Expertise and Social Policies: The Use of Microsimulation in the Decision-Making Process

• In Event: Unpacking Expertise - III: Boundaries, Technologies, & Translation

Abstract

Back in 2011, party negotiators for a sixth Belgian State reform agreed to transfer competencies in the field of social protection (including child allowances) to sub-federal entities. Since then, these communities and regions are following different political–administrative paths and mobilizing disparate arrays of expertise to prepare for their future policy-making activity.

Assuming that the very content of transferred policies is reshaped both by the political will (materialized by the state reform) and by the distinctive appropriation and translation processes characterizing the entities (following objectives, stakeholders networks and available resources), it is quite clear that the figures suggested by and/or commissioned to experts will partly impact the future of Belgian public administrations and, accordingly, of families.

Our goal is to focus on microsimulation tools and demonstrate that Belgian sub-state authorities are using number-expertise in radically diverging fashion – which will impact decisions, policies as well as the way they are perceived.

Based on an ethnography and using a broad selection of interviews with stakeholders engaged in several aspects of microsimulation regarding such social competencies (to evaluate current policies, forecast future policy designs or test for alternatives) in Belgium, the aim of this paper is to question the place of numbers in social policy-design and to reveal and compare knowledge networks at stake during this ongoing reform.

We believe that a systematic questioning of this number-entangled policy field will both enlighten the local decisional process and be of use to illustrate the strong cooperation between science, technology and society.

Author

• Isalyne Stassart, Université de Liège / Institut Wallon de l'évaluation, de la prospective et de la statistique