Re-imagining relevance? Social science expertise in the National School of Government
The UK is to establish a new National School of Government (NSG) as part of a plan to ‘rewire’ the civil service both to grow its capacity to ‘get things done’ and better meet the existential challenges facing both this government and our democracy more broadly. The wider context of radical uncertainty asks significant questions about how we need to govern now and in the future.
This announcement shows recognition within government that the ‘usual way of doing things’ cannot meet the moment. Yet the UK government remains – by design – rigid, risk-averse, over-centralised, short-termist and reliant on a narrow base of expertise, which render it limited in the current environment. How then could the NSG help to address these constraints, and what role might social science play?
AcSS has recently highlighted the value of a greater diversity of social science evidence to government. The broader quest for relevance is well-established, from the recently announced UKRI funding strategy to the growing emphasis on impact in the Research Excellence Framework. Should we however take pause to consider the current route to social science relevance?
Relevance is often understood to involve immediate and close alignment to the current policy priorities of government – from the Industrial Strategy to AI. Whilst there will always be a need for responsive advice on specific policy questions. Does the current context of challenge encourage us to be more ambitious. We would argue that the role of social science is not only one of immediate relevance. Deeper longer-term relevance also involves supporting civil servants by providing a collective memory, contextualisation of how we got here, and drawing on our criticality and conceptual insights. This approach to relevance offers a greater chance of securing better, more effective, alternative ways to govern.
So, what might deeper engagement look like? We take inspiration from social scientist Carol Weiss. As someone who wrote extensively on scientific evaluation of social programmes, Weiss was of course in favour of robust empirical data on specific public policy areas. But she argued that ‘structures of meaning’ derived from social scientists’ theoretical work were equally important. Data matters, but it’s social science ideas that have a bigger impact on policy:
“[…] ideas, more than discrete pieces of data, have influenced the way that policy actors think about issues and the types of measures they have been willing to consider. [Social science] bring[s] fresh perspectives into the policy arena […] they challenge assumptions that have been taken for granted and give credibility to options that were viewed as beyond the pale. They provide enlightenment.”
What social science ideas are relevant to the founding of the NSG and its training of future civil servants? Here we consider three that already have a degree of traction but with far greater potential to be mined in ‘rewiring’ government.
Positivity
The study of British policymaking is dominated by tales of fiasco, scandal and crisis. From the failures of privatisation and outsourcing to the handling of COVID, this work is important in aiding deeper understanding of how government works and supporting accountability and transparency.
But does an emphasis on interrogating dysfunction and allocating blame also militate against experimentation and deep learning? What might be the alternative?
Internationally and here in Britain, there is now a growing ‘positive public policy’ movement, encouraging a focus on success as well as failure. This isn’t a naïve co-option or shallow boosterism. Indeed, taking ‘a walk on the bright side’ has its roots in the work of Nobel Prize Winner for Economics, Elinor Ostrom. Ostrom encouraged scholars of public policy to seek out examples of policy arrangements that work, explain them, and then learn from them, arguing that what works in practice can work in theory.
There are a range of evidenced innovations in how policy can be made and delivered – from design to participation and systems thinking – that offer the potential to meet ambitions of ‘rewiring’. In the face of a ‘broken Britain’ doom loop and democratic fragility, positive public policy feels like an idea whose time has come.
Once we start looking for successes in British policymaking we can see them, from the smoking ban, sugar tax, or auto-enrolment in pensions and SureStart. ‘Learning from things that went right’ is also an aspiration reflected in initiatives such as the Cabinet Office’s ‘Test, Learn and Grow’ programme. Positive public policy offers a powerful orientation for the NSG, attuned to learning from the both the negatives as well as the positives of past, present and elsewhere to drive a desirable future, where the value of government is recognised.
Place
Place is a Cinderella policy idea, often eclipsed by the ugly sisters of scale and global reach. It has the potential to do more for effective policymaking than the stereotypes of the overly prosaic and hyper-local might suggest. Drawing on social science, we can see that place is a short-hand term that emphasises the importance of policy context. Context and contingency are fundamental epistemological tenets that affect how we understand how policies work but are often ignored in favour of scale or transferable practice.
From the citizen-led approach to health and social care in the Wigan Deal to community wealth building of the Preston Model, there’s much to learn from local policy innovation. Indeed, to drive effective government, the NSG cannot be focused on the civil service or Whitehall. It must not only encourage mobility of people, knowledge and talent but also leverage the local knowledge and acute understanding of place already embedded in existing research-policy-community ecosystems, included those supported by UKRI investments. Social science is at the forefront of systems approaches to addressing critical policy challenges with place sensitivity, as demonstrated by the Health Appraisal of Urban Systems (HAUS) model now gaining traction in Government.
Relationality
In a context of radical uncertainty, government, should not assume it has or should have all the answers. Humility implies valuing knowledge often excluded from the policy process, trans-disciplinary dialogue with a wide range of other expertise, including a diversity of social science expertise.
For scholars familiar with the foundational work of early pragmatists such as Mary Parker Follett, this approach makes complete sense. Follett, writing in the early 20th century, set out a bold conception of human beings as relational. What Follett from 1924 has to say to UK Government in 2026 is still fresh and relevant. If, as she says, ‘reality is in the relating, in the activity-between’, then NSG needs to enhance spaces for exchange and to advance an approach to governing that is ‘strategic, balanced and relational’.
This emphasis on relationality is not only significant in a complex multi-level governance environment but is relevant in terms of the latest ‘magical’ technological saviour of UK policymaking: artificial intelligence. Whatever the potential of AI, for the NSG to deliver on the wider ambitions of effective government, demands a more sustained recognition of the need for ‘human[e] government’. Civil servants need not only be fluent in AI, but value the expertise derived from lived experience, the tacit, local and experiential forms of practice reasoning, the care and compassion charged through relationships.
Policy scholarship teaches us why government often fails to learn, but the announcement of a new National School of Government evidences a renewed effort to do so. Our argument is that social science expertise can support the NSG’s policy learning through its big ideas to rewire the state.
About the authors
Catherine Durose is Professor of Public Policy, and Co-Director of the Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place at the University of Liverpool. She is recognised as a leading expert on urban governance and public policy, and has written widely on policy design and implementation, devolution, urban transformation, social and democratic innovation, participation and community ownership.
Liz Richardson is a Professor of Public Administration at the University of Manchester. Her research interests include participatory urban governance; local politics and local government; public services; and public policy. She has an interest in methodological innovation including participatory research approaches, and experimental methods.
Sarah Ayres is Professor of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Bristol. Working at the intersection between political science and regional studies, her research has examined how diverse actors solve complex problems through collaboration and local leadership. She specialises in Whitehall decision making, collaborative governance and English devolution.
John Boswell is Professor in Politics at the University of Southampton. His interests centre around contemporary issues and themes in democratic governance and public policy. His research is generally qualitative and interpretive in nature.
Paul Cairney is Professor of Politics and Public Policy at the University of Stirling. He is a specialist in British politics and public policy, often focusing on the ways in which policy studies can explain the use of evidence in politics and policy, and how policymakers translate broad long term aims into evidence-informed objectives. He is currently the principal investigator of FORTH2O which investigates how to foster collaborative, and systems approaches to policy problems.
Ian C. Elliott is Senior Lecturer of Public Administration at the Centre for Public Policy, University of Glasgow and co-Editor-in-Chief of Public Administration and Development. His research includes the strategic state and mission-led government as well as the teaching of public administration.
Matthew Flinders is Professor of Politics and Founding Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre at the University of Sheffield. He is also Vice-President of the Political Studies Association and Chair of the Universities Policy Engagement Network. He is the author or editor of fourteen books and over 200 peer-reviewed research articles and book chapters. He has also written and presented a number of documentaries and is a regular contributor to the Times Higher.
Steve Martin is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy at Cardiff University. He has a distinguished track record of applied policy research and providing strategic advice to governments across the UK and internationally. Steve has established and directed two major research centres and published more than 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He was a member of the UK’s What Works Council and has a particular interest in promoting evidence use by policy makers.
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