Evidence-based Policy-making; Social Policy and Social Policy Analysis; African Socio-political and Development Thought

South Africa is a young democracy currently going through a crisis of leadership. The worst drought in recorded history has played out at regional level but against the backdrop of complex political dynamics. The government has lost significant capacity at the technical level, largely the result of political priorities driven by the need to decolonise society and the institutions of higher learning. This has manifest in the water sector as systemic failures of key instrumentation systems, rendering the El Niño event invisible until it hit. This case study of the El Niño event shows that drought management is embedded within a broader political process and is not simply a technical management issue. The Vaal River system sustains 60% of the national economy and 45% of the total population of the country, but water security in this system has been placed at risk because of political dynamics.

This chapter explores some of the governmental implications of particular uses of policy relevant data and evidence for health policymaking in Ghana. In particular it looks beyond issues of technical capacity to include issues of political responsibility—namely responsibility to use evidence, to take it into account, and to account for it. It is worth noting that claims thatevidence can improve accountability practices and democratic decisions are seen within some current calls for ‘evidence-based policymaking’ (EBPM) (c.f: Weisburd and Neyroud 2011; Clarence 2002), but the way such improvement should occur remains vague and under-investigated. From a general decision-making perspective, the use of evidence serves to inform decisions and to make them more ‘rational’. In addition, explicit use of evidence potentially improves transparency and along with it the accountability of decisions. However, accountability is not an inherent property of decisions. It is a practice put into being by policy agents and procedures.
This chapter uses a case study of Ghana in order to explore how uses of evidence for national planning link with concepts of accountability, and what political effects particular uses of evidence can produce.