From political motivation to scientific knowledge: classifying policy labs in the science-policy nexus

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Urban Living Labs (ULL) emerged as a special derivate of policy labs. These are a relatively young phenomenon that is characterized by a strong orientation towards design thinking and the generation of evidence for policy-making processes. Research on this topic is rising, yet there is need for more empirical evidence that informs explanations of how policy labs in general and ULLs in particular are successfully de-politicizing and objectifying debates in the science-policy nexus, for example in wicked areas such as sustainable transport policy. Drawing on two ULLs in local policy communities in Germany, the central research question asked is how different types of policy labs with diverging salience levels of science and politics effectively contribute to an evidence-based debate on policy solutions. Answering this question for a topic characterized by high levels of complexity, emotions, and uncertainty potentially provides generalizable insights for different types of policy labs: The results indicate that policy labs may effectively move the debate from political motivation to scientific knowledge, but only if science is given a real role within the policy lab.