Organizing to Link Social Science with Public Policy Making
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6360959 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Douglas R Bunker (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1978 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 223-223 |
| Publication date | 1978-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Public Administration Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0033-3352 • E-ISSN: 1540-6210 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2307/975674 |
| OpenAlex | W2324033143 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 4 |
Scientists and public policy makers jointly recognize that close collaboration between the realms of science and government is difficult. MacRae (1976, esp. Chap. 2) describes the ancient conflict between expertness and popular rule and its particular manifestations in the contemporary relations of social science and government. Though many trained as social scientists now participate in the federal bureaucracy, and other public officials have grown used to various forms of systematic analysis which borrow from the language and methods of science, the goals, decision processes and operating norms of scientific and democratic institutions diverge. Between the two, the political process is necessarily the prevailing approach to guiding public action. Needs, problems, and new aspirations are sensed, and innovative alternatives are designed and adopted on the basis of policymakers' implicit identifications, attitudes, and images of reality; signals communicating constituent and interest group preferences; and the venerable processes of exchange and power conservation which are institutionalized within the political system and the government apparatus. Occasionally, the diversity of perspectives represented, the balance of forces within the system and elective accountability are sufficient to provide the crude steering of public affairs essential to avert catastrophe and to satisfy or cool out most interests. With acceleration of the rate of and social change, increases in the complexity and interdependence of the socio-political and techno-physical environments within which problems must be assessed and choices made, and rising demands for both equity and technical effectiveness in our public problem solving processes, pressure has intensified to augment these historical and constitutional methods by tapping the contributions of science more systematically and effectively than before. In the fields in which government applies scientific technology as an action tool, the use of scientific knowledge has been expanding in a natural, non-controversial, and largely successful way for some time. Even with the rising sensitivity about technological imperatives, when the scientific input is largely means-oriented and responsive to political authority its utilization is typically uncontested. In contrast, when formal scientific knowledge and scientists enter the arena of policy formulation and program design a variety of problems reduce their influence and potential value. In addition to such specific factors as perceptions of the validity of the particular finding or theoretical proposition, the soundness of an analytic method or the political feasibility of a proposal seen as emanating from a social scientific proposition, the prob
Accountability · Bureaucracy · Democracy · Government (linguistics · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Public policy · Public relations · Sociology · Evaluation and Performance Assessment · Law · Policy Transfer and Learning · Public Administration · Research, Science, and Academia
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,1 |
| Citation span | 1987 - 2023 (37) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |