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| Open Theism Discussion Board > Public Forums > Let’s solve the problem of evil > Decline of Professionalism in Policy Analysis. | Forum Quick Jump
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 12/4/2003 5:17 AM (GMT -6) |   | http://politicalaims.com/
12.3.2003
IT'S NOT ACADEMIC In times past, the lonely academic's ability to influence policy debates has been, well, quite minimal. Translating esoteric research to policy-makers distracted by dozens of competing claims is a tough enough task for anyone reared in academe. Given the messy reality of social life, politicos can often cull from the wide world of research to substantiate whatever position their pollsters have advised them to adopt. If a congressman needs some evidence that a particular policy is the best choice, he/she can probably find it.
Moreover, the tools of the social scientist don't often lend themselves to easy policy evaluations. And expert academics sometimes arrive at opposite policy prescriptions from the very same piece of research. But the peer review process and the norms of objective research help to produce research that, at the very least, hasn't been bought off by some special interest and meets some nominal degree of scientific rigor. Without any objective, disinterested input on the policy-making process, all policy decisions are reduced to purely political considerations. Which makes recent developments in Washington all the more depressing.
The rise of conservative think tanks isn't particularly new, but their influence on the policy process - both through the "research" they produce and through the staff they provide government - has grown in recent decades. Now, as independent institutions focused on studying policy outcomes, think tanks are a great idea. However, as organizations towing a particular ideological line without regard for standards of scientific integrity, "think" tanks may simply serve to provide pseudo-scientific cover for preconceived policy positions. As Benjamin Wallace Wells documents, the American Enterprise Institute is quickly shedding any pretense of ideological balance as it gains influence over the most vital policies of the day. Indeed, by housing such fraudulent wackos as John Lott, AEI seems to be losing any pretense of basic integrity. Unfortunately, AEI's dominance on the political scene is only growing.
Nicholas Confessore highlights yet another obstacle blocking the beleaguered academic's access to the policy-making process: The rise of lobbying interests buying into journalism. These days, it seems corporations and other big lobbying firms aren't content to fight it out through their traditional practices of influence-peddling. Now, they can simply buy policy position papers through such for-profit outfits as James Glassman's TCS.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0312.confessore.html
Expecting the press to differentiate between who's an expert, and who's a crackpot posing as an expert in a fraudulent organization is probably asking too much. As a result, if a legitimate academic appears on television or in print to decry the effects of some ideologically driven piece of legislation, we can now expect some paid-off half-baked researcher on the same program or paper to conclude the opposite. And in the end, our policies will increasingly reflect ideological positions and big-money interests divorced from any understanding of their effects on the social world.
-- Jake Rosenfeld
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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