ESRC UK Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice: Working Paper 6

This paper is a contribution to the methodological work of the ESRC UK Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice, and part of an attempt to broaden the applications and techniques of systematic review. It takes the form of an embryonic review of public disclosure, a policy better known as 'naming and shaming'. Six initiatives are examined in order to develop an elementary theory of the conditions under which shaming sanctions might work. There are also further reflections on the realist approach to systematic review, and on how research syntheses may feed into policy making. The purpose of the Working Paper series of the ESRC UK Centre for Evidence Based Policy and Practice is the early dissemination of outputs from Centre research and other activities. Some titles may subsequently appear in peer reviewed journals or other publications. In all cases, the views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of the ESRC. This government expects more of policy makers. More new ideas, more willingness to question inherited ways of doing things, better use of evidence and research in policy making and better focus on policies that will deliver long term goals? (Cabinet Office, 1999, my emphasis) There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice, which does not live by secrecy. Get these things out in the open, describe them, attack them, ridicule them in the press, and sooner or later public opinion will sweep them away.