The research-policy linkage
The academic community, research centres, international NGOs and multilateral cooperation bodies have for decades focused on the importance – decisive for development – of contributing to the generation of fruitful dialogues between the results of social research and policy-making. The basis: an increasing conviction that public policies will be more pertinent, solid and sustainable if they are nurtured on scientifically relevant, evidence-based information, using appropriate checking and follow-up methods.However, the considerable international bibliography on the issue shows up the innumerable difficulties to foster a link that, in this increasingly complex world, is more and more necessary. It contributes to nurture and give a basis to policy designing, decision-making, implementing and assessment processes at the service of development. This is a particularly sensitive phenomenon in Latin America, both because of the actual living conditions of its peoples and because of the political, social and scientific cultures overlapping each other in this phenomenon. A major share of international bibliography addressing the analysis of this subject comes from countries from the north and does not necessarily apply appropriately when considering our regional context although, it should be said, their progress and debates make an invaluable contribution to reflection and to the preparation of strategies to overcome the hiatus between one dimension and the other in the research-policy duo.It is also true that some contemporary phenomena provoke new alignments in the role of social researchers as well as in methods of production and use of scientific knowledge. Nevertheless, in the policy-making arena there are also new scenarios involving greater complexity in processes, in decision-making paths and in the map of stakeholders involved. These transformations are imbedded in the text and context of our times, involving important innovations and challenges. Germán Solinís –when describing the tasks of the MOST Programme working group on governance and dialogue among citizens, policy-makers and researchers – points out some major conceptual pillars that arose from the work of this community. Among them, the emergence of multi-stakeholder and cross-disciplinary dynamics, with stakeholders, policy-makers and social agents that relocate and recompose themselves, enabling a trans-disciplinary approach to emerge as a key to understanding this problem. (…) At the centre of these dynamics, a new status for social science researchers arises.From this perspective, two problem areas appear, requiring attention.
- On the one hand, the ways knowledge is produced, both strictly regarding scientific and academic knowledge as well as the participation of other social and political stakeholders in this production.
- On the other hand, the connection between knowledge and policies, a strategic connection in the definition of public action responding to the needs of the real world, with the support of qualified scientific foundations.
Inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean: Research, Policy and Management for Social Transformations

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