How is evidence used in collaborative policymaking? A case study investigation of West Midlands Combined Authority (England)

Lowther, Jason (2025). How is evidence used in collaborative policymaking? A case study investigation of West Midlands Combined Authority (England). University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

Recent decades have seen both an increasing recognition of the need for collaboration across different tiers of government and sectors to address complex policy issues, and an increasing expectation for policymakers to make effective use of evidence in developing public policy. Inter-Municipal Collaboration (IMC) has become common across Europe and constitutes an important international phenomenon. The aim of this thesis is to deploy policy studies and evidence utilisation theory to enable policymakers and academics to understand how evidence is used in inter-municipal collaborations. Extant research has neglected to account for the effects of local collaborations on policymaking and the use of evidence, although recent studies suggest that collaboration has a significant impact on evidence use. We ask how evidence is used in policymaking in early-stage inter-municipal collaborations, and how this use is understood by participants. We examine the types and characteristics of evidence used and investigate why evidence is used in these ways. Combined Authorities (CAs) are a significant example of IMC which by 2023 covered over 30% of the population of England outside London. Using a qualitative case study of an English CA, we examine how evidence was used in policymaking in the collaborative context. The thesis captures a range of empirical data to illuminate the detail of policymaking in this setting, including 25 elite interviews, analysis of 60 documents, and participation in almost 80 meetings. A theoretically informed conceptual framework is developed, which is then refined through analysis of the case study data and further literature, to produce a final conceptual framework for use in future research. The case study shows that creating a collaboration brought together new groupings of diverse policy actors from a range of institutions, often developing policy in informal backstage settings. Three key empirical and theoretical insights from the case study are presented. The first concerns how evidence is used in backstage settings. The case study data identified a frequent category of evidence use ‘to enhance debate and dialogue’ in repeated interactions between elite policy actors in private, backstage settings, a type of evidence use that is seldom found in the literature. The second important finding concerns how evidence is used in creating and maintaining narratives. The thesis contributes to the investigation of the relationship between evidence and narrative by identifying three distinct applications of narrative in the case study. Finally, the case study demonstrated opportunities for the use of new types of evidence through collaboration which was found to both ‘open up’ and ‘close down’ the types of evidence used in policymaking. The thesis develops a conceptual framework which explains evidence use in the collaborative context as influenced by four key factors: policy actors, institutions, governance and the type/characteristics of evidence itself. The significance of the study is that it contributes to the field of evidence utilisation studies by informing theoretical understandings of evidence use by introducing a focus on local collaborative and informal, backstage settings which has previously been lacking. It also informs our empirical understanding of evidence use in this novel but increasingly important context. The research provides insights for policymakers on how the initiation and design of inter-municipal collaborations can influence their approach to policymaking and the use of evidence.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):