Presentation by John Hoddinott, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute at the IFPRI Policy Seminar held on 2 June 2011 "Evidence-Based Policymaking: Challenges, Methods, and Innovations in Assessing Policy Influence".

1. Evidence-Based Policymaking: Challenges, Methods, and Innovations in Assessing Policy Influence John Hoddinott

2. Insights from Development:The creation of sustainable agency Agency: The capability of an individual or organization or government to take action Capability is expanded through: resources; the provision of knowledge and the relaxation of constraints and/or the creation of opportunities Policy Influence Sustainability: The capacity to endure Page 2

3. A tale of two policy process influences IFPRI and export quotas in Vietnam IFPRI and ‘graduation’ from the Productive Safety Nets Programme, Ethiopia Page 3

4. Policy Processes and New Technology Adoption: Parallels The provision of resources, knowledge, and the relaxation of constraints are core characteristics of technology adoption Page 4

5. Assessing Policy Influence: Implications (1) Assessing policy influence should be done across all stages of the policy process, not just policy implementation . Arguably, policy implementation is the least important stage over which influence should be assessed Seeing the analogy between policy processes and technology adoption opens up the set of actions over which policy engagement occurs and thus be assessed: What outcomes do relevant actors seek to achieve How are the inputs into these outcomes, and the outcomes themselves, measured Understanding information flows; roles of networks and biases Page 5

6. Assessing Policy Influence: Implications (2) Different stages of the policy process are amenable to a variety of qual-quant assessment/evaluation techniques. For example: In decentralized settings (think federal political structures such as those found in Ethiopia and India) policy influence in agenda setting and formulation can be assessed through quantitative randomized encouragement designs Influence on implementation can be assessed through focus groups, key informant interviews etc Page 6