YOUTH 2020 - The position of young people in Slovenia

Introduction  27 flourished in the last two decades. It is the idea that a range of skills and expertisemust inform the process of policy adoption and implementation, usually in the form of blending scientific, pragmatic, and value-driven knowledge. It is one of the preconditions of modern corporate governance, which rejects ideological solutions and replaces them with rational deci- sion-making, which is focused on causes and not on symptoms. Evi- dence-based policy-making and implementation help policy-makersmake informed decisions about policies, programs, and projects, and our re- search results are placed at the core of policy-making and implementation. Such policy-making and implementation requires a higher degree of ra- tionality, a more rigorous and systematic approach to policy-making, and represents an integration of experience, judgment, and expertise, combined with the best possible external evidence stemming from the systematic monitoring of a given field. At the same time, the role of re- search in this process gains new dimensions of social responsibility, as research is no longer based on identifying conclusions of interest for sci- entific publication, but on supporting processes that will mostly address the real challenges of the target group. Good research results are there- fore important for evidence-based policy-making and implementation, at least in terms of: (a) a good understanding of the public policy envi- ronment and the way in which that environment is changing; (b) pre- dicting the likely effects of policy changes, allowing for the selection of different alternative policies as well as the assessment of their effects; (c) indicating links between strategic orientations, planned outcomes, and policy objectives, allowing a clear demonstration of the link between the planned and the implemented; (d) defining the measures and public pol- icies necessary to achieve the strategic and medium-term objectives; (e) influencing other stakeholders to contribute to the achievement of public policy objectives; and (f) communicating and publicising robust research results, enabling informed action by organizations representing the in- terests of young people. The Mladina 2020 research group is aware that today’s efforts to inte- grate youth interests into national strategies and programs are uncoordi- nated, and at the same time they often lack the necessary professional