Scientific findings have become increasingly important for policy-makers, for instance when developing new public interventions or when current solutions must be modified. However, as clearly shown during the Covid-19 pandemic, evidence-informed policymaking does not enjoy the acceptance of the entire public. While reliance on scientific arguments can be rational, it is not always obvious to expect citizens to massively support the use of evidence in policymaking, as they often know little about the process leading to this evidence. In explaining citizen skepticism about the inclusion of scientific advice in policymaking, available literature predominantly focuses on trust in political institutions. With trust in citizens and governments shown to be determined by different antecedents, it is relevant to apply a multi-trustee approach for a full understanding of the relationship between trust and support for evidence-informed policymaking. Beyond trust in experts, trust in governments and other citizens are important factors to consider, too.

To study public attitudes towards evidence-informed policymaking, we conducted a cross-sectional survey with almost 9000 citizens in the peak of the second Covid-19 wave in six Western democracies: Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Switzerland, and the United States. Of the trust types investigated, trust in scientific experts is significantly positively related to support for evidence use in policymaking. Scientific evidence is by nature produced by experts who have an epistemic advantage over laypeople. This competitive advantage puts non-experts inevitably in a strong dependence relationship, which highlights the need for trust. Interestingly though, government trust turns out to be negatively related to citizen support for evidence-informed policymaking. A possible interpretation is that citizens trusting their governments may not feel a need to have epistemic input from other stakeholders, i.e., scientists, which may not be necessarily aligned with the preferences of trusted governments. In fact, these findings resonate with previous studies that found a negative relationship between trust in political authorities and attitudes about technocracy, with which evidence-informed policymaking is sometimes associated. Finally, also trust in fellow citizens is negatively related to support for evidence use. The lower trust citizens have in fellow citizens (generalized trust), the more they will appreciate epistemic input coming from scientific experts.

Our study equally identified potential moderators of attitudes towards evidence-informed policymaking. In particular, citizen perceptions about government performance matter. Respondents who do not trust their governments tend to be more in favor of evidence-informed policy if they evaluate their government performance negatively.

What are the policy implications of these findings? We highlight that citizens distrusting their governments are not per se negative about the application of scientific results by these governments. While policymakers can hardly influence how and to what extent citizens prefer evidence-informed policymaking, they can reverse the relationship between trust and evidence use. Our study shows that especially in situations of declining trust in political institutions, and declining social capital, policymakers may benefit most from investing in more evidence-informed policymaking.

You can read the original research in Public Administration: Bundi, P., & Pattyn, V. (2022). Trust, but verify? Understanding citizen attitudes toward evidence-informed policy making. Public Administration, https://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12852

Pirmin Bundi is an Assistant Professor at the Swiss Graduate School of Public Administration (IDHEAP) of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland).

Valérie Pattyn is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Public Administration of Leiden University (Netherlands), and part-time affiliated at KU Leuven Public Governance Institute (Belgium).