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Informer ideology matters

An at-scale experiment on evidence-informed policy implementation

Jorge García-Hombrados and Marcel Jansen, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid; Ángel Martínez, EsadeEcPol; Berkay Özcan, London School of Economics and Political Science; Pedro Rey-Biel, Esade-URL; Antonio Roldán-Monés, Esade EcPol y London School of Economics
Project selected in the Social Research Call, 2021

Institutions such as think tanks or the media can perform the task of disseminating the scientific evidence that decision makers need in order to implement policies. Often, however, these institutions have a clearly defined ideology. This study presents the results of a randomised controlled experiment on local decision makers in 5,678 Spanish municipalities, in which two think tanks, two newspapers of opposing ideologies and a prestigious foreign university issued the same information about an effective, low-cost, non-ideological policy. The policy in question consisted in making certain changes to the content of the Wikipedia page on each municipality, since according to scientific evidence this may give rise to an increase in tourist expenditure. It was then measured to what extent ideological alignment between the issuer and the receiver of the information affected the adoption rate of the policy. The study also compares the impact of the two formats used to report the scientific evidence: policy briefs and newspaper articles.
Key points
  • 1
       The probability of the recommended policy being implemented increases by 65% when the institution providing the information is aligned ideologically with the decision maker, in comparison with those cases in which the latter receives no information.
  • 2
       When the institution that provides the information has an ideology at odds with that of the decision maker, the information has no effect.
  • 3
       Information coming from an international academic institution does not exert a statistically significant influence, being approximately half of that exerted by information from an ideologically aligned institution.
  • 4
       Newspaper articles and policy briefs are equally effective (or ineffective) for encouraging the adoption of evidence-informed policies when there is ideological alignment (or misalignment).
242020

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