By Paymal, Elisabeth

Agrilinks “Ask the Experts” series will feature FSP Suresh Chandra Babu, International Food Policy Research Institute, and Duncan Boughton, Agricultural Economist and Professor, International Development, at Michigan State University.

Monday, June 25, 2018, 9:30-10:00 EDT

• Why, even with research and analysis, is the policy making process seldom evidence-based?
• What constraints do policy makers face to incorporate evidence in decision making?

Access the webinar

In most developing countries, there is a disconnect between the evidence generated by policy research and analysis and the policy making process. How do we overcome this gap in order to enhance the food security and nutrition outcomes? The high cost of food security policy decisions made in the absence of evidence led the development community to invest heavily in evidence generation for addressing policy problems. Strengthening the national capacity of policy researchers and analysts in the developing countries was the approach. But we quickly found that even with adequate evidence, policy makers were not using the evidence. Evidence generation does not guarantee sound policy making. Just producing research reports and journal papers was not enough for translation of evidence into action. Understanding the policy process and the capacity of the actors and players of the policy system is key for the effective conversion of research into policy and program action. Over the last four years, USAID’s FSP-IL brought researchers and collaborators from several institutions and developing countries together to understand the role of policy processes for increasing the policy impact. It also helped to identify the weakest linages at various stages of policy process to speed up the process of evidence based policy making. This webinar will discuss what we found from FSP-IL research on policy processes and how these results will help further strengthening the national policy systems.