Lived Experience as evidence? Exploring a governance-driven perspective

A participatory turn has occurred in recent years, which claims to centre citizen’s voices in knowledge production and policymaking processes. This includes an increasing emphasis on prioritising ‘lived experience’ – that is experiential knowledge of particular societal or policy issues – within policymaking. In this talk we draw on participatory governance literature to consider the different drivers of this move towards the use of ‘lived experience’ in policymaking. We find that, although lived experience is often considered as democracy-driven or a result of campaigning movements that challenge traditional forms of expertise and power, it is also driven by state-led processes of participation and thus could be considered an example of governance-driven democratisation (Warren, 2009).

We illustrate our argument through examples of how lived experience features in anti-poverty policymaking in Scotland. These examples show that whilst the language of participation and deliberation feature in the rationale, these ideas are squeezed out as institutional needs and norms take precedent. We argue that this illustrates the ways that policy ‘elites’ are required to design processes that serve specific policy needs. Furthermore, we identify that these needs are often related to producing and using specific forms of evidence. We thus identify how ‘lived experience’ connects to the evidence-use literature that considers how types of evidence are perceived and utilised in policymaking.

Dr Hayley Bennett is Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh.  She specialises in the policy design and delivery of welfare services, specifically social security, labour market programmes, and anti-poverty initiatives.

Dr Clementine Hill O’Connor is Kentigern Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow.  Her expertise is on the role of citizens and citizen voices in policy-making processes, public engagement as evidence and gendered responses to conditionality.