Social science mandarins: Policymaking as a political formula

This article strongly suggests that the customary sequence of events starting with science and terminating with policy-making lacks empirical confirmation; that in fact, the actual sequence of events is primarily determined by policy stances and terminates with some form of scientific investigation, geared however to legitimation rather than explanation. Four empirical case studies are examined: Brown v. Board of Education; Project Clear; Project Camelot; and the Moynihan Report. In each case it is evident that the causal model most appropriate is one that recognizes the legitimation role of social science as dominant. The article concludes with an examination of key factors in the present structure of government and science that makes the teleological model central; it also points out that such a model is neither better nor worse than the customary ways of viewing the relationships; only different in implication and explication.     

Relativists and Absolutists: Grand Strategies in a World of Fractured Norms

The current widespread renewed interest in the development of grand military-political strategies is a function of a rapidly changing global configuration of powers. From the bipolarity of the Cold War, which by its very construction limited either the United States or the Soviet Union from constructing much less implementing a unilateral framework, we have moved to a political and economic environment in which a variety of nations in parts of the world that did not figure into the power equations of the past century, invites such analysis. This article draws attention to factors profoundly limiting a grand strategy at the global level. It further indicates that the source of such push for grand strategy derives from inherited doctrines, largely of 19th European origin, which continue to emphasize absolutist doctrines based on theology, history and ideology. They are increasingly dysfunctional formulas in a relativistic universe of political systems and military technologies. The emergence of economic Diaspora in place of “three worlds of development” also serves to weaken approaches derived from imperial doctrines and political approaches that are no longer the monopoly of conventional armed forces. The essay concludes with the belief that one older element that continues to display cachet is diplomacy and face to face human initiatives. Bargaining rather than blustering may be the order of the age. In this, it is Metternich rather than Hegel that may prove a better source of negotiating a complex multi-national world order.     

Unheard Testimony,Untold Stories: the representation of women's Holocaust experiences

This article seeks to show that despite women's lives during the Holocaust becoming a growing area of historical interest, there is a reluctance on the part of Holocaust scholars to acknowledge testimony that does not concur with preconceived gender roles, patterns of suitable female behaviour, or pre-existing narratives of survival. The article focuses on both the testimonies of female witnesses to the Holocaust, and the small but rapidly growing body of secondary literature devoted to looking at women's lives in German-occupied Europe, to show how many testimonies are overlooked because they represent difficult experiences.