Australia’s National Drug Strategy Authors:

This paper is concerned with applying theories of the policy process to evaluating national drug strategies. It explores the utility of theories, frameworks and models of policy processes for understanding the nature of the evaluation/policy nexus, and for maximising the likelihood that drug strategy evaluations will actually contribute to the development of sound social policy on drugs. It addresses scholars ’ assertion that ‘There is nothing as practical as a good theory’. We argue that people evaluating policies and their implementation—especially large, complex social interventions such as national drug strategies—will benefit from applying a policy lens to their work. Doing so can provide an entry point to the evaluation, help set boundaries, and contribute to evaluation design. We evaluated the 2004-2009 phase of Australia’s National Drug Strategy, and use that evaluation to explore policy theory as an aid to understanding drug policy processes. The policy theories that are available include the systems model, the stages heuristic, the rational/comprehensive model, the bounded rationality model, institutional rational choice frameworks, the incrementalism model, the punctuated equilibrium theory, the multiple streams model and the advocacy coalitions model. Each contributes to understanding Australia’s National Drug Strategy and has potential for contributing to its evaluation. We conclude that policy theory provides, to evaluators of national drug strategies, insights into the policies that they are evaluating that would otherwise remain hidden. Furthermore, it potentially contributes to focusing the evaluation, interpreting the findings and enhancing evaluation utilisation.