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.     

EVALUATION AS SOCIAL POLICY

Policy research has become an integral part of the policymaking process but is changing as the goals and emphases o f policies change. The paper explores the shift in emphasis in evaluation research away from predominantly programmatic concerns and toward accountability issues in personnel and job evaluation. It depicts an inward turning in domestic policies from the provision of services to evaluation of government itself, and an acceleration in conflict over how the work of government should be structured and performed, and by whom. Using examples from three levels o f government, it describes what makes policies controversial, their evaluations political, and how the search for legitimacy and legitimizing technologies raises the stakes for all actors in the policy process–elected officials, administrators, consumers, and evaluators. Conclusions are drawn regarding the effect on research o f these changes in policy.     

"THE LONG AND VIOLENT PULL": SCIENCE FUNDING AND POLICY RESEARCH

Books reviewed in this article.
Claude E. Barfield. Science Policy from Ford to Reagan: Continuity and Change.
D.B.T. Kallen et al. (Eds.) Social Science Research and Public Policy-Making: A Reappraisal
David Meister. Behavioral Research and Government Policy: Civilian and Defense R & D     

INNOVATION POLICY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

This paper offers a rationale for expanding current efforts to support industrial innovation to encompass the important and unique contributions that the social sciences can make in this area. In order to provide a comprehensive overview of these contributions, the paper examines the role that social factors play in the process of technological innovations, the importance of social innovations, and the potential contributions of social science research to the diffusion of innovation as well as its importance in considering the broad social impacts of social innovations.     

ELECTRICITY TARIFFS: SOCIAL POLICY IMPLICATIONS

Abstract: The issue of equity in the provision of public utilities is one which has been the subject of a number of Australian studies over the past ten years. In particular, the obvious inequities in pricing between different classes of electricity consumers have attracted attention. Evidence that these inequities exist not only between, but also within, consumer classes was found in a survey of Brisbane residential electricity consumers. Significantly higher rates per kilowatt hour are paid by lower income consumers and the proportion of income spent on electricity is higher than that spent by the upper income households surveyed.
These inequities have important implications in the development of social policies, particularly those directed at the aged who, in many cases, rely on a low fixed income in the form of the old age pension. So far, in Australia, only the Victorian state government has approached this issue in any detail as a part of its Social Justice Strategy despite the fact that similar inequities in the provision of electricity to household consumers exist in all states.     

THE EXPATRIATE ADVISOR AS SENIOR POLICY ANALYST

Few first-hand accounts on advising exist by government advisors working in Third World countries. Other writers suggest that such advising is different from that found in the governments o f the industrialized countries. A framework for comparing expatriate advisors in Africa with senior policy analysts in the United States is developed which finds a great deal of similarity between the two types of advisors. Examples are drawn from the literature (much of it fugitive) about advisors and policy analysts working in Africa, Europe, and the United States.     

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.     

THE REAGAN ADMINISTRATION'S WELFARE RETRENCHMENT POLICY: TERMINATING SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS FOR THE DISABLED

Large numbers of the permanently and totally disabled have had benefits terminated since 1980 as a result of a determined effort towards that end by the Reagan administration. This is an example of the process by which a major change in political ethos is translated into important changes in welfare benefit entitlement rules. It is also interesting since it seems to be the first instance of a large scale conscientious attempt of the executive branch to reach into and narrow the basic entitlement policy of the Social Security Administration. This normally would be done through joint executive, congressional and legislative action. This article presents the policy background of these events and reviews and analyzes the data about their consequences.     

THE CORPORATE MANAGEMENT FRAMEWORK AS ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE: A CRITIQUE

Abstract: A corporate management framework has been the basis for a transformation of Australian public administration in recent years. Program budgeting, corporate planning, performance contracts, program evaluation and new forms of efficiency scrutiny are among the techniques introduced. They stem from a dominant paradigm of technical and instrumental rationality, within which a framework of practical remedies and technologies of power carries the corporate management label. Four concepts underly this framework and its techniques: the product format, instrumentalism, integration and purposive action. The framework has fundamental problems. The product format is inappropriate for many public services and overvalues quantifiable, single-purpose outputs while denigrating claims of worth and effectiveness made on non-economic grounds; instrumentalism ignores the political dimensions of public organisations; integration denies the value of decentralised forms of service development and delivery and, paradoxically, contradicts current private management precepts; and purposive action displays an unwarranted optimism about the potency of technical rationality under central direction. The four principles must be reviewed as offering few prospects for genuine and lasting reform.