Vanesa Weyrauch and Leandro Echt on why context matters

Science for Policy

Why does evidence sometimes land and sometimes not? Why do some policies fail even though the evidence suggests they should succeed? And what can we do about it? Saying "it's all about the context" is easy, but what does this actually mean? And more importantly, how can we make that into a useful insight in advance, rather than just a post-hoc justification for things not working out?

Vanesa Weyrauch and Leandro Echt have looked into this question in some detail, and their organisation, Purpose & Ideas, created a framework to tackle exactly these questions. In this episode, they discuss with Toby Wardman of the SAM not just why context matters, but what that actually means and what we can do about it.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Context Matters framework: https://www.purposeandideas.org/post/context-matters-but-are-we-prepared-to-build-on-this