Distinguished Speaker Seminar: Chalongphob Sussangkarn – Bridging Research and Policy: Perspectives from Experiences in Research and in Government

Chalongphob Sussangkarn, Distinguished Fellow, Thailand Development Research Institute and a former finance minister of Thailand delivered a lecture entitled "Bridging Research and Policy: Perspectives from Experiences in Research and in Government" at a distinguished speaker seminar on 29 July 2008. He chose this topic because of his experience in managing a policy-oriented think tank and the Thai economy while serving as president and finance minister, respectively.

Dr. Chalongphob mentioned that donor organizations have invested huge amount of resources on supporting research in developing countries for institution building, capacity building at researchers' level, research projects, etc. However, they need to justify effectiveness of such assistance. This is specially so in social sciences research where what is applicable "knowledge" is not as clear cut as in experimental scientific research, and the link between research and policy tends to be rather fuzzy. Many donors now attach importance to the ability of research to bring about "evidence based policy".

Dr. Chalongphob pointed out several gaps have been identified from past research such as supply gaps (insufficient research available); information/communication gaps (relevant research do not reach policy makers); demand gaps (policymakers are not interested in relevant research); and governance gaps (research subservient to political agenda, making open and impartial research difficult to do). He discussed various possibilities for filling the gaps. For the supply gaps, for instance, a good strategy is to fund and out-source the needed research in the short-term and build research capacity in the medium to longer-term. However, there are no simple solutions for this matter. Policy-research links are complex, context specific and depends on the specific political economy. But it is worth stressing the point that policy relevant research need to be demand driven and responsive and tailored to specific regional/country situations. He put these issues in the context of his own personal experience in which he started doing pure research, then switched to policy research and finally to policy making. He stated the progression from and differences between pure research and policy relevant research are not completely clear cut. For instance, while cooperative games such as coalition formation and bargaining are stylized abstract representations of important real world phenomena and questions, the research questions are conceptual and mathematical. Nevertheless, as they are analyses of stylized real world situations and were derived from real world problems, the research is not completely divorced from what goes on in the real world.

Dr. Chalongphob emphasized that questions are certainly "policy relevant". For example, with inter-linkages, policy intervention in one market may not be effective as landlord may adjust terms in other markets. The research is still a large distance away from practical policy formulation. Nevertheless, having the correct conceptual view of how the world works is critical for policy formulation. There is also an issue that constantly caused tensions between Research and Operations at the World Bank. Operations wanted something more practical and could be quickly implemented from research, while a lot of researches were trying to gain new insights into how the world works.

Turning to the links to policy making, Dr. Chalongphob noted that it is important to develop trust and networking with public agencies officials in a partnership mode, drawing on each other's comparative advantage. Researchers can contribute to the conceptual framework and technical analyses of policy problems. In contrast, public sector officials are weaker on conceptual frameworks and technical analyses but know details of policy implementation and constraints. If a partnership can be developed, the results are much more effective than can be achieved by either party working alone. Technical transfer is also necessary to strengthen policy analyses by the public sector and cultivate long-term networking between the think tank and public sector agencies. However, there remains a constant problem with personnel continuity in the public sector.

Dr. Chalongphob concluded by taking the view that both "research" and "policy" are multi-dimensional and complex, so the "bridging" is necessarily complex, probably like a spaghetti bowl of bridges. However, more and more bridging seems to be going on. Many bridging institutions have been created and survived in developing countries over the long-term, and more researchers make "policy research" their career path. One should therefore be reasonably optimistic about the supply side and their ability to bridge to the demand side. How to make best use of the policy research and bridging capacities already available in developing countries will indeed be the biggest challenge in the future, rather than simply concentrating on building more policy research and bridging capacities.