Ministers. Her work focuses on the policy development process with an interest in the role of values in the policy process. She has published widely in academic journals including Public Administration, the Journal of Public Policy, the Australian Journal of Political Science, and the Australian Journal of Public Administration. She is the author of Wheat Marketing in Transition: the Transformation of the Australian Wheat Board (Springer: 2012) and co-editor of two books on drought and one on the National Party.
Balancing policy, evidence & values
Many of the challenges facing policy makers in the twenty-first century have been identified by science and appear to be only solvable by reference to more science. In the past fifteen years or so ‘evidence-based policy making’ have become the buzz words du jour. But what do they mean?
Surely policy was not made without reference to ‘evidence’ before the late 1990s? The rhetoric of evidence-based policy- making implies that politics, values and ideology have been removed from policy, replaced by ‘the facts’ which by implication speak for themselves. Policy search in this world becomes a quest for the best evidence. But is this realistic?
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