Abstract
Most academic research on public policy achieves little influence in government. The disconnect reflects the different ways researchers and government learn about policy. In social policy, typically, scholars make rigorous but narrow arguments about how to improve social conditions while saying little about politics or government. Policymakers, however, reason in broader, integrative ways and pay more attention to program experience and institutions. Evaluations have influence in part because they serve the governmental style. By reasoning more like policymakers, scholars could have greater influence. But to make that connection, the teaching of public policy and academic incentives must change.
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Notes
The basis for these statements is attending over thirty years of conferences of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management (APPAM) and hearing members talk about this problem.
I do not establish here that academic policy research typically has this narrow, statistical and disembodied character. However, I have documented such trends in political science (2010), and conversations with academics in other social sciences and social policy make clear that trends there are similar. APPAM leaders have sought ways to make academic research more policy relevant for several years now.
The following sections rely heavily on Coleman (1972).
This was a comment I heard Kissinger make while working for him as a speechwriter while he was Secretary of State in 1974-5.
There can also be experiments or simulations of policy problems, which fall between research and policy analysis. In essence, they create new data to permit new forecasts.
See note 4.
Based on local officials I talked to in 1992, this was the case with the path-breaking welfare work programs in San Diego, the subject of MDRC’s first and perhaps most influential welfare reform study from the 1980 s. See Goldman et al. (1986).
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I gratefully acknowledge helpful comments on earlier drafts from Angela Evans and anonymous journal reviewers.
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Mead, L.M. Only connect: Why government often ignores research. Policy Sci 48, 257–272 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-015-9216-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11077-015-9216-y