ABSTRACT
This book has argued that governments’ ability to deliver cost-effective public policy is being held back by a reluctance to think about some of the fundamental conceptual and methodological issues raised by the process of governing. Some of these methodological issues are concerned with what the concept of ‘evidence’ means and, in particular, an over-enthusiastic focus on facts (detective work on the past) that has been de-coupled from the conceptual thinking and the testable hypotheses that are better positioned to help us grapple with what the future may have in store for us. Some of these issues are concerned with how well (or badly) governments cope with uncertainty and risk and also with how well (or how badly) learning and adaptation take place.
