European Policy Analysis Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 2015 | Page 5

European Policy Analysis

claimed that the conservative demand was
unconstitutional. In Nidwalden, by contrast, the government supported the introduction of tax deductions for family-internal childcare and succeeded without much
resistance. They achieved this by linking the
measure to the dominant discourse of economic competitiveness and by focusing the
evidence they produced on bolstering this
link.

In the final section of the article, we
draw conclusions: (a) for those who promote gender equity, (b) for those who are
interested in the use of evidence in policymaking, and (c) for the more academic discourse on theories of the policy process.

capturing a broad spectrum of conceptual
and epistemic approaches, and the use of
information or knowledge plays an important role.1 Employing a plurality of theories
of the policy process and specifying the
function of evidence within d