International and Interdisciplinary Insights into Evidence and Policy

Linda Hantrais, FAcSS, is Emeritus Professor of European Social Policy at Loughborough University, UK, and Visiting Fellow at the LSE Centre for International Studies (tbc). Her research interests span international comparative research theory, methodology, management and practice, with particular reference to public policy and institutional structures in the European Union, and the relationship between socio-demographic trends and social policy. Ashley Thomas Lenihan is a Fellow at the LSE Centre for International Studies and a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Law, Science, & Global Security at Georgetown University. Her research focuses on the political economy of international security, international law, and the relationship between social science research and the policymaking process.Susanne MacGregor, FAcSS, is an Honorary Professor of Social Policy at LSHTM, and Emeritus Professor at Middlesex University. She has been a Scientific Adviser to the UK Department of Health and was Programme Coordinator for their Drug Misuse Research Initiative (2000–2008). She is a member of the UNRISD research collaboration: Towards universal social security in emerging economies.

• Foreword 1. Evidence-based policy: exploring international and interdisciplinary insights 2. Institutionalising evidence-based policy: international insights into knowledge brokerage 3. Using evidence to improve policy and practice: the UK What Works 4. Evidence-based policy as iterative learning: the case of EU biofuels targets 5. Creating and using the evidence base: the case of the Active Ageing Index 6. Media and evidence-informed policy development: the case of mental health in Australia 7. Using evidence to reconstruct second-language learning policies in Estonia 8. CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis: Dutch (economic) policy-making 9. Evidence and the policy process from an Indian perspective 10. (Mis)use of evidence in microfinance programming in the global south: a critique 11. Evidence and alcohol policy: lessons from the Italian case 12. Evidence-based research, epidemiology and alcohol policy: a critique