The premise of this paper is that before a policy research organization, such as IFPRI, can assess the impact of its research, it must first understand how research information is actually used by policymakers. Following this, methodologies to assess impact and to enhance the usefulness of policy research can be developed. Part 1 of this paper reviews what is known about the workings of the policy process, and examines the factors affecting the use of research information by policymakers in this process. Among these are the interests of the actors involved in the policy process, the nature of the policy environment in which they operate, and the characteristics of research itself. The authors suggest how these insights can improve the usefulness of research, and discuss what this implies for IFPRI.
In Part 2, the authors develop a conceptual framework for understanding how research information is produced, communicated, and ultimately used in the policy process, based on the ideas developed in Part 1. The framework provides the basis for a proposal for a study to more closely examine the hypotheses about the use of information in the policy process developed in Part 1. The proposed study, outlined at the end of Part 2, will investigate the specific example of the use of IFPRI research by policymakers in Pakistan.
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