theme is taken up by Laura Jenkins who defines a strategy of depoliticisation as. '[entailing] forming necessities, permanence, immobility, closure and fatalism ...
Evidence Based Policymaking as Depoliticised Governance Strategy: The Case of European Drug Policy
Adam Standring (FCSH-UNL)
Chapter 3 in O’Gorman, Aileen, Gary Potter & Jane Fountain (eds.) (2016) Evidence in European social drug research and drug policy, Lengerich: Pabst Science Publishers
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Abstract The growing popularity and legitimacy of ‘evidence based policymaking’ (EBP) has been accompanied by the increased delegitimisation of so-called political policymaking, explicitly influenced by concerns such as ideology, morality and electoral populism. These trends can be observed across a wide number of social policy areas, none more so than in drug policy, where policymakers feel increasingly compelled to justify their decisions based on research evidence and yet where experts, practitioners and social researchers bemoan the failure to utilise evidence. European drug policy particularly has undergone discursive change over the past twenty years where research evidence has fuelled the emergence of the harm reduction paradigm as well as a ‘balanced approach’ which gives equal focus to demand as well as supply reduction. The EBP mode of governance is not, however, unproblematic – it encourages an antagonistic relationship between evidence (and producers of evidence), understood as neutral and value-free, and policy (and policymakers), understood to be value-laden and subject to external political influences. ‘Politics’, as such, is viewed as normatively bad and EBP is presented as a mechanism of depoliticisation through which policymaking might be exorcised of externalities and subsequently become more effective. Not only does this have serious implications for democratic accountability, concerns regularly raised in the literature on technocracy, but it neglects important functions of EBP in (re)constructing power relations and in discursively framing policy problems. Key Words: Constructivism, Governance, Depoliticisation
Introduction Recent years have seen the drug policy debate, particularly in Europe, dominated by the role of evidence on policymaking. A growing body of literature has criticised the extent to which research evidence is integrated and utilised by policymakers within the policy process and which seeks to develop tools and mechanisms to give evidence better impact (Lancaster, 2014; Ritter, 2015). While this literature makes a valuable contribution to both the public and political debate on drug policy, especially in highlighting the failures of current drug policy, as well as in the promotion of more effective drug interventions, this chapter develops a more critical approach to evidence, departing from an ‘instrumental’ (Sanderson, 2002) or ‘symbolic’ (Boswell, 2008) understanding of evidence to approach the use of evidence from a
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constructivist perspective. Doing so acknowledges that the role of evidence is cast in both positive and normative terms which has both a material and discursive effect on the development of any policy area to which it is applied. The ‘Evidence Based Policymaking’ (EBP) paradigm has become the principal heuristic tool through which the relationship between research evidence and policymaking is understood. Heavily influenced by the methods and ethos of the evidence based medicine movement (Greenhalgh & Russell, 2009), the EBP paradigm presents a normatively ideal vision of evidence production which attaches particular significance to the supposed neutral and value-free nature of research evidence situated in a strongly positivist or empiricist ontology and epistemology (Clarence, 2002). A constructivist perspective challenges these (often implicit) assumptions by acknowledging the socially constructed nature of knowledge and evidence, and instead ‘shifts our focus from the inherent value of ‘evidence’ to the actors or groups involved in its production and the settings in which it’s produced (Lancaster, 2014). The EBP paradigm has become increasingly prevalent in the context of European governance in which traditional democratic legitimacy is replaced by technocratic efficacy – a move from input legitimacy to output legitimacy (Scharpf, 1999; Mair, 2013). One of the most important functions of EBP within drug policy is as a tactic of depoliticisation, serving to deny the political nature of drugs and instead seeking to replace what are perceived as ‘ideological’ and value-laden forms of policy knowledge with neutral, scientific and value-free alternatives. An EBP influenced European approach to drug policy, which takes a more balanced and pragmatic perspective, challenges the exclusive claims to policy relevant knowledge which were once the preserve of law enforcement experts and politicians. Rather than 3
being viewed as truly neutral or ‘apolitical’ these shifts should instead be seen as a particularly political strategy or form of governance which seeks to constrain political choice and agency around a specific framing or articulation of the drug phenomenon. Depoliticisation – evidence and the denial of the political Many of the recent trends in the practice of governance have served to instrumentally or discursively separate decision-making processes from their political nature, in a process that has been termed depoliticisation (Burnham, 2001; Mair, 2013). Politics and the political remain problematic and contested terms within political science but the depoliticisation literature draws on a body of political theory which sees politics as a normatively positive and even necessary form of conduct (Crick, 2013; Hay, 2007; Mouffe, 2013). A liberal and plural society is understood as one in which there exist numerous competing and conflicting interests, preferences and values and a vibrant political arena is a site in which these competing social interests can be deliberated, selected and acted upon (Hay, 2007, Ch. 2). This theme is taken up by Laura Jenkins who defines a strategy of depoliticisation as ’[entailing] forming necessities, permanence, immobility, closure and fatalism and concealing/negating or removing contingency’ (Jenkins, 2011, p.160). Depoliticisation, as such, should be seen as a particular governance strategy or, paradoxically, as a form of political conduct. ‘To engage in a strategy of depoliticisation is to also engage in a political act’ (ibid), albeit one which seeks to constrain the options and agency of others. Depoliticisation, however, does not remove an issue from the political sphere, and the extent to which such a goal is even possible remains contentious, but is rather a deliberate strategy of denial (Flinders & Wood 2014, p.136).
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Evidence based policymaking (EBP), as a normative project, can be seen to follow this pattern of denying the political nature of policy areas to which it is applied, both in the way it seeks to subject policy problems to a particular technical/instrumental, positivist vision of the social world (Brown, 2015, p.120) as well as the way in which it seeks to maintain a (contentious) analytical distinction between the sphere of evidence production – the scientific – and the sphere of policy production – the political (Nutt, 2010; Majone, 1989). Drug policy is readily acknowledged to be a heavily political or politicized area (Monaghan, 2011; Kalant, 2010) albeit with the definition of political either left implicit or instead used pejoratively to denote an area in which ideology, morals and other non-rational considerations take priority in decision-making (Stevens, 2007). The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Addiction (EMCDDA) has been prominent in constructing and promoting a distinct European approach to drug policy which distances itself from political concerns. Thus, when it is stated: ‘the European approach to drugs can be characterised as one in which evidence takes priority over ideology’ (EMCDDA, 2010a, p.13), this can be seen as both an empirical claim (which is likely to be contested) as well as an articulation of a normative position. Such sentiments are echoed by David Nutt who distinguishes between the roles and arena of scientific evidence production and policymaking: Science can, indeed, I would argue must, be the prime mediator of policy if we are to minimize the harms of drugs, both medical and social, but science cannot deliver policy because that is the realm of politics. What scientists can do—as I have done—is insist that where science is taken to support a political decision it must be the best science. Even more importantly, politicians must not be allowed to hide moral or 5
worse, petty political, motivations regarding drug legislation behind a smokescreen of science. (Nutt, 2010, p.1154) Nutt’s claims here would appear to support Jenkins’ argument regarding EBP’s normative critique of politics, that the partisan and partial nature of politics is valueladen, imbued with self-interest and as such viewed negatively: ‘politics is not valued, in contrast to neutrality, impartiality and ‘fairness’ which are perceived positively’ (Jenkins, 2011, p.160). The extent to which science, in practice, can be considered neutral and objective, from a constructivist perspective, must be contested and at least subject to analysis, and will be addressed further in the following sections. The current practice of depoliticisation has been strongly linked with the prevalence of neoliberal logics among both political elites and publics (Hay, 2007; Wood, 2016). Will Davies and Wendy Brown have both written recently on the way in which neoliberal logic shifts social and political practices from deliberation, reason, and argumentation towards a form of technical, rational conduct: Political rationality could be said to signify the becoming actual of a specific normative form of reason; it designates such a form as both a historical force generating and relating specific kinds of subject, society, and state and as establishing an order of truth by which conduct is both governed and measured. (Brown, 2015, p.118) The ‘truth’ which neoliberal logic seeks to establish is one heavily reliant on a positivist or technocratic understanding of how social order is, and importantly should, be governed. Political rationality is understood as a neutral and objective counterpoint to prerational or nonrational forms of social knowledge such as 6
tradition, ideology or values and permeates through all social levels into politics and the social sciences (Brown, 2015, pp.119-120). In more concrete terms it ‘seeks to replace critique with technique, judgement with measurement’ (Davies, 2014, p.25), and, ‘moral rules with scientific rules’ (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006, pp.28-31), thus contributing to the disenchantment of politics which in turn involves a ‘deconstruction of the language of the ‘common good’ or the ‘public’, which is accused of potentially dangerous mysticism’ (Davies, 2014, p.19). According to these logics, alternatives which are based on measures other than the purely positivist or rational are to be denied. As Wood states, ‘neoliberal policies, discourses and institutions tend (intentionally or unintentionally) to hide or cloak the contestable or contingent nature of the ideas they institute’ (Wood, 2016, p.527). The shift from government to governance, what Brown describes as ‘the primary administrative form’ of neoliberalism (Brown, 2015, 122) has replaced ideas of the ‘common good’ and the ‘public’ with an emphasis on ‘accountability’ and ‘efficiency’. However, this is a particular type of accountability and efficiency heavily centred on instrumental rationality and practical legitimacy, depoliticised and stripped of deliberation, values and ideology. These governance practices have been particularly noted at the European level (Majone, 1996) whereby networking and practical legitimacy supersede hierarchical or moral legitimacy (Scharpf,1999). More emphasis has been placed, recently, on understanding governance within drug policy and particularly what constitutes ‘good governance’. The complex nature of drug policy, it has been argued, makes networking, stakeholder engagement and the better utilization of evidence in policymaking essential to better governance practice (Singleton & Rubin, 2014; McGregor et al, 2014). Other authors, however, have been more critical of the extent to which governance, as an administrative practice, 7
has the capacity to broaden participation in the policy process and instead have pointed to the potential of governance practices to prioritise or even embed particular forms of knowledge and preferences within institutionalised practices (Davies, 2011). The hierarchies which network governance seek to replace to not disappear but are merely obscured and rather than encouraging policy alternatives and contestation, networks may instead serve to exclude actors with dissenting views and therefore result in the further depoliticisation of policy areas. The instrumental rationality of EBP One of the strengths of the neoliberal logic of social order, frequently remarked upon, is the extent to which proponents are able to reflectively absorb critiques to produce more persistent and enduring logics (Crouch, 2011; Boltanski & Chaipello, 2011; Harvey, 2007). In this manner, the EBP movement has been particularly successful in absorbing the critique of technocratic theory, in particular the extent to which expert knowledge is seen to be both partial and unaccountable (Fischer, 1993), by embracing more deeply a positivist, instrumental rational view of evidence utilization. The spheres of science and politics must remain distinct, albeit with a one way transfer of impact and influence, from the former to the latter. The pressing concern of EBP, before even impact on policymaking is taken into account, is the protection of the objective and neutral form which evidence must take (Davies, 2014). As Du Gay argues (2000), value-neutrality becomes an ethos in its own right but one which is more often than not left implicit. Much of the space taken up within EBP literature directly tackles methodological concerns, which in themselves are attempts to remove the agent from the process of evidence production (Pearce & Ramen, 2014; Deeming, 2014). This in turn leads to
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the construction of hierarchies of evidence, with that produced by randomised controlled trials and systematic reviews gaining legitimacy over alternate forms of evidence such as expert or practical experience – i.e. those in which agents are directly involved (Deeming, 2014). Such an approach is neglectful of the implicit political nature that methodological (and prior ontological and epistemological) choices carry (Brown, 2015, p.35; Furlong and Marsh, 2010). The goal of positivist social science (and by extension EBP), and one which has clear depoliticising potential, is the removal of ambiguity and contingency from the identification of social problems and the development of interventions (Sanderson, 2002; Forester, 1993). In order to achieve this goal, proponents of EBP must also have an idealised view of the policy process itself, in which rational actors consistently seek ‘what works’ (Cairney, 2015) because acknowledging the messiness of policymaking would severely challenge the EBP project (Williams, 2010, p.197; Davies, 2014). Constructivist approaches to the philosophy of science and the production of knowledge cast doubts on the very possibility that human agents, and therefore values, ideals and subjectivities, can be removed from scientific processes. The endeavour of scientific work, as Knorr-Cetina stresses, is one which is inextricable from the social contexts (of collaboration or competition) in which they are produced (1981; see also Kuhn, 1996). The work of Majone makes this point particularly well in relation to evidence and the policy process – evidence is the product of the decisions, selections and argumentative strategies of the ‘analyst as craftsman’ (1989, pp.42-68). Evidence, it is argued, is not selected for its neutral and value-free nature but for its ability to support, justify and legitimise a particular discursive argument within the policy process. 9
The idea that there is a role for evidence beyond the instrumental, as a form of argument or discourse, is very often acknowledged within the EBP literature but frequently seen as a point to be resisted or rejected. This is particularly clear in the case of drug policy in which politicians have been frequently accused of misrepresenting or ‘cherry-picking’ evidence to suit their pre-existing policy preferences (Stevens, 2007; Monaghan, 2011; Hughes, 2007; Bennett & Holloway, 2010). The question of who judges and mediates the adequacy of evidence is perhaps one of the most important, and most neglected, aspects of the EBP literature. While the discursive role of evidence has started to receive some attention in recent years (Pearce et al, 2014; Wesselink et al, 2014; Wesselink & Hoppe, 2011) the focus has largely rested on the way in which evidence constitutes meanings and frames policy problems. The extent to which evidence produces competing policy frames exists in a state of tension with the ideals of a positivist ideal of evidence production, in which the legitimacy of evidence can and should be judged, sorted and ordered. It is difficult, if not impossible, to remove the selection of which policy frames have greater legitimacy from value-laden or ‘political’ considerations. In this case, however, the depoliticising strategy of EBP attempts to further narrow the options or alternatives by excluding particular actors or preferences which operate outside of its exclusive claims to knowledge. As we will see later, in the case of drug policy, politicians, law enforcement actors and other civil society groups are unlikely to be able, or even unwilling, to produce evidence which meets the strict scientific requirements to which the EBP movement gives precedence and so risk marginalisation or exclusion from policy debates. That is not to say that these actors, particularly law enforcement actors, do not continue to play a substantial role in the development in drug policy 10
but rather that the EBP paradigm acts to diminish their contribution to what constitutes policy relevant knowledge by presenting it as unscientific and irreconcilable to the normatively desirable instrumental/technical logic of an evidence based drug policy. A constructivist perspective on the use of evidence, therefore, ‘shifts our focus from the inherent value of ‘evidence’ for addressing ‘drug problems’ to the ways in which policy knowledge is made valid, by whom and in what contexts’ (Lancaster, 2014, p.949). Drug policy as a site of contested expertise Since its earliest development, drug policy has been the site of contested claims to knowledge and expertise. The framing of drug use as a moral, rather than a health, issue and the subsequent development of prohibition and criminalisation as appropriate interventions has been attributed to the strong cultural and historical institutional factors prevalent in American forms of social control which came to dominate the global response (Goode & Ben-Yehuda, 2009; Bewley-Taylor, 2012; Levine, 2003). As Levine argues (2003, 147), however, American hegemony was not in itself sufficient in establishing a global consensus on drug prohibition, but rather governmental and law enforcement actors found strategic opportunities in framing drug problems in ways which increased their resources. ‘Top politicians and government officials in many countries may have believed deeply in the war on drugs and drug use. But other health-oriented causes could not have produced for them so much police, coast guard and military power’ (ibid). The opportunities for health interventions, expressed within the UN treaties, were extremely limited, as 11
Resolution III of the 1961 Convention makes clear: ‘one of the most effective methods of treatment for addiction is treatment in a hospital institution having a drug free atmosphere’ (emphasis added), at this point health based responses to the drug problem were not considered a matter of priority. At the European level, in this period, similar institutional arrangements can be seen in which law enforcement expertise was given precedence in policy development. Although the EEC had within its mandate competencies relating to public health these did not directly tackle the drug phenomenon as a health issue. European action in drugs initially took place through the Pompidou Group (emanating from the Council of Europe) with the European Commission later joining these meetings, before becoming an integral part of the TREVI network of law enforcement and customs officials (Elvins, 2003). The focus of these informal networks of national law enforcement networks was the sharing of intelligence, knowledge and best practice in a closed, non-binding and opaque manner. Specific concerns were aroused, by the mid-1980s, with the prospect of the Schengen Accord and the Single European Act (SEA) and the potential this posed for cross-border crime: At this point, anti-drug trafficking policies became part of a broader normative policy framework based on the idea that ‘removing’ internal borders would increase crime and that the most effective way to address this was through ‘compensatory’ law enforcement measures. (Elvins, 2003, p.171) Both the definition of the problem and the recommended solution was produced in an exclusionary manner in which law enforcement experts were seen to be arbiters of policy relevant knowledge. These experts were said to fulfil the ‘uncertainty
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reducing role’ of an epistemic-community, linked by both shared professional expert knowledge as well as shared causal understandings of the problem at hand (Elvins, 2003, p.173). The informal and intergovernmental nature of these groups also allowed national governments to retain sovereignty over what was still considered to be a heavily politicised issue, albeit one with low political saliency (Radaelli, 1999). Two events were to markedly change the complexion of European action in drugs and would challenge the legitimacy of the exclusive knowledge claims of law enforcement actors and the existing paradigm of prohibition and criminalisation. The first of these was the growing global HIV/AIDS epidemic which was quickly to become associated with the sharing of contaminated needles, itself a result of the underground and marginalised nature of drug use (Edwards & Galla, 2014). It became increasingly recognised that the public health issues associated with drug use were not just neglected by the current paradigm but were actually acerbated by it and alternative interventions were needed. The development of alternatives was strongly influenced by the examples of the Netherlands, who had long taken a more pragmatic approach to drug use, and Switzerland who were pioneers in the integration of public health expertise in drug interventions (Csete, 2010). An initial step in this direction was taken by the European Parliament who commissioned a report on the drug situation in Europe, the Cooney Report (Bewley-Taylor, 2012): Drug addiction and drug abuse should be treated primarily as a subject relating to health and welfare, and not as one of “police and justice”. The possession of small quantities of drugs for personal use should not be regarded as a criminal offence. (Cooney Report, cited in Boekhout, 2002, p.27)
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The second event had direct political implications – the impending enactment of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) would formalise the division between public health, which would reside in the communitarian 1st pillar, and justice and home affairs, situated in the intergovernmental 3rd pillar. The wording of the treaty is of particular importance in challenging the existing discourse through the adoption of an evidence based approach (Article 152 (ex Article 159) (emphasis added): “Community action shall be directed towards the prevention of diseases, in particular the major health scourges, including drug dependence, by promoting research into their causes and their transmission, as well as health information and education.” EU action in drug policy since the enactment of the TEU shows a continued attempt to reconstruct both what constitutes policy relevant knowledge in the area of drugs as well as a realignment of power relations between expert groups and policymakers. This is highlighted well by the introduction of regular EU Drug Strategies and Drug Action Plans. Originally these documents presented rather vague, broadbrush, objectives, prioritising areas of joint action but in the more recent versions the stated goals have been translated into specific points of actions which include timescales and indicate the responsible parties. Of fundamental importance in the promotion of evidence based drug policies in Europe is the creation of a European agency, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), dedicated to the collection and dissemination of drug related data. The impact of this agency, and European action in general, in creating a ‘European approach’ to drugs has been criticised, most notably by Chatwin (2007, p.498) who states: ‘Illicit drug policy can therefore be said to be too
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complex and too deeply entrenched in national policy making for traditional modes of European control’. The source of this criticism is the perceived lack of harmonisation across European drug policies and the failure of European institutions to pursue this aim. In making this point, however, Chatwin focuses on the instrumental view of EBP rather than its discursive impact, neglecting both the political and institutional constraints under which European drug policy operates. The creation of an independent monitoring centre is an important turning point in European governance of the drug issue, signifying a commitment to a deeper involvement as well as a refocusing of the issue in terms of health. As Hartnoll (2003, p.59) states, ‘EMCDDA […] reflects both the evolution of the European political and institutional context and the development of scientific methodologies and networks, especially in the field of epidemiology. Evidence and the European approach to drug policy It is increasingly common to hear of a European approach to drug policy which includes a balanced approach between supply and demand reduction, the adoption of pragmatic approaches to drug use which include harm reduction interventions and a particular attention to the interface between policy and evidence (Edwards & Galla, 2014; EMCDDA, 2009). Situating EU action in drugs primarily within the communitarian pillar had clear depoliticising potential, raising the issue beyond that of domestic politics and allowing the construction of a distinct problem definition. It provided greater opportunity for the European institutions, the Commission, Parliament and Council (through the Horizontal Working Party on Drugs, founded in 1997) to intervene in the development of a European drug policy which could support and influence national policy. This approach also served to diminish law enforcement’s exclusive claims to policy relevant knowledge and their capacity to 15
define the issue solely within their own terms. The EBP paradigm here served a dual role, both discursive and instrumental, in depoliticising drug policy by reducing questions of ambiguity and contingency and the EU’s drug agency, the EMCDDA, was functional in this. The founding regulations of the EMCDDA, drawn up in 1991, which outlines its primary role and functions are imbued with an instrumental rational logic of evidencebased policymaking: The Centre's objective is to provide […] the Community and its Member States with objective, reliable and comparable information at European level concerning drugs and drug addiction and their consequences.
The
statistical,
documentary
and
technical
information processed or produced is intended to help provide the Community and the Member States with an overall view of the drug and drug addiction situation when, in their respective areas of competence, they take measures or decide on action. (European Council, 1993, pp.3-4) A number of scholars have doubted the extent to which such a mandate, limited to data gathering and dissemination, could have a material impact in promoting convergence or ‘Europeanisation’ of national drug policies (Chatwin, 2003) and a great deal of emphasis was placed on the objectivity and neutrality of the agency whose work was explicitly seen not to challenge the existing prohibitionist paradigm (Boekhout, 2002; Edwards & Galla, 2014). The absence of an explicit political mandate, however, does not remove the agency from politics. As Elvins (2003, 11)
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states: ‘the views of ‘knowledge brokers’ are also intrinsically political in the sense that they are referenced against an existing way of doing things politically.’ A better understanding of the agency as active brokers of knowledge rather than passive disseminators can be gathered from the following functions contained within the founding regulations: •
carry out surveys, preparatory studies and feasibility studies, together with any pilot projects necessary to accomplish its tasks;
organize
meetings
of
experts
and
whenever
necessary set up ad hoc working parties (Function 2); •
facilitate exchanges of information between decision-makers, researchers, specialists and those involved in combating drugs (Function 5);
•
ensure improved comparability, objectivity and reliability of data at European level by establishing indicators and common criteria of a non-binding nature, compliance with which may be recommended by the Centre (Function 6);
•
facilitate and structure exchange of information, in terms of both quality and quantity (databases) (Function 7);
•
[…] promote the incorporation of data on drugs and drug addiction gathered in the Member States or emanating from the Community into international monitoring and drug-control programmes […] (Function 12) (European Council, 1993, p.4)
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These constitute what Majone (1989) termed the ‘craft of analysis’ in which agency actors are expected to exercise selectivity and subjectivity in the production of policy relevant data which will ultimately ‘[foster] a culture of uniformity for which agreement on problem definition (and the types of data used to support this) has become a prerequisite’ (Elvins, 2003, p.121). The very nature of the data collected by the agency again presents a direct challenge to existing exclusive knowledge claims. The primary outputs of the EMCDDA are the annual report on the drug situation in Europe and the annual statistical bulletin. Both these publications are based on five key epidemiological indicators which were originally devised in expert meetings of the Pompidou Group before being developed and refined by the EMCDDA in collaboration with the National Focal Points (Hartnoll, 2003, pp.60-61). These indicators include: drug prevalence among population groups; high risk drug use; treatment demand; drug related deaths, and; drug related infectious disease. Located directly in the sphere of public health, the methodological and scientific rigor of these health based indicators not only helps to establish the practical legitimacy of the EBP approach but serve to narrow the political frame of drug responses in accordance with an instrumental/technical logic.
The way by which the drug problem is measured
becomes a constitutive articulation of nature of the problem. While the mandate of the agency includes the gathering of supply reduction data there is a clear imbalance in both the level of resources and staffing dedicated to this, as well as the reliability and comparability of the data produced in this area. The role of the agency in promoting the EBP paradigm is outlined above in functions 5 and 12. The development of rigorous and comparable supply reduction indicators has been an objective of the agency since its creation but this area has long lagged 18
behind the development of the epidemiological indicators and the issues with supply reduction data are well known to the agency. As early as 2002 the agency highlighted specific problems relating to the comparability of data and particularly the problems in constructing shared European reporting standards in the area (EMCDDA, 2002, p.74). The development of supply reduction indicators became a specific goal of the 2009-12 EU Action Plan (European Council, 2008) but the challenges of applying scientific methods to law enforcement data, as well as engaging in law enforcement actors in scientific tasks, remains problematic given that the purpose of law enforcement data collection remains unreconciled with that of scientific knowledge production (EMCDDA, 2010b). As with many of the EU’s decentralised agencies, the EMCDDA is heavily reliant on engaging stakeholders to provide it with the data it needs to function. In the case of the EMCDDA this is in the form of National Drug Focal Points (NFP). The institutional composition and location of each focal point within the member states varies on a country by country basis but these bodies are typically populated by actors
with
backgrounds
in
public
health,
psychiatry
and
sociology
(EMCDDA/CICAD, 2010, p.102). Actors with a strong grounding in medical and social sciences are more likely, on the basis of maintaining the scientific legitimacy of their work, to seek to propagate a depoliticised EBP approach. The agency has made greater efforts, in recent years, to directly collaborate with law enforcement experts, particularly in the new series of joint EMCDDA/Europol drug market reports (EMCDDA, 2016) but this remains a small part of the overall output of the agency. The EMCDDA plays an important role in coordinating the methodology of data collection performed by the NFP and as such in shaping the nature of policy relevant evidence available to policymakers. In addition to this the EMCDDA has, in recent 19
years, become more active in promoting a particular institutional design, or best practice, in the development of national drug observatories (EMCDDA/CICAD, 2010). National drug observatories are argued to be an important component of EBP and the EMCDDA places great emphasis on the need for these bodies to be independent, objective and free of political interference, while maintaining the support of the political institutions which sustain them – both in terms of resources and data (ibid). The legitimacy of the EMCDDA and the data it produces is heavily reliant on the perception of its value-free evidence-based approach yet the success of the agency has been to promote a highly political problem definition of the drug phenomenon in Europe while simultaneously eschewing ideological or moralistic concerns. Perhaps the most contentious issue which the agency has taken on is the issue of harm reduction which has gained wide currency throughout Europe, ‘despite some persistent ideological differences, most interventions related to the concept of harm reduction have been implemented in most Member States’ (Edwards & Galla, 2014, p.946). The contentiousness of the concept of harm reduction, in its current articulation, must be understood in relation to the way that it problematises and highlights the distinction between a pragmatic, evidence-based approach to drug problems and a value-based approach. As Fry (2010, pp.104-107) emphasises, the tendency of advocates is to justify harm reduction in terms of the weight of evidence of its efficacy while neglecting the inherent normative or value-based judgements entailed in the construction of this evidence base. The success of the harm reduction concept in reconfiguring and rearticulating the nature of the drug problem and the possibilities afforded in terms of appropriate interventions can be seen in the way in which the term has been reappropriated by groups it was designed to delegitimise 20
and marginalise. Understood initially as a direct challenge to the prohibitionist paradigm, the term has become increasingly used in law enforcement discourses (Harfield, 2006; Elvins, 2008). Conclusion The extent to which European drug policies are evidence based has become, depending on one’s perspective, either a defining feature of a distinctive European approach or a source of criticism over the impact of research evidence on policymaking. Both these perspectives, it is argued, miss the point somewhat, reliant as they are on a material, instrumental rational view of evidence and particularly the evidence based policymaking endeavour. This paper, in adopting a constructivist perspective of drug policy, moves beyond a material understanding of evidence to examine the discursive role evidence plays in reconstituting power relations between different groups in the policy making process in legitimating and validating specific forms of policy relevant knowledge, and thus empowering or delegitimising particular actors and policy frames. Evidence, within the EBP movement, is necessarily presented as a neutral and value free alternative to the political sphere which is imbued with irrational and pre-rational concerns. Depoliticisation is a particularly useful analytical frame with which to analyse these processes. Understood as a political strategy to deny the political nature of an issue, thus removing contingency and political agency, depoliticisation is clearly a strong feature of the contemporary EBP movement. While critiques of technocratic theory point to the partial (in both senses of the word) nature of expert knowledge, the EBP movement maintains a strong distinction between the scientific and the political world – even if it advocates for a greater influence of the former on the latter. The neutrality
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and objectivity of science, and particularly social science, is however a convenient fiction.. Drug policy is an inherently political policy area which raises fundamental questions relating to, among other things, individual freedoms, social harms and the public goodnormative moral questions which are not reducible to scientific or rational logics. By seeking to deny ambiguity and contingency in the area of drug policy the EBP approach can be seen to have depoliticising effects which, in addition to reframing the policy area in public health terms, also serve to diminish the capacity of actors and groups who do not subscribe to the same logics of evidence to provide policy relevant knowledge and to frame the drug phenomenon according to their own beliefs and values. This process is particularly apparent in the case of European drug policy in which an institutional framework has been developed designed both to promote the greater use of evidence in drug policy as well as circumscribing the very nature of that evidence. Features such as scientific rigor, value neutrality and comparability are given precedence in evidential terms without much critical reflection over the implicit value-laden and normative judgements contained within the body of evidence. While the aims of the EBP policy movement may be noble, to reduce drug harms, challenge the status quo, and make the world better, by reducing the debate to a technical or instrumental logic debate is necessarily narrowed and actors or groups who cannot speak in those evidentiary terms are disadvantaged. This depoliticisation of drug policy cannot be seen as an entirely elite, or EU, led strategy as it has received endorsement from a wide range of civil society groups and advocates for drug policy change. In both cases, from the top down and the bottom up, actors seek to escape the constraints of national politics in
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