I think 90% of the answer to this is risk aversion from funders, especially LTFF and OpenPhil, see here. As such many things struggled for funding, see here.
We should acknowledge that doing good policy research often involves actually talking to and networking with policy people. It involves running think tanks and publishing policy reports, not just running academic institutions and publishing papers. You cannot do this kind of research well in a vacuum.
That fact combined with funders who were (and maybe still are) somewhat against funding people (except for people they knew extremely well) to network with policy makers in any way, has lead to (maybe is still leading to) very limited policy research and development happening.
I am sure others could justify this risk averse approach, and there are totally benefits to being risk averse. However in my view this was a mistake (and is maybe an ongoing mistake). I think was driven by the fact that funders were/are: A] not policy people, so do/did not understand the space so are were hesitant to make grants; B] heavily US centric, so do/did not understand the non-US policy space; and C] heavily capacity constrained, so do/did not have time to correct for A or B.
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(P.S. I would also note that I am very cautious about saying there is “a lack of concrete policy suggestions” or at least be clear what is meant by this. This phrase is used as one of the reasons for not funding policy engagement and saying we should spend a few more years just doing high level academic work before ever engaging with policy makers. I think this is just wrong. We have more than enough policy suggestions to get started and we will never get very very good policy design unless we get started and interact with the policy world.)
I think 90% of the answer to this is risk aversion from funders, especially LTFF and OpenPhil, see here. As such many things struggled for funding, see here.
We should acknowledge that doing good policy research often involves actually talking to and networking with policy people. It involves running think tanks and publishing policy reports, not just running academic institutions and publishing papers. You cannot do this kind of research well in a vacuum.
That fact combined with funders who were (and maybe still are) somewhat against funding people (except for people they knew extremely well) to network with policy makers in any way, has lead to (maybe is still leading to) very limited policy research and development happening.
I am sure others could justify this risk averse approach, and there are totally benefits to being risk averse. However in my view this was a mistake (and is maybe an ongoing mistake). I think was driven by the fact that funders were/are: A] not policy people, so do/did not understand the space so are were hesitant to make grants; B] heavily US centric, so do/did not understand the non-US policy space; and C] heavily capacity constrained, so do/did not have time to correct for A or B.
– –
(P.S. I would also note that I am very cautious about saying there is “a lack of concrete policy suggestions” or at least be clear what is meant by this. This phrase is used as one of the reasons for not funding policy engagement and saying we should spend a few more years just doing high level academic work before ever engaging with policy makers. I think this is just wrong. We have more than enough policy suggestions to get started and we will never get very very good policy design unless we get started and interact with the policy world.)