SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINES AND POLICY RESEARCH: THE CASE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

It has been argued that social science disciplines influence their members policy research via theoretical focus, methods, norms, and system maintenance mechanisms and that these forces inhibit the usefulness of policy research for policy-making. Political science is found to influence substantially its members policy research output and to decrease its policy usefulness, primarily by promoting explanations of policy, although the extent of influence and lack of usefulness are less than studies of other disciplines suggest. Whereas highly useful outcome analyses are produced less frequently than many advocates of policy research would hope, a sub-stantial body of policy research undertakes objectives that when satisfied, particularly in the area of problem definition, provide moderately useful output to decision makers. In addition, policy research output is remarkably diverse substantively, but less so in terms of the purposes it serves.     

POLICY RESEARCH AS SOCIAL SCIENCE: OUTFLANKING THE VALUE DILEMMA

Social scientists fear that policy research compromises their objectivity. As a result, policy science is becoming a separate discipline which is accorded lower status that other fields of social inquiry. However, the history, sociology and psychology of science show that the elaboration of robust social theory would be aided by a more intimate relation between policy research and academic social science than currently obtains. The traditional canons of value freedom, which have been invoked to justify the independence of social science from policy, misrepresent the relation between facts and values in science. Objective knowledge is consequent on dispute and triangulation by a many-valued community of fallible social scientists; but it does not eventuate from consensual value neutralism. Social knowledge interacts with social values to change phenomena our theories represent. This self-restructuring characteristic of social events warrants singular attention by social scientists. Policy researchers are in a particularly opportune position to provide that attention.     

SCIENCE, RISK AND HEALTH POLICY: THE CHANGING OPERATIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Abstract: Scientific research is usually regarded as an impartial contributor to the public policy-making process. However, increasingly, such research in health matters to do with industrial processes, medical intervention and drug therapy is perceived to pose risks and thus produce uncertainty in government and anxiety among consumers of health services. This when the scientific research agenda is about to take increasingly dramatic steps with important implications for applied science. Five select issues intended to depict a lack of research consensus and resulting in perceptions of societal risk-taking are used to illustrate this phenomenon. The growing influence of the "Green" environmental and consumer movement promises increasing resistance to science-based societal risk-taking. Scientists have acknowledged problems and advocate a variety of responses including the adoption of radically different aims and methods in science. The quality of some medical statistics and the dominance of the research methods agenda by epidemiologists is also a cause for concern. The major dilemma, however, is that while both refutation and uncertainty are integral to the Popperian model of puzzle-solving in science, they are factors which pose serious political risks in decision-making for ministers and their advisers.     

POLICY COMMUNITY,POLICY NETWORKS AND SCIENCE POLICY IN AUSTRALIA

Abstract: The policy community approach to policy analysis has been developed from ideas expressed by Richardson and Jordan in 1979. The approach is increasingly used to identify the key actors and groups of actors who make policy decisions, to analyse the interactions between the groups and to hypothesise about the types of outcomes achieved. The approach aids analysis in policy contexts which cut across the boundaries of individual organisations in the policy process, across the public and private sectors, and beyond national boundaries. This paper evaluates several expositions of the approach with reference to an analysis of science policy in Australia and suggests typological refinements which enhance its explanatory capacity.     

SCIENCE IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY

In recent years a number of important science policy issues have rentered on questions about the social utility of science. The field of knowledge systems accounting has evolved as a special form of social impact assessment to observe and measure the impact of science on society. A system of social impacts of science (SIS) indicators has been developed as an attempt to represent these complex patterns and relationships. In the final analysis, the causal relevance of science to social performance depends on our capacity to link the complex knowledge system of modern science to the achievement of social goals.     

IDEOLOGY AND POLICY RESEARCH: THE CASE OF MURRAY'S LOSING GROUND

Ideology and policy research are intertwined in many ways; an example is Murray's Losing Ground which uses “science” to justify racial, sexual, and class discrimination. Murray is utterly faithful to the neoconservative version of how liberalism went wrong in the 1960s. He says an intellectual elite shifted the blame for poverty, crime and low achievement to “the system” destroying individual responsibility. But his argument is not supported by evidence. Data are bent tofit foregone conclusions. He argues that more people are becoming dependent on government support, but his method of counting who receives assistance is a fiction. Nevertheless his argument has wide appeal among Americans. Why? His argument touches the self-interested Social Darwinist in almost all of us.     

THE CHANGING CONTEXT OF ACADEMIC SCIENCE: UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY RELATIONS IN BIOTECHNOLOGY AND THE PUBLIC POLICY IMPLICATIONS

The issue of university-industry relations in the field of biotechnology illustrates the changing context of academic science. Research has become an organizational enterprise and no longer can be seen as simply the accumulation of individual efforts. This development complicates the normative context of academic science and in so doing introduces important policy questions, especially regarding interaction between industry and universities. Funding, faculty conflict of Interest, and the ownership of intellectual property resulting from research are policy issues which are analyzed in the context of some of the recent organizational changes in the performance of academic research.