Public Policy Engagement

The mission of the Tobin Project is to be a catalyst for transformative research in the social sciences. As such, Tobin Project initiatives aim to build lasting change across academia by generating new scholarship on the most pressing social problems. Ongoing engagement with the policy community is essential to this process. At crucial points in the research process, the Tobin Project facilitates a two-way exchange of ideas: scholars share insights with policymakers able to effect change, and policymakers offer their perspectives on real-world challenges and share ways that scholarship can best inform public policy. The nature and extent of our engagement with policymakers varies with each project, but all of our initiatives strive to involve practitioners and government officials throughout the research process.

This ongoing interaction between scholars and policymakers, aimed at the ultimate goal of producing new scholarship strategically informed by real-world policy challenges, is illustrated here by three case studies of early Tobin Project inquiries that successfully facilitated productive exchange:

Regulatory Reform: The real-world impact of a long-term research effort
Preventing Capture: Policymaker engagement yields cutting-edge research questions
The Democracy Index: A new idea develops into innovative public policy