During the past few years there has been a surge of interest in thetheory and practice of ‘evidence-based policy’, both in the academiccommunity and among policy makers. In early 1999, two importantnational conferences on evidence-based policy were held: one underthe auspices of the Association of Research Centres in the SocialSciences (ARCISS), and the other convened by the School of PublicPolicy at University College London in association with the CochraneCentre at Oxford. These key events coincided with the finalisationof the ESRC's plans for a new national Resource Centre forEvidence-Based Policy which will draw together high-quality researchevidence to support policy makers and practitioners in a variety ofpolicy domains; at the same time, the journal Public Money and Management devoted a special issue toa series of case studies on evidence-based policy. The currentvolume stems from that seminal collection.

In searching for an explanation of why this surge of interest hasoccurred at the present time the editors rightly point to suchfactors as the expansion and availability of relevant social scienceknowledge, the decline in deference to government and the demand forgreater public accountability. Correspondingly, the enthusiasm onthe part of government for systematic and well-focused evidencereflects, as they perceive it, the rapidly changing and more complexcharacter of the society with which they have to deal: a challengewhich requires foresight, accurate knowledge and rigorous analysis.These high-level concerns about the need to improve the quality ofpolicy making form a distinct stream within the Modernising Government White Paper which was publishedin March 1999. They have led to the creation of new units within theCabinet Office such as the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) and thePerformance and Innovation Unit (PIU), whose job it is to developpolicy initiatives in a much more research based way throughcross-departmental teams (including the involvement of experts fromoutside Government). The Centre for Management and Policy Studies(CMPS), which began its work in June 1999, has been given thespecial task of developing a new approach to policy making based onthe latest techniques of knowledge management.