Family planning policy, program, and practice decisionmaking: The role of research evidence and other factors

Current attention to increasing access to family planning has increased focus on ensuring that policy, programming, and practice are “evidence-based.” This paper seeks to answer when, what types, and how evidence is used in decision-making related to family planning. Views of what constitutes evidence need to be more aligned: researchers should understand that “evidence-based” does not only mean “research evidence-based” to decision-makers; and decision-makers must understand the value of robust research evidence among other evidence they consider when making decisions. Decision-makers appreciate research but it is only one factor they take into consideration—and may not be the most influential factor in their decision-making. Research findings tend to be filtered through decision-makers’ values and beliefs in addition to political, economic, and social considerations. Examples from the family planning field reinforce the persistence of other factors affecting decision-making. A number of promising interventions show that research evidence, vis a vis other factors, can inform decision-making. Expecting policy or program change from single studies is mostly unrealistic, but examples from decades of family planning programming described in this paper illustrate the incremental influence of evidence from research on family planning policies and programs

On the margins of minority life: Zoroastrians and the state in Safavid Iran

This article looks at the treatment of the Zoroastrians by central and provincial authorities in early modern Yazd, Kirman and Isfahan, emphasizing the institutional weaknesses of the central or khāsṣạ protection they were supposed to benefit from under the Safavids (907–1135/1501– 1722). It is argued that the maltreatment the Zoroastrians endured under the Safavids had little to do with religious bigotry. Rather, it arose from rivalries between the central and the provincial services of the Safavid bureaucracy, putting Zoroastrians in Yazd, Kirman, Sistan and Isfahan at risk of over-taxation, extortion, forced labour and religious persecution. The argument developed in this article pivots on the material interest of the central and the provincial agents of the Safavid bureaucracy in the revenue and labour potentials of the Zoroastrians, and the way in which the conflict of interest between these two sectors led to such acts of persecution as over-taxation, forced labour, extortion and violenc