Intelligent Policy Making for a Complex World: Pragmatism, Evidence and Learning

The credentials of the evidence‐based policy movement appear to be increasingly subject to challenge based on research that has highlighted the limits on the use of evidence in policy making. However, moves towards a more ‘realistic’ position of evidence‐informed policy making risk conflating prescription with description and undermining a normative vision of better policy making. This article argues that we need to review the ideas that underpin our thinking about evidence‐based policy making, and move beyond the territory of instrumental rationality to a position founded upon two intellectual pillars: our developing knowledge about complex adaptive systems; and ideas from a pragmatist philosophical position – especially those of John Dewey – about social scientific knowledge and its role in guiding action to address social problems. This leads us to a conception of ‘intelligent policy making’ in which the notion of policy learning is central.