For policy to bring positive change to people, it needs to be informed by the best available evidence and local knowledge. Producing robust evidence is just part of the policy-change story; we need to look at where that evidence is – or isn’t – being used by governments, and why. And while we have seen increasing interest in evidence-informed policy-making, relatively little attention has been paid to the political and organisational challenges of embedding a culture of evidence within government departments.

What are the politics of how research-based evidence is used in policy-making: what factors influence decision-makers? What systems help or hinder research use? And how can the development community support robust evidence-informed policy-making?