The webs of belief around ‘evidence’ in legislatures: The case of select committees in the UK House of Commons
| Published date | 01 March 2021 |
| Author | Marc Geddes |
| Date | 01 March 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12687 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
The webs of belief around ‘evidence’in
legislatures: The case of select committees in the
UK House of Commons
Marc Geddes
School of Social and Political Science,
University of Edinburgh, UK
Correspondence
Marc Geddes, School of Social and Political
Science, University of Edinburgh, 19 George
Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LD, UK.
Email: marc.geddes@ed.ac.uk
Funding information
Economic and Social Research Council, Grant/
Award Number: ES/J500215/1
Abstract
A wide-ranging literature has explored the relationship
between research, knowledge and policy. However, legisla-
tures have often been overlooked in this research. While
some studies have looked at ‘who has access’, the literature
on how parliaments seek to engage with knowledge claims
is particularly scarce. This article addresses this gap through
a case study of UK select committees. By adopting an inter-
pretive lens, the article explores how MPs and officials
make sense of evidence in committee settings. It finds that
legalistic definitions around ‘evidence’shape wider beliefs
in how to engage with knowledge claims and the practices
of undertaking inquiries, and are underpinned by a distinctly
political function of knowledge use in politics. Beliefs
around evidence have significant repercussions and high-
light tensions (i) around the authority of committee reports,
(ii) between epistemic and democratic claims and (iii) with
respect to who is included and who is excluded.
1|INTRODUCTION
The relationship between science, knowledge and policy continues to be a fertile area of debate and scholarly
research. Issues including the distrust of elites and the expansion of nationalist movements have questioned the
established relationship of expertise and public administration (Nichols 2017), while most recently the global health
[Correction added on 19 August 2020 after first online publication: Author's affiliation has been updated in this current version.]
Received: 3 October 2019 Revised: 10 June 2020 Accepted: 18 June 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12687
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2020 The Author. Public Administration published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
40 Public Admin. 2021;99:40–54.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
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