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spring 2005 contexts 41

Contexts, Vol. 4, Issue 2, pp. 41-47, ISSN 1536-5042, electronic ISSN 1537-6052. © 2005 by the American Sociological Association. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions

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can social science shape the public agenda?

feature article harold l. wilensky

Although America leads the world in conducting social scientific evaluations of public policies, in the end, social science contributes less to policymaking here than it does in most of Western Europe and Japan. Instead, our research has little bear- ing on whether a government program lives or dies. Intellectuals typically have tense relationships with men and women of power, but the disconnect between research and policy is most extreme in the United States.

Drawing on interviews with more than 400 politicians, budget officers, health and welfare officials, and labor and management people in 19 rich democracies, as well as decades of related research, I reach two conclusions about the interplay of knowledge and public policy. First, whether and how research influences policy depends on the political and economic context in which it is financed and used. Fragmented and decentralized political economies, such as that of the United States, foster isolated, single-issue research, typically focused on short-run effects and used as rhetorical weapons rather than policy planning input. In con- trast, more centralized, “corporatist” systems, such as those of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Austria, and, partially, Germany, provide channels for more consistent expert and intellectual influence. If staff experts are at the table where at least mod- erately centralized governments bargain with broad-based labor federations, employer and trade associations, profes- sional associations, political parties, and churches, they will have a more serious, sustained input to the policy process. If academic intellectu- als also have a steady relationship with political elites, their knowledge will be used more often. In short, these central- ized, coordinated groups serve as con- s e n s u s - m a k i n g machines, fostering

dialogue among researchers, bureaucrats, and politicians that connects a wider range of issues, considers longer-range effects, and more often uses research findings to plan and implement policy.

Second, good basic research deals with recurrent problems of the human condition and is therefore, in the broadest sense, public-policy research. Even in America’s adversarial political environment, social science makes its way into the policy arena in the long run.

To illustrate these two themes, I concentrate on four issues where social science has improved our knowledge: job training and creation, health care, economic policy, and crime control.

job training and cost-benefit analysis

The case of job training and cost-benefit analysis illustrates a sad truth: the more evaluation, the less program develop- ment; the more demonstration projects, the less follow-

through. In no other policy area in the United States has the demand for rigorous evalua- tion research loomed so large, and nowhere among the rich democracies has such research been so politi- cized. Three problems are apparent: the research itself is usually quite narrow, polit- ically naive, and often seri- ously flawed; research focused on a single program obscures how programs affect one another; and eval- uated success has little to do with future funding.

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A typically narrow measure of the efficiency of job training is the earnings of the graduates, which ignores the interde- pendence of policies. Improved education and training may be ineffective in increasing earning capacity unless steps are also taken to change the number and mix of available jobs, and efforts to change available jobs may fail if low-wage workers lack training and education. Either initiative taken alone might fail, whereas both together might succeed.

One of the most careful and comprehensive cost-benefit analyses ever done on a social program, based on research by Mathematica Policy Research in Princeton, was published in the

early 1980s. It illustrates how to conduct an independent, sys- tematic evaluation that avoids the narrow, single-issue disease. It focused on the Job Corps and shows that solid proof of pro- gram effectiveness often has no impact on policy or program funding. The Job Corps provides a range of services to disad- vantaged youth—vocational-skills training, basic education, and health care—typically in residential centers. In fiscal 1990–91, it served 62,000 young people: a majority black, eight in ten high school dropouts, and four in ten from families on public assis- tance. It is the most expensive federally run job training pro- gram. Baseline and follow-up data were gathered for about 5,100 youths over two years (including a matched comparison group who were never enrolled). The average training period was 5.9 months. The researchers showed estimated total annu- al costs to society (including Corps members) of $5,070 in 1977 dollars and the total benefits to society of $7,343—or a net gain to society of $2,273 per Corps member.

If we concentrate only on the increased output and earn- ings, as is typically done, we would miss almost half the soci- etal benefits shown for the Job Corps. For instance, the net social value of reductions in arrests—reductions in costs to the criminal justice system, in personal injury and property dam- age, and in the value of stolen property—amounted to about $2,000 per Corps member during the observation period. Apparently, while many matched non-Corps youth were vig- orously engaged in robbery, burglary, theft, barroom brawls, mugging old men in back alleys, peddling drugs, and an occa- sional murder—all the while collecting an average of $1,357 more from AFDC, General Assistance, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Unemployment Insurance, and Workers Compensation than Job Corps members collected—the Corps members were off the street during training and often worked in conventional jobs afterward. Some minor savings came from reduced drug and alcohol use, but the big savings were in the reduced crim- inal activity accompanying their participation.

None of this more broadly applied research inspired expanded funding. President Reagan proposed to wipe out the Job Corps. President Bush I’s last budget proposal cut the Job Corps slightly. It has not fared well under Bush II.

Many social programs and labor-market policies in the United States are funded for such short periods and at such meager levels that the fuss about their alleged failure to solve some huge problem is absurd. Some of these programs were hardly launched before they were shot down in a cloud of com- plaints about great costs and limited benefits, often reinforced by short-term, single-issue evaluation research. In the rare case where evaluations found evidence of some modest success, the

42 contexts spring 2005

Some of these programs were hardly launched

before they were shot down in a cloud of com-

plaints about great costs and limited benefits,

often reinforced by short-term, single-issue

evaluation research.

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Future Employee: Edison, NJ, Job Corps Academy

spring 2005 contexts 43

results were often pronounced as benedictions at the grave- side. Political success may have been inversely related to eval- uated success. In the absence of effective coalitions of politicians, bureaucrats, and experts and a system for aggre- gating interests, achieving consensus, and integrating social and economic planning, each interest group can interpret research results according to its preconceptions, with no accommodation to opposing preconceptions. The voice of research, even scholarly analysis, is drowned out by the noise.

commercial health care: an american peculiarity

The radical disjunction between knowledge and policy is evi- dent in the issue of health care reform, where social science has improved our grasp of the issues. Here is what comparative research tells us: the United States is unique among rich democ- racies in its lack of national health insurance, high ratio of pri- vate to public expenditures, almost complete commercialization of health care delivery through a medical/industrial complex, chaotic and intrusive private and public regulation, extraordi- nary administrative costs, and inequality of access. It ranks high- est in total cost yet scores below average in health performance. In contrast, all other affluent democracies have universal and comprehensive coverage for medical care based on the princi- ples of social right and shared risk, global budgets within which regions and localities must operate, a dominant public share of spending, and compulsory financing from individual and employer contributions and/or government revenues.

In the absence of these common features of national health care, when the United States attempts incremental health care reforms, two results are inevitable—cost shifting and risk-selection. If you try to control the costs of services pro- vided by vendors who serve Medicare and Medicaid patients or the privately controlled plans, the dominant actors— employers, HMOs, hospital chains, insurance companies—will shift costs to the public sector by restricting coverage and charging patients more. Commercial providers also save money by risk-selection, skimming off the younger, healthier patients and dumping older, sicker, costlier patients onto the public sector.

The latest attempt at large-scale reform was the complex Clinton health care proposal of 1993–94. The level of the debate was set more by the infamous television ads starring

Harry and Louise than by careful research on the costs and ben- efits of various systems of health care finance, organization, and delivery. During the year-long debate on health care reform, the disjunction between knowledge and policy was matched by the disjunction between political rhetoric in Washington and pub- lic opinion. Despite the sharply partisan climate of 1993–94 and fear-mongering slogans by the small-business lobby and insur- ance companies, issue-specific opinion remained friendly to the outlines of national health insurance. Cross-sections of Americans polled about issues remained enthusiastic about uni- versal and government-guaranteed coverage via an employer mandate, portability of all medical insurance, and prohibition against insurance companies’ refusal to cover preexisting con- ditions—in short, the content of the administration bill. But

when asked whether they supported the “Clinton health care proposal,” the same people gave their TV-driven negative response. Few, of course, knew what the proposal contained. The media—especially television but also the prestige press— concentrated on shouting politicians in 20-second sound bites, the style and content of the advertising war, and the details of the political process, accenting extremes. Despite this cloud of confusion and hysteria, a majority showed support for the spe- cific ingredients of reform.

Some argue that the Clintons’ failure was due to their polit- ical ineptitude. This overlooks the history of similar efforts that failed in more favorable political climates. Presidents who tried to move toward national health insurance include Teddy Roosevelt, FDR (who judged he could not get Congress to add it to Social Security), Truman, and Kennedy. Today the barriers include the great size and influence of the insurance industry (1,500 insurance companies dominate the medical-industrial complex and their lobbyists spent almost $50 million to defeat the Clinton plan); the declining influence of broad-based

Some argue that the Clintons’ failure was due

to their political ineptitude. This overlooks

the history of similar efforts that failed in

more favorable political climates.

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it.” —Mark Twain

contexts spring 200544

political parties in the electorate and the erosion of labor unions and established churches, which leaves a power vacuum increasingly filled by the broadcast media interacting with nar- row, sectarian, political and religious interest groups and equal- ly specialized business groups; the increasing polarization of American politics; Senate rules that permit minorities to block legislation; and, finally, unrepresentative electoral rules that are also hostile to third-party formation (majoritarian, first-past-

the-post, winner-take-all). The lesson: a major electoral shift must take place if the United States is to join the other advanced democracies in this policy area.

reaganomics versus economics

The role of experts and intellectuals in shaping policy in the United States is severely limited or transformed into that of pro- pagandists, as at such right-wing think tanks as the Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, and their few left-wing counterparts (such as the Institute for Policy Studies). Of course, independent aca- demic researchers do not always agree on the policy implications of their work. For instance, a small minority of academic econo- mists embraced Reaganomics; they defended large tax cuts under Reagan and Bush II as a way to spur capital investment and growth and thereby reduce deficits. Herbert Stein, former chair- man of the Council of Economic Advisers under Presidents Nixon and Ford, calls it “punk supplysideism”—extreme to the point of being bizarre. Yet because of the erratic relationship of experts and intellectuals to policy in the United States, this doctrine became public policy overnight under Reagan, swiftly replacing serious literature on both monetarism and supply-side econom- ics. It became the object of some derision during the Bush I and Clinton administrations but has since been revived in its purest form under Bush II. The consensus of scholarly researchers on the effects of the level of taxes on economic performance, in fact, ranges between the view that it has a minor positive to a minor negative effect. And these effects depend on types of tax cuts, stage of the business cycle, and so on.

We can view economics as an extreme case for under- standing both the great distance between social science and policy (as in the rise of Reaganomics) and as an example of the

occasional strong influence social science research can have when its perspectives fit the preconceptions of political lead- ers (as in the recent health care debate and this year’s Social Security debate). Economics is more influential and more nar- rowly specialized than other social science disciplines. It is the only social science institutionalized in the White House (the Council of Economic Advisers), and it can claim higher levels of consensus about theory and method than the other social sciences. This is why health economists have, for better or worse, dominated the intellectual component of health care reform. Because of their inherent bias toward market solutions and their insulation from social research on the organization, financing, and the performance of health care delivery systems in other countries, one group of American health economists has made exaggerated claims regarding the benefits of “med- ical savings accounts” (or other forms of privatization) remi- niscent of the claims of the supply-side ideologues of the 1980s and 1990s. If this advocacy “research” shapes health care reform, the likely outcome will be a two-tier system, fur- ther cost shifting on a grand scale, and a further polarization of American politics without the benefits of either cost control or equality of access for the majority of Americans.

crime prevention and sociological knowledge

The message so far: Where there is a consensus in main- stream social science, it is often overcome by forensic “research,” and the disciplines in the large, specialized American academy differ in perspective and impact. But even where sociology and political science provide a consensus of the competent on major issues of public policy, the record is not encouraging. The issue of crime prevention and control provides an example.

Extensive contributions to the understanding of changing rates of crime over time and location have had virtually no effect on American policy in the past 30 years. In fact, the record suggests that the better the research, the smaller the audience. From my recent review of American data on violent crime and from cross-national studies, I infer a broad scholar- ly consensus about the roots of violent crime: across time and geographical areas and under modern conditions, the combi- nation of poverty, inequality, and family breakup in the con- text of crowded urban living powerfully and consistently explains homicide rates, which are correlated with less reliable data on other violent crimes.

The decline of violent crime between 1993 and 1999 reflects a brief decline in poverty, unemployment, and inequal- ity, the beginning of family policies that cushion the shock of family breakup, and the decline in the proportion of 15–24- year-olds. Reverse all these sufficiently, and the rates will climb

Extensive contributions to the understanding

of changing rates of crime over time and loca-

tion have had virtually no effect on American

policy in the past 30 years.

spring 2005 contexts 45

again. Further, the crackdowns on crime—the prison boom starting in the early 1970s, the repeated declarations of war on drugs and crime from Nixon through Bush I and II, tough talk and tough laws—have given us the highest known incar- ceration rate in the world, an increasing share of government budgets going to courts and prisons, and a poisonous politics, Willie Horton style. But the crackdowns do not deter crime.

Scholars of very different ideological persuasion—dovish like Elliott Currie and hawkish like James Q. Wilson—range between the view that increasing the severity, frequency, and certainty of punishment to deter crime is only marginally effec- tive and the view that it is counterproductive. Even increasing the number of law enforcement personnel and increasing police efficiency has only a small effect on the crime rate, unless vast resources are put into community policing. Even then, the results are modest, and they are infinitesimal where there is no “community.” As in the case of poverty research and supplysideism, the scholarly consensus regarding crime prevention is segregated from the action.

In sum, policy segmentation is extreme in the United States, and the disjunction between social science and social policy is equally extreme. At the other end of the spectrum are democracies—often dubbed “corporatist”—that are more centralized, with more consensual politics and tighter inte- gration of knowledge and policy. These include Japan as well as smaller European democracies such as Norway, Sweden,

Finland, Austria, and, to a lesser extent, Belgium and the Netherlands (with Germany a middle case between the extremes). In these countries either American-style evaluation research is not done at all, or, if done, it is more closely tied to policy deliberations and is used not to kill off political enemies but to foster consensus and implement policy. In other words, national differences in structures for bargaining shape the intellectual channels for influence. It is not the modest supply of social science knowledge that blocks its influence in the United States, although it is modest; it is not the limited sup- ply of experts and intellectuals; it is not even the limitations of applied social research (American research has been more rig- orous than others); it is instead the location of our experts and intellectuals. If they were located in an interacting array of cen- tralized labor federations, centralized employer federations, strong political parties, and at least moderately centralized governments with the capacity to implement policy, American social scientists would have as much influence as their coun- terparts abroad.

basic social science shapes policy in the long run

Despite its limitations, social science does make its way into the public agenda in the long run, even where social and political structures are unfavorable to the easy interplay of politicians, bureaucrats, and intellectuals. For good basic research is policy-oriented in the broad sense that it deals with persistent problems of the human condition—hierarchy and equality, consensus and conflict, security and efficiency, par- ticipation and political legitimacy, and the causes and conse- quences of the wealth of nations. It also addresses recurrent problems of modern society: the breakdown and regeneration of community and democracy, social rights, and individual lib- erties. Social science aims to develop knowledge of these uni- versal problems and dilemmas as well as their resolution.

That our knowledge of these issues makes its way in the long run is evident from the intellectual history of the past cen- tury or so. Consider these examples drawn from sociology and economics: The labor economists and labor historians of the “Wisconsin School” in the first third of the 20th century mightily shaped American social security laws and the NLRA (the Wagner Act and related labor legislation). Again, the ideas emerged long before they were embodied in legislation. For instance, the early impetus for the Social Security Act of 1935 came from economists, political scientists, and others who were the original founders and leaders of the American Association for Labor Legislation (AALL), established in 1906 as a section of the International Association for Labor

Only when the political climate is ripe can

solid knowledge play out in policy.

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Social Security becomes law.

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Legislation. Among the most active scholars who were in or around this association and who shaped the public agenda of the 1930s were John R. Commons, institutional economist of Wisconsin, who advised Senator LaFollette on progressive social legislation before World War I, and his many students in both labor economics and industrial relations.

During the three decades before the New Deal, these scholarly advocates did research on collective bargaining, labor law, industrial regulation, income maintenance, work- er’s compensation, unemployment insurance, and health insurance. They crafted laws, some of which were debated in the legislatures of Wisconsin, Ohio, and New York; later they directly shaped New Deal social legislation. The persistent influence of these intellectuals on social legislation of the 1930s is symbolized by Wilbur Cohen’s appointment as Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare in the Johnson administration 30 years later. He got his PhD in 1934 at Wisconsin, where he was fully exposed to the lively academ- ic debates about labor and social legislation.

Morris Janowitz’s work in the early 1960s on the military and the related work of Charles Moskos in the late 1980s had considerable influence in the reorganization of the military. Moskos’s (and Janowitz’s) ideas of a national youth service corps have directly shaped political debates—with Senator Nunn and Governor, then President, Clinton and, later, pres- idential candidate John Kerry embracing the idea—again after a 30-year time lag from sociological analysis to nation- al policy debate.

Similarly, it is likely that when political and economic con- ditions are favorable for the adoption of national health insur- ance, many a Congressional staffer and White House domestic adviser will dig out old memos and position papers based not only on the work of medical economists but also on research in the sociology of medicine and on comparative studies of the organization and delivery of medical services.

What I infer from this tour through examples of the public policy impact of social science is that the work of political sci- entists and sociologists raises the consciousness of policy- makers in two ways: • It helps to specify what areas are most open to choice and

maneuver, and what forces cannot be reversed by public policy, such as the aging of the population, the decline of fertility, and the emergence of gender equality.

• It brings to view new policy options and a wider range of possibilities. Consider health insurance: Although mass and elite opinion have been in favor of national health insurance since at least the Truman administra- tion, never before have so many Americans understood the broad options that other modern democracies have adopted. Many folks in the congressional and executive branches have learned something about European and Canadian systems of finance and delivery—again knowledge rooted in long-term study by sociologists, political scientists, economists, and public policy ana- lysts. In other words, social science serves the function of rational enlightenment.

Wilbur Cohen becomes Secretary of HEW, 1968.

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Similarly, comparative studies show that while all modern democracies confront similar problems of structural unemploy- ment and family breakup, some of them have developed effec- tive policies to reduce the negative effects. Of all the successful policy clusters that we find abroad, active labor-market policy (training and retraining, job creation, placement and job coun- seling, mobility incentives) and family policy (childcare, parental leave, flexible retirement, family allowances) are the two that gen- erate the broadest supporting coalitions and are therefore likely candidates for the American public agenda. The first increases productivity; the second reduces family poverty. That national health insurance has been successful in achieving a reasonable balance between equity and universal coverage, cost control, innovation, and quality in rich democracies as diverse in culture and politics as Britain, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Norway, and Sweden casts doubt on the idea that “American individualism” makes national health insurance impossible for the United States.

The second conclusion about the long-run impact of social science is that, on occasion, the weight of social science evi- dence shapes a specific policy direction. This occurs when a political leader with a preference for a particular direction comes to power, is able to build coalitions to support it, and hires advis- ers already in touch with the relevant ideas through social and political networks that reach into university campuses.

Many students of American politics suggest that the United States is paralyzed in dealing effectively with its major problems. They often list their favorite policies and call it paral- ysis when these are not enacted. A more precise definition is needed. Clearly where (1) both the masses and most elites favor a set of policies, (2) other countries have enacted it suc- cessfully, and (3) there is no action in the United States for as long as 25–50 years, we can call it paralysis. Examples include national health insurance, effective gun control, family policy, serious investment in raising standards for grades K-12, and policies to increase party and candidate access to the broad- cast media in election campaigns.

It takes critical elections to create the opportunity for major reforms that reflect widely shared goals: FDR ranged between a two-to-one and a four-to-one margin in the U. S. Senate

when he signed New Deal legislation; Lyndon Johnson had a two-to-one margin when he launched Medicare. Today it may not take that much to overcome paralysis, but it will likely require substantial Democratic control of Congress and a pres- ident of the same party and/or a resurgence of Republican “moderates” in rebellion against radical right dominance. Until then, we can expect tiny steps and a reluctant, unsteady funding of popular social and labor-market reforms that might serve the public interest. Only when the political climate is ripe can solid knowledge play out in policy.

Harold L. Wilensky is professor emeritus of political science at the

University of California, Berkeley, and the author of 13 books.

recommended resources

Henry J. Aaron. Politics and the Professors (Brookings Institution,

1978). An economist insider describes the uses and misuses of social

research in Johnson’s War on Poverty.

Arnold J. Heidenheimer, Hugh Heclo, and Carolyn Teich Adams.

Comparative Public Policy, 3rd ed. (St. Martin’s Press, 1990). How and

why democracies differ in the specific policies they choose. Covers

America, Europe, and Japan.

Haynes Johnson and David Broder. The System: The American Way of

Politics at the Breaking Point (Little, Brown, 1996). A play-by-play

account of contending forces in the battle over the Clinton health care

proposal by two old-fashioned investigative reporters.

David Mechanic and David A. Rochefort. “Comparative Medical

Systems.” Annual Review of Sociology 22 (1996): 239-270. Shows

why cost shifting, risk selection, interference in the clinical

doctor/patient relation, rationing by income, and escalating costs are

rooted in the peculiar U.S. (non)system of health care delivery.

Harold L. Wilensky. Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy,

and Performance (University of California Press, 2002). Offers sys-

tematic analysis and evidence supporting the assertions in this article,

by specifying similarities and differences among 19 countries in their

taxing, spending, and public policies, and how these shape the well-

being of their people.

PROGRESS AMERICAN-STYLE:

Ford’s most fuel-efficient 2003 car can go, tops, 36 miles on a gallon of gas. Its 1912 Model T could go 35 miles.