Caroline Schlaufer

Global evidence in local debates: the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in Swiss direct-democratic debates on school policy

This article analyses the use of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other evidence in educational policy discourse in the context of direct-democratic votes in Switzerland. The results of a quantitative content analysis show that PISA is used by all actors to support a wide range of policy measures and ideological positions. Other evidence, however, is only used to support single specific policy positions. These findings demonstrate the ubiquity of PISA. The article discusses these results in view of the question of whether the incorporation of evidence into policy debates contributes to informed discourse.

The contribution of evaluations to the discourse quality of newspaper content

This research shows how the use of evaluations in newspaper articles contributes to the quality of public media discourse prior to direct-democratic votes. Data from Swiss direct-democratic campaigns on school policy between 2000 and 2012 are used to compare newspaper articles that contain evaluations with those that do not refer to evaluations. Results show that those newspaper articles containing evaluations exhibit higher levels of justification, reciprocity and respect, tend to argue in terms of the common good, and contain less storytelling than newspaper articles that do not refer to evaluations. Implications for public deliberation and evaluation practice are discussed.

The Political Use of Evaluations in Democratic Discourse: Enrichment or Exclusion?

This article asks the question of how the political use of evaluations enriches democratic discourse. It builds on the results of a multi-year research project on the use of evaluations in direct-democratic debates in Switzerland in the fields of health and education. The results of quantitative and qualitative content analyses of documents related to 221 votes and a split-ballot survey show that the use of evaluations provides policy-relevant information and substantive justifications, leads to less normative arguments, and increases interactivity of discourse. However, evaluations are particularly used by elite actors in their argumentation, but also to receive information on policies. This leads to a separation of the arena of deliberation in an expert discourse that includes empirical evidence and a lay discourse that eschews empirical knowledge.