The role of research in policy development: The creation of the IMF cereal import facility

This paper challenges the erroneous, yet growing, view that social science research has little impact upon public policymaking. The case example here is the research lending up to the creation of the cereal import facility at the International Monetary Fund. The study is divided into two parts: (1) an intellectual analysis of the major research work on the cereal facility; and (2) a political study of how this research work was picked up and translated into reality by policymakers. It concludes that social science research must be careful, timely and ‘translatable’ if it is to be effectively used by policymakers.