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Author: Mark Solovey Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262358751 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 409
Book Description
How the NSF became an important yet controversial patron for the social sciences, influencing debates over their scientific status and social relevance. In the early Cold War years, the U.S. government established the National Science Foundation (NSF), a civilian agency that soon became widely known for its dedication to supporting first-rate science. The agency's 1950 enabling legislation made no mention of the social sciences, although it included a vague reference to "other sciences." Nevertheless, as Mark Solovey shows in this book, the NSF also soon became a major--albeit controversial--source of public funding for them.
Author: Janeen M. Klinger Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3030112519 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 259
Book Description
This book examines how deterrence, coercion and modernization theory has informed U.S. policy, addressing why former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara’s famous description of the Vietnam War as the “social scientist’s war” is so accurate. By tracing the evolution of ties between social scientists and the government beginning in World War I and continuing through the Second World War and the early Cold War, the narrative highlights the role of institutions like the RAND Corporation, the Social Science Research Council and MIT’s Center for International Studies that facilitate these ties while providing a home for the development of theory. The author compares and contrasts the ideas of Bernard Brodie, Herman Kahn, Albert Wohlstetter, Thomas Schelling, Gabriel Almond, Lucian Pye and Walt Rostow, among others, and offers a cautionary tale concerning the difficulties and problems encountered when applying social science theory to national security policy.
Author: Michael Desch Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 069122899X Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
How professionalization and scholarly “rigor” made social scientists increasingly irrelevant to US national security policy To mobilize America’s intellectual resources to meet the security challenges of the post–9/11 world, US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates observed that “we must again embrace eggheads and ideas.” But the gap between national security policymakers and international relations scholars has become a chasm. In Cult of the Irrelevant, Michael Desch traces the history of the relationship between the Beltway and the Ivory Tower from World War I to the present day. Recounting key Golden Age academic strategists such as Thomas Schelling and Walt Rostow, Desch’s narrative shows that social science research became most oriented toward practical problem-solving during times of war and that scholars returned to less relevant work during peacetime. Social science disciplines like political science rewarded work that was methodologically sophisticated over scholarship that engaged with the messy realities of national security policy, and academic culture increasingly turned away from the job of solving real-world problems. In the name of scientific objectivity, academics today frequently engage only in basic research that they hope will somehow trickle down to policymakers. Drawing on the lessons of this history as well as a unique survey of current and former national security policymakers, Desch offers concrete recommendations for scholars who want to shape government work. The result is a rich intellectual history and an essential wake-up call to a field that has lost its way.
Author: Daniel Callahan Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 1468470159 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 394
Book Description
The social sciences playa variety of multifaceted roles in the policymaking process. So varied are these roles, indeed, that it is futile to talk in the singular about the use of social science in policymaking, as if there were one constant relationship between two fixed and stable entities. Instead, to address this issue sensibly one must talk in the plural about uses of dif ferent modes of social scientific inquiry for different kinds of policies under various circumstances. In some cases, the influence of social scientific research is direct and tangible, and the connection between the find ings and the policy is easy to see. In other cases, perhaps most, its influence is indirect-one small piece in a larger mosaic of politics, bargaining, and compromise. Occasionally the findings of social scientific studies are explicitly drawn upon by policymakers in the formation, implementation, or evaluation of particular policies. More often, the categories and theoretical models of social science provide a general background orientation within which policymakers concep tualize problems and frame policy options. At times, the in fluence of social scientific work is cognitive and informational in nature; in other instances, policymakers use social science primarily for symbolic and political purposes in order to le gitimate preestablished goals and strategies. Nonetheless, amid this diversity and variety, troubling general questions persistently arise.
Author: Edward O. Laumann Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press ISBN: 9780299111946 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 560
Book Description
The Federal Government in the United States is a government "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Presidents are elected by popular vote in the nation (filtered through the electoral college), Senators are elected by popular vote in their states, and Representatives are elected by popular vote in their Congressional districts. Cabinet members and agency heads are appointed by the elected president, as are members of the Supreme Court. But this says nothing about politics. Professor Lauman and Knoke have asked, in this book, how policies were made, in the period 1977-1980, in the areas of energy and health. The question is a very different one from the question of how the positions of president and Congress are filled.
Author: David Byrne Publisher: Policy Press ISBN: 1847424503 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 240
Book Description
This important book examines how social science is applied now and how it might be applied in the future in relation to social transformation in a time of crisis.
Author: Carol Weiss Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation ISBN: 1610445538 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 305
Book Description
Policy makers, as well as the general public, are often unaware of social science research until a story about it appears in the national media. Even in official Washington, a staffer's report on social research may go unnoticed while a report in the Washington Post receives immediate attention. This study takes a systematic and revealing look at social science reporting. How do journalists hear about social science, and why do they select certain stories to cover and not others? How do journalistic standards for selection compare with social scientists' own judgments of merit? How do reporters attempt to ensure accuracy, and how freely do they introduce their own interpretations of social science findings? How satisfied are social scientists with the selection and accuracy of social science news? In Part I, Carol H. Weiss addresses these questions on the basis of personal interviews with social scientists and the journalists who wrote about their work. Part II, by Eleanor Singer, is based on an analysis of media content itself, and compares social science reporting over time (between 1970 and 1982) and across media (newspapers, newsmagazines, television). These two complementary perspectives combine to produce a thorough, realistic assessment of the way social science moves out of the academy and into the world of news.
Author: Georgios Papanagnou Publisher: UNESCO ISBN: 9231042262 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 301
Book Description
Producing scientific knowledge that can inform solutions and guide policy-making is one of the most important functions of social science. Nonetheless, if social science is to become more relevant and influential so as to impact on the drawing and execution of policy, certain measures need to be taken to narrow its distance from the policy sphere. This decision is less obvious than it seems. Both research and experience have proved that policy-making is a complex, often sub-rational, interactive process that involves a wide range of actors such as decision makers, bureaucrats, researchers, organized interests, citizen and civil society representatives and research brokers. In addition, social science often needs to defend both its relevance to policy and its own scientific status. Moving away from instrumental visions of the link between social research and policy, this collective volume aims to highlight the more constructed nature of the use of social knowledge.
Author: Richard P. Nathan
Author: Richard P. Nathan
Author: Fred R. Harris
Author: Mark Solovey
Author: Janeen M. Klinger
Author: Michael Desch
Author: Daniel Callahan
Author: Edward O. Laumann
Author: David Byrne
Author: Carol Weiss
Author: Georgios Papanagnou