Cairo Roundtable: Evidence on Governance into Policy

Governance evidence can be controversial. Sometimes it can be even more so if it comes from think tanks and research institutes. Yet the role of these institutions is critical for strengthening evidence informed policy making. 

 

Organized by UNDP OGC with support from IDRC Canada, this roundtable, entitled: "Evidence on Governance into Policy: The Role of Research Institutes and Think Tanks", sought to identify factors which affect the likelihood of governance evidence informing policy. It discussed the role which think tanks and research institutes play in supplying governance evidence and promoting and introducing it into governance reform, political debate and policy process.

 

The roundtable produced nine UNDP OGC discussion papers, listed below.

 

The roundtable was organized as a side-event of the Information and Decision Support Center IDSC International Conference on "The role of think tanks in developing countries", January 18-19 2009, Cairo.

Written by Noha El-Mikawy, this outcome report provides a conceptual background to the roundtable, and reports on the discussions informed by a series of six case studies that looked at Nepal, Peru, Serbia, China, Sudan and the APRM in Africa. It also includes reflections made by invited experts.

 

 

Written by Nicola Jones, Julia Pomares, Arnaldo Pellini with Ajoy Datta, this paper highlights that there is a considerable array of internationally generated governance evidence indicators and approaches, but a much more limited culture of context-specific evidence generation in post-conflict societies. It served as a background paper to the workshop.
 

Written by Nicola Jones and Arnaldo Pellini, this synthesis paper summarises case studies from Nepal, Peru and Serbia, three diverse post-conflict contexts on the production and use of governance evidence at both the general and sectoral levels.
 

 

Written by Binod Bhatta, that case study looks at existing efforts to generate evidence on governance at the national and sub-national levels, and how evidence is used in Nepal by state and non-state actors in the education sector.  

 

Written by Maja Gavrilovic, this case study looks at the role and scope of influence of research institutes and think tanks in Serbia. It identifies the factors that constrain and/or facilitate CSO influence and briefly examines the potential for more effective future engagement.

Governance Evidence in Peru: Production and Use in the Education Sector  

Written by Jorge Aragon and Martin Vegas, this case study that aims to draw some lessons about the main challenges for evidence-based policy and governance in Peru.

 

Written by Minquan Liu and Qu Wang, this case study examines and assesses the role of research institutions and think tanks in linking up governance evidence with policy making in China.

 

Evidence Generation in Developing Countries: The case of Sudan  

Written by Eltayeb Hag Ateya, describes the experience of The Peace Research Institute (PRI) of the University of Khartoum, the oldest, largest and most prestigious university in Sudan, as an evidence generating institution.

 

Institutionalising Governance Evidence: Experiences of Think Tanks in the African Peer Review Mechanism 

Written by Steven Gruzd, this case study describes and maps the variety of research institutions that have been engaged as in the various APRM countries, and analyses the challenges that they have faced, both practical and political.