(Political Analysis) Gerry Stoker, Jon Pierre, B. Guy Peters (Eds.) - The Relevance of Political Science-Palgrave Macmillan (2015)

Political
Analysis
Series Editors: B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre and Gerry Stoker
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Political
Analysis
Series Editors: B. Guy Peters, Jon Pierre and Gerry Stoker
Editorial Advisory Group: Frank R. Baumgartner, Donatella Della Porta, Scott
Fritzen, Robert E. Goodin, Colin Hay, Alan M. Jacobs, Eliza W.Y. Lee, Jonathon W.
Moses, Craig Parsons, Mitchell A. Seligson and Margit Travits
Published Rudra Sil and Peter J. Katzenstein
David Beetham Beyond Paradigms: Analytic
The Legitimation of Power (2nd Eclecticism in the Study of World
edition) Politics
Peter Burnham, Karin Gilland,Wyn Grant Gerry Stoker, B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre
and Zig Layton-Henry (eds)
Research Methods in Politics (2nd The Relevance of Political Science
edition) Martin Smith
Lina Eriksson Power, Politics and the State
Rational Choice Theory: Potential Cees van der Eijk and Mark Franklin
Limits Elections and Voters
Jean Grugel and Matthew Louis Bishop
Democratization: A Critical
Introduction (2nd edition)
Colin Hay Forthcoming
Political Analysis
Colin Hay, Michael Lister and David Marsh Keith Dowding
(eds) The Philosophy and Methods of
The State: Theories and Issues Political Science
Andrew Hindmoor Alan Finlayson and James Martin
Rational Choice Interpretive Political Analysis: A
Vivien Lowndes and Mark Roberts Critical Introduction
Why Institutions Matter Colin Hay
David Marsh and Gerry Stoker (eds) Globalization and the State
Theory and Methods in Political Johanna Kantola and Emanuela Lombardo
Science (3rd edition) Gender and Political Analysis
Ioannis Papadopoulos William Maloney and Jan van Deth
Democracy in Crisis? Politics, Political Participation and
Governance and Policy Democratic Politics
B. Guy Peters David Marsh
Strategies for Comparative Political Behaviour
Research in Political Science Karen Mossberger and Mark Cassell
Jon Pierre and B. Guy Peters The Policy Process: Ideas, Interests
Governance, Politics and the State and Institutions
Heather Savigny and Lee Marsden Dimiter Toshkov
Doing Political Science and Research Design in Political
International Relations Science
The Relevance of
Political Science
Edited by
Gerry Stoker
B. Guy Peters
and
Jon Pierre
Selection, editorial matter, Introduction and Conclusion © Gerry Stoker, B. Guy Peters
and Jon Pierre 2015
Individual chapters in order © Gerry Stoker; John Gerring; Colin Hay; Matthew Flinders;
Bo Rothstein; Graham Wilson; Sarah Giest; Michael Howlett and Ishani Mukherjee;
Thom Brookes; Craig Parsons; B. Guy Peters; Jon Pierre; Helen Margetts 2015
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Contents
List of tables and figures ix

Notes on the editors and contributors x
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction 1
Gerry Stoker, B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre
Tensions over relevance 2
Relevance: the standard lines of defence 5
Three lines of vulnerability 7
The developing argument of the book 11
PART I PERSPECTIVES ON RELEVANCE
1 Challenging three blockages to relevance and political

science: the obvious, the avoidable and the thorny 19
Gerry Stoker
Politics and evidence: a difficult relationship 20
Incentive structures in academia limit the pursuit of
relevance 23
Doubts about the intellectual case for relevance
undermine its practice 26
Designing a solution 30
Conclusions 34
2 The relevance of relevance 36

John Gerring
Causal and descriptive knowledge 37
The science of social science 39
Engagement and objectivity 43
Are there other possible foundations for social science? 45
A pragmatic inquiry 46
v
vi Contents
3 Relevant to whom? Relevant for what? The role and

public responsibility of the political analyst 50
Colin Hay
Introduction: relevance – divided by a common
language? 51
The private language of political science 53
Relevance and rationality: between perestroika and
glasnost? 55
Relevance: deserved or attained? 58
Diagnosing and resolving the crisis 61
4 The rediscovery of the political imagination 65

Matthew Flinders
The road(s) to irrelevance 67
The political imagination 71
A rallying cry to the university professors of politics 79
5 Guilty as charged? Human well-being and the unsung

relevance of political science 84
Bo Rothstein
Variations of relevance 84
Does democracy produce human well-being? 86
State capacity, quality of government and human
well-being 88
Poverty, state capacity and quality of government 91
Does democracy generate political legitimacy? 92
What does political science want to explain? 93
Political theory, state capacity and quality of
government 94
Empirical measures of the relevance problem in political
science 96
Theory: why state capacity and quality of government
generate human well-being 99
Quality of government, social trust and human
well-being 100
Conclusions: the seven sins depriving political science
of its potential for being relevant to human
well-being 102
Contents vii
6 Why did nobody warn us? Political science and the crisis 104
Graham Wilson
Ideas 106
Institutions 108
Interests 110
What did political science get right? 115
Conclusion 115
PART II RELEVANCE: THE CONTRIBUTION OF

SUB-DISCIPLINES AND DIVERSE APPROACHES
7 The relevance of the academic study of public policy 121

Sarah Giest, Michael Howlett and Ishani Mukherjee
Introduction: linking policy research to policy practice 121
The contribution of political science: reconciling
knowledge and power in public policy-making 122
Concerns for relevance and the two-communities
metaphor of policy knowledge utilization 124
Moving beyond the two-communities model:
knowledge brokerage 128
Conclusion: research relevance in policy studies – an
ongoing research agenda in political science 134
8 Why political theory matters 136

Thom Brooks
Introduction 136
A chequered past? 137
Political thought: creating an impact 139
The challenge of demonstrating an impact 143
Bright future 146
9 Constructivism and interpretive approaches: especially

relevant or especially not? 148
Craig Parsons
Of gadflies and journalists: problems with
postmodern and interpretivist claims to specific and
direct relevance 152
Constructivism as eye-opener for policy-makers and
especially students 161
Conclusion 168
viii Contents
10 Is comparative politics useful? If so, for what? 169

B. Guy Peters
Varieties of relevance 171
The contributions of comparative politics 172
Challenges to the relevance of comparative politics 180
The limits of relevance in comparative politics 186
Conclusion 188
11 Can political science address the puzzles of global

governance? 190
Jon Pierre
Towards global governance? 193
Enter the scholar: The political science contribution 194
Discussion 199
Conclusions 201
12 Maximizing the relevance of political science for public

policy in the era of big data 203
Helen Margetts
Citizens, social media and big data 204
Governments, digital technologies and the promise of
big data for policy-making 208
Big data challenges 210
Maintaining relevance 212
Public policy pay-offs 217
Conclusion 220
Gerry Stoker, B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre
The case for relevance 220
Why is relevance difficult to deliver? 222
A manifesto for relevance 225
Bibliography 227
Index 263
List of tables and
figures
Table
1.1 Varieties of policy input provided by academics 22
Figures
5.1 Healthy life years vs level of democracy 89

5.2 Healthy life years vs control of corruption 90
ix
Notes on the editors
and contributors
Thom Brooks is Professor of Law and Government at Durham

University’s Law School and an Associate Member of the
Philosophy Department. He was previously Reader in Political and
Legal Philosophy at the Politics Department of Newcastle
University with past visiting appointments at Oxford, St Andrews
and Uppsala. His recent books include Hegel’s Political Philosophy
(Edinbugh Univesity Press, second edition 2013) and Punishment
(Routledge, 2012). Brooks is the founding editor of the Journal of
Moral Philosophy and is Director of the Centre for Criminal Law
and Criminal Justice.
Matthew Flinders is Director of the Sir Bernard Crick Centre for the
Public Understanding of Politics at the University of Sheffield, UK.
He became the chair of the Political Studies Association of the UK
in 2014.
John Gerring is Professor of Political Science at Boston University,

where he teaches courses on methodology and comparative politics.
His books include Social Science Methodology: A Criterial
Framework (Cambridge University Press, 2001) and Case Study
Research: Principles and Practices (Cambridge University Press,
2007).
Sarah Giest is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the

University of Leiden. Her current research comparatively analyses
the interplay of academia, industry and government in the fields of
environmental and innovation policy. She also has a strong interest
in networks and network management in relation to government
performance.
x
Notes on the editors and contributors xi
Colin Hay is Professor of Political Sciences at Sciences Po, Paris,

and an Affiliate Professor of Political Analysis at the University of
Sheffield, UK, where he co-founded the Sheffield Political Economy
Research Institute. He is the author of a number of books including,
most recently, The Legacy of Thatcherism (Oxford University
Press, 2014, with Stephen Farrall), The Failure of Anglo-Liberal
Capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and The Political Economy
of European Welfare Capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012, with
Daniel Wincott). He is the lead editor of New Political Economy
and a founding co-editor of Comparative European Politics and
British Politics.
Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Chair in the Department of

Political Science at Simon Fraser University and Yong Pung How
Chair Professor in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the
National University of Singapore. He specializes in public policy
analysis, political economy, and resource and environmental policy.
Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet, a professo-

rial fellow at Mansfield College and Director of the Oxford Internet
Institute, all at the University of Oxford, before which she was
Professor of Political Science and Director of the School of Public
Policy, UCL. She is a political scientist specializing in the relation-
ship between digital technologies, government and politics. Books
and reports include: a series of studies on government on the
Internet for the UK National Audit Office (1999, 2002, 2007,
2009, co-authored with Patrick Dunleavy); Digital Era
Governance (Oxford University Press, 2008, with Patrick
Dunleavy); The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2007, with Christopher Hood); Paradoxes of
Modernization (Oxford University Press, 2010, with Christopher
Hood and Perri 6); and Chaotic Pluralism: Social Media and
Collective Action (Princeton University Press forthcoming, with
Peter John, Scott Hale and Taha Yasseri).
Ishani Mukherjee is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew

(LKY) School of Public Policy at the National University of
Singapore. She received her PhD in Public Policy in 2013, which
was awarded the World Future Foundation PhD Prize in
Environmental and Sustainability Research in 2014. Her research
interests combine policy design and policy formulation, with a
xii Notes on the editors and contributors
thematic focus on environmental sustainability, renewable energy

and energy efficiency, particularly in South East Asia. She has
worked previously at the World Bank’s Energy Practice in
Washington, DC, and obtained her BSc degree (2004) and MSc
degree (2006) in Natural Resources and Environmental Economics
from Cornell University.
Craig Parsons is Professor of Political Science at the University of

Oregon, USA. His award-winning books include: A Certain Idea of
Europe (Cornell University Press, 2003) and How to Map
Arguments in Political Science (Oxford University Press, 2007).
B. Guy Peters is Professor in the Political Science Department at the

University of Pittsburgh, USA. He is a prolific author and his most
recent works include Strategies for Comparative Research in
Political Science (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Jon Pierre is Professor of Political Science at the University of

Gothenburg and Professor of Public Governance at the Melbourne
School of Government, University of Melbourne. His research
interest is focused on governance, public administration, public
management and urban politics. His latest books include The
Oxford Handbook on Swedish Politics (Oxford University Press,
2015, editor), Governing the Embedded State (Oxford University
Press, 2015, with Bengt Jacobsson and Göran Sundström),
Globalization and Governance (Edward Elgar, 2013), Interactive
Governance (Oxford University Press, 2012, with Jacob Torfing,
Guy Peters and Eva Sörensen) and The Politics of Urban
Governance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Bo Rothstein holds the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at

the University of Gothenburg where he is also head of the Quality
of Government Institute. He was recently awarded an Advanced
Research Grant by the European Research Council for a five-year
project entitled ‘The Performance of Democracies’.
Gerry Stoker is Professor of Politics and Governance at the

University of Southampton, UK, and also Centenary Research
Professor at the University of Canberra, Australia. In 2001 he was
designated Economic and Social Research Council (UK) Hero of
Dissemination; in 2004 he received a ‘Making a Difference’ Award
Notes on the editors and contributors xiii
from the UK Political Studies Association for the impact of his work
on local governance; and in 2006 he was given the ‘Best Politics
Book of the Year’ award for Why Politics Matters by the UK
Political Studies Association.
Graham Wilson joined Boston University in 2007 having taught

previously at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the
University of Essex in the UK. In 2012 he published his book, The
Consequences of the Global Financial Crisis: The Rhetoric of
Reform and Regulation (Oxford University Press, with Wyn
Grant). In 2012 he was also awarded the Ulrich Kloti Award for
Lifetime Achievement from the ‘Structure and Organization of
Government Research Committee’ of the International Political
Science Association.
Acknowledgements
This book has taken longer to produce than we originally hoped

and that reflects the busy lives that all of our contributors lead. We
thank them all for their efforts. In the final stages of producing the
book Michael Elliott, having just successfully completed his PhD at
the University of Southampton, did sterling work in improving the
typescript and chasing down references. Thanks again to Keith
Povey Editorial Services for excellent work in preparing the final
text. This book is the last of our series that will be produced directly
under the control of the wonderful Steven Kennedy. The book has
been improved greatly, as ever, by Steven’s insights and finally deliv-
ered not least because of his unwillingness to let it drift on and on.
GERRY STOKER
B. GUY PETERS
JON PIERRE
xiv
Introduction
GERRY STOKER, B. GUY PETERS AND JON PIERRE
As editors we should start this book by stating that we think that

political science produces much work that is relevant but that it
could do more to enhance the relevance of its work to policy-
makers, think tanks, non-governmental organizations and citizens.
In 2010 we published a joint chapter on the issue (Peters et al.
2010), which developed that argument, and followed that by
organizing a session at the American Political Science Association
meetings that year on the topic of relevance. Here is a report on that
session from a journalist (Jaschik 2010) who was present:
Gerry Stoker shared ‘a wicked thought’ he had when planning a

session held on Saturday at the annual meeting of the American
Political Science Association. What if he called as many senior
figures in political science as he could reach and asked them ‘if
they had ever said anything relevant in their entire careers’?
Stoker, professor of politics and governance at Britain’s
University of Southampton, didn’t embarrass his discipline’s
luminaries by asking them one by one for any examples of rele-
vance. (The laughter in the room, however, suggested that some
might not have fared well if asked.)
The laughter in the room, we would like to think, also reflected the
wit with which Stoker presented the issue; but there is undoubtedly
a sense of unease when it comes to the issue of relevance both
among American and other political scientists worldwide.
This book aims to understand, analyse and address that sense
of unease about relevance. We need to move beyond a debate
about whether political science is relevant since the subject matter
of the discipline manifestly makes it germane to the challenges
facing our societies. The challenge for this book is to show the
variety of ways that political science is relevant and how it could
be more relevant. The issue that needs to be addressed is not so
1
2 Gerry Stoker, B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre
much whether practising politicians or the media judge political

science to be relevant (see for example the exchange between
Kristof 2014 and Fearon 2014). Rather, for this book, the key
agenda is how best to understand the obstacles that need to be
resolved in achieving relevance and the potential for relevance that
could thereby be realized. There might be good reasons why there
are blockages on the road to relevance for political science (Stoker
2010a). We will continue this introduction by noting the variety of
tensions raised by the issue of relevance. We then go on to examine
three of the standard narratives of defence used by those who want
to claim relevance for political science and three points of vulnera-
bility identified by those who call for a greater gearing up towards
relevance by the profession. We then move on to look at the contri-
butions from our authors in the light of these reflections. The stan-
dard lines of attack and defence over the issue hardly close the
debate. There are many subtleties, nuances and frankly new
insights that we think that our contributors provide in this book. So
our introduction closes with a review of the chapters in the book
and highlights the developments in the debate which they offer.
Tensions over relevance
As political scientists we can offer one immediate explanation for

the discomfort felt by political scientists about the topic of rele-
vance which is a familiar feature of other areas of political tension:
debate over relevance threatens interests and reflects conflicting
visions of how actors should behave. The political science profes-
sion employs thousands of people around the world and its work is
engaged with, and read by, millions either directly or indirectly. The
question of its relevance goes to the heart of the interests of the
profession and brings to the fore a different set of divisions from
those that already plague a fragmented profession with competing
sub-disciplinary foci and methodological preferences (Almond
1990; Sigelman 2006). Relevance brings into play three types of
conflict. The first and most familiar to political scientists is a
conflict over access to resources.
Judgements about relevance from policy-makers and others can
lead to threats to research funding or the marginalization of politi-
cal science in teaching programmes. The former threat moved from
the abstract to the concrete for American political science when its
Introduction 3
access to National Sciences Foundation research funding was

threatened by moves in the US congress in 2012/13; and the danger
to the sustainability of political science teaching is experienced in
different ways in different countries in the light of concerns about
its virtues as a discipline and its value in terms of employability for
students. If political science is irrelevant why should it be part of the
curriculum in our colleges and universities? In short, queasiness
about relevance reflects awareness within the profession that
getting on the wrong side of the argument might lead to a squeeze
on resources for the discipline.
But the debate over relevance also has within it conflicts over
values. Political science is a complex activity and within that world
as Isaac (2013: 207) points out some ‘will advocate for relevance,
and will be relevant, in a range of different and sometimes even
competing ways. And they will do so in a disciplinary environment
in which many of their colleagues will resist “relevance” in the
name of “scientific objectivity” or “basic knowledge” or even
“truth seeking” … Each of us has our own answers to these ques-
tions’. Relevance can be advocated and opposed on different
grounds and it would be naïve to imagine there is ever going to be
anything other than a plurality of views on the topic. It appears that
relevance reflects for some a mid-life crisis. A repeated pattern is
one where academics spend their early careers publishing and
researching and when their career reaches some level of maturity
move on to reflect on issues of relevance. For example, Harold
Lasswell (1956; see also Lerner and Lasswell 1951) used his presi-
dential address to the American Political Science Association to
advocate that political scientists turn their knowledge much more
explicitly and effectively to address issues of practice, although his
advocacy of ‘a policy science of democracy’ had a largely sceptical
reception (Farr et al. 2006). Robert Putnam (2003) used his presi-
dential address to call to attention the public role of political
science, drawing on his own substantive contribution around issues
of social capital and political disengagement. In the case of interna-
tional relations, Alexander George (1993) stands out as one among
a number of advocates for a stronger connection between theory
and practice (Walt 2005). Joseph Nye (2009: 252) uses his contri-
bution to 100 perspectives on The Future of Political Science to
suggest that political scientists ‘should devote more attention to
unanswered questions about how our work relates to the policy
world we are in’ (see also in the same volume Prewitt 2009).
Notwithstanding these pleas from leaders in the profession it is

clear that large numbers are not moved by the call to arms for rele-
vance.
The third aspect of the conflict over relevance goes deeper still
and adds to the sense of unease around the issue: relevance is ulti-
mately about the identity of the profession (Stoker 2010a; 2012).
As political scientists know, divisions and conflicts over identity
create challenging problems for politics to resolve, as they are not
so amenable to a ‘more or less’ compromise between competing
sides that might be available in a conflict over resources.
Disagreements, say over which research to fund, can often be
resolved by agreeing that different interests can access at least some
of the funds, but when it comes to conflicts over identity it is less easy
to get different actors to agree to a compromise. Value- or identity-
based conflicts may create divisions that are unbridgeable between
students of politics that claim a humanist perspective and those
who emphasize a scientific perspective. Bernard Crick (1959), for
example, was very concerned that the technical and methodological
fixation dominant in American political science would encourage a
way of studying politics that would see political science become
disengaged from the practice of politics. The top American journals
all appear to prize methodological advance above substantive
contribution to the understanding of politics. One of the top-selling
books about methods in political science shows how in many
branches of the science this orientation has become an all-pervad-
ing mantra, exactly as Crick feared. Kellstedt and Whitten (2009:
15–18) offer general rules of the road to ‘scientific knowledge about
politics’ and conclude: ‘whereas politicians make or break their
political careers with normative statements, political scientists need
to avoid them at all cost’. Academics should argue so ‘that it is
impossible for the reader to tell what your values are or what your
normative preferences about the world are’. When another group
makes a claim that political science should adopt a humanist tradi-
tion and has a moral responsibility to put its work at the service of
citizens it is difficult for those that argue for a strict separation of
the personal and political science to find common ground with
them. Relevance creates tension because it can lead into discussions
which are about the soul of the profession.
So far we have offered little insight into the substance of the debate
about relevance, preferring to establish instead that there are good
reasons, grounded in the nature of the divisions and conflicts at stake,
Introduction 5
for the political science profession to be concerned with the topic.

Relevance is a sensitive topic for political science: answering its chal-
lenges therefore matters. In the next section we begin to set out some
of the standard lines of defence used within the profession.
Relevance: the standard lines of defence
The first line of defence in the debate about relevance can be

summed up as: all knowledge is relevant and that since political
science produces knowledge that is uniquely robust it is relevant.
This argument can be developed further by recognizing that what
constitutes relevance is not fixed. It can vary according to time,
circumstance and indeed the standpoint of the observer. Something
that might appear irrelevant can, after a political crisis or turn of
events, have a pressing relevance. Think of colleagues toiling away
on some obscure part of a constitution or a country that is not a
normal focus of attention and then something happens and all of a
sudden that work is relevant. If relevance is the production of rigor-
ous and unique knowledge it seems difficult to see how any
academic could object to the idea of relevance or deny that they
might be relevant. Peter John (2013) takes this line of argument
further still by suggesting that academics simply need to be more
confident about their claims of relevance:
Academics should stand their ground and have more confidence

in their intellectual project. They can claim that the systemic
study of politics adds value in a way that the methods of other
knowledge professionals cannot. To be craven to the practitioner
world makes academics too similar to other knowledge
providers so they cannot claim comparative advantage. In this
way, academics are bound to be less influential as politicians and
policy makers can get that kind of expertise more easily else-
where. If academics stick to the production of knowledge, which
may involve the use of technical terms and complex models and
methods, in the end the policy makers will come to them, rather
than the other way round. (Ibid.: 172)
His point finds many echoes in the commentary of others (Isaac

2013; Lupia 2000). Political science delivers robust knowledge
which is communicated in a way that those who take the time to
consume it can do so. Indeed John (2013: 172–3) claims that

‘academics are good at disseminating their work across networks,
establishing their reputations and ensuring the acceptance of
complex ideas and findings’ and that the new world of social media
makes this ‘lateral form of influence even easier’.
The second line of defence is that there is a lot of political science
that has shown a capacity for engagement and has made an impact.
That argument might be nuanced further by claiming political
science has traded its early, slightly more extensive, interaction with
the world of policy for a stronger focus on rigour and method which
may mean the quantity of directly relevant work has gone down but
its quality has gone up. In the early decades of the journal, the
American Political Science Review articles dealing with issues of
policy advocacy or criticism were by no means dominant but were
not uncommon, reflecting perhaps an easier period of exchange
between academics and elites. But by the early 1960s, ‘prescription
had almost entirely vanished from the Review’ (Sigelman 2006); a
reflection not only of change in the profession but also in the
complexities of accessing policy-makers. In the case of international
relations the idea of relevance was at the very heart of its foundation
(Brown and Ainley 2005) – to grapple with issues of sustaining peace
between nations – but a substantial and growing gap has been iden-
tified as characterizing the relationship between theory and practice
for several decades (Walt 2005). Again complex forces are at play
that could explain this increased specialization and separation. The
idea of relevance may have drifted down the profession’s agenda but
it has not lacked powerful exemplars. In Stoker’s chapter in this
volume, the example of the work of democratic designers and gover-
nance scholars such as the Nobel prize winning Elinor Ostrom is
lauded. Other chapters are replete with examples of political science
that has had an impact. It may be that for some scholars, more than
others, the ‘impact imperative’ exerts a stronger pull. For example,
Campbell and Childs (2013: 185) rightly claim that ‘feminist politi-
cal science, and gender and politics scholars, offer useful and long-
standing examples of best practice when it comes to dissemination,
engagement and impact’. Some parts of the discipline or related
fields may lead the way but political science has enough of its output
on the stocks to justify the claim that it is relevant.
The third line of defence reads more like a form of attack in the
hands of some of its advocates. The argument is that policy-makers
and politicians ignore evidence they do not find agreeable and to
Introduction 7
cover their tracks falsely accuse political science of lacking rele-

vance. Here is a particularly spirited riposte, to the claim that polit-
ical science fails the relevance test, from Ronald Rogowski (2013:
216):
Contemporary political science suffers from too much policy

relevance, not too little. Politicians simply do not like the policies
that scholarly research supports, prefer policies (often put
forward by charlatans) that better suit their interests, and seek to
suppress or ignore evidence-based research that contradicts their
own, or their ‘base’ voters’, ideologies. When these same politi-
cians assert piously that political science offers no policy-rele-
vant research, what they really mean is that it offers no research
that supports their own biases.
Rogowski goes on to identify diverse areas of policy over immigra-

tion, electoral rules and issues of redistribution where well founded
insights are simply not taken up. As several authors in this volume
note, the tendency for policy to seek supportive evidence rather than
for evidence to drive policy appears to be a commonplace feature of
contemporary democracies. As Wildavsky (1979) argued decades
ago, speaking truth to power is a far from easy task.
None of these lines of defence deny directly the relevance of
trying to achieve relevance. They argue rather that relevance of
evidence is difficult to judge straightforwardly. That rigour in the
production of knowledge is what really matters. Political scientists
are using in increasing numbers the options provided by social
media and other outlets to share their findings. The blockages are
not with them but rather with powerful policy-makers who look for
evidence to match their preferences rather than use evidence to
drive their choices.
Three lines of vulnerability
So how is the defensive fortress assembled by political science to be

challenged? What are the vulnerabilities identified by those who
argue that more attention needs to be paid to relevance? The weak-
ness they identify in the case for the relevance of political science
mixes concerns about its agenda, with worries about its methods, to
concern with the manner of its outputs.
The first argument is captured by a simple and telling question:

is it the case that political science can show how its agenda matches
the major concerns of the citizens of the world? There are hidden
factors at work that encourage political science to explore issues of
importance to their world view but which would not be considered
matters of great salience by those outside of the political science
community. Albert Hirschman (1981) comments that one of the
challenges for social science is that as people live in society they not
unreasonably think that they know a thing or two about it. So there
is a particular premium on evidence and argument generated from
within the social sciences that confounds common-sense assump-
tions. As Hirschman (1981: 298) puts it: ‘important social science
discoveries are therefore typically counterintuitive, shocking and
concerned with unintended and unexpected consequences of
human action’. Here we might have an initial clue as to why politi-
cal science has a tendency to head off in a direction away from
everyday – perhaps the most obviously relevant – aspects of politi-
cal activity; or, when investigating that activity, concentrates a lot of
effort on discovering something a little bit different or unique.
Political science, in order to differentiate its findings from the
common sense of the age, is constantly searching for surprises, idio-
syncrasies or a finding that is counterintuitive. There is nothing
inherently inappropriate about these lines of enquiry, but it means
that as a result political scientists can stumble into being irrelevant.
Specialized research topics meet only indifference from the inner
circle of politicos – the politicians and the journalists that report on
them – for much of the time. This inner circle may recognize the
need for occasional engagement with, for example, experts on the
details of elections and complicated constitutional issues, but
beyond that there is no need for regular engagement. When it comes
to most aspects of politics there is a standing assumption on the part
of these politicos that there is little need for the expertise of politi-
cal science. In the case of politics those that are the foremost among
its practitioners, the elected representatives and the political jour-
nalists, often give the impression that they do not need political
science, at least when it comes to understanding how politics works
or what we can reasonably expect from politics. The tendency to
develop specialized knowledge has created a sense that political
science is only on the margins of the daily agenda of politics.
It is also possible to identify a more radical version of this argu-
ment: the myopia of political science has meant that its work fails to
Introduction 9
grapple with the big human and therefore political issues. There
have been recurring moments in the history of political science
when political scientists have stepped forward to say that big things
are happening in the world – and that political science needs to be
grappling with them. An excellent and powerful example of this
message is provided by David Easton in his Presidential Address to
the American Political Studies Associations in 1969. A little scene
setting would seem appropriate.
Easton was at that time a leading advocate for the scientific
behavioural revolution in political science but appears in his speech
to be strongly affected by the social and political turmoil of the
times: with its new environmental and feminist movements, its anti-
war perspective, its civil rights concerns and so on. His speech is
about trying to reconcile two forces: making political science more
rigorous, and making it more relevant. Faced with a world
confronting nuclear war, environmental disaster and huge levels of
social injustice Easton (1969: 1057) argues: ‘there can be little doubt
that political science as an enterprise has failed to anticipate the
crises that are upon us’. Its agenda needs to be set to a much greater
degree by the pressing problems in the world around it. Easton goes
on to outline a ‘credo of relevance’ with seven key points:
• Substance must dominate over technique. What is studied

matters more than how it is studied.
• To claim simply to study empirically politics as it exists lends
itself to a conservative outlook as it tends to focus on what is
rather than what might be.
• Too much sophistication in method obscures the brutal reality of
much of politics and prevents political science from addressing
pressing human needs.
• Science cannot be neutral: what you choose to study is driven by
value judgements, and how that work is used should be steered
by values.
• The role of intellectuals is to promote the ‘humane values of civi-
lization’.
• To know is to bear the responsibility to act; scientists have a
special obligation to put their knowledge to work.
• This commitment to engage should be institutionalized and
expressed through associations of scholars and universities. They
cannot stand aside: politicization of the professions is
inescapable as well as desirable.
There can be little doubt about the radicalism of the message that
Easton was trying to convey. Equally it is clear that political scien-
tists have largely ignored it. The article in the American Political
Science Review that captures Easton’s presidential address has a
mere 343 (in June 2014) citations compared with 5,453 given to a
book published by him that has become a political science classic: A
Systems Analysis of Political Life (Easton 1979). The revolution in
orientation that Easton was arguing for failed to materialize. So the
challenge remains: is political science grappling with the issues that
matter?
A second line of vulnerability builds on the first, but its focus is
more about the doing of political science rather than its agenda. Its
driving question is: does political science have a sufficient breadth
of method and approaches to enable it to be relevant? The strongest
carrier of this message in recent decades has been the group of
scholars that challenged both the approach of the American
Political Science Association and its journals and which became
known as the ‘Perestroika Movement’ (Monroe 2005; Schram and
Caterino 2006).
The movement is mixed in its focus and depth of analysis, but
one of the essential points to emerge is its critique of mainstream
political science for having too great a reliance on highly sophisti-
cated quantitative methods, rational choice modelling and game
theory that neglects those qualitative traditions of study that might
have a more direct engagement with those involved in politics as
policy-makers and citizens. While part of the objection to this
perceived state of affairs is the way it closed down job opportunities
and careers for those who were not prepared to follow a few
narrow prescribed methodological paths, a strong secondary theme
in the challenge from the Perestroika Movement was that because
of its obsession with highly technical methods political science has
become irrelevant to the politics of the real world. A political
science that is entirely dominated by esoteric presentations and
technical disputes makes its work inaccessible and therefore unus-
able by ordinary citizens. A wider range of methods with a greater
capacity to engage in critical reflection about what should be done
as well as what is would help to lead political science down the path
towards relevance. Another issue might be that the things that are
easiest to measure (e.g. votes) may actually be the least relevant for
solving problems. In other words, political science can tend to go
where the data is, not where the major issues actually are.
Introduction 11
While the second line of challenge over relevance reflects a more

internal dispute within political science, the emerging prominence
of the third line of vulnerability again reflects the impact of external
forces. The third question posed by the doubters of political
science’s claims to relevance is this: you may do good political
science but can you communicate it? The resources and commit-
ment of the profession comparatively speaking go into the produc-
tion of the research and not its delivery. In the world where many
actors and institutions face greater calls for accountability, a failure
to share and show the value of work funded by taxpayers puts polit-
ical science in a vulnerable position. The focus for this challenge is
on communication. Matt Flinders, both in this volume and else-
where, has led this line of attack: ‘it is not therefore that political
science has become irrelevant, but that it has generally failed to
promote and communicate the social value and benefit of the disci-
pline in an accessible manner’ (Flinders 2013a: 164). Resolving the
situation requires more ‘political imagination’ and for political
scientists to become better at the arts of translation – that will
require the acquisition of some new skills as well as a rebalancing of
where the effort is put within the profession. What Flinders refers to
as triple writing – a scholarly first piece, followed by a short more
popular summary, then a more journalistic short blog or media
story to bring the study to life and gain attention for it – is the order
of what is required to a much greater degree for the future.
The developing argument of the book
The book is constructed in two parts. In the first part the chapters
are largely concerned with some of the general issues raised by rele-
vance. In the second part of the book the authors turn their atten-
tion to the contribution of sub-disciplines or particular approaches
to meeting the challenge of relevance.
Stoker launches the first part of the book by developing some of
the themes touched on in this introductory chapter by exploring
three blockages to relevance. The first blockage has already been
hinted at and considers how power rather than evidence is the
determining factor in politically driven policy-making. The second
focuses on the lack of incentives and professional encouragement
for political scientists to make their work obviously and directly
relevant. Both the first two blockages can be met to some degree by
changes in the practice of political science by accepting that,

although limited, an important role for evidence remains and that it
is up to political science to make its work accessible. The third
blockage raises the trickiest issues in that it is about whether politi-
cal scientists can offer evidence-based solutions and advice rather
than explanations of ‘what is’. However, even this blockage could
be addressed if as Stoker argues political science developed a
stronger design arm to its way of working.
The debate about the relevance of political science is, of course,
part of a broader consideration of the purpose and value of social
science, and in Gerring’s chapter we are offered a review of the
alternative claims that might limit the search for relevance among
social science. But in the end we get a strong statement made for the
utility of social science to be a key objective and an argument that
academic curiosity is a good but not sufficient justification for
social science. The two might indeed coexist, of course, with curios-
ity driving scholars to a consideration of issues that have relevance,
even if the answers are not straightforward or easily agreed upon.
As Hay argues in his chapter, relevance, like beauty, is to some
degree in the eye of the beholder. He argues that much of what is
done in research in political science is indeed relevant – even work
that does not appear to address immediately or obviously contem-
porary issues. So the challenge is how to explain better the rele-
vance of the topics and methods used by political science. The
responsibility of political scientists is less to deliver different work
with a more palpable application, but rather to take the trouble and
effort to a much greater degree to explain the relevance of their
work and their choice of topic. Flinders takes on this theme but is
perhaps more critical of the current output of political science. He
argues for a more developed political imagination in the choice of
research topics and writing to ensure that it does bridge the
academic–practitioner divide and is accessible to a wider audience
than a few academic colleagues. He makes a number of practical
suggestions about how greater accessibility in research might be
delivered.
A more critical note is sounded in the chapters by Rothstein and
Wilson. They take the argument about the political imagination
and apply it in two areas: welfare and the economy. Rothstein
argues that political science could make itself more relevant if it
focused less on providing advice to policy-makers or offering
‘public intellectual’ guidance to citizens and instead conducted high
Introduction 13
quality comparative research about the core outputs of the political

system. What non-academics really need to know from academic
science is: does it have an answer to what makes for good outputs
from political systems that improve human well-being? It would
seem that being better able to answer that question would end
doubts about the relevance issue once and for all. Bad government
and corruption are the cause of misery and suffering for many
populations around the world and political science needs to focus
more of its fire power on those issues and the determinants of good
governance.
Wilson is critical of the failure of political science to grapple with
another important output from politics: the stability and viability
of the economic and financial systems. More generally he argues
that too little political science was willing to grapple with issues of
inequality and too often that political science came up with argu-
ments that suggested the extraordinary power of some organized
interests – especially those around finance – was not a problem
because of the matching power of other forces. Political science has
not taken so much of the blame as the discipline of economics for
failing to foresee the crisis of 2007/08 onwards, as experienced by
many Western societies, but, argues Wilson, it should and could
have done better. Political science, perhaps, in that sense needs to
give itself a broader political economy focus in order to improve its
chances of being relevant.
Part II of the book explores the issue of relevance through the
eyes of various sub-disciplines or approaches within political
science. It starts with a chapter by Giest, Howlett and Mukherjee
on the policy sciences which by reason of its subject matter would
seem to have relevance as a focus. Yet even in the world of policy
studies relevance is only achieved through constant vigilance and
care taken, both over the way that research is selected and
conducted, and over the commitment given to not only transferring
knowledge but also to understanding its complex dynamics. Policy
research is relevant in two ways, this chapter argues; first by
directly engaging with policy-makers through the provision of
evidence, and second by working through knowledge brokers,
policy advisers and designers who make up the ‘third community’
of a policy system.
The next chapter reviews work that at first glance would appear
to be a much less likely source of relevant political science: namely
political theory. But Brooks puts up a spirited defence of the
achievements of political theory in terms of relevance. The chapter

provides several examples of political theorists engaging and
making a difference and Brooks argues that, far from being a threat,
the relevance or impact agenda is one of great promise for political
theorists. If they embrace the challenge, as some have before them,
then political theorists have nothing to lose and everything to gain
if relevance becomes a more important criterion in driving the
dynamic of political studies.
Parsons explores the prospects for another approach to politi-
cal studies – the constructivist paradigm – that would seem not to
be the most obvious carrier of the flag of relevance. Again the
message of the chapter is more positive than negative. The chap-
ter directly takes on some of the claims of the Perestroika
Movement and the broader group of postmodern constructivists
and those that make the case for a more relevant form of political
studies such as Flyvbjerg (2001). The gist of Parsons’s challenge is
that the arguments put forward may provide a path to relevance
but at the cost of producing work that has a distinctive social
science offering. If political science is politics what does it offer
that is different from journalism or politicians’ speeches in terms
of understanding? It is only by showing how constructivism offers
insights and understanding of issues that other approaches fail to
illuminate so effectively that a better answer to the relevance
question can be addressed. Engagements of that sort might at
times be fed directly to policy-makers, but the more likely route is
through teaching and training future policy-makers, knowledge
brokers, analysts and journalists to think critically using the tools
of constructivism.
In his chapter on comparative politics, Peters does point to some
of the accomplishments of this sub-discipline in addressing major
political issues such as democratization and conflict management.
That said, however, he also points to the many challenges facing
comparative politics and the declining relevance of much of the
research. Pierre in his chapter identifies a limiting case for achieving
relevance and shows that in the world of global governance our
underdeveloped understanding and the modest nature of practice
on the ground makes a claim for relevance difficult to sustain.
However, as Pierre argues, too much literature appears happy to
sustain itself through internal theoretical debates rather than to
grapple with the task of understanding the complexity of global
politics.
Introduction 15
Finally, Margetts makes a case for political science to achieve

relevance by exploiting the possibilities created by big data. While
recognizing the challenges that surround the approach, Margetts
argues that, by moving on from an initial rather slow embrace,
political science could, if big data analysis was adopted to a greater
degree, open up exciting areas for itself and styles of analysis that
are more immediate, more comprehensive and more rigorous.
However, a core prerequisite for undertaking this big data journey
to greater relevance would be a willingness to embrace working in
larger and cross-disciplinary teams.
The book then aims to provide both a more nuanced set of argu-
ments around the issue of the relevance of political science and a
tentative assessment of its achievements in some of its sub-disci-
plines. There may be areas, such as the study of electoral systems or
campaigning techniques, which are not covered in detail in this
book, where relevance claims could be more easily established.
Equally we have not touched in depth on arenas of political science
where relevance is not really a viable objective, such as histories of
the discipline or studies that provide a backcloth theory or method-
ology for the advancement of the discipline. Our aim is to move the
debate forward by giving the reader more food for thought.
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PART I
PERSPECTIVES ON
RELEVANCE
Chapter 1
Challenging three blockages

to relevance and political
science: the obvious, the
avoidable and the thorny
GERRY STOKER
This chapter explores three blockages to relevance. The first argu-

ment rests on the observation that the use of research in the world of
policy is prone to the play of politics and power and that the windows
of opportunity for political science to demonstrate its relevance may
therefore be relatively narrow and infrequent. This first blockage will
come as no surprise to anyone in political science or in politics. The
play of power in decision-making is a central feature in our mutual
understanding of politics. The second explanation focuses more on
the lack of incentives and organizational blockages experienced by
those that prioritize relevance within the profession of political
science, which in turn limit the numbers of those academics that seek
to make their work obviously and directly relevant. This blockage is
a product of the intended and unintended consequences of institu-
tional and individual decisions made over the last few decades and
which could be addressed by a different set of choices being made. It
is, therefore, an avoidable blockage. The third blockage rests on
thorny issues raised by the advocacy of relevance. These include the
difficult issues of untangling matters of fact and value and more
generally whether political scientists can offer evidence-based solu-
tions and advice rather than explanations of ‘what is’. The first obsta-
cle is something that has to be worked around, the second has to be
confronted and the third puzzled about and hopefully addressed by
new cadres of work that build on some pioneering examples.
19
20 Gerry Stoker
Politics and evidence: a difficult relationship
The essence of politics is to decide in the context of conflict and

disagreement what, if anything, should be done, and, given time
constraints and the limited attention that policy-makers can devote
to one among a multitude of potential issues, political scientists like
other players have to find their ‘window of opportunity’ (Kingdon
1995). Policy decisions as Weiss (1993: 94–5) argues emerge ‘from
the rough and tumble of political support, opposition, and bargain-
ing’. When political scientists go down the road of relevance they
enter the world of politics and its play of power. For scientists from
other disciplines the brutishness and otherness of this world of poli-
tics can come as a shock (Stoker 2006: 63–5), but it would be
surprising if many political scientists overlooked the most obvious
characteristics of that world.
The use of research is not directly in the control of researchers
and it is naïve not to recognize that research can become a weapon
in an ongoing political battle. Studies can be misused by political
interests, the media can over-simplify complex research and the
political leaning of the researchers may inappropriately colour the
findings of the research. There may be dark forces at work. The
relationship of social science and policy-making is governed by an
ironic dynamic, argues Boswell (2009). Governments can hand
over lots of money for evidence-collecting and analysis and largely
ignore it. Evidence is hardly ever used to improve policy but rather
just to lend authority to the preferences of policy-makers or even
more generally to demonstrate the rationality of decision-making
processes. The decisions of government are sound if they also pay
for lots of evidence collecting even if they rarely use the evidence.
Policy-makers move to the dynamics of power, which means that
often evidence is unwanted or only used if supportive, in some way,
of the preferred option.
Beyond these issues of politics and power the policy process has
a temporal dynamic that means that research findings can find it
difficult to find the right opening. As political scientists we would
view as naïve an understanding of the policy process driven by the
rational decision-making model. The policy process does not follow
the linear process of conceptualizing the problem, designing inter-
vention, providing solutions and evaluating that intervention. As all
the established policy-making models tells us, from the multiple
streams framework to punctuated-equilibrium models (for a review
Challenging blockages to relevance 21
see Sabatier 2007), the policy process involves a complex set of

elements that interact over time. Problems, solutions and political
opportunities may all become prominent at different times. It is
clear that researchers hardly ever find themselves in the position of
problem solving where there is an agreed view of a challenge and a
consensus that something should be done about it. Only rarely will
the conditions emerge for a pure problem-solving model: a clear
and shared definition of the problem, timely and appropriate
research answers, political actors willing to listen and the absence
of strong opposing forces. Much more often political scientists like
many other policy players, struggle to find the appropriate window
of opportunity in which to make their impact. Policy-making and
academic work, moreover, operate with different understandings of
time constraints. As Walt (2005: 35) argues: ‘scholars want to make
their work as accurate as possible, even if this takes longer, but
policy makers rarely have the luxury of waiting’. Political science
research operates with an elastic view of time, but this may as a
result find itself losing the battle for relevance by failing to produce
results in a timely way if the right ‘window of opportunity’ is open.
As Carol Weiss (1979: 431) argued over three decades ago, ‘there
has been much glib rhetoric about the vast benefits that social
science can offer if only policy makers paid attention. Perhaps it is
time for social scientists to pay attention to the imperatives of
policy-making systems and to consider soberly what they can do,
not necessarily to increase the use of research, but to improve the
contribution that research makes to the wisdom of social policy’. At
the same time Wildavsky (1979) captured the challenge of speaking
truth to power as an art or craft that required not only rigorous
evidence-based knowledge but also an understanding of the
complexities and realities of the policy process and the social
dynamics of working with politicians and policy-makers.
The policy process is not generally a context where a linear
connection can be made between the identification of a problem
and the production of a solution. A standard but naïve understand-
ing of the way policy impact works for academic research assumes
a starting point of blue skies research, followed by applied develop-
ment, after which comes the identification of a problem that is ulti-
mately met by the design of a solution informed by the research. As
Pollitt (2006: 259) comments: ‘in the real worlds of public policy
and management such simple transactions do occasionally occur,
but they are unrepresentative of academic advice-giving as a
22
Table 1.1 Varieties of policy input provided by academics
Type of advice Description Example from political science
Agenda-setting Identification of coming Work on governance and the

and reframing. issues or new ways of understanding of the fragmented
looking at challenges. complexity of the policy process
has informed the understanding
of policy-makers (Rhodes 2007).
Expert moderation Helping to clarify options The role of political science
of inter-party and and enabling the different advice in conflict management or
inter-institutional sides to come to an resolving settings (Reynolds
discussion. agreement. 2011).
Conceptual Clarifying definitions and The role of various scholars on
clarification. helping policy-makers to the democratic deficit facing the
understand more clearly European Union (Follesdal and
the problems they face. Hix 2006).
Questioning false The advice provided here Debate about whether reducing
assumptions. is challenging. It questions the voting age to 16 is a good
underlying assumptions. idea or not (Cowley and Denver
It asks what might be 2004).
missing from the decision
frame. It identifies what
might be lost if a particular
path is followed even when
that path may lead to gains.
Advising about Here a key role could be Work using randomized
how best to about how to design controlled trials (RCTs) to look
collect data. research so that results can at how to increase turnout or
feed into the policy process. more civic behaviour (Green and
Gerber 2008).
Guidance on how Here the advice is not about Advice on the conduct of a
best to structure a what decision to take but citizens’ jury, referenda or people’s
decision. how to organize a process panel (Smith 2009).
that would enable a decision
to be made.
Substantive advice Drawing on generalizations Advice on how best to respond to
about how to made from the established issues of gender inequality in
address a problem. body of research work this political systems (Squires 2007).
form of advice looks at what
to do but considers how best
to respond in the context.
Technical tips Here the essence of the Advice provided on the
based on previous advice is to capture past on implications of changing to a
experience. lessons what to do or what different electoral system (Bowler
not to do. and Donovan 2013).
whole’. There are perhaps more windows of opportunity than is

commonly assumed. Table 1.1 captures the main types of advice
that could be offered, drawing on and developing Pollitt’s work
(2006). The difficulties presented by the play of power are substan-
tial but opportunities for engagement still abound.
Incentive structures in academia limit the pursuit of

relevance
Stephen Walt argues that for academic scholars the incentive struc-
ture to engage in the world of politics and policy is conspicuously
absent. His argument is developed in the context of international
relations (IR) theory but could equally be applied across political
science.
The modest impact of contemporary IR theory on policy

makers is no accident, because the creation of IR theory
conforms to the norms and incentives of the academic profes-
sion rather than the needs of policy. IR scholarship is often
impenetrable to outsiders, largely because it is not intended for
their consumption; it is written primarily to appeal to other
members of the profession … This is not a new phenomenon;
both scholars and policy makers have been complaining about
it for decades … It is a direct consequence of the professional-
ization of the academic world and the specific incentives that
scholars within the academy have established for themselves.
The academic field of IR is a self-regulating enterprise, and
success in the profession depends almost entirely on one’s repu-
tation among one’s peers. There is therefore a large incentive to
conform to the norms of the discipline and write primarily for
other academics. (Walt 2005: 38)
New career scholars know that publishing in good quality journals

is their ticket to a successful career. Making an effort to promote the
relevance of their work could seem a potentially unproductive
waste of time. General theory and ground-breaking work that
heads off in novel directions is valued over applied theory.
Empirical work is more likely to be assessed according to the virtu-
osity or novelty of its methodology rather than the relevance of its
topic or findings to external observers.
24 Gerry Stoker
The emphasis on a particular scholarship practice is no accident:

‘the discipline has tended to valorise highly specialized research (as
opposed to teaching or public service) because that is what most
members of the field want to do’ (ibid.). There are not many
academics that spend much time in the world of government or
policy advice and the numbers that have taken up that role in recent
years has probably declined. Even in the United States, where an
extensive system of appointments gives greater scope for scholars to
move from academia to government and vice versa, the tendency
has been for the traffic to diminish. As Nye (2008: 594) comments:
‘the United States has a tradition of political appointments that is
amenable to “in and out” circulation between government and
academia. While a number of important American scholars such as
Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski have entered high-level
foreign policy positions in the past, that path has tended to become
a one-way street. Not many top-ranked scholars are currently going
into government, and even fewer return to contribute to academic
theory.’ If you enter the world of government from the academy, the
chances are you will never find your way back.
One reason why it is so difficult to work across the divide is that
academic work is becoming increasingly specialized and it is diffi-
cult to keep up to date unless you are a full-time academic. In his
review of 100 years of political science publishing and the evolution
of the profession in the United States, Lee Sigelman (2006) points
out that the dominant leitmotif has been fragmentation, or perhaps
more neutrally specialization, within the discipline. That specializa-
tion has brought some advances, it could be argued, and could in
theory have better equipped academics to offer policy-relevant
work, given the enhanced intensity and focus of their expertise. But
in practice it has tended to widen the gap between policy and
academics as the latter have become more specialized and less
accessible with regard to their knowledge production. The resultant
growth and specialization of knowledge means that no one – least
of all time-poor policy-makers – can keep up with the subfields of
political science (Nye 2008).
Specialization has also taken a hold on the very process of trans-
ferring knowledge from outside government to the inside. Think
tanks, the media, public intellectuals, professional associations,
non-governmental organizations and other bodies now play a
stronger role in linking to policy-makers than universities or
academics more generally. Universities are no longer at the fore in
the transmission of ideas to the world of policy. They have been

crowded out and out-competed. As a result, the idea that has
comforted some academics – that their ‘big ideas eventually drip-
down to the policy world, perhaps via their students – may not hold
true. As Walt (2005: 40) comments:
This is a comforting view insofar as it places academic theorists

at the pinnacle of the status hierarchy, leaves scholars free to do
whatever they want, and assumes that their efforts will eventu-
ally be of value. There is also much to be said for allowing schol-
ars to pursue ideas that are not tied to specific policy problems,
because wide-ranging inquiry sometimes yields unexpected
payoffs. But there are also grounds for questioning whether the
current division of labor is optimal.
The trickle-down theory only holds good if it is assumed that

there are channels for the ideas to travel down. But the evidence
suggests that the world of policy advice has become crowded with
actors that have the communication skills, a commitment to
provide immediate expertise at a moment’s notice and a zeal for
engagement that is not observable in the academic world. ‘The
problem is further compounded by the use of academic jargon
and the lack of interest in communicating in plain language to a
policy public (Nye 2008: 599). Although the specialists in univer-
sities’ media departments do their best to overcome the resistance
or disinterest of many academics there can be little doubt that
many disciplines – political science included – are simply not
geared up to compete at making an impact in the crowded world
of policy advocacy that has been established in most advanced
democracies.
The structure of academia and the structure of the world of
policy advice may have led to a greater separation of academics
from policy relevance but there is no necessary reason to believe
that the trend could not be reversed. Universities are beginning to
gear up to extend their capacity for policy relevant work and
impact. The world of policy advice is crowded but universities have
tremendous advantages in terms of long-term institutional funding
and access to knowledge that could challenge the limited staffing
and short-termed resourcing of think tanks. As the formal advice
from within the civil service comes under pressure too, because of
funding concerns at local, national and international government
26 Gerry Stoker
levels, again universities are in a position to step into the vacuum

that is being created.
Changing the incentive structures of academics to encourage a
greater focus on relevance is likely to be a hard task but there are
signs that incentives and practices are shifting among early career
researchers. Professional and institutional decision-making has
helped to make the situation of relative disengagement among
many political scientists, but this could, given the right alliance for
change and a favourable context, be turned towards a drive to
greater engagement and relevance. Given the autonomy of the
profession the opportunity to do political science differently is
always there.
Doubts about the intellectual case for relevance

undermine its practice
In a broad sense all social scientists have something to say about the
societies they live in. Moreover, what constitutes relevance is not
fixed. It can vary according to time, circumstance and indeed the
standpoint of the observer (Gerring 2001). Expressed in this way it
seems difficult to see how any academic could object to the idea of
relevance or deny that they might be relevant. The rub comes not
necessarily when the discussion moves on to policy relevance but
more when the focus moves generally to the question of ‘what to
do?’. Describing and explaining an issue, event or context may offer
relatively comfortable territory for most academics. Even a more
specific diagnosis of a problem or policy challenge might be accept-
able terrain for many. But queasiness can begin to set in when it
comes to the next stages in the potential exchange between academ-
ics and the world of relevance. Here the basis of the exchange is
premised on prediction, prescription or evaluation (Walt 2005). It is
when moving towards these activities that doubts about the sound-
ness of the intellectual case for relevance begin to surface and hold
back engagement. For many academics it is at these stages that they
start to think they are glad to be irrelevant or at least express a sense
of being uncertain about the extent of engagement that is desirable
and appropriate. These doubts are not without foundation and
reflect on the problematic of relevance.
Before looking at some of the relevance challenges that have
come to grip attention, let me consider one objection that I find less
convincing. One proffered reason to object to relevance is that

when political scientists have pursued relevance they have often
ended up putting their research into the hands of established power
holders and simply acted to provide so-called expert judgement to
underwrite partisan policy-making (Norton 2004; Piven 2004).
There is a kernel of truth in this observation, as an engaged politi-
cal scientist is inherently connected to the play of power. The polit-
ical scientist in pursuit of relevance, however, does not need to be a
technician of the state working for power and against the power-
less. There are some cases where political scientists have sided with
power and some where they have not. A careful and detailed empir-
ical study by a variety of American academics (Macedo 2005) into
the failings of the political system of the United States – a study
under the auspices of the American Political Science Association –
has produced a set of reform measures that are sufficiently radical
not to be seen as a defence of the status quo. There are difficulties
and challenges that social scientists have dealing with power.
Political scientists, in particular, should be sensitive to these issues,
though this objection to relevance is not one of the strongest.
There are, however, several difficulties confronting the intellec-
tual case for relevance that have a greater traction. The first is that
the uneasy relationship between ‘facts and values’ comes more
sharply into focus as you enter the world of prediction, prescription
and evaluation. There are at least three types of objection that come
to the fore. The first is to claim that the empirical and the normative
need to be kept separate for effective science and that any blurring
of the boundaries in pursuit of relevance is undesirable. A second
line of attack accepts that empirical and normative theorizing are
intertwined to such an extent that they cannot be separated, so that
when social scientists move into the world of relevance they should
not seek any special status borne out of their expertise. At most,
they can claim that their knowledge is only a particular organized
form of opinion, as valid – but no more so – as others that might
stem from direct experience, craft practice and so on. The third
objection is that claims made for any guiding framework that
academics might use to steer their predictions, prescriptions and
evaluations are likely to prove to be untenable.
In political science’s reaction to Harold Lasswell’s advocacy of a
science of democracy you can observe all three of these elements in
the challenges from academics to Lasswell’s vision of a political
science engaged with policy advice and debates (Farr et al. 2006).
28 Gerry Stoker
‘To scientific ears’, Heinz Eulau explained, the policy sciences

sounded ‘tantalizingly ideological . . . serving the parochial values
of democracy rather than . . . the values of science and knowledge
which are presumably universal’ (quoted in ibid.: 584). To others
the problem was the claim to special expertise and status for politi-
cal scientists. Many objected to the scientific pretensions of
Lasswell’s vision and its elitist implications that debate would be led
by expert political scientists. Finally the unifying principle of the
pursuit of ‘dignity’ that Lasswell proposed as a guiding value for the
science of democracy was derided as vague and incapable of provid-
ing a strong basis for making choices between policy options.
For these and other reasons, including the ‘quietism, resignation,
and intellectual conservatism’ (ibid.: 586) of the profession,
Lasswell’s vision of a political science community committed to a
science of democracy fell on stony ground. Lasswell predicted in
1963 that ‘political scientists whose advisory roles are negligible …
would be as rare as unicorns’, but, as Farr et al. (2006: 584, 585) go
on to comment, ‘political scientists were not generally convinced;
the unicorns multiplied’.
Some, however, did detect in Lasswell’s work a latent commit-
ment to active citizenship and engaged politics that required a more
explicit citizen involvement and education, and a stronger develop-
ment of devices to support deliberation and public discussion –
what might be called ‘a policy science of participatory democracy’
(Dryzek 1989: 118). This theme of developing a political science
more accessible to laypeople and non-specialists was taken further
by some in the so-called Perestroika Movement at the beginning of
the twenty-first century that argued for a different way of doing
political science (Monroe 2005; Schram and Caterino 2006).
There are other doubts that have been raised about the intellec-
tual case for relevance. One objection to the pursuit of relevance is
that in many areas the evidence may not be clear enough to allow
for clear and workable solutions to be identified. Claims to be able
to establish causality that could in turn guide a claim to provide
solutions should be treated with scepticism. Those who are
inclined to see political science as an attempt to develop causal
statements about general features of society may nevertheless hold
the view that these statements at best can come in a probabilistic
form. As Walt (2005: 37) notes, ‘a scholar might be delighted by a
theory predicting that, on average, a 20% increase in X would
produce a 25% decrease in Y, but a policy maker will ask whether
the problem now occupying his inbox is an outlier or an exception

to this general tendency’. One response might be to develop a more
contextual, middle-range theory (George 1993). Although this
approach can have advantages for the policy-maker in that it is
sensitive to his or her situation, it can also lead to a highly contin-
gent form of advice: ‘if you do X, then Y will occur, assuming condi-
tions a, b, c, and q all hold, and assuming you do X in just the right
way’ (Walt 2005: 36). Some policy-makers might wonder about the
value of such circumscribed advice. Advice might be easier to give
in stable settings but it is more often asked for in situations of
uncertainty and change where making claims about the special
knowledge of political science might be more problematic. Some
social scientists, of course, hold that the pursuit of scientific-style
knowledge is pointless. Piven (2004) argues that attempts to iden-
tify linear cause-and-effect dynamics when examining a problem
leads to the attempt to build policy on fictitious grounds as realities
are always more complex than any simple model can capture.
There is a general argument that can be made for relevance of
disciplines such as political science that look at particular aspects of
the working of society. Most political scientists are comfortable
with the idea that their work could inform and enlighten; they are
less comfortable when their role is pushed towards prediction,
prescription and evaluation. Political scientists appear hesitant
about how to manage the relationship between normative and
empirical theorizing – indeed a common response is an ostrich-like
refusal to confront the issue – and they are unclear about the qual-
ity and capacity of their theories and evidence to carry the burden
of solution-seeking rather than, at best, diagnosis.
Dealing with the interface of normative and empirical theorizing is
not made easier by the gap in the discipline between those that deal
with normative theories and seek to argue about how political
arrangements should be, and those that deal in empirical theory and
try to account for how politics works in practice (Shapiro 2003; Smith
2009). The two sides of the discipline are often uninformed about each
other’s positions and the result is doubly unfortunate ‘because specu-
lation about what ought to be is likely to be more useful when
informed by relevant knowledge and … because explanatory theory
too easily becomes banal and method-driven when isolated from the
pressing normative concerns’ (Shapiro 2003: 2).
The range of intellectual doubts about achieving relevance leads
to a conservative response among many academics that they should
30 Gerry Stoker
stand back from the turmoil of politics and describe and explain
how and why politics is as it is. To try to offer solutions is a mistake.
This point is developed by Bruce Miller when he argues that the
political scientist may offer advice but cannot be the purpose of the
study. The advice ‘may not be taken’ or may indeed be brushed
aside by the forces of politics. The study of politics would indeed be
brought into contempt if its solutions ‘are treated as irrelevant by
the people to whom they are offered’ (Miller 1962: 274). With the
exception of a few technical issues around, for example, the details
of voting systems, political science cannot offer advice that will be
viewed as neutral. The nature of politics is such that it is driven by
differences over values and interests. There can be no claim to the
common good or efficiency. Offering solutions inevitably drifts into
taking sides, and that is not appropriate.
How disabling should we let this fear become? Is it right that our
science enables us to analyse problems, but not engage in the search
for solutions? A halfway house in responding to the empirical–
normative divide might be to call for political science to move to a
problem-oriented focus in order to unify and share insights from
various parts of the discipline, not least normative and empirical
theorists. The argument is that there should be a relationship
between the world of political analysis and the practice of politics in
the world. Political science should, as part of its vocation, seek not
to pursue an agenda driven by its own theories or methods, as if it
were in a separate world, sealed off from the concern of its fellow
citizens. As Shapiro (2004: 40) puts it: the problems addressed by
the profession need to be ‘theoretically illuminating and convinc-
ingly intelligible to outsiders’. If the discipline were reoriented in
this manner it would enliven both normative and empirical theoriz-
ing by bringing into focus new and challenging agendas and also
provide a more powerful claim to relevance on the part of the disci-
pline (Prewitt 2009).
Designing a solution
My argument (developed more fully elsewhere, see Stoker 2010a;

2012; 2013) is not just for a problem-oriented political science; it is
for a solution-seeking political science that takes as its challenge the
designing of politics. Herbert Simon (1996) argues that in the
sciences there are two great traditions: the science of nature and the
science of the artificial. The former focuses on what is and the latter
on things that are created by human beings. As Simon points out,
the science of the artificial is not a simple derivative of pure science,
it is a neglected pathway. It is a different, equally valid and demand-
ing way of looking at the challenge of academic understanding.
Engineering, the medical sciences and other disciplines embrace the
challenge of the sciences of the artificial and in doing so have
focused on the issue of design: how to achieve intentional change.
Design thinking can be applied to all institutions, products and
systems that are created by human beings. Political systems are not
natural and so they could be viewed as artificial, with functions,
goals and the capacity for adaptation. Political systems exist for a
purpose and so are open to design thinking. As Simon (1996: 111)
puts it: ‘everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at
changing existing situations into the preferred ones’. The classic
focus of design thinking is on intentional change.
Design develops around three moments. The first moment
involves an inquiry about how best to represent the problem or
issue at hand. To explore these issues can reveal not only what is
wrong but also the direction of change that might improve things.
The second moment is about reviewing available tools and options
of change. This search is not comprehensive but instead is bounded
and looks towards existing practices to see how they could be
adopted or adapted to achieve the desired change. The third phase
is prototyping, testing ideas in an interactive and learning context
to develop the solution and to maximize its beneficial impact and
limit any negative features. At this abstract level a design approach
can be observed in operation in building, road systems, gadget
development, web science, medicine, robotic machines and many
other fields. Some argue you can imagine applying such thinking to
businesses and their functioning (Brown 2008) or to the refinement
of public services (Bason 2010). My argument is that it is an arena
that political science and international relations should be willing
to step into as well.
It is possible to identify some pioneering work in this style.
Reynolds’s (2011) work on Designing Democracy in a Dangerous
World provides an example of this kind of design thinking in prac-
tice. Reynolds reviews a range of options for intervention but
argues that those interventions need to be understood in terms of
the context, history and institutional environment in which they are
being applied. He develops a complex diagnostic tool kit drawn
32 Gerry Stoker
from a careful synthesis of existing knowledge in order to judge

what intervention might work and then applies that thinking in
examples as diverse as Iraq, Burma, Sudan and Afghanistan. The
intervention models that emerge have a mixed track record in appli-
cation, reflecting the wider play of power and complexity of issues
in real cases – nevertheless, they show the value of design thinking.
The late Elinor Ostrom’s work (1990) is worthy of celebration
and is highly prized as her Nobel award indicates and is a rare
example of explicit design focus. Ostrom identifies at least eight
design principles. These include identifying who key stakeholders
are and giving them rights to participate in the setting up of any
system of management. She argues for graduated sanctions against
rule breakers and a nested capacity for governance in larger, more
complex, settings. Underlying the overall approach is a focus on the
importance of norm-building for successful collective action.
Ostrom’s work starts from value propositions about the nature of
good governance which stresses the degree to which higher levels of
government should not crowd out self-organization at lower levels;
equally, though, it does not argue that allocation decisions should
be left to the market – rather its focus is on designing the capacity
for stakeholder-based collective action. The design and research
work is on how to support collective action among stakeholders,
particularly in common-pool resource settings where access to a
valued good (water, fisheries) needs to be managed to sustain the
resource.
The design approach to political science might in many settings
then embrace the growing trend towards using randomized control
trials as part of the research paraphernalia available (Stoker 2010a;
2010b). An example here is provided by the work on nudge inter-
ventions by John and colleagues (John et al. 2011). Design solutions
that take the form of a nudge to shift existing patterns of behaviour
may be more feasible than those that involve complex forms of
institutional redesign. Nudge involves changing the presentation of
information to citizens or placing choices in the context of social
norms. Testing using randomized control trials can reveal what
interventions are likely to work and to what extent.
The thinking of the design political scientist is oriented towards
drawing lessons and requires flexibility in the use of analogies and
in approaches to categorization and conceptualization. Generally
in mainstream political science when developing concepts you are
discouraged from changing the category of something and actively
advised to avoid concept stretching (Sartori 1991). If you observe a

cat and a dog you are not allowed to invent a new category of a ‘cat-
dog’ but rather you are required to move up the ladder of abstrac-
tion to the category of animal. But the designer actively engages in
a process akin to concept stretching to see if a solution that is under-
stood to work in one setting can be made to fit a problem in another
setting. You may have identified a set of design devices about what
works, derived from empirical observation, and then you try to
stretch those devices to suit the context or environment that you are
trying to apply them to. This kind of thinking underlies much of the
work on democratic innovations captured by Graham Smith (2009)
referred to in his Democratic Innovations as ‘designing institutions
for citizen participation’. If part of Ostrom’s message is for govern-
ment to step back to let citizens self-organize, then part of the focus
of this work is on how to deepen democratic engagement in the
decision-making and practice of government. The focus is on giving
citizens more control over the decisions and choices made by the
state, stretching from participatory budgeting to community
control of policing. The empirical and theoretical foundations in
this area are very rich and will provide a strong basis for illustrating
what a design approach could look like (Geissel and Newton 2012).
The end goal of the designer is to offer a solution, whereas the
end goal of the mainstream political scientist is to offer an explana-
tion. The designer can only rest when a solution has been offered
and that which is offered appears to work. There are others in polit-
ical science that have led the way in taking a step towards solution
seeking. A solution focus can be observed in how feminists and
others have sought to understand the biases and prejudices of the
way that politics works in order to address gender imbalances
(Squires 2007). It then asks if those insights might be applied more
generally in the design of more equal access to democratic gover-
nance. Interventions in the form of quotas, mainstreaming and
policy agencies have been examined in detail. For feminists simply
to analyse the failings of the political system was never enough on
its own: they wanted to explore solutions but use the same tools of
evidence and reasoned argument to explore both problems and
answers.
One of the main messages in Crick’s In Defence of Politics to
those who study politics as academics was that their work should
be purposive rather than driven by claims to scientific neutrality,
unvarnished empiricism or abstract self-referential theoretical
34 Gerry Stoker
exchanges. For Crick, politics is about a system that delivers an

ordered capacity to reconcile interests and engage in collective
action, and so political science should be focused on the working of
that system and whether it is achieving the purposes that citizens
demand of it. Purpose is the point of the subject matter of political
science since, through politics, citizens ‘strive to realize public
purposes realistically’ (Crick 2000: 155). The empirical–normative
divide needs to be breached because political scientists do and
should care about their society; but it is a divide made false by the
nature of politics as a subject matter. We require a political science
where moral considerations are not repressed or kept apart but are
commingled with analytical argument in a challenging manner. It
means rediscovering the humanist tradition where social study is
about the education of judgement, where judgement concerns what
one does, how one does it and to what ends (Hirschman 1981).
Conclusions
The blockages to achieving relevance for political science are

considerable. Can the obstacles be overcome? In terms of engage-
ment with the policy process it would seem that political science
could create windows of opportunity. In so doing, it could play a
greater role, although it cannot of course overturn – nor should it
want to (Dryzek 1989) – the essentially political nature of that
process. Our expertise should be at the service of democracy, not
above it. The inward-looking orientation of agenda-setting within
the academic profession may prove a harder obstacle to overcome.
As Nye (2009: 253) advises younger scholars not to ‘hold their
breath’ when waiting for a reorientation towards a stronger focus
on questions of relevance, ‘the trends in academic life appear to be
headed in the opposite direction’. However, a changing context
may have an impact. First, the Internet lowers the barriers to
engagement (Gibson 2009) not only to citizens but also to academ-
ics. Second, an internal focus might have seemed appropriate and
easier to defend under the relatively benign conditions for advanced
liberal democracies in the second half of the twentieth century.
Given the threats to democracy, the challenges of globalization and
the scale of environmental and climate change that are emerging in
the twenty-first century, a more compelling case can be made for
reorganization towards an external focus. The intellectual doubts
about an enterprise of relevance can be addressed, especially if the

challenges of a design approach are embraced. We need more work
building on that of pioneers that show what a solution-seeking
political science could deliver. The challenge rests on a reorientation
of the focus of the discipline and then much greater effort in
communication. The blockages to relevance have substance but
they are far from being insurmountable.
Chapter 2
The relevance of relevance
JOHN GERRING
Social science is a species of practical knowledge. ‘Any problem of

scientific inquiry that does not grow out of actual (or “practical”)
social conditions is factitious’, Dewey writes:
All the techniques of observation employed in the advanced

sciences may be conformed to, including the use of the best statis-
tical methods to calculate probable errors, etc., and yet the mate-
rial ascertained be scientifically ‘dead’, i.e. irrelevant to a genuine
issue, so that concern with it is hardly more than a form of intel-
lectual busy work. (1938: 499)
If social scientists cannot tell us something relevant about the world

then they (we) are serving very little purpose at all (Adcock 2009;
Bloch 1941/1953; Bok 1982; Haan et al. 1983; Lerner and Lasswell
1951; Lindblom and Cohen 1979; McCall and Weber 1984; Mills
1959; Myrdal 1970: 258; Popper 1936/1957: 56; Rule 1997;
Shapiro 2007; Simon 1982; Smith 2003; Wilensky 1997; Zald
1990; see also the symposium in Political Science and Politics 43(4)
(October 2010), with contributions by Amitai Etzioni, Jacob
Hacker, Gary Orfield, Lorenzo Morris and Theodore Lowi).
Relevance in its narrow sense means addressing issues that lay
citizens care about, or should care about. Unfortunately, in
academic work one finds that writers sometimes confuse the notion
of statistical significance with real-life significance. In a wide-rang-
ing review of economics studies, McCloskey and Ziliak refer to this
as the ‘standard error of regressions’ (McCloskey and Ziliak 1996;
Ziliak and McCloskey 2008).
Relevance in its broader sense means bringing new and useful
knowledge to a problem that citizens care about. Here, I am using
36
The relevance of relevance 37
the term as a synonym for social utility. And it is here that relevance
brings its full weight to bear on methodological questions in the
social sciences. This point may not be fully apparent to readers, so
I shall discuss several examples.
The first is the debate between causal and descriptive knowledge.
The second is the debate over the naturalist model of social science.
Other examples might be chosen, but these will be sufficient, I
think, to prove the relevance of relevance. It will be seen that both
sides in these debates defend their position – implicitly, if not explic-
itly – by an appeal to relevance. Indeed, I shall argue (later on) that
there is virtually nowhere else for them to appeal. In this sense,
appeals to relevance are dispositive in arguments about social
science methodology.
Causal and descriptive knowledge
A long-standing debate continues over whether, or to what extent,

social science should be oriented around causal, as opposed to descrip-
tive, questions (Gerring 2010). A parallel debate has surfaced over
how causality should be defined, e.g. as potential outcomes, counter-
factuals, mechanisms, regularity or some other model (Brady 2002).
Perhaps the key argument in favour of causal knowledge and in
favour of a potential outcomes approach to causality is that this
form of knowledge and this way of understanding causality is most
relevant to social concerns. As many authors have pointed out, it is
only through causal knowledge that we can intervene rationally in
the world. And the potential outcomes framework is perhaps the
most useful framework for crafting specific policy interventions
(Woodward 2005).
Likewise, within a given study, relevance often plays a role in
distinguishing among various causal factors. Consider the classic
question of war, as elucidated by Patrick Gardiner:
When the causes of war are being investigated, it may be decided

that both economic factors and human psychology are relevant to
its outbreak; yet since we deem it to be within our power to influ-
ence or alter the economic system of a society, whereas the control
of human psychology seems, at least at present, to be beyond our
capacity, we are likely to regard the economic rather than the
psychological factors as the ‘cause’ of war. (1952/1961: 12)
38 John Gerring
By a similar logic, in discussions of social policy, causal arguments

that rest upon deep-seated political-cultural factors are in some
respects less interesting than arguments resting on policy design.
The latter can be redesigned, while the former are presumably long-
enduring, and hence less relevant to contemporary policy discus-
sions (except as boundary conditions). Relevant causes tend to be
manipulable (Woodward 2005).
At the same time, those who argue against the dominance of
causality in the social sciences, and those who argue against a
narrowly focused potential-outcomes approach to causality, also
couch their position in terms of relevance. They point out that not
all causal knowledge that we regard as useful and informative has
direct policy ramifications. Some studies pertain to things that
happened long ago and could never be repeated. For example, the
causal effect of colonialism on long-term patterns of development
in the global South does not provide policy prescriptions for the
present. The usefulness of this knowledge falls under the rubric of
understanding and explanation rather than intervention.
Knowing something about the impact of colonialism helps us to
understand the world we live in – and, arguably, helps us to
understand ourselves. In this very diffuse sense it might lead to
better policy prescriptions. But even in the absence of policy
prescriptions, self-knowledge is important and may have enor-
mous impact on a society. The case of colonialism is especially
relevant to countries with a recent colonial past, where it remains
a vituperative subject.
Similar arguments might be mustered in defence of the relevance
of descriptive knowledge. It is relevant how many Jews were exter-
minated in the Holocaust and how many Tutsis and Hutus were
killed in the Rwandan genocide, and in what proportion (Des
Forges 1999). And it is relevant who did the killing, and with what
motives (Goldhagen 1997; Waller 2002). These are not causal
arguments, at least not in the usual sense. But they help us to
understand something that we want desperately to understand –
partly because it is so awful and partly because we wish to know
more about what might be called (to use an old-fashioned term)
‘human nature’. Likewise, a good deal of knowledge garnered
from the field of psychology is more properly classified as descrip-
tive rather than causal. Thus, both sides in the causal/descriptive
debate lean heavily on relevance as a justification for their endeav-
ours.
The science of social science
Since the birth of social science, these loosely defined disciplines

have debated how scientific they could be (or ought to be), and
whether the natural-science (‘naturalist’ or ‘positivist’) model is
appropriately applied to decisional elements of human behaviour.
A key issue in this debate is whether the study of society is more –
or less – relevant when assuming the garb of science.
Those who are dubious of the naturalist model fear that it
might prevent us from writing about things that matter. Too
preoccupied with its status as a science, Barrington Moore
thought:
social science overlooks more important and pressing tasks.

The main structural features of what society can be like in the
next generation are already given by trends at work now.
Humanity’s freedom of maneuver lies within the framework
created by its history. Social scientists and allied scholars could
help to widen the area of choice by analyzing the historical
trends that now limit it. They could show, impartially, honestly,
and free from the special pleadings of governments and vested
interests, the range of possible alternatives and the potentiali-
ties for effective action. Such has been, after all, the aim of
inquiry into human affairs in free societies since the Greeks.
(1958: 159; see also Adcock 2009; Flyvbjerg 2001; Mead
2010; Shapiro 2007; Smith 2003; Wolin 1969)
A similar critique stems from the tradition of social thought

known as critical theory. Brian Fay suggests that social science
should lead the way for future transformations in society
by assuming a particular form, namely, one that isolates in the

lives of a group of people those causal conditions that depend
for their power on the ignorance of those people as to the
nature of their collective existence, and that are frustrating
them. The intention here is to enlighten this group of people
about these causal conditions and the ways in which they are
oppressive, so that, being enlightened, these people might
change these conditions and so transform their lives (and,
coincidentally, transcend the original theory). (1983/1994:
108)
40 John Gerring
It is in this spirit that Howard Zinn used to refer to himself as a

professor of political silence.
More radical critiques, questioning the very possibility of under-
standing society, stem from intellectual traditions known variously
as post-modernist or post-structuralist (Rosenau 1992) or interpre-
tivist (Winch 1958). Although arguments for relevance are rarely
stated explicitly, it seems clear that writers like Jacques Derrida,
Michel Foucault and Slavoj Zižek view the scientific pretensions of
social science as not merely false but also damaging to society. Their
war against social science is correctly viewed as an attempt to liber-
ate society from a false idol. It is not – at least not usually – waged
with a Dionysian intent simply to amuse and distract. It is decen-
tring, deconstructing with a purpose, albeit one that is rarely explic-
itly defined.
Thus, for the anti-science camp, concerns for relevance are very
much front and centre. Likewise, I would argue, for the pro-science
camp. (I am of course speaking in very broad terms.) Here, the
argument may be less apparent, so I will sketch it out in greater
detail.
There is no doubt that most of our knowledge about society (by
which I mean to include the realms of politics, culture and the econ-
omy) is gained from non-academic venues, e.g. news media, books
written by non-academics, and word of mouth. Society is a popular
topic, and one with few barriers to entry. We all have something to
say about it. Consequently, those who study society scientifically
are consigned to play second fiddle to journalists, politicos, reli-
gious leaders, social movement activists and the proverbial
man/woman in the street.
By dropping any pretence of science, members of the social science
academy could more readily join this fray, addressing issues of press-
ing concern in the vernacular. This would qualify as relevant in the
first sense of the term. But it might not qualify as relevant in the
second, and more important, sense. The question to ask is whether a
non-scientific approach to society adds value to what we already
learn about these topics from other sources. Defenders of social
science would argue that it would not, or would add very little.
Note that we have plenty of news about politics emanating from
mainstream media organizations. We have commentary on that
news, including a strong dose of critique, from many angles,
emanating from countless magazines, books, blogs and cable news
shows. Some of it is highbrow and most of it lowbrow. The point is,
there is plenty to go around. Would society be served by adding one

more layer of commentary on issues of the day, or fundamental
social critiques of the sort envisioned by Moore, Fay and Zinn?
A simple answer to this question hinges on how cogent the addi-
tional layer of commentary might be. If there are talents of the order
of Edmund Wilson or Christopher Lasch lurking within the acad-
emy today by all rights they ought to come forth from the ivory
tower as public intellectuals. Howard Zinn was such a talent, and
he exercised it regularly, refusing to be confined to the ivory tower.
However, I suspect that talents of this stature are relatively rare in
social science departments today.
To be sure, one could argue that this is a product of an overly scien-
tific style of graduate education, which squeezes the life out of
subjects in the service of dry, academic prose and hypotheses that can
be proven with 95 per cent certitude. However, even if we refused to
adopt those scientific standards, adhering to an earlier standard of
general scholarship on the model of Oxford and Cambridge (until
quite recently), I wonder if society would be well-served. This comes
back to the point about value-added. Most of what such generalists
would think about and write about is already being thought about
and written about by non-academics. We do not need more of what
we already have. Moreover, since humanities departments across the
world continue to provide an education focused on language, litera-
ture, history and the arts, there is little value-added in a social science
academy that mimics a classical Bildung.
What we lack, from the humanities and from non-academic
commentators, is social science. There is virtually no one outside of
university social science departments asking big questions – theo-
retical questions – and bringing evidence to bear on those questions
in a rigorous fashion. This is not something that everyday folks
have much interest in or the skills to achieve. Science – even social
science (which is not, after all, rocket science) – requires a degree of
training and perseverance that is out of keeping with the relentless
‘now’ of television, blogs and other media.
Occasionally, this produces insights not available from these other
sources. Here, it becomes relevant in the first sense of the word.
Consider the question of how, and whether, to foster democracy
around the world, a current issue in foreign policy and international
development. One type of knowledge is heavily contextual – about
specific countries, their histories, apparent trajectories and possible
responses to various policy initiatives. This sort of knowledge is not
42 John Gerring
scientific in the usual sense, though it is not simple-minded and is

certainly highly relevant to any initiatives that policy-makers might
adopt. Proper nouns are important. However, what political science
has to offer this policy debate is probably more focused on theoret-
ical knowledge about democratization and democratic consolida-
tion – its causes, processes and effects in general (for a recent review
of democracy as a dependent variable, see Coppedge, forthcoming.
For discussion of democracy as an independent variable, see
Coppedge 2012). One would not want to overplay the precision or
informativeness of this knowledge. However, there are some gener-
alizable conclusions and policy-makers ignore these conclusions at
their peril.
Thus, while we shall continue to learn most of what we know
about society from other sources, this does not mean that anthro-
pology, economics, political science and sociology (and their vari-
ous offshoots) should cease practising science – including the rather
arcane elements of that science such as formal models, simulation
models and advanced statistical methods for causal inference.
An argument can therefore be constructed such that the work of
social science is best carried forth by adhering to a distinctive set of
(‘scientific’) standards, rather than collapsing the boundaries
between science and non-science (Eckstein 1992: ch. 2 invokes Weber
in support of this limited and differentiated role for social science vis-
à-vis the public sphere). This argument points out that it will not aid
citizens and policy-makers to have a field of anthropology undiffer-
entiable from theology, or a field of political science indistinguishable
from party ideology. If Christopher Jencks, a noted social policy
expert, approached problems in the same manner as Edward
Kennedy – or Ronald Reagan, for that matter – then we would have
no need whatsoever to consult the views of Professor Jencks. What
academics like Jencks have to add to the political debate is premised
on their expertise. And what are the grounds for expertise, if not the
practice of good social science? There is some utility to good social
science, and none at all to bad social science.
Arguably, the wilful avoidance of scientific norms has doleful
long-term consequences for social science, and for those who would
see social science playing a role in the transformation of society. To
the extent that social scientists forego systematic analysis in favour
of polemic, they compromise the legitimacy of the enterprise of
which they are a part and from which they gain whatever promi-
nence they currently enjoy. As judges walk a fine line between their
assigned constitutional roles and their desire to affect public policy,

so must social scientists walk a fine line between science and soci-
ety. The day when this line disappears is the day when social science
no longer has a calling.
All of this is not to say that social scientists cannot also serve
society in other capacities – as voters, activists, polemicists and so
forth. The key point, from this perspective, is that this adjunct
capacity be clearly differentiated from our roles as social scientists.
We cannot help but play multiple roles. But playing these roles well,
without causing confusion and misrepresentation, depends upon
wearing different hats – openly, so that all can see. A speech before
a political rally should be clearly differentiated from a classroom
lecture.
Engagement and objectivity
Being relevant (in the first and second senses of the term) does not
imply a social science composed of zealous advocacy, where writers
embrace particular policies or draw moral/ethical conclusions
about historical actors and actions: where the past becomes, in
Michael Oakeshott’s apt phrase, ‘a field in which we exercise our
moral and political opinions, like whippets in a meadow on Sunday
afternoon’ (quoted in Fischer 1970: 78).
By the same token, it seems fruitless to insist that social science
should entirely eschew opinionizing, for ‘normative’ concerns are
often difficult to avoid. Imagine writing about the Holocaust or
slavery in a wholly dispassionate manner. What would an even-
handed treatment of these subjects look like? Everyday language is
not morally neutral, and social science must accept this affectively
charged vocabulary as a condition of doing business (Collier 1998;
Freeden 1996; Gallie 1956; Hollis and Lukes 1982; MacIntyre
1971; Pitkin 1972; Searle 1969; Strauss 1953/1963; Taylor
1967/1994). Leaving aside such extreme examples, it is difficult to
conceive of important statements about human actions and human
institutions that do not carry some normative freight. At the very
least, one’s choice of subject is likely to be guided by some sense of
what is right and wrong. ‘In theory’, writes E. H. Carr:
the distinction may … be drawn between the role of the investi-

gator who establishes the facts and the role of the practitioner
44 John Gerring
who considers the right course of action. In practice, one role

shades imperceptibly into the other. Purpose and analysis
become part and parcel of a single process. (1939/1964: 4)
I cannot fathom why anyone would choose to invest years (typically

decades) researching a subject if it did not have some normative
importance to him or her. Arguably, truth claims are enhanced when
a writer frankly proclaims his or her preferences at the outset of the
work. This way, possible inaccuracies in evidence or presentation are
easier to detect, and to evaluate. Hidden prejudices probably do more
harm than those that are openly avowed. Yet, it must be stressed
again that the value of a work of social science derives from its value-
added, not its normative point of view. To say ‘Y is good’ or ‘We
should do Y’ is to say extraordinarily little. Few are likely to be
persuaded by such a statement, unless it is simply by virtue of the
authority of the writer. And what authority do members of the social
science caste possess, aside from the authority of social science?
Generally, social science is most powerful when the normative
angle of a work is handled delicately. The most compelling argu-
ments for social welfare, for example, are those that demonstrate
causal relationships, e.g. that particular programmes aid in alleviat-
ing conditions of poverty and do not have negative externalities.
Such studies do not proclaim baldly ‘Poverty is bad’ or ‘We should
increase social welfare spending’, although there is no question that
these views undergird most research on poverty and social policy.
So long as the author’s research is sound, one is unconcerned with
his or her normative position on the matter.
Otherwise put: the persuasiveness of any normative argument is
itself dependent on the persuasiveness of whatever descriptive and
causal propositions comprise that argument. Descriptive and causal
propositions serve as the meat of any prescriptive statement.
Whether or not the researcher is motivated by some vision of a
better society, or only by personal or material interests, is rightly
immaterial to our judgement of the quality of his or her work.
There are idiots and geniuses of every persuasion. One would prefer
to read the geniuses and leave the idiots alone, leaving aside their
personal views and ethical codes.
Finally, it seems appropriate to observe that the vast majority
of social science analysis has little to do with what is good or bad.
No one – or virtually no one – argues against the virtues of peace,
prosperity, democracy and self-fulfilment. What is relevant is any
knowledge that might help us to achieve these desiderata

(Friedman 1953a). Here is where social science matters, or ought
to matter.
Are there other possible foundations for social

science?
In asserting that relevance forms the foundation – i.e. the ultimate

justification – for the activity known as social science we must also
consider the alternatives. What are these alternatives?
One alternative is grounded in science, as a concept and as a prac-
tical activity. This is the topic of philosophy of science, a vast body
of literature (for a practical, rather unphilosophical, treatment, see
Ziman 2002). The trouble is that science is difficult to define. One
can list attributes commonly associated with scientific work, e.g.
systematic, rigorous, evidence-based, falsifiable, replicable, general-
izable, non-subjective, transparent, sceptical, rational, causal, cumu-
lative and so forth. But this is not very coherent, and is in any case
subject to considerable debate. One can approach science as an
activity. But in this approach the definition is entirely circular –
science is what scientists do. And there is considerable disagreement
over what it is that natural scientists do, and whether they are
engaged in a common enterprise (for a compendium of definitions
from prominent writers, see www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/1122
sciencedefns.html).
In the case of social science both the concept and the associated
activities are considerably more variegated. So problems of definition
and sociology of knowledge become even more acute. Consider the
number and diversity of disciplines that are often encompassed by
this term: anthropology, archaeology, business, communications,
demography, economics, education, environmental design, geogra-
phy, law, political science, psychology, public administration, public
health, public policy, social work, sociology and urban planning,
along with various offshoots of these disciplines. Perhaps some order
could be found by scoping down – from social science to an individ-
ual discipline, such as political science. Even so, one finds a good deal
of diversity in the views of disciplines and the practices contained
therein. And in the more coherent disciplines, such as economics, the
greater degree of coherence one finds cannot be regarded as self-justi-
fying. Just because economists have a stronger sense of unity than
46 John Gerring
most social sciences does not, in and of itself, serve as a grounds for
justification for their approach to social science.
One might also appeal to the fecundity of a scientific paradigm.
To a large extent, scientific activity is self-governing, as scientists
work within a well-defined theoretical framework – one whose
fecundity seems beyond doubt. Novel findings are their own justifi-
cation (Lakatos 1978). Some areas of research attract attention and
others do not as the sense of advance or wider pay-off to society is
less obvious and so you could argue that biology is hot and physics
is not, or at least certain aspects of physics like string theory are not.
This seems self-evident to scientists. However, this line of justifica-
tion depends upon another premise – that when science follows its
hunches society is well-served. This premise is rarely doubted in the
natural sciences, where the payoff from scientific discoveries in the
twentieth century has been enormous. The point, then, is that natu-
ral science can define and redefine the direction of scientific research
because progress, and social utility, are easily demonstrated.
So a Lakatosian approach to natural science does not really
contradict the gist of my argument; it merely treats the social utility
of scientific endeavour as an unstated assumption. In any case,
demonstrating progress in the social sciences is much more difficult.
Although there are ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ areas of research in every field
one suspects that this may have as much to do with academic fads
as with demonstrable scientific progress. And the payoff for society
is less certain. And this is why a Lakatosian approach to social
science is harder to define and harder to defend. Explicit attention
to relevance is therefore more necessary in the social sciences than
in the natural sciences.
One might add that most social science payoffs are fairly proxi-
mate because the topic itself is relevant – or at least, most topics are.
If one finds something important about the causes of civil war this
can be immediately applied. By contrast, in the natural sciences most
work that takes place within the academy is ‘basic research’ with few
immediate payoffs for society. This, too, serves to detach natural
science from questions of relevance.
A pragmatic inquiry
By way of summary, let us return to the broader argument. I have

argued that social science, like other realms of human activity, is
rightly judged by its contribution to society. How social science

should be organized, what sort of methods it should employ, and
what sort of subjects it should investigate is therefore dependent
upon judgements about which directions will provide the greatest
value-added for society. This question may be posed of any disci-
pline, or of any human activity where the consequences of human
action may reasonably be assessed.
If, let us say, one is investigating the stock market to see how its
operations could be improved one might begin by asking what
‘improvement’ would mean. What functions does one expect a
stock market to perform? What would a ‘good’ stock market look
like? The pragmatist’s line of inquiry can also be posed in the form
of a counterfactual: where would we be without it? Implied in this
question are the following additional questions. Is there another
institution that might perform these functions more effectively? Do
its costs outweigh its benefits? In the case of the stock market I
imagine an inquiry such as this leading fairly quickly to several
conclusions: (a) its main purpose is to reduce transaction costs
between investors and firms, i.e. to raise capital; (b) no other insti-
tution that we are aware of does this as effectively; (c) its relative
success in doing so can be judged, among other things, by the
amount of money that it raises and the stability of stock prices over
the long haul.
The purpose of social science, I would maintain, is to help citi-
zens and policy-makers to understand the world better, with an eye
to changing that world. Social science ought to provide useful
answers to useful questions. Robert Lynd made this argument many
decades ago, and the words still ring true. Social science, he writes:
is not a scholarly arcanum, but an organized part of the culture

which exists to help man in continually understanding and
rebuilding his culture. And it is the precise character of a culture
and the problems it presents as an instrument for furthering
men’s purposes that should determine the problems and, to some
extent, the balance of methods of social science research. (Lynd
1939/1964: ix)
Many others have echoed the same general sentiment, before and
since (Adcock 2009; Bloch 1941/1953; Bok 1982; Gerring and
Yesnowitz 2006; Haan et al. 1983; Lerner and Lasswell 1951;
Lindblom and Cohen 1979; McCall and Weber 1984; Mills 1959;
48 John Gerring
Myrdal 1970: 258; Popper 1936/1957: 56; Rule 1997; Simon 1982;
Wilensky 1997; Zald 1990). Indeed, the presumed connection
between social science and social progress has been present from the
very beginning of the disciplines we now label social science. The
Statistical Society of London, one of the first organized attempts to
develop the method and employment of statistics, proposed in 1835
to direct their attention to the following question: ‘What has been
the effect of the extension of education on the habits of the People?
Have they become more orderly, abstemious, contented, or the
reverse?’ (quoted in Turner 1997: 25–6; originally quoted in Porter
1986: 33; see also Collins 1985: 19). Whatever one might think
about the perspectives embedded in this research question, it is clear
that early statisticians were interested in the role that knowledge
might play in social change. To paraphrase Marx (several decades
later): the point of scholarly reflection is not merely to interpret the
world, but also to reform it – perhaps even to revolutionize it.
Methodologists have not fully grasped the potential deliverance
that this simple thesis presents. Bluntly put, whatever species of
social science methodology seems most likely to produce useful
knowledge ought to be embraced; whatever does not should be
eschewed (Rule 1997 argues along similar lines; see also Rescher
1977). In this way, pragmatism provides a philosophical ground for
adjudicating methodological debates and allows us to move beyond
sterile and essentially irresolvable debates between different philo-
sophical camps (‘culturalist’, ‘interpretivist’, ‘rationalist’, ‘posi-
tivist’, ‘poststructuralist’ and so forth). Rather than choosing
camps, we might ask what specific tasks, strategies and criteria each
camp entails. We can then ask the pragmatic question: Would the
social sciences, thus oriented, tell us about things that we want to
know? Would this methodology allow us to reach societal consen-
sus on important problems? Could it be integrated into a demo-
cratic politics? Which vision of social science is likely to prove, in
the long run, most useful to society? These counterfactuals, while
difficult, provide some bearing on meta-methodological debates.
Granted, ‘usefulness’ is not always self-evident, as the preceding
discussion suggests. There are grounds for embracing causality and
grounds for resisting this embrace. There are grounds for embrac-
ing a naturalist vision of social science and grounds for resisting this
embrace.
A vulgar version of pragmatism implies that a single telos,
universally agreed upon, should guide all our actions. For Dewey,
however, pragmatism meant ‘that it is good to reflect upon an act in

terms of its consequences and to act upon the reflection. For the
consequences disclosed will make possible a better judgment of
good’ (in Rorty 1966: 283–4). In this spirit, it is more important to
ask the question of social science’s purpose, in a serious and consci-
entious way, than to provide a very specific answer. The answers
will surely vary from place to place, from time to time, and from
person to person. What does seem certain is that if one ignores the
question entirely – hunkering down in our insulated academic
bunkers to perform our own (possibly quite idiosyncratic) genres of
research – one is likely to fall far from the mark. Simple intellectual
curiosity is insufficient to provide a grounding for social science
(though it is a good start).
Chapter 3
Relevant to whom?
Relevant for what? The role
and public responsibility of
the political analyst
COLIN HAY
Like most bons mots, relevance is a seemingly unimpeachable

virtue, an attribute one would like conferred upon one’s work, and
something only others lack. Yet it is not always clear what relevance
actually is; nor, relatedly, what might make a work of political
analysis irrelevant. In this chapter I reflect on the question of rele-
vance/irrelevance, considering what it might mean for political
analysis to be seen or judged relevant – noting, in the process, both
that relevance is a property or attribute that can really only be
bestowed by others and that it tends to be task or, at least, context-
specific. I will consider how a political science more clearly oriented
to the attainment of relevance might differ from the one we have
today. In the process I consider whether political science requires a
paradigm shift in order to enhance its capacity to attain relevance,
reflecting on the implied identification by its critics of a ‘crisis of
irrelevance’ associated with the old paradigm. I look at how politi-
cal science might engage better with its current audiences, extend
the range of audiences with which it engages and, in the process,
change at least some of its content and form. Yet I will suggest that,
in the end, this entails no paradigm shift: that little if any contem-
porary political science is irrelevant – but that most of it could be
made both more relevant and relevant to many more. As this
suggests, relevance itself may not be the issue – since most of what
we do has the potential to be deemed relevant. Rather, it is about
50
Relevant to whom? Relevant for what? 51
making the case for the relevance of our work. As political analysts,
I suggest, we need to become better public advocates of the work
that we already do. That, in turn, implies a clearer sense of our indi-
vidual and collective responsibility to those for whom we write, to
those for whom we might write and, above all, towards our subject
matter.
Introduction: relevance – divided by a common

language?
If we are to believe what we read, political science is currently mired

in a crisis and a crisis of perhaps a rather unfamiliar kind – a crisis
of relevance. The charge, quite simply, is that we political scientists
fail to produce work that engages either those for whom it is
intended or those for whom it should be intended. We fail, in short,
to provide – or, in stronger versions of the thesis, to be capable of
providing – a credible ‘public interest’ defence of the work we do.
As such we fail in our public duty to act collectively as public goods
providers. Needless to say, that is quite a serious charge – not least
as it comes from political scientists themselves. And it needs to be
taken very seriously indeed. If it is warranted much contemporary
political science is irrelevant – and perhaps does not deserve the
public investment on which it typically depends.
Though the auto-critique echoes earlier auto-critiques of other
disciplines, most notably perhaps C. Wright Mills’s call for sociolo-
gists to discover (or discover again) their ‘sociological imagination’
(see especially Flinders 2013a; 2013b), this crisis discourse is new.
Political scientists have, depending on the critic, either previously not
regarded relevance as a criterion pertinent to the evaluation of their
research or have had no need to worry about the relevance of their
work since their almost natural ‘political imagination’ led them to
explore and express themselves publicly on issues of wider societal
concern. In fact, in most accounts, some combination of the two is
responsible for our current predicament: relevance was not a concern
for so long as relevance was almost guaranteed by the natural (or at
least naturalized) curiosity of political analysts to interrogate the
political world politically – to hold it to account and potentially to
change it (or at least to inform the conduct of those who might).
So what has changed? Well, there is surely something of a clue in
the rather uneven distribution of concern about relevance. This is,
52 Colin Hay
by and large, an Anglophone preoccupation and, as noted above, a

recent one at that. Indeed, it is predominantly a British and
American preoccupation. But although they are typically lumped
together and assumed to arise out of the identification of ostensibly
similar pathologies, a moment’s reflection reveals there to be rather
different reasons for the current Anglophone anxiety over relevance
on each side of the Atlantic.
In the US, lack of relevance is typically a charge levelled at what
is perceived, by its critics, to be a highly and artificially stylized,
standardized and technicized mainstream political science ortho-
doxy. Crucially, ‘relevance’ (more specifically, the need to develop a
political science more attuned to the attainment of relevance) is the
clarion call of the Perestroika Movement. Its advocates promote a
more modest, more open-ended, less technical and more accessible
political science capable of communicating to a wider audience,
and not just a largely self-appointed technical elite (fluent in the
private language games and proficient in the modelling techniques
which have come to characterize the mainstream). As this suggests,
lack of relevance is, in the US context, quite a specific concern
directed at a subset of political analytical techniques which, though
prevalent in the US, are somewhat less dominant elsewhere.
In Britain, by contrast, concerns about the relevance of political
science are far more general – relating to the entire discipline and
not just to specific parts of it. Moreover, and perhaps more signifi-
cantly still, it is difficult not to see such concerns as having a partic-
ular resonance and purchase at a time when the public funding and
evaluation of research (both by the research councils and the
Higher Education Funding Council for England) has become
explicitly linked to the (adjudged) influence or ‘impact’ of research
in non-academic contexts (Flinders 2013a; 2013b). Though impact
and relevance are by no means interchangeable terms, they are
certainly synonyms, and it is clear that the current preoccupation
and associated concern with relevance amongst British political
scientists is in no small measure a response to the increasing incen-
tivization of demonstrable research impact in non-academic
contexts. This suggests two things. First, that a greater attentiveness
to and concern with relevance is a rather rational, perhaps even a
narrowly instrumental, response to a reconfiguration of institu-
tional incentives. Second, and no less significantly, it suggests that
British political scientists, or at least those articulating publicly an
anxiety about the relevance of their discipline (our discipline),
would almost certainly worry just as much about the potential lack
of relevance of the Perestroikans themselves.
There are undoubtedly some ironies here. These typically mani-
fest themselves in the tensions which so often characterize the ‘rele-
vance debate’ (if we can call it that) as anxious proponents of
(greater) relevance typically target different and contradictory
things as means to attain the (greater) relevance they would have
us strive for. In a sense, then, we are divided by the common
language of relevance – even more so that of a ‘crisis of relevance’
– and we mean rather different things by it. To understand this
better it is useful to return to the definition of the term itself. But
before doing so it is perhaps important first to establish some of
these tensions.
The private language of political science
The first of these relates to the private language games to which

political scientists are sometimes prone. Much of the relevance
debate, on both sides of the Atlantic, targets what it sees as the
unnecessary technicization of the content of academic political
science and the associated impenetrability of the prose in which
much of it is conducted and expressed. But even this critique takes,
essentially, one of two different forms – on different sides of the
Atlantic. The US interpretation of such matters, as expressed most
eloquently in the Perestroika Movement for the reform and broad-
ening of the American political science mainstream, is perhaps less
concerned than its British counterpart with technical specialization
and inaccessibility per se. Its concern is rather more with the nature
(and limits) of the analytical assumptions that make this kind of
formalism possible. The algebraic modelling of political systems,
the Perestroikans argue, entails an analytical commitment to a set
of ontological assumptions (about the nature of political actors and
their motives) which is profoundly limiting. Put simply, mathemat-
ical formalism of this kind may well allow us to produce something
resembling the elegant parsimony of mainstream neoclassical
economic models, but it comes at a very high price in terms of the
credibility and realism of the assumptions on which it is predicated.
In short, to make political systems amenable to this kind of model-
ling entails a commitment to analytical assumptions which are, at
best, crassly distorting simplifications and at worst demonstrably
54 Colin Hay
false. The price of formalism, they contend, is irrelevance – in the

sense that the resulting models, however elegant and neat, bear little
or no credible link to the ‘real’ world of politics. Policy-makers (and
other political actors), in this view, would be deeply misguided to
use such models to inform their strategic deliberations on how to
act politically.
But this is already a very different sense of relevance from that
exhibited in the British debate. Here, as expressed most succinctly
and clearly by Matthew Flinders (2013a; 2013b; and in this
volume) and Peter Riddell (2011), it is not the accuracy, realism or
credibility of the analytical assumptions underpinning technical
formalism in political science that is the problem. Rather, it is the
impenetrability and inaccessibility to a wider audience that comes
with such assumptions, whatever they are and however credible or
incredible they may happen to be. Whilst formalism may well
render impenetrability and inaccessibility more likely (at times it
seems – or is seen – almost to guarantee it), it is by no means the
only path to it. Indeed, or so it is argued, there is certainly plenty
more of the latter (inaccessibility and obscurantism) in British polit-
ical science than the former (formalism) – and, as such, it is obscu-
rantism that is the problem here, not formalism. It is for precisely
this reason that the principal target of the British champions of
greater relevance is the increasing professionalism of the discipline
and not the preference within it for certain analytical strategies over
others.
There are certainly problems with this at times rather stylized
account of the (highly professionalized) condition of contempo-
rary political science (and its associated pathologies) in Britain, or
elsewhere for that matter. We will come to these presently. But, for
now, it is perhaps most important simply to establish the very
different understanding of relevance (more accurately, irrelevance)
at work here. Contemporary political science, in this the British
variant of the auto-critique, stands accused of irrelevance not
because it has nothing useful to say to policy-makers (since its
analytical assumptions render its models unrealistic and hence
irrelevant) but because its unnecessary obscurantism and profes-
sional isolation renders it incapable of communicating whatever it
might have to say to such audiences. Contemporary political
science, in other words, is irrelevant in the US critique because it is
poor political science (political science of the wrong kind); contem-
porary political science is irrelevant in the British critique because
it is poorly communicated political science written for and dissem-

inated to the wrong audience in the wrong way.
Relevance and rationality: between perestroika and

glasnost?
Yet this is not the only tension that we can identify between these
ostensibly parallel, but in fact rather different, critiques of contem-
porary (Anglophone) political science. A second tension in fact
arises fairly directly from the first. For what is in effect dismissed in
one discourse (the US) as irrelevant is, when recast in terms of the
other (the British), perhaps the clearest example of relevance. The
irony here is palpable and is perhaps clearest to see if we focus the
discussion a little more precisely on rational choice theory – the
proverbial elephant in the room for much of the debate. For
although the status and place of rational choice theory within the
discipline lies at the heart of the relevance/irrelevance debate, it is
invariably present in the discussion only in a rather implicit way. As
is so often the case, it helps to seek to render explicit what is invari-
ably left implicit.
Whilst perestroika is not only a rejection of rational choice (and
is typically not cast in such terms), it is certainly a rejection of the
hallowed status of rational choice within the US political science
mainstream – and it is important to remember this (rational choice
scholarship is, in effect, the clearest target of the Perestroikan
critique). For Perestroikans, to put things starkly, US political
science is irrelevant to the extent to which it is dominated by
perspectives, like rational choice theory, which rely on foundational
ontological assumptions chosen for their analytical convenience (in
the case of rational choice, to render possible the retroductive
modelling of political outcomes); and it is also irrelevant, to the
extent to which this is the case, because such analytical assumptions
are distorting simplifications which ensure that the models to which
they give rise are of no genuine value in the ‘real’ world of political
practice. This is, in a sense, a normative critique leading to a rejec-
tion of rational choice theory – or, at least, the initiating analytical
move (the choice of assumptions on the basis of their analytical util-
ity rather than their credibility) that makes it possible. Rational
choice is, in short, bad political science (indeed, its claim to offer a
science of politics is spurious); as such, rational choice is irrelevant
56 Colin Hay
political science because bad political science is irrelevant and

rational choice is bad political science.
Whether or not one agrees with it, there is a clear logic and
consistency to such a view – and that logic, I would argue, lies at the
heart of the Perestroika Movement. Accept the logic and one is a
Perestroikan; reject it and one is not. But the point is that, insofar as
an equivalent logic can be identified in the British critique – the
Glasnost Movement, perhaps – it is very different. For the rele-
vance–irrelevance distinction is deployed here in a way that makes
it not in any sense synonymous with the good political science–bad
political science distinction so integral to the Perestroika critique.
Arguably the Glasnost usage of the distinction is rather more
semantically precise. But, whatever its terminological pedigree, it
sees relevance as a judgement conferred by others, agonizing less
about whether contemporary political science deserves to be
adjudged relevant than whether it is adjudged relevant by those
who use or might use it.
This brings us back to rational choice theory. And here, it strikes
me, there is a clear inconsistency in the Glasnost position, at least as
it is expressed by the likes of Matthew Flinders and Peter Riddell. For
their argument, in essence, is that the tragedy of contemporary polit-
ical science is its professionalization – and its professionalization as a
science in particular. For, they suggest, it is this ‘road to irrelevance’
(Flinders 2013b: 2) that has led it to conduct more and more of its
business in a private language which is dry and decidedly unengag-
ing, impenetrable, elitist, exclusionary and, above all, inaccessible to
those not trained in it. Political science, they suggest, cannot expect
to be adjudged relevant by those who might benefit from the insights
it offers for as long as this remains the language in which such
insights are principally communicated. Professionalization has
promoted and rewarded obscurantism and obscurantism precludes
relevance.
This is a neat and at least superficially attractive thesis. But there
are at least two profound objections to it. The first, in a way, is an
empirical one – and it comes in two parts. The kind of research that
authors like Riddell and Flinders have in mind when they castigate
contemporary political science for its obscurantism and associated
irrelevance is very clear. Their call for relevance is, in effect, an
unapologetic extension and updating of Bernard Crick’s coruscat-
ing critique of The American Science of Politics (1959). But the
point is that, certainly outside of the US, very little published polit-
ical science conforms readily to the image they present of a highly

professionalized elite removing itself from the political world
which ostensibly forms the subject of its analyses to communicate
to itself in private and in semaphore (or, worse still, algebra). And,
what is more, despite the association they draw between such alge-
braic obscurantism on the one hand and irrelevance on the other,
the irony is that it is precisely work of this kind that invariably has
the strongest claim to have proven influential – certainly amongst
policy-makers. For, insofar as any political science might stake a
claim to have informed the content of the politics in and through
which we are governed, it is surely – for good or ill –
rational/public choice theory. Whether it be central bank inde-
pendence or the introduction of quasi-market mechanisms in
public health care systems, there can surely be no denying that
rational and public choice theoretical models typically expressed
in formal terms have made it through the veil of algebraic notifica-
tion and off the page into the minds of policy-makers in a way that
the more intuitively accessible ideas of others have not (Hay 2007).
And arguably they have done so precisely because of the scientific
mystique associated with their algebraic and formal character. One
might worry about that – for what it is worth, I do – but it does not
help us to deny it.
The second objection to the Glasnost thesis follows in a sense
from the first. If it is rational/public choice theory that has perhaps
the greatest claim amongst existing political science perspectives to
demonstrable relevance (in the sense that its ideas have most consis-
tently informed public policy-making), then the highly technical
character of some political science cannot be the impediment to
relevance it is presumed to be. This is a crucial point. Authors like
Peter Riddell in particular are vociferous in their objection to what
they see as the jargon-laden insularity and almost wilful obscuran-
tism of academic political science, attributing the latter’s failure to
influence the conduct of politics to this above all else. He argues for
a jargon-free political science that can be communicated directly to
a wider audience, and he sees this as the solution to the crisis of
irrelevance that he detects. But there is an obvious and significant
problem with such a view. Were jargon and algebra-laden peer-
reviewed academic papers the only output of researching political
scientists, then Riddell, Flinders and others might well have a very
good point. But quite simply they are not. Indeed, the unquestion-
able influence and reach of public choice is surely the best possible
58 Colin Hay
testimony to the diverse array of mechanisms in and through which

it has come to influence policy elites, political parties and the like.
As Peter John explains, ‘technical terms do appear in journals
because they explain what common language would itself obscure,
such as the language of methodology or statistics’ (2012). Indeed,
one could go further. Academic peer review is a collective public
good in that it ensures (for the most part) that those claiming, in the
wider dissemination of their research and its implications for
others, a scientific licence do so having first had to earn it. This may
well necessitate the use of seemingly obscure phrases and conven-
tions that are inaccessible and impenetrable to the ultimate users of
the research. But if that is the price that is paid for ensuring that
public policy, for instance, is informed by research that is well-
conducted and independently scrutinized, then that is surely a price
worth paying.
Relevance: deserved or attained?
This brings us to a final irony. Flinders (2012b), in particular,

clearly fears the development – through ever greater professional-
ization and its institutionalization and embedding in the incentive
structures of higher education funding and promotion – of a politi-
cal science which ever more closely resembles the discipline of
economics. Indeed, he clearly sees political scientists as following a
path long travelled by economists. That path, he fears, will lead
them, if it has not already led them, just as it led economists before
them, to a form of intellectual ‘autism’. In so doing he echoes the
critique of mainstream neo-classical economics offered by the self-
styled ‘post-autistic economics movement’ (see for instance
Fullbrook 2003; 2007) – fearing the parallel (if belated) develop-
ment of a similarly autistic political science of abstract model build-
ing. But whatever sympathy one might have with such a critique
(and, for what it is worth, I have plenty), he commits himself in the
process to a very different conception of relevance to the one with
which he started.
For, judged in terms of attained relevance, as it were, there is no
social science discipline that has proved more successful than
economics. As a discipline it might not have seen the global finan-
cial crisis coming for reasons intimately associated with its prefer-
ence and penchant for stylized equilibrium models (and the
algebraic notification in and through which these are convention-

ally expressed). But this certainly did not come at the price of
perceived irrelevance – certainly amongst policy-making elites. For
mainstream neo-classical economics shapes directly the conduct of
economic policy-making (and much else besides) in a way that rele-
vance-minded political scientists (proponents of Glasnost) can
scarcely dream about. And however much neo-classical economics
may be implicated in the present crisis, there is no sign of this influ-
ence waning in the wake of the crisis. If this is autism (and there are
some pretty good reasons for thinking that it might be), then autism
has proved no impediment to its perceived relevance amongst those
responsible for economic decision-making.
But this is, of course, not an argument for autism in political
science. In a sense, my point is to show the potential dangers of
fetishizing attained relevance. Mainstream economics is attractive to
policy-makers because it both claims to be and ‘looks’ very scientific.
It is neat and reproducible and its models lead typically to clear policy
inferences. It does what policy-makers want and it has the added
attraction of doing so in a way that is largely immune to critique from
those not fluent in the private language in which it is conducted. In
short, it depoliticizes and technicizes economics – and that is precisely
what makes it attractive (and hence relevant) to political elites. We
might well contest the foundational ontological assumptions which
make this kind of modelling possible, noting (with Nobel Prize
Winners like Milton Friedman or Douglass North) that they are
chosen for their analytical convenience not their credibility or realism
(Friedman 1953b; North 1990; see also Hay 2004). But to do so is
either not to make an argument about relevance at all or to make an
argument about deserved relevance rather than attained relevance. It
is, in effect, to change discourse – to move from Glasnost to
Perestroika. For what the Perestroika Movement in the US does is to
argue that the mainstream political science orthodoxy does not
deserve to be seen as relevant by virtue of the epistemological and
analytical choices it makes – in effect, its core premises preclude
genuine relevance, even if they facilitate a spurious relevance. That
might well be our view of mainstream economics too; that, if we
understand the distorting/simplifying analytical moves that make
possible most neo-classical economic theory, we will see its claim to
genuine relevance to be spurious. But the language of relevance is
actually a distraction and an unnecessary complication here, leading
us to some of the confusions I have sought to describe above.
60 Colin Hay
We would do better, I contend, to reserve the term ‘relevance’

for judgements bestowed by others on our work, rather than to
venture on to the inherently difficult terrain of adjudicating
deserved relevance ourselves. That is not to say that we should
avoid passing a normative judgement on the analytical strategies
employed in political and economic analysis, nor that we should
avoid seeking to persuade others that they are mistaken to take
cognizance (or so much cognizance) of perspectives predicated
on what we regard to be dubious assumptions. But we risk
conflating the normative and the analytical if we couch such
critiques in the language of relevance. Relevance is an attribute
or property bestowed (rightly or wrongly) by others. As such,
whether research is judged relevant or not is an empirical ques-
tion; whether it should be judged relevant is a normative ques-
tion – and it is important that we preserve the distinction
between the two.
In sum, then, in the preceding sections I hope to have established
that although the Perestroikans and their British counterparts in
promoting relevance speak an ostensibly similar language (albeit
with different accents), they have drawn their sense of relevance
from very different sources. Ultimately, and although I have consid-
erable sympathy with the normative critique of the limitations of
much mainstream US political science on which it draws, I think the
Perestroikan debate on relevance is, at least in this context, a
distraction. For, properly understood, the critique it presents of the
US mainstream is not about relevance/irrelevance (in the dictionary
sense) but about good and bad political science and the extent to
which the latter might crowd out the space for the former in certain
institutionalized academic environments. That is a crucial debate
and one that at times might even touch on this one. But it not
central to the subject of this volume – which I take to be whether
and how political science should strive to attain greater demonstra-
ble relevance.
But the Glasnost view, as I have termed it, is certainly no less
problematic. It may very well get relevance right semantically. But,
ironically, it does so whilst getting the admittedly complex lessons
for relevance of rational choice profoundly wrong and, in the
process, falsely demonizing the collective public goods of profes-
sionalism, technical proficiency and perhaps even academic peer
review.
Diagnosing and resolving the crisis
So, where does all of this lead us? Having sorted out what we might
mean by relevance, is it credible to think that we suffer from a
contemporary crisis of irrelevance and, if so, what should we do
about it?
Here, as elsewhere, the semantics are important. What we call
things matters. And there is scarcely a concept that is more politi-
cally and rhetorically significant than that of crisis. To call this a
crisis of irrelevance is, then, to engage in a certain politics. It is, in
essence, a call to action – a call for us to mend our broken ways and
to do political science differently in a way better capable of attain-
ing the relevance we seek or should be seeking. For crises, certainly
acknowledged crises, present opportunities. They are, as the
etymology of the term suggests, not just moments of failure but just
as crucially moments of decisive intervention. So acknowledging or
convincing us that we have a crisis may well be the key thing here –
a necessary if not perhaps sufficient condition for resolving our
problem. On such a reading, then, we might have already turned
the corner. This volume might even be seen as an indication of that.
But I suspect things are not quite so simple. They seldom are. In this
case my reasons for scepticism relate just as much to the diagnosis
of the affliction itself as they do to any optimism for the proposed
path to greater relevance put forward by those convinced of such a
crisis diagnosis – though clearly the two are closely linked.
Yet to profess a certain scepticism about whether we face a crisis
of irrelevance or not is in no sense to dismiss the relevance agenda.
I very much welcome the debate – indeed, any debate – about the
public role of political science; though I fear that this is perhaps not
the best way to have that debate. But the debate is an opportunity
and the opportunity is a good one.
So what does the crisis diagnosis look like? Clearly there are
different variants of the thesis, but rather than attempt to draw
together a general sense of the crisis narrative I will simply summa-
rize what I take to be its most cogent and eloquent expression to
date – that by the editors of this collection (Peters et al. 2010). Their
short essay, published in the latest edition of David Marsh and
Gerry Stoker’s (2010) highly (and rightly) influential text, Theory
and Methods in Political Science, is an extremely important inter-
vention – and might perhaps be seen as the originating contribution
to what has now become the relevance debate.
62 Colin Hay
In it they provocatively assert that the lack of relevance of the

discipline is a major cause of legitimate anxiety. Any sustained
reflection on the collective capacity of the community of political
scientists to offer anything of value to the wider society, they
contend, can hardly but fail to paint a ‘rather dismal picture’ of a
discipline largely unable to produce workable solutions to policy
problems (2010: 341; see also 328). They argue that ‘a discipline
that studied politics but had nothing to say to those involved in
politics or [to those] who might be involved is somehow failing’
(326). The use of the conditional tense is, of course, important here.
Their comment is teasingly hypothetical. But, we can only assume
that the discipline they describe here has more than a passing resem-
blance to our own.
Developing their point, they suggest that the agenda of political
analysis should be – and yet remains insufficiently – set by real
world political concerns and real world political actors – their
concerns should be our concerns, not our concerns theirs (327; see
also Shapiro 2004). As they explain, ‘political science should, as
part of its vocation, seek not to pursue an agenda driven by its own
theories and methods, as if it were in a separate world, sealed off
from the concerns of its fellow citizens … we should be asking ques-
tions to which others outside the profession want to know the
answer’ (328). This has important implications for what we study
and how we should study it. As they suggest, if we are to respond to
the challenge the crisis presents, we must acknowledge that ‘the best
of political science should have a problem-solving attitude: identi-
fying a question thrown up in the world, illuminating its dimen-
sions through systematic study and seeking to ask what could be
done to improve the situation in the service of humankind’ (330).
There is undoubtedly much to commend in this and I have very
little objection to a political science that is problem-oriented and
which seeks to identify and respond directly to ‘real world’ political
challenges (i.e. to concerns identified by non-political scientists).
But there are real dangers here too, and it is just as important that
we avoid these as that we fashion, in the mirror image of Peters et
al.’s critique, a pared down political science better attuned to the
maximization of relevance. For we might just find that, were we to
do this, we would have thrown the baby out with the proverbial
bath water. A number of points might here be made.
First, though perhaps least significantly, I think Peters et al., and
others besides them, are in danger of underselling, in effect, what
we already do as political scientists. Frankly, I do not share the view

that an audit of the contribution of academic political science to the
public debate and the provision of public goods would paint as
‘dismal’ a picture as they suggest. This, I think, is the hyperbole of
crisis talk – and it is not very helpful. I genuinely believe that the
vast majority of the practising researchers in political science that I
know do seek to address in their work concerns which are not
purely academic; and, moreover, that they do so precisely in the
hope that their research will lead to substantive changes in the ways
policy and politics is conducted. Indeed, that I think is the principal
motive informing the research they do. They might not always be
very good at it and they certainly might not be very good at commu-
nicating that rationale publicly (a far from trivial failing to which I
will return presently). But it is simply wrong, in my judgement, to
see them as motivated by narrowly academic or professional
considerations in their choice of research question.
Second, and rather more significantly, problem-oriented political
science, though extremely valuable, is unlikely on its own to prove
self-sustaining in the long term and a privileging of it over purer
more theoretically driven work may well ultimately undermine our
capacity to generate relevant insights (by which I mean insights seen
as relevant by others). This may well sound perverse, but the logic
is a simple one. Problem-oriented political science is invariably
parasitic on theoretical perspectives and traditions typically devel-
oped over long periods of time through primary research and theo-
retical elaboration and not, by and large, through attempts to
resolve practical political or policy puzzles. It would be rather tragic
to wait until an imminent meteor strike before deciding that it
would be useful to invest in research on the movement of large
objects in gravitational fields, even if at the time it were difficult to
envisage the practical problem that such knowledge might help us
resolve. The same is true in political analysis – theory and applied
theory develop best in parallel, feeding off one another in a symbi-
otic manner. Thus, even if we were to convince ourselves that we
were suffering today a profound crisis of irrelevance, the solution
would not be to abandon pure theory in favour of a problem-
oriented political science. There is and must always be a place for
both.
Third, and relatedly, we cannot allow the agenda of academic
political science to be shaped entirely by the concerns of those who
might benefit from the research we conduct or might conduct.
64 Colin Hay
Political science is not, and cannot be allowed to become, a

response-mode discipline. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
our work responding to the concerns and challenges of citizens and
policy-makers. And, as I have argued, I think rather more of our
work is of that kind than Peters et al. give us credit for. But it can
never be all that we do, not least because political scientists are citi-
zens too and they have political concerns. Much much better, I
think, is to argue that, where political analysts seek to design
research to address issues which do not reflect current societal or
political concerns, they take some responsibility for explaining to
the wider community their rationale for conducting such research.
And that, in the end, is the key point for me.
From my perspective, little if any contemporary political science
is irrelevant – in the sense that a case could not be made for the
public value (however limited) of the research, thinking and analy-
sis in and through which it might develop. But, crucially, most of it
could be made both more relevant and relevant to many more. As
this suggests, relevance itself may not be the issue – since most of
what we do has the potential to be deemed relevant or to become
relevant at some later point, if only we were more willing to make
the case for it. That is the challenge that relevance poses to us. Our
challenge, it strikes me, is not by and large to do different things but
to make rather better the case for the relevance of the things we
already do – to explain a little more our hunches, to communicate
our choices and above all to defend the independent conduct of
political science as a core collective public good in any open and
democratic society. As political analysts, I suggest, we need to
become better public advocates of the work that we already do.
That, in turn, implies a clearer sense of our individual and collective
responsibility to those for whom we write, to those for whom we
might write and, above all, towards our subject matter.
Chapter 4
The rediscovery of the

political imagination
MATTHEW FLINDERS
‘Just now, amongst social and political scientists, there is wide-

spread uneasiness, both intellectual and moral, about the direction
their chosen studies seem to be taking’ – so wrote C. Wright Mills
over 50 years ago. ‘This uneasiness, as well as the unfortunate
tendencies that contribute to it, is, I suppose, part of a general
malaise of contemporary intellectual life. Yet perhaps this malaise
is more acute amongst social scientists, if only because of the larger
promise that has guided much earlier work in their fields’ (1959:
19). But what is ‘the promise’ of the political and social sciences
and how can such a quality of scholarship be rediscovered in the
twenty-first century in a way that responds to the current debate
about the relevance of political science? The aim of engaging with
this core question is not to contribute to the fashionable flaying of
political science but to chart a more positive and optimistic ‘road
to relevance’ through which to emphasize just why the study of
politics matters. The central argument of this chapter is therefore
that the discipline needs to rediscover its political imagination, by
which I mean an approach to scholarship that emphasizes bridging
(i.e. the formation and cultivation of relationships within and
beyond academe), accessibility (i.e. an approach to writing that
defines the use of obscure, pretentious or trendy language as a sign
of indecision, inability and deceit) and morality (in the sense of
writing with a sense of social purpose and explicit relevance).
Political science is not alone in facing severe external challenges
and internal schisms – the ‘public sociology wars’ and the ‘post-
autistic economics movement’ make this clear – but its position as
the ‘master science’ arguably makes its perceived decline (in terms
65
66 Matthew Flinders
of both intellectual standards and social impact) a more pressing

matter.
In essence, the challenges that political science currently faces in
terms of demonstrating various forms of ‘impact’, ‘relevance’ and
‘engagement’ are unlikely to diminish in the coming decades and, if
we are honest, they are likely to increase as a pressure that shapes
the nature of higher education from North America to Australasia
and all points in between (see Flinders 2013b). My argument is
therefore that what we might call ‘the impact agenda’ represents an
opportunity, carefully managed, to redefine the discipline in a way
that talks to ‘multiple publics in multiple ways’, to borrow Michael
Burawoy’s (2005) phrase. My argument is not that political scien-
tists should become public intellectuals, nor is it necessary for schol-
ars to compromise their independence or integrity. There is no need
for critical approaches to be tempered and much to be gained by
political theorists who can trespass across boundaries and who
understand ‘the art of translation’. There are – as with day-to-day
politics – no easy or pain-free solutions to complex problems, and
the politics of impact for political science has many dimensions that
have not yet been fully explored (the gendered dimensions and the
risks of locking in pre-existing disciplinary inequalities, the risks
posed by the co-production of knowledge or what might be termed
‘activist scholarship’, the dangers of intellectual exhaustion caused
by the heaping of ever greater and diverse expectations on the
shoulders of academics, etc.) – but my sense is that political science
is currently caught somewhere between ignoring the challenge and
half-heartedly responding to the new agenda. It would achieve far
more by seizing the initiative and seeking to define the agenda itself
through a more coherent and deeper response to its critics by
outlining exactly why and how the study of politics matters. In
some ways those who study politics and who profess to be experts
need to be far smarter in how they strategically manoeuvre the
discipline in terms of (internal) endeavour work and (external)
branding. The simple argument of this chapter is that these internal
and external components must be driven by a rediscovery of the
political imagination.
In order to make this argument this chapter is divided into three
sections. The first section reflects upon the past of the discipline by
identifying what are termed as ‘roads to irrelevance’. The aim of
this section is really to challenge those observers who would draw
great delight in placing the failings of the discipline at the door of
The rediscovery of the political imagination 67
those scholars who have emphasized a scientific episteme and there-

fore generally quantitative techniques. The blame for the ‘tragedy
of political science’ must be accepted by the discipline in toto if it is
to move towards a more vibrant model of engaged scholarship.
Having briefly set out the historical foundations the second and
most substantive section of this chapter teases apart this concept of
‘the political imagination’. Here I make the rather rash and bold
statement – many will inevitably disagree – that whether we like it
or not to be a university professor of politics is to be a political
actor. I also argue that political scientists possess a professional
responsibility or obligation to engage with the public. Such argu-
ments may well be heretical to many but maybe this just reflects
their lack of political imagination. The final section then looks to
the future and suggests that political science needs to become more
amateur (or more specifically, more ‘wobbly’), more optimistic and
more daring.
The road(s) to irrelevance
The first ‘road to irrelevance’ is closely associated with the emer-

gence of modern political or social science (as opposed to political
or social studies) in the second half of the twentieth century. The
attempt to model the study of politics upon the natural sciences was
forged upon the belief that it was not only possible but also desir-
able to isolate ‘facts’ from ‘values’ and, through this, to depoliticize
essentially the study of politics. It was therefore concerned with
disconnecting the social dimension of the study of politics, in terms
of values and morality, from the science of political inquiry, in terms
of data and knowledge. It was for exactly this reason that Mills
used his The Sociological Imagination (1959) to ridicule the rise of
‘grand theory’ and ‘abstracted empiricism’ as ‘parasites living off
the classic social science tradition’. Scholars were, in Mills’s argu-
ment, being corrupted by a false bureaucratic ethos that was turn-
ing them into ‘mere technicians’ at a time when the public was
desperately in need of help to understand the changing times in
which they lived. In The American Science of Politics (1959) Crick
warned similarly against the potentially insulating implications of
viewing the study of politics as a ‘hard’ (i.e. natural-scientific)
science. To push the discipline in that direction was, he argued, to
risk robbing it of its passion, its emotion and its capacity to play a
68 Matthew Flinders
broader social role. In this regard Crick’s position dovetailed with

the concerns of several American scholars at the time, like Thomas
Cook (1960) and Philip Moneypenny (1960), and was therefore
not so much anti-American as anti-scientism.
To accept the view that the behavioural turn sought to depoliti-
cize the study of politics in order to isolate certain facts, patterns or
rules in a pseudo-scientific manner arguably risks missing the more
sinister manner in which political science actually cultivated anti-
politics. The depoliticization of political science is therefore a myth
that in many circumstances veils the imposition of a highly political
set of values about human nature and collective action that could
only ever fuel distrust in politicians and public servants. This is
because if the baseline assumption of political science is that human
beings are interested solely in maximizing their own selfish utility
then the discipline can only ever breed cynicism, distrust and nega-
tivity. Rational choice theory in particular became less of a predic-
tive science of politics or deductive method and more of a
self-fulfilling prophecy. It is for exactly this reason that Colin Hay
(2009: 587) argues that ‘political scientists have contributed signif-
icantly to the demonization of politics … They trained us, in effect,
to be cynical. And in that respect at least, we have been excellent
students’. The point I am trying to make is that if political scientists
have engaged in promoting a message about politics, if they have
been influential and relevant, then it has been in promoting what I
would term ‘the bad faith model of politics’ (see Flinders 2012b). In
this model politicians are inevitably linked to squabbling, self-inter-
est, short-termism, corruption and sleaze; they are, in short, not to
be trusted. If politicians represent the epitome of evil then all
contact and cooperation with them by academics must be avoided.
The dominant intellectual shift within political science from the
1950s and 1960s onwards was therefore a rejection in the progres-
sive social tradition that had shaped the discipline from its incep-
tion. This is a tradition that was defined by the work of A.
Lawrence Lowell, Woodrow Wilson, Frank Goodnow, Albert
Bushnell Hart and Charles Beard in the United States; and in which
the work of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, R. H. Tawney and Harold
Laski was steeped in the UK. This was also the ‘classic tradition’
that Mills and Crick sought to defend against what they saw as the
pro-market and anti-political values that were concealed beneath
the claims to ‘objectivity’ and ‘neutrality’ of modern political
science. With this in mind it is possible to pinpoint both the passive
and active contributions of political science to the rise in political

disengagement and apathy. In an active sense political science’s core
values taught us that politicians and bureaucrats were not to be
trusted. Indeed, arguably the most influential strand of political
science in recent years has been that community of scholars which
has advocated the ‘logic of discipline’ and the depoliticization of
democratic politics (for a review and critique of this field, see
Roberts 2010). This logic, simply put, defines politicians as too
easily tempted to interfere in ‘rational’ policy-making due to the
pressures of democratic politics and has therefore fuelled the mass
transfer of functions from elected politicians to a new cadre of
experts, specialists, scientists, ethicists, judges and accountants.
The active ‘road to irrelevance’ is therefore tied to a normative form
of anti-politics that advocates the hollowing out of the architecture
of democracy due to the ‘bad faith model of politics’.
The vast majority of political scientists, however, were not swept
up in the behavioural revolution; many retained a commitment to a
pluralistic methodology and a humanistic set of values. For the
most part, therefore, the culpability of most social and political
scientists relates more to a sin of omission than to the existence of
anti-political sentiment. The passive ‘road to irrelevance’ is there-
fore concerned with the evolution of a discipline in which certain
activities are prioritized and incentivized far above all others. The
dominant interpretation of ‘professionalism’ in the social sciences,
in general, and in all facets of political science, in particular, has
therefore become tied to a culture of ‘publish or perish’ in which
few incentives exist for broader social engagement. The ‘tragedy of
political science’, as David Ricci (1984) argued three decades ago, is
therefore that as the study of politics became more ‘professional’
and ‘scientific’, the weaker it became in terms of both its social rele-
vance and accessibility and as a social force supportive of democ-
racy and democratic values. In a sense the social and political
relevance of the study of politics simply melted away and was
replaced with a malignant (and to some extent embarrassing)
preoccupation with methodological masturbation, theoretical
fetishism, sub-disciplinary Balkanization and the development of
esoteric discourses. (Mick Billig’s Learn to Write Badly: How to
Succeed in the Social Sciences (2013) offers a particularly devastat-
ing critique of this latter feature of modern scholarship.)
And in making such strident accusations I am by no means a lone
scholar. Theda Skocpol, for example, has underlined the need for
70 Matthew Flinders
ambition, energy and fresh-thinking within the disciple and has

defined the current state of the art as being defined by ‘navel gazing
and talking to ourselves’ (see Flinders 2013a). Robert Putnam has
similarly highlighted the need for the discipline to reconnect and to
‘focus on things that the rest of the citizens of our country are
concerned about’ (quoted in Jaschik 2010). The problem is,
however, that the dominant scholarly tradition of political science –
and I mean of the whole discipline – rejects such an emphasis and as
a result, as Joseph Nye (2009) has argued, ‘the danger is that polit-
ical science is moving in the direction of saying more and more
about less and less’. And the fact that Nye made these comments
not in an academic journal or professional magazine but in the New
York Times (20 October 2009) illustrates the manner in which the
issue of relevance has mutated from a disciplinary sideshow to a
very public debate (quoted in Cohen 2009). Peter Riddell, the
former political commentator for The Times and currently Director
of the Institute for Government, wrote in 2010 that:
to read many political science journals is to enter an enclosed and

often narcissistic world of academics writing for each other. It is
self-referential as well as self-reverential, and often unreadable to
anyone but a specialist. Real politicians seldom feature in these
articles. Indeed the authors seem to feel they would be corrupted
by contact with politicians. But politics is not, or should not be,
about mathematics or neo-Marxist jargon. Some political scien-
tists do try to bridge the gap with the world of politics. But they
are a minority. (2010: 551)
The intellectual origins of what I have termed ‘the road to irrele-

vance’, or what Mills described with his typical flourish as ‘the
entrance into fruitlessness’ (1959: 74), are both complex and long-
standing and to some extent this is a path that has been trodden by
a range of social sciences. It is for exactly this reason that Shapiro
uses the metaphor of flying to describe a common sense of discon-
nectedness across the social sciences in general, and within political
science in particular. To fly is therefore to feel a heady sort of free-
dom and manoeuvrability, a feeling that what you write actually
matters and a belief in your capacity to take risks, challenge estab-
lished idioms and reach out to new audiences. The metaphor of
flying is therefore intimately entwined with the political imagina-
tion. Too many academics have become scared of flying for fear of
being ridiculed for being insufficiently specific or rigorous, or

rejected by the intellectual gatekeepers who have built their careers
on a specific approach to the discipline and now edit journals or
chair selection panels. The tragedy of political science is therefore
that it has lost its political imagination.
The political imagination
When did you last read a piece of political science that filled you
with what the Greeks called entheos – that is a sense of inspiration,
release or connection with the text? Some professors might argue
that as a scholarly endeavour concerned with the pursuit of pure
and detached knowledge political science should not be concerned
with inspiring, releasing or connecting; and if they hold this posi-
tion they have surely lost their political imagination: they are dead
in intellectual terms and have become little more than (naive and
misguided) technicians. At best we have embraced relevance half-
heartedly and even begrudgingly, but we need to make it fuel our
imaginations. The arguments of Wright Mills’s seminal work The
Sociological Imagination (1959) matter more today than they did
when the book was first published over half a century ago, and they
matter most to political science. They demand of it three things:
1. the task and the promise of the political imagination is to form

and sustain social and political relationships (i.e. bridging);
2. the political imagination therefore demands that political scien-
tists talk and write in ‘human’ (i.e. accessibility);
3. the political imagination is both optimistic and relevant (i.e.
morality).
What mattered then was the idea that social scientists had a moral
and political obligation to society at large; an obligation to help
people make sense of an increasingly complex world. This was both
the promise and the task of the political imagination.
The task and the promise (i.e. bridging)

The central role and value of the political imagination rests in its
capacity to help both the governors and the governed to understand
the broader social and political milieu. It is therefore concerned not
72 Matthew Flinders
with necessarily providing simple solutions to complex problems

but in helping individuals to make sense of their position in the
world and the nature of the challenges that confront them in a way
that forges some form of reconnection. Scholarly knowledge, from
this perspective, has academic value in its own right, but it also has
(or should have) a social value in the sense of a meaningful rele-
vance, demonstrable impact or simply some visibility beyond acad-
eme. It is exactly this broader visibility, and the skills (both
intellectual and professional) that are necessary to achieve it, that
the ‘road to irrelevance’ has destroyed.
Let me inject a little story to burnish this point. During 2009 and
2010 I wrote and presented a series of programmes for the BBC that
sought to explain both the challenges of governing in the twenty-
first century and also the reasons for the rise in political apathy
and disengagement amongst the public (see www.bbc.co.uk/
programmes/b015fb6c). As part of this project I interviewed former
presidents and prime ministers from all over the world, a vast
number of serving politicians and senior officials, a broad sweep of
social commentators, comedians, satirists, interest group represen-
tatives and journalists and – last but not least – a significant number
of members of the public. My set of interview questions initially
included one about the relevance of political science with the aim of
gauging how relevant or visible any particular professor, book or
piece of research about politics had been to the day-to-day activities
of any of the interviewees. With almost perfect consistency this
question received the following responses: blank bewilderment
(from the public); polite embarrassment (from serving officials and
politicians); and a mixture of laughter and ridicule for even asking
the question (from all other social commentators). The question
was quickly dropped.
Mills (1959) begins The Sociological Imagination with the state-
ment that ‘nowadays men often feel that their private lives are a
series of traps’ because they exist in a period of far-reaching social,
political and economic change but lack the means and resources to
understand how and why these changes affect their lives and what
might be done. Fifty years later and with the benefit of hindsight
Mills’s ‘earthquakes of change’ appear almost insignificant when
set against the challenges that will define the twenty-first century
(resource depletion, over-population, climate change, bio-politics,
economic crisis, etc.); and this is reflected in the fact that the analy-
sis of risk and what might be termed ‘the politics of crisis’ have
evolved to become almost self-standing disciplines in their own

right. In this context Bauman’s (e.g. 2006, 2007) work on liquidity
and Giddens’s (2002) work on a ‘runaway world’ with their
converging foci on the erosion of once solid points of social anchor-
age takes on added import as both a form of contextual shorthand
and as a point of departure into the political imagination. A point
of departure in the sense that encourages – even forces us – to fly (to
return to Shapiro’s powerful metaphor).
To possess and display the political imagination is therefore to
combine the very highest standards of scholarship with the ability
to demonstrate why it matters in social terms. Not necessarily why
it matters in the instrumental sense of having the capacity to
change government policy or produce profit, but why it matters in
the sense of being in some way relevant to the ordinary lives of men
and women. Those who possess the political imagination are
therefore able to see the bigger picture in terms of structural trans-
formations in society (political, economic, technological, psycho-
logical, etc.) but who are then able to use this knowledge not only
as a contribution to academic knowledge but as a contribution to
society in the sense of being able to help the public make sense of
the world around them and to understand their position within the
broader social milieu. ‘For that imagination is the capacity to shift
from one perspective to another … it is the capacity to range from
the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most inti-
mate features of the human self – and to see the relations between
the two’ (Mills 1959: 7). In this sense the political imagination
cannot promise to give individuals greater control over their lives
but it does offer a form of linkage and a way of cultivating social
understanding and political literacy. Put slightly differently, it
enables the university professor of politics to help the individual
grasp his or her place in the world and through this ‘the indiffer-
ence of publics’ might be ‘transformed into involvement with
public issues’ (ibid.: 5).
The political imagination is therefore structured around a twin
commitment to the very highest standards of scholarship (in terms
of rigour, ambition and creativity) and an equally robust commit-
ment to demonstrating the relevance of that scholarship across soci-
ety. As mentioned before, the paradox of our time and the tragedy
of political science is that it has honoured neither of these commit-
ments. If the content of our leading journals really does reflect the
highest standards of scholarship then we are in trouble; and at the
74 Matthew Flinders
same time repeated public demands that political scientists learn to

‘talk human’ reflects the triumph of what Mills called ‘socspeak’
(i.e. opaque, indigestible syntactical and semantic sludge) over clear
English. It is this focus on the use of English that brings us to shift
our attention from bridging to accessibility.
Political and social engagement (i.e. accessibility)

I want to return to how social and political scientists interpret the
world in the next sub-section but here I simply want to focus on the
issue of communication and accessibility because there is no sense
in promoting the theme of bridging or linkage or emphasizing the
professional obligations of university professors of politics to the
public if what flows along that bridge is incomprehensible. This is a
point I have already made, but its importance cannot be over-
stated: there are two major hurdles that political science must clear
if it is to develop a greater relevance and social impact. The first of
these revolves around the issues of language, clarity and deceit.
Albert Einstein famously suggested that ‘any fool can make the
simple complex but it takes a real genius to discuss complex issues
in simple terms’. If this is true then political science urgently needs
more geniuses. This point, of course, takes us back to the history
and ‘professionalization’ of the discipline, but I fear I must ask of
much modern political science whether there is actually any fire
beneath the smoke? Is much of our scholarship simply confused
verbiage or is there, after all, something there? The answer, I think,
is: something is there but it is buried so deep and it demands so
much in terms of translation that what that germ of relevance actu-
ally is or why it matters is rarely uncovered.
Smoke without fire; topics without argument; irrelevant
ponderosity; methodological introductions to methodology; theo-
retical introductions to theory; and neologisms aplenty. These are
quite indispensable to the writing of books by men or women with-
out ideas. As is a lack of intelligibility. The ultimate web of deceit is
to veil one’s intellectual impotence through the use of jargon and
verbiage in the hope that the reader will interpret their failure to
penetrate the book as evidence of their own intellectual weakness,
rather than that of the authors. The complexity of the language
used to study and write about politics is, from this interpretation,
rarely related to the complexity of the phenomenon or topic of
analysis. In this regard Mills’s translation of segments of Talcott
Parsons’s The Social System (1951) into plain English provided a

devastating insight into the art of abstraction. Sixty years later the
direction of travel of much academic writing has been towards far
greater jargon-spew, even in those sub-disciplines, like public
administration, legislative studies and comparative government,
that traditionally enjoyed a far closer relationship with practition-
ers and plain English.
Critics of my position will undoubtedly argue that political
science, as a professional discipline, will inevitably require the use
of certain technical terms or phrases that are understandably not
within the mainstream public vocabulary. This, again, is rarely
more than a smokescreen. Technical terms will, of course, have to
be used from time to time, but ‘technical’ does not necessarily mean
difficult, and certainly does not mean jargon. Political science has
become a discipline built on jargon; and if technical terms are really
necessary and also clear and precise, it is not difficult to use them in
the context of plain English and thus introduce them meaningfully
to the reader. Critics may at this point engage in a far more sinister
and hurtful form of criticism and accuse me of advocating the
demotion of academic scholarship into little more than pseudo-
journalism. This sideswipe will be couched upon the implicit
suggestion that I am obviously unable to grasp the intellectual
magnitude of their work and am therefore trying to lower the stan-
dard of political science towards my own inferior level. The curse of
political science, a curse that both Mills and Crick endured, is to
become identified as a ‘mere literary man’ or, worse still, to have
their work defined as ‘mere journalism’. Any academic who dares
to write in a widely intelligible way, let alone engages with televi-
sion or radio, is liable to be condemned in this manner. This reflects
a rather superficial logic. Accessibility and scholarly quality do not
exist in a zero-sum relationship whereby an increase in one
inevitably leads to a reduction in the other.
Has nobody noticed that the most influential and enduring
works of political science – from Machiavelli’s The Prince to Crick’s
Defence – are generally short, concise and accessible? Readable
does not mean superficial and those that belittle such works are
really demonstrating their own lack of a political imagination. A
lack of ready intelligibility rarely has anything to do with the
complexity of the subject matter and very rarely anything to do
with the profundity of thought at play. It has, as Mills argued, to do
almost entirely with certain confusions of the academic writer
76 Matthew Flinders
about his or her own status and intellectual insecurity around those
less conventional scholars who might dare to reveal that the
Emperor has no new clothes. To define academic work that is both
scholarly and accessible to a wide audience as ‘journalistic’ is akin
to the academic closing of ranks on the part of the mediocre who
understandably wish to exclude those who possess the ability to
talk to both ‘kings and publics’. In any case the broader pressure to
tie the public funding of the social sciences to clearer outputs in
terms of relevance and impact requires political science to move far
beyond its historical pretensions and aversions and instead learn to
diversify in terms of its research outputs. Political science needs to
work not harder but smarter; smarter in the sense of recognizing
that the next generation of political scientists will have to master
the art of triple-writing (a technique of writing and dissemination
that cascades the outputs of any research project along a three-part
process):
• Phase 1: research results, findings and implications are written

up into traditional academic outputs like books and articles (i.e.
single-writing).
• Phase 2: the same research then forms the basis of a short
research note that is intended to be both accessible and of value
to a range of user-groups (i.e. double-writing).
• Phase 3: in the final stage the research forms the focus of a
number of succinct, pithy and even controversial articles for
newspapers, magazines or popular websites (i.e. triple-writing).
Triple-writing therefore provides a way of bridging the academic

and public spheres without diluting academic standards. The chal-
lenge stems from the fact that the professional incentives of the
discipline still reflect the centrality of single-writing but that situa-
tion is slowly changing as funding, and to a lesser extent student
recruitment, become linked to demonstrable impact, relevance and
public visibility. The climate is therefore one that will increasingly
reward those who possess the political imagination because double
and triple-writing demands creativity, vision, the capacity to take
risks and even a certain playfulness of mind. The real challenge of
triple-writing, however, is that it requires skills and attributes –
ways of looking at the world – that established political scientists
have either lost or never had and that new entrants to the profession
are rarely encouraged to develop at the beginning of their careers. It
also demands that scholars understand the notion of intellectual

craftsmanship and the need to approach their political writing in
terms of it being an art as well as a science. Those interested in the
notion of political writing as an art form would do well to read
George Orwell’s Why I Write or Politics and the English Language
(both first published in 1946). ‘What I have most wanted to do’,
Orwell wrote, ‘is to make political writing into an art’. The link
with the contemporary state of political science flows out of his
following comment that ‘looking back through my work, I see that
is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless
books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without
meaning, decorative adjectives, and humbug generally’. Orwell,
like Bernard Crick and C. Wright Mills, understood the notion of
entheos; and this existed at the root of his approach to writing but
it also depended on having some broader sense of political purpose.
It is for exactly this reason that the third and final argument
concerning the political imagination focuses on political morality
and values vis-à-vis political science.
Optimistic and relevant (i.e. morality)
1. Political science needs to dare to engage with ‘the political’ in the

sense of engaging with relevant norms, values and debates in the
public sphere.
2. This is quite different to suggesting that political scientists
should become partisan political actors.
3. A deep cloud of depression and irrelevance has settled upon
large sections of the discipline and this will only be cast off by
focusing not on problems and ‘end times’ but on solutions and
‘new beginnings’.
The first argument takes us back to the ‘road(s) to irrelevance’ that

was mapped out in the previous section. This suggested that politi-
cal science had grown increasingly detached, isolated and irrelevant
due to a disciplinary attempt to separate ‘facts’ and ‘values’. This
allowed me to suggest that an attempt had been made to take ‘the
politics’ out of the study of politics. Although this trend was
initially interpreted as a form of depoliticization this was quickly
rejected, by scholars such as Ian Shaprio (1996), in favour of an
argument that identified the imposition of an implicitly pro-market
and anti-political set of values beneath a veneer of objective and
78 Matthew Flinders
value-free research. At the same time those who rejected the onto-
logical and epistemological claims of behaviouralism are guilty of
their own sins of omission in the sense that they allowed themselves
to become invisible political actors at a time when democratic poli-
tics needed them. They were invisible because political scientists
retreated into their offices and abdicated their professional (and
professorial) responsibilities to the public. The vehicle of their abdi-
cation was, as Mills and Crick both stressed, an increased emphasis
on cloudy obscurantism, empty ingenuity and the production of
millions of words about nothing or, at best, very little. As a result,
political science drifted towards irrelevance because it had very
little that actually mattered to say. It had no message and it had no
soul.
If a connection exists between the health of democratic politics
and the health of political science it follows that the latter must have
something of value to say about the former. Political scientists must
play a more active and visible role in major debates about the
nature of society, the distribution of scarce resources, the need for
reforms or the challenges ahead. They must, in a sense, stand up
and be counted as political actors. And yet many political scientists
would baulk at the suggestion that they possessed a moral and
political obligation to society at large. Many would hide behind the
shield that to make such an argument risked politicizing the profes-
sion. To raise this shield would, however, be to fall into a trap that
has held political science back from realizing its potential for at
least 50 years.
A university professor of politics is a political actor. No
research or writing is genuinely free from political bias, and even
the idea that political science should have nothing to do with
values, or that it is necessary to separate ‘knowledge’ from
‘action’, is itself a political attitude. Gabriel Almond (1988) was
undoubtedly correct when he wrote that ‘the uneasiness in the
political science profession is not of the body but of soul’, though
he was undoubtedly wrong when he conflated all political action
and engagement as partisan political engagement. Arguing in
favour of political scientists playing an active role in day-to-day
political debates was, for Almond, the intellectual equivalent of
‘throwing in the sponge’ for a discipline that was (or should be)
focused on ‘objectivity’. Moreover, anyone who challenged this
position must not only be ‘anti-professional’ but also ‘in doubt as
to whether they are scholars or politicians’. Although such simplis-
tic assumptions may have held sway in the twentieth century they
hold little value in the twenty-first. The political imagination is not
interested in big ‘P’ party politics and is concerned with defending
not specific politicians, decisions or arguments but the process and
values of democratic politics. It is concerned with the promotion of
democratic values, with social understanding and political literacy
and with the encouragement of democratic engagement.
Defending politics is therefore very different from defending
specific politicians or parties, just as defending the role of politicians
(an essentially invidious and painful profession) is quite different
from having any obligation to defend the specific behaviour of any
specific politician. Almond’s arguments therefore risk conflating a
number of issues that urgently need to be teased apart. This, in turn,
leaves us with a sudden sense that maybe political science does have a
responsibility to its subject matter that it has largely neglected. To
make this argument deliver is to place this essay firmly and finally
within the contours of Bernard Crick’s classic Defence of Politics.
A rallying cry to the university professors of politics
In this essay I have made an argument of almost primitive simplic-

ity: if political science is to grow and flourish in the twenty-first
century it urgently needs to rediscover its political imagination. In
order to make this argument previous sections have charted both
the ‘road(s) to irrelevance’ and the three main elements of the polit-
ical imagination (i.e. bridging, accessibility and morality). In this
regard I hope to have at least provided some food for thought that
may help you nourish a more positive and constructive approach to
the study of politics. The rest of this chapter is dedicated to fleshing
out these points in just a little more detail. For those too tired or too
full to take any more nourishment, I thank you for your time and
hope that you do not think ill of me for what I have sought to say
within these pages (and let me reassure you that Herod is not in my
heart). For those with the space for just a little more food for
thought let me conclude this essay by seeking to engage with the
scholarship of Bernard Crick as a way of driving home my argu-
ment concerning the political imagination.
If C. Wright Mills possessed the sociological imagination then
Bernard Crick undoubtedly possessed the political imagination;
and to flow from the work of the former to the latter is to develop a
80 Matthew Flinders
certain natural currency or flow. Both men were intellectuals who

were frequently sceptical of intellectuals; both were vigorous
pessimists and despairing optimists; both were polemicists who
engaged in political debates; both were polymaths in terms of their
intellectual breadth; both were mavericks who relished in maintain-
ing something of an ‘outsider’ (or what Mills described as
‘outlander’) status; both were radicals with conservative tendencies;
and both were huge fans of George Orwell’s writing. The central
element of Crick’s scholarship that really interests me in this essay is
his views on the responsibilities of political scientists to promote the
public understanding of politics. Crick’s was therefore a career that
hinged upon the notions of bridging, accessibility and morality.
Indeed, it was Crick’s commitment to these qualities that led directly
to the introduction of compulsory citizenship education in the UK
(and a knighthood for services to political studies). He therefore
maintained throughout his career a distinctive responsibility
towards the academic community to bring illumination, via engage-
ment, to the process and thinking that politics requires. So let me
plunder both his values and scholarship (particularly his ‘A Rallying
Cry to the University Professors of Politics’ that was published as an
appendix to the second edition of his In Defence of Politics in 1964)
in order to underscore my argument about the relationship between
the health of democratic politics and the health of political science.
Could it be that political science is in poor health because it failed to
nourish and sustain democratic politics in the public sphere? Surely it
cannot be long before Crick’s Defence of Politics and Riddell’s
Defence of Politicians are joined by a Defence of Political Science? It
would take a braver (or more foolish) man or woman than me to try
and defend political science as it has been undertaken in recent
decades. As the end result would probably be both slim in form and
weak in content, let me use Crick’s ‘rallying cry’ and his emphasis on
political understanding as a way of rediscovering the soul of the disci-
pline. In short, let me sign off by making three provocative arguments:
1. Political Science needs to become more amateur (or ‘wobbly’).

2. Political Science needs to become more optimistic.
3. Political Science needs to become more daring.
The study of politics has, in recent decades, become gripped by the

pathology of rampant professionalization. Indeed the mantra of
almost every sub-disciplinary association or group has generally
been wrapped around a commitment to ‘greater professionaliza-

tion’. For example, Michael Freeden’s (2008) call for political theo-
rists to step away from the kinds of ‘public intellectual’ stance that
Crick and others have played and to pursue a more analytical
approach to everyday politics can be seen as signalling a retreat
from the sense of public responsibility which Crick urged upon the
scholarly community. Jeff Gill and Kenneth Meier (2000: 195) have
similarly set forth what they call a ‘methodological manifesto’ for
the field of public administration and have suggested the field has
‘fallen behind related fields in terms of methodological sophistica-
tion’ and what is needed is ‘a greatly enhanced focus on empiricism
and rigorous quantitative approaches’. The concept of ‘profession-
alization’ has therefore become tied to a certain idiom that arguably
grates, without careful management, against the demands of the
political imagination. It is an idiom that tends to promote quantifi-
cation, specialization, jargon, distance and a faux form of depoliti-
cization that leaves me with the inevitable conclusion that if this is
professionalization then political science needs a large and urgent
dose of amateurism.
Amateurism not in a pejorative sense, however, but in the sense
of returning to a proud social science tradition in which the gap
between political science and political reality is less wide; amateur
in the sense of a form of political writing that is widely accessible;
and amateur in the sense of possibly possessing more drive, ambi-
tion and creativity than those who have been tightly schooled
within a rather dry and lifeless academic tradition. It was exactly
this sense of ‘flying’ that Crick appealed to in his ‘rallying cry’ and
that Mills referred to when he defined himself as being personally
and intellectually ‘wobbly’. In my interpretation of taking pride in
being ‘an amateur’ is to rejoice in Mills’s commitment to being
‘wobbly’ in the sense of refusing to be bound by academic or profes-
sional dogma. ‘I am a Wobbly, personally, down deep, and for
good. I am outside the whale, and I got that way through social
isolation and self-help’ (Mills 2000: 252). Where are those young
political scientists that are willing to exist ‘outside the whale’?
Where are those young scholars who exist to inject colour into what
has become a very grey discipline?
To suggest that political science has become a rather grey disci-
pline is surely beyond dispute and flows into my second concluding
argument concerning optimism. The discipline has become not just
a dismal science but also a very depressing science in the sense that
82 Matthew Flinders
it has become imbued, as Andrew Gamble (2000) has argued, not

only with a deep pessimism but also with a focus on ‘endism’ in all
its forms (‘the end of politics’, ‘the end of authority’, ‘the end of
history’, etc.). Although much of this literature highlights impor-
tant social, economic or political trends in the starkest of terms it
does little in terms of identifying solutions or promoting confidence
in the capacity of collective democratic engagement to respond.
Fate and our future have acquired an unfortunate association with
death, destruction and impotence that for some reason completely
overlooks the massive achievements of democratic politics during
the twentieth century. A new political science for the twenty-first
century might therefore adopt a more optimistic – or, at the very
least, a more balanced and solution focused – account of the rela-
tionship between politics and fate. The question for political science
is whether it has the strength of nerve and purpose to play a public
role in explaining why politics matters, how it can and does shape
people’s lives, and how democratic politics can be viewed as a coun-
terweight to the vicissitudes of fate.
Most of all political science needs more individuals that ‘dare to
be a Daniel’ and ‘dare to stand alone’. It takes great courage and
conviction to stand alone and swim against the current of profes-
sional academic opinion, but to some extent the political and social
sciences needs characters, like Mills and Crick, who are willing to
put their heads above the parapet and explain to the public why poli-
tics – and therefore the study of politics – matters. The twenty-first
century will belong to those disciplines that are willing to respond to
the world as it changes, to modernize and adapt and see the loss of
once fixed reference points as an opportunity rather than a threat.
The intellectual craftsman displays a commitment to understanding,
challenging and changing both his or her discipline and the world in
equal measure. The craftsman’s work must be critical and it must
make a difference in the sense of holding on to a belief that the study
of politics can make a difference. It needs to dare to believe in itself.
To advocate such a radical shift in the nature and scope of political
science is not to promote a form of ‘punk politics’ but it is to bring
this chapter full circle and back to where it started and the conclu-
sion that it remains a discipline in search of its soul. With this in
mind it is a great shame that the American Political Science
Association’s task force on political science in the twenty-first
century managed to isolate the responsibility of political scientists to
helping the public make sense of the world around them – ‘arguably
the heart and soul of political science’ – but then proceeded to bury
its head in the professional sand by focusing solely on issues within
the profession rather than the link between the profession and the
wider world. The task force therefore suggests the existence of a
discipline that remains adrift and that urgently needs to rediscover
its political imagination.
Chapter 5
Guilty as charged? Human

well-being and the unsung
relevance of political science
BO ROTHSTEIN
Variations of relevance
The chapters in this volume clearly show that finding an answer to

the question ‘Is political science relevant?’ demands that a more
basic question is solved, namely ‘Relevant for what?’ Many differ-
ent answers could be given to this question. Political science could
be relevant for giving advice on how to win election campaigns,
how politicians should best act so as to get enough support for their
policies in legislative assemblies, when and if state leaders should go
to war or how they should act in international negotiations for best
furthering the interests of their countries, to name a few. In this
approach to the issue of relevance, political scientists are seen as
consultants or advisers to politicians in power who are ‘speaking
truth to power’, to use Aaron Wildavsky’s famous phrase (1987).
The level of the relevance of political science would then be deter-
mined by how successful the policies coming out from this type of
advice are. I do not know of any systematic study of the success rate
for this way of making political science relevant, but if we compare
with our sister discipline, economics, our expectations should be
modest (cf. Krugman 2009; Rodrik 2000, 2013).
Another idea of how to make political science more relevant is
based not on informing the political elite, but the general public.
This is the political scientist as the public intellectual writing op-ed
articles, giving public lectures and commenting upon current polit-
ical affairs in the media. The number of political events that deserve
84
Human well-being and the relevance of political science 85
comments are in principle endless. Was it a good idea to invade

country X? Why is party Y now changing its rhetorical repertoire?
Why is nation Z having such a huge welfare state? What explains
declining trust in government? Here, the level of relevance would be
determined by the question if political scientists can offer some-
thing more, deeper or qualitatively different from what we get from
the astute political journalist or pundit. Since I have ventured (or
sinned?) in this business myself quite a lot, I will refrain from
making any statement about how useful this approach is to making
political science relevant.
Both these (and perhaps several other) approaches to the issue of
the relevance of the discipline have their pros and cons. According to
Mark Lilla (2001), Plato deeply regretted his three journeys to
Syracuse and became convinced that his advice to King (and later
tyrant) Dionysius was completely in vain. My impression is that
many, not least our colleagues in neighbouring subjects, are quite
sceptical about what political scientists have to offer as advice to
political elites or to the general public. Be that as it may, as an alter-
native I would like to offer another idea of what should count as
relevance, namely in what way the discipline can contribute to over-
all human well-being. This idea is based on the increasing availabil-
ity of what has become known as ‘big data’ that can be seen as
measures of various aspects of human well-being, including poverty.
Much of this data comes in the form of ‘one figure per country’,
which is an advantage for political scientists since the nation state is
one of its prime units of analysis. This idea, which actually goes back
to Aristotle’s studies of the 158 city states that he and his students
collected information about, is centred on the idea that there may be
a causal link between how a state is governed and the well-being of
its citizens (or their ‘virtue’ to use Aristotelian terminology). The
standard measures of well-being are of course various so-called
objective measures, such as population health, levels of poverty,
infant mortality and literacy. In addition, a number of interesting so-
called subjective measures are now also available, such as percep-
tions of the level of corruption in one’s country, of social trust, and
of whether people report they are satisfied with their lives (aka
‘happiness’). In addition, there are now also a number of other rank-
ings of countries concerning respect for human rights, gender equal-
ity, innovativeness and competitiveness, to name a few.
As mentioned, these measures come in the form of averages and
can therefore disclose huge variations, not only between individuals
86 Bo Rothstein
and social groups, but also between regions and sectors within a
country. How well they actually measure human well-being can of
course be discussed at length. However, most of us would prefer to
live in a country where few newborns die, most children survive
their fifth birthday, almost all ten-year-olds can read, where people
live a long and reasonably healthy life, where child deprivation is
low, where few women die when giving birth, where the percentage
of people living in severe poverty is low, and where many report
they are reasonably satisfied with their lives (Holmberg 2007). We
may also like to live in a society of which people think the morality
is reasonably high, implying that they perceive corruption to be
fairly uncommon and that ‘most people in general’ can be trusted
(Rothstein 2005b). If that is the case, then the question of whether
political science can be relevant becomes different from the consult-
ant and public intellectual approaches mentioned above. Instead, it
becomes a question of the extent to which the discipline can
contribute to increased human well-being, or to take a lead from a
recent book on this approach: can the discipline contribute to our
understanding of why some societies are more successful than
others (Hall and Lamont 2009)? My first argument is that the
increased focus on the importance of institutions in general and on
government institutions in particular, not only in political science
but also in economics (especially development and environmental
economics), economic history and sociology, dramatically increases
the potential for political science to be of relevance for explaining
the huge differences in human well-being that we can observe
(Holmberg and Rothstein 2012). My second main argument is that
this hugely increased potential for relevance is under-utilized
because of a misdirected focus on what should be the main things
that we as political scientists should try to explain.
Does democracy produce human well-being?
Research about democratization has been a huge enterprise in the

discipline with numerous studies of how, when and why countries
shift from various forms of authoritarian rule to electoral represen-
tative democracies. There has also been a lot to study since the
waves of democracy that have swept over the globe have brought
representative democracy to places where it seemed inconceivable
50 or 30 or even 10 years ago. More countries than ever are now, by

the most sophisticated measures used, classified as being demo-
cratic, and more people than ever live in democracies (Teorell
2010). This is certainly something to celebrate, but there are also
reasons to be disappointed. One example is South Africa that
miraculously managed to end apartheid in 1994, without falling
into a full scale civil war. As Nelson Mandela said in one of his
speeches, ‘the introduction of democracy would not only liberate
people but also greatly improve their social and economic situation’
(Mandela 1994: 414). The available statistics give a surprisingly
bleak picture of this promise. Since 1994, South Africa has not
managed to improve the length of time that children on average go
to school by one single month; economic inequality is as high as in
1994, which means that it remains at a world record level; life-
expectancy is down by almost six years; and the number of women
that die when they give birth has more than doubled (data from
Teorell et al. 2013). Simply put, for many central measures of
human well-being, the South African democracy has not delivered
any positive results.
Another example has been provided by Nobel Laureate Amartya
Sen in an article comparing ‘quality of life’ in China and India. His
disappointing conclusion is that on most standard measures of
human well-being, the communist-autocratic Peoples’ Republic of
China now clearly outperforms liberal and democratically
governed India (Sen 2011). Using a set of 30 standard measures of
national levels of human well-being as well as some variables
known to be related to human well-being such as capacity for taxa-
tion, and including between 75 and 169 countries, Holmberg and
Rothstein (2011b) find only weak, or no, or sometimes even nega-
tive, correlations between these standard measures and the level of
democracy as defined above. Maybe the most compelling evidence
about the lack of positive effects of democracy on human well-
being comes from a recent study on child deprivation by Halleröd
et al. (2013) using data measuring seven aspects of child poverty
(access to safe water, food, sanitation, shelter, education, health
care and information) from 68 low and middle income countries for
no less than 2,120,734 cases (children). The result of this large
study is that there is no positive effect of democracy on the level of
child deprivation for any of the seven indicators. This bleak picture
of the effect of democratization on economic prosperity and other
aspects of human well-being is confirmed by several other recent
88 Bo Rothstein
studies (Doucouliagos and Ulubasoglu 2008; Norris 2012). In sum,

the picture given by available measures is this: representative
democracy is not a safeguard against severe poverty, child depriva-
tion, huge economic inequality, illiteracy, being unhappy or not
satisfied with one’s life, infant mortality, short life expectancy,
maternal mortality, access to safe water or sanitation, gender
inequality, low school attendance for girls, low interpersonal trust
or low trust in Parliament.
Why does democratization not produce better outcomes? One
explanation was given by Larry Diamond in a paper presented
when the National Endowment for Democracy in the United States
celebrated its first 25 years of operations:
There is a specter haunting democracy in the world today. It is

bad governance – governance that serves only the interests of a
narrow ruling elite. Governance that is drenched in corruption,
patronage, favoritism, and abuse of power. Governance that is
not responding to the massive and long-deferred social agenda of
reducing inequality and unemployment and fighting against
dehumanizing poverty. Governance that is not delivering broad
improvement in people’s lives because it is stealing, squandering,
or skewing the available resources. (Diamond 2007: 19)
What Diamond is saying is that democracy is not enough – without

control of corruption and better governance, the life situation for
citizens will not improve. Needless to say, neither Diamond’s nor
my argument is that we should not care about democracy which,
and I’m sure Diamond agrees, is absolutely indispensable. The
argument is that democratization is not enough for increasing
human well-being: without a reasonably high level of administra-
tive capacity in the state, democracy will not deliver.
State capacity, quality of government and human

well-being
If we follow Diamond’s idea about the importance of ‘bad gover-

nance’ and, instead of having the degree of democracy as an explana-
tory variable, turn to measures of a state’s administrative capacity,
quality of government or good governance, the picture of what public
policies can do for human well-being changes dramatically. For
Figure 5.1 Healthy life years vs level of democracy
High
80
Japan
Israel Sweden
Norway
70 Singapore South Korea
Cuba USA
Kuwait Croatia
China Bosnia and Herzegovina
S. Arabia Syria Bahrain Brunei Malaysia Georgia Argentina
Heathy Life Years
Macedonia
Belarus
60 Lebanon Armenia
Egypt Maldives Iran Russia Honduras
Azerbaijan Mongolia
Turkmenistan Tajikistan
Bangladesh Tuvalu
Pakistan Papua New Guinea
50 Iraq Gambia
Laos Cambodia Senegal
Haiti Djibouti Kenya South Africa
Equatorial Guinea Nigeria
Cameroon Chad Ethiopia
40 Tanzania
Rwanda Mali
Afghanistan Mozambique Botswana
Zimbabwe Liberia Burundi
Swaziland
Angola
30 Lesotho
Sierra Leone
Low
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Low Level of Democracy High
R2 = 0.01.
89
Sources: World Health Organization; Freedom House/Polity; data runs by Richard Svensson.
Figure 5.2 Healthy life years vs control of corruption
90
High
80
Japan
Spain Australia Sweden
Greece Italy Belgium Switzerland
70 Finland
Panama Slovenia USA
Cuba Denmark
Argentina Chile
Slovakia
Syria Bahamas
Heathy Life Years
Paraguay Ecuador Antigua and Barbuda

60
Russia Grenada
Solomon Islands Guatemala Mongolia
Myanmar Tuvalu Bhutan
Kiribati
50 Iraq
Yemen Ghana
Haiti Djibouti South Africa

Nigeria
40 Ethiopia
Mali
Afghanistan Botswana
Mozambique Swaziland
Zimbabwe Angola
30 Lesotho
Sierra Leone
Low
–2 –1 0 1 2 3
Low corruption Control of Corruption High corruption
R2 = 0.44.
Sources: World Health Organization; World Bank; data runs by Richard Svensson.
example, the above mentioned study on child deprivation finds

strong effects of measures of quality of government on four out of
seven indicators on child deprivation (lack of safe water, malnutri-
tion, lack of access to health care and lack of access to information),
when controlling for GDP per capita and a number of basic individ-
ual-level variables (Halleröd et al. 2013). A study of how corrup-
tion impacts five different measures of population health finds
similar strong effects, also when controlling for economic prosper-
ity and democracy (Holmberg and Rothstein 2011b). Other studies
largely confirm that various measures of a state’s administrative
capacity, quality of government, levels of corruption and other
measures of ‘good governance’ have strong effects on almost all
standard measures of human well-being, including subjective meas-
ures of life satisfaction (happiness) and social trust (Holmberg et al.
2009; Norris 2012; Ott 2010). Recent studies also find that absence
of violence in the form of interstate and civil wars are strongly
affected by measures of quality of government and more so than by
the level of democracy (Lapuente and Rothstein 2014; Norris 2012;
Öberg and Melander 2005). Figures 5.1 and 5.2 show two simple
scatterplots that illustrate the huge variation in correlations
between a measure of democracy and a measure of ‘bad gover-
nance’ for one central aspect of human well-being, namely expected
years of healthy life.
As can be seen, the correlation between this measure of human
well-being and the level of democracy is zero, while the correlation
with ‘control of corruption’ is substantial. This result is shown to be
repeated for a large set of other measures of human well-being and
what should generally count as ‘successful societies’ (Holmberg and
Rothstein 2011a; 2011b; Rothstein and Holmberg 2011). It may be
added that the result is also valid for indicators that measure
whether states are able to handle their public finances in a respon-
sible way. While the correlation between Standard & Poor’s credit
ranking of countries and democracy is negligible, the correlation
with levels of corruption is substantial.
Poverty, state capacity and quality of government
As mentioned above, the average measures used in the ranking of

countries can certainly disguise huge internal differences. The issue
of social and economic inequalities has been high on the agenda in
92 Bo Rothstein
political science, not least in studies of the welfare state and in polit-
ical economy. However, also in this area, focus has been almost
completely centred on variables that relate to the ‘input’ side of the
political system, such as the electoral success or failures of left
(right) political parties or different party systems (Iversen and
Soskice 2006; Korpi and Palme 2003). Little attention has been
paid to the quality of the state machinery that is supposed to handle
the often demanding and complicated tasks of implementing social
insurance systems. An example of the importance of this comes
from a recent study by Svallfors (2012). Using survey data for 29
European countries that include questions about the fairness of
public authorities (health sector and tax authorities) as well as ques-
tions about ideological leanings and policy preferences, this study
has shown the following. Citizens in Europe who have a preference
for more economic equality, but who live in a country where they
perceive that the quality of government institutions is low, will in
the same survey indicate that they prefer lower taxes and less social
spending. However, the same ‘ideological type’ of respondent, who
happens to live in a European country where he or she believes that
the authorities implementing policies are basically just and fair, will
answer that he or she is willing to pay higher taxes for more social
spending. To summarize: citizens who live in a country, where they
perceive that corruption or other forms of unfairness in the public
administration is common, are likely to be less supportive of the
idea that the state should take responsibility for policies for
increased social justice, even if they ideologically support such poli-
cies. Given this, it is noteworthy that the Oxford Handbook of the
Welfare State does not have index entries for terms like ‘bureau-
cracy’, ‘administration’, ‘implementation’, ‘public administration’
or ‘corruption’ (Castles 2010).
Does democracy generate political legitimacy?
Some may argue that the normative reasons for representative

democracy should not be performance measures like the ones
mentioned above, but political legitimacy. If people have the right
to change their government through ‘free and fair elections’, they
will find their system of rule legitimate. In regard to this, empirical
research shows even more surprising results, namely that demo-
cratic rights or the feeling of being adequately represented by
elected officials does not seem to be the most important cause

behind people’s perception of political legitimacy. Based on
comparative survey data, several recent studies show that ‘perform-
ance’ or ‘output’ measures, such as control of corruption, govern-
ment effectiveness and the rule of law, trumps democratic rights in
explaining political legitimacy (Gilley 2006; 2009; Gjefsen 2012).
As stated by Bruce Gilley, ‘this clashes with standard liberal treat-
ments of legitimacy that give overall priority to democratic rights’
(2006: 58). Using a different comparative survey dataset, Dahlberg
and Holmberg (2014) conclude in a similar vein that ‘government
effectiveness is of greater importance for citizens’ satisfaction with
the way democracy functions, as compared with factors such as
ideological congruence on the input side. Impartial and effective
bureaucracies matter more than representational devices’. Thus, if
the relevance of political science is about understanding the causes
of political legitimacy, most researchers in this discipline have stud-
ied the parts of the political system that are less relevant.
What does political science want to explain?
The relevance problem of political science can readily be seen from

this ‘input–output’ perspective of the state. First, remarkably, polit-
ical science seems uninterested in having measures of human well-
being as the main dependent variable. Instead, the main part of the
discipline is interested in explaining politics, rather than what the
political machine (i.e. the state) can do (or in many cases is doing)
for people. Thus, most political science tries to explain things like
‘Who wins elections?’, ‘When and why are countries democratiz-
ing?’, ‘Why do parties change their strategy?’ or ‘How do states
negotiate international agreements?’ As recently argued by
Fukuyama (2013), the discipline has paid little attention to the
capacity of the state to do things that actually improve human well-
being. Second, if the relevance of research in political science is
understood in terms of how it may improve human well-being
and/or improve political legitimacy, then political scientists have to
a large extent been focusing on the least important part of the polit-
ical system, namely how the access to power is organized (that is,
electoral and representative democracy and democratization),
ignoring the more important part of the state machinery – how
power is exercised, or, in other words, the quality of how the state
94 Bo Rothstein
manages to govern society. As argued by Fukuyama (2013), this

seems to have been driven by an underlying ideological view
inspired by neo-classical economics, particularly strong in the
United States, which emphasizes the need to limit, check and
control (and also minimize) the state, which is basically seen as a
‘predatory’ organization. In other words, how to tame the beast has
the central focus, not what the animal can achieve.
The result is that the quality of the administrative part of the
state, which we now know is of the utmost importance for increas-
ing human well-being, has been severely under-studied, under-theo-
rized and under-measured in political science. It is also (and maybe
even more) surprising that public administration scholars have
largely ignored this comparative ‘human well-being’ aspect of their
enterprise (cf. Pierre and Peters 2009). In sum, a political science
that ignores empirical studies and that lacks a sound theoretical
conception of the part of the state that is most important for deliv-
ering human well-being (and political legitimacy!) may very well
deserve at least some of the critique of its irrelevance that has lately
been launched against the discipline (Cohen 2009). This should be
seen in light of the fact that most human misery in today’s world is
in all likelihood not caused by a lack of medical technology or treat-
ments, a lack of economic resources or a lack of technical devices.
We have the resources and knowledge for what is needed to create
reasonably good human well-being for the world’s population. The
reason for the massive amounts of social and human misery that
exist today is in all likelihood related to the fact that a majority of
the world’s population lives under dysfunctional government insti-
tutions. Thus, if political science could produce knowledge that
would improve the quality of government, minimize corruption
and increase the state’s administrative capacity, the discipline would
become more relevant to the lives of real existing people and
societies.
Political theory, state capacity and quality of

government
This neglect of the importance of states’ administrative capacity

and the quality of government institutions in general can also be
seen in political theory. One example comes from Richard Arneson
who discusses the issue of whether welfare distribution should be
tailored to people’s preferences. First, he recognizes that this would

perhaps be impossible because we could not imagine public
authorities with the capacity to collect and use the amount of
information necessary to accomplish such a task. Nevertheless, he
states that he will ‘ignore these practical feasibility problems’ and
instead ‘assume that correct and full information regarding
people’s preferences is available at no cost whatsoever to whatever
institutions we establish to implement the principles of distributive
justice that we accept’ (Arneson 1990: 158f.; see also Cohen
1989). Although such reasoning may be justified as interesting
thought experiments, they are by these political philosophers
launched as policy devices. In general, political philosophers have
been remarkably uninterested in and unaware of the political
importance of the administrative and institutional sides of politics.
When they deal with the question of what the (democratic) state
ought to do to increase social justice, they ignore the problem of
what this state is capable of doing. David Estlund even claims that
political philosophy is easily distorted by an ‘ever present thought
that it might be of practical importance’ (Estlund 2008: 1). As
Wolff states: philosophers tend to ‘fall short of taking up the chal-
lenge of thinking hard about questions of the process and, even
more importantly, consequences of implementation’ (Wolff 2011:
192).
One example comes from an important approach in political
theory known as ‘luck egalitarianism’. Scholars in this approach
argue that citizens should only be compensated by the state for
problems in their lives that they themselves cannot be held respon-
sible for. This main idea is that the differential impact of circum-
stances for which an individual cannot reasonably be held
responsible (‘brute luck’) are to be neutralized, by some type of
public policy, whereas consequences due to the different choices
people make (‘option luck’) are to be left intact. A typical case is
John Roemer’s idea that, when deciding whether people who have
contracted lung cancer should get medical treatment through a
public programme, patients should be divided into classes accord-
ing to whether their smoking was their own responsibility or not.
He argues that the choice to smoke is ‘determined’ by a person’s
social circumstances, such as his or her class, ethnicity, gender,
education, etc. Thus a steel worker would have a much greater
chance of getting his lung cancer treated by society than a female
college professor who, because of her circumstances, decided to
96 Bo Rothstein
smoke – she would have to take full financial responsibility for

getting medical treatment (Roemer 1995; 1996; 1998).
The problem with this approach is that anyone with the slightest
knowledge in research about implementation problems in public
policy would realize that having a bureaucracy that would (a)
collect all this information about citizens and (b) make decisions
based on this mountain of information would create an administra-
tive Leviathan that would severely delegitimize any public health
care insurance system (Rothstein and Uslaner 2005). How could
the information and integrity problems for solving the problem of
personal responsibility for issues like obesity, venereal diseases and
injuries from dangerous sport activities be solved? What type of
administration could handle the issue of whether unemployment is
due to ‘brute luck’, for which the individual has the right to receive
unemployment insurance, or as a result of choices, for which the
individual should be held responsible, such as not showing enough
effort in acquiring new skills, following the changes in the global
economy (Risse 2002)? I wish the ‘luck egalitarians’ the best of luck
with solving these issues because they will certainly need it. In sum,
the policies that would follow from luck egalitarians, such as
Arneson, Cohen and Roemer, are likely to result in implementation
nightmares that, from what is very well known from empirical
research, would create a political majority against increased efforts
for social justice. The ethics of disregarding this knowledge is
comparable to medical researchers who would ignore well-known
dangerous side effects when they prescribe new drugs or treat-
ments. To paraphrase the noted Holocaust scholar Yehuda Bauer,
the troublesome issue is whether political science (and other
academic disciplines) is still ‘producing technically competent
barbarians’ (Rothstein 2005a).
Empirical measures of the relevance problem in

political science
Can this neglect in large parts of political science of issues relating

to the output side of the political machinery be empirically verified?
The answer is yes. I have looked at two sources that should capture
what political scientists are interested in. The first is the article data-
base Thomson’s Web of Science. I searched for articles published
during the last 20 years (since 1993) that have the term ‘corruption’
as a keyword in the title or in the abstract. This produced more than

8,000 articles which I then sorted by the number of times they had
been cited. The highest cited article published in a political science
journal is placed as no. 42. Higher up on the list, the dominance of
articles published in economic journals is overwhelming. The
picture that comes out of this search is that economics completely
dominates the field of corruption research, with 33 articles scoring
higher than the most cited article by political scientists. This is also
seen from the fact that, during the two decades 1990–2010, the
flagship journal of the discipline, the American Political Science
Review (APSR), published only six articles about corruption out of
a total of 904. Another quite telling example is that, out of the 211
articles published by the APSR during the last five years (2009–13),
only one has the term ‘poverty’ in the abstract, as a keyword or in
the title. The same surprisingly low result goes for the terms ‘human
welfare’, ‘human development’ and ‘infant mortality’. The scores
for ‘literacy’ and ‘life satisfaction’ are zero (data from the author’s
own search of Thomson’s Web of Science, 10 December 2013).
Obviously, these central measures of human welfare are issues that
the leading journal in the discipline, and those who publish in it,
find uninteresting and/or irrelevant.
It should be added that it was economists and not political scien-
tists who in the late 1990s gave attention to the devastating effects
that ‘bad governance’ had on development (La Porta et al. 1999;
North 1990; Rodrik 2000). On the one hand political science
should be grateful and applaud the interests economists now put on
the importance of political institutions and good governance for
development (Acemoglu and Robinson 2012; Rodrik et al. 2004).
On the other hand, I would argue that leaving the issue of what
should count as ‘good government’ to economists is a little like
giving the full responsibility of how to conduct wars to the generals.
I believe the historical record shows this has turned out to be a bad
idea.
The second source for the argument that political science has
neglected issues about a state’s administrative capacity and the
quality of government are the many ‘handbooks’ that have been
published during the last decade in various fields of the discipline.
In the following list, none of the ten such handbooks includes a
chapter or even a section of a chapter that deals with issues of how
a state’s administrative capacity and the quality of government
relate to human well-being. However, the Handbook of
98 Bo Rothstein
Comparative Politics does have a chapter that to some extent deals

with this issue (entitled ‘The Poor Performance of Poor
Democracies’), but it is, symptomatically, written by an economist.
1. The Oxford Handbook of Political Science

2. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics
3. The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy
4. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Institutional Analysis
5. The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory
6. The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State
7. The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy
8. The Oxford Handbook of Political Institutions
9. The Oxford Handbook of Political Behavior
10. The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics
Eight of these huge volumes do not even have an index entry for the
term ‘corruption’ (the exceptions are the Political Economy and the
Political Behavior handbooks). The Oxford Handbook of Political
Science does have two index entries on ‘poverty’ but over 50 for
‘participation’ and more than a hundred that begins with the term
‘party’. The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics also has
two entries for ‘poverty’ but over 50 for ‘preferences’ and not a
single entry for ‘corruption’. Since American political science, at
least quantitatively, is so dominant in the discipline, it is notewor-
thy that, according to Michael Johnston, ‘American political
science as an institutionalized discipline has remained steadfastly
uninterested in corruption for generations’ (Johnston 2006: 809).
Given the detrimental effects that corruption has on all standard
measures of human well-being, including poverty, and how preva-
lent corruption, according to all standard measures, is in most
countries in the world, this ignorance is nothing less than astonish-
ing. This is all the more surprising since three of the most acclaimed
books in the field during the last 25 years have put forward the
importance of state capacity. In Protecting Mothers and Soldiers,
Theda Skocpol (1992) explained why the United States failed to
develop a northern European type of welfare state by emphasizing
the corruption and other forms of malpractices that tainted the
implementation of the war veterans’ pensions scheme after the Civil
War. In Making Democracy Work, when measuring the quality of
democracy in Italy’s regions, half of the indicators Robert Putnam
(1993) used were about administrative capacity. Also, in her
‘modern classic’ Governing the Commons, Nobel Laureate Elinor

Ostrom (1990) placed much emphasis on the relation between high
levels of social trust in the local communities she analysed and their
ability to create legitimate administrative arrangements for prevent-
ing the overuse of their common natural resources.
Interestingly, the newly published Oxford Handbook of
Mexican Politics has about 50 entries for corruption in its index. It
should also be added that political scientists have been interested in
‘clientelism’; however, this is usually understood as various forms
of vote-buying and not related to issues about a state’s administra-
tive capacity or quality of government (Kitschelt and Wilkinson
2007; Stokes 2007). In sum, the picture that comes out of these
handbooks, which in total amounts to around 7,000 pages, is clear.
Political scientists are very interested in ‘politics’ but they are not
that interested in what politics implies for the well-being of citizens.
Secondly, political science is dominated by scholars who are inter-
ested in the ‘input’ side of the political system but largely ignorant
of the part that has to make sure that whatever policies decided
upon are also implemented in an orderly, fair, efficient and impar-
tial manner. Since the quality of the latter, as shown above, has very
important implications, not only for human well-being as such, but
also for the possibility of obtaining broad-based political support
for policies that may increase human well-being, this indicates that
those who have argued that the discipline lacks relevance may be, at
least partly, right.
Theory: why state capacity and quality of

government generate human well-being
The argument that a state’s administrative capacity, control of

corruption and quality of government is central for development
and human well-being is certainly not just based on empirical find-
ings. What can be seen as the ‘institutional turn’ in the social
sciences gives ample theoretical support for the existence of a strong
causal link between ‘good’ administrative institutions and human
well-being. The central idea is that, in order to be ‘successful’ in
producing high levels of human well-being, societies need a much
larger pool of public goods than has generally been understood in
neo-classical economics and rational choice oriented political
science (Hall and Lamont 2009). As argued by North et al. (2009:
100 Bo Rothstein
11), this does not only include things like the rule of law, secure
property rights and physical infrastructure. In addition, they argue
that goods like education, public health and social insurance
programmes should be added to the list of public goods that soci-
eties need in order to prosper. Moreover, they also argue that
successful societies have much larger governments (as seen as the
percentage of GDP that is public spending) than the less successful
societies. As Rodrik et al. have argued, developing countries lack a
large set of good public institutions ‘that economists usually take
for granted, but which are conspicuous by their absence in poor
countries’ (Rodrik et al. 2000: 4). This is not only a problem for
developing or former communist countries. Available measures of
corruption and quality of government show huge variation within
Europe. Moreover, countries like Greece and Italy now score lower
than several African countries.
The causal link between quality of government and human well-
being can be thought of as follows. Creating and maintaining a
large enough supply of public goods is by and large a ‘trust game’.
First, since public goods usually have to be paid for by taxes, citi-
zens must trust that most other citizens are actually paying their
taxes. Second, they must also trust that most other citizens will not
overuse or abuse the public goods in question. Third, they must also
trust that those in charge of managing the public goods can be
trusted not to subvert them to private goods (that is, engage in
corruption). Social (or generalized) trust is thus the key, and here
the empirical evidence is for once clear. Societies that have higher
levels of social trust also have higher levels of human well-being
(Healy et al. 2001).
Quality of government, social trust and human

well-being
The central question then is what generates high levels of social

trust in a society? The most widespread idea has been that social
trust is generated ‘from below’ by people being active in voluntary
associations (Putnam 2000). In this Tocquevillian approach, the
capacity of a society to produce social trust depends on citizens’
willingness to become active in broad based, non-exclusionary,
voluntary organizations. However, the evidence that associational
membership of adults creates social trust has not survived empirical
testing (Armony 2004; Claiborn and Martin 2000; Delhey and

Newton 2003; Dinesen 2013; Herreros 2004; Robbins 2011;
Wollebæck and Selle 2003). To take one example, one large-scale
empirical study aimed at explaining variations in social trust based
on the World Values Study surveys and covering no less than 60
countries concludes that ‘perhaps most important and most surpris-
ing, none of the four measures of voluntary activity stood up to
statistical tests, in spite of the importance attached to them in a
large body of writing, from de Tocqueville onwards’ (Delhey and
Newton 2004: 27).
As a response to the failure of the society-centred approach to
produce good empirical indicators for its claims about how the
causal mechanisms generating social trust operates, the institution-
centred approach claims that for social trust to flourish it needs to
be embedded in and linked to the political context as well as formal
political and legal institutions. According to this approach, it is
trustworthy, uncorrupt, honest, impartial government institutions
that exercise public power and implement policies in a fair manner
that create social trust and social capital (Rothstein 2005b). For
example, Delhey and Newton concluded from their above
mentioned study that ‘government, especially corruption free and
democratic government, seems to set a structure in which individu-
als are able to act in a trustworthy manner and not suffer, and in
which they can reasonably expect that most others will generally do
the same’ (2004: 28). Using survey data from 29 European coun-
tries, Bjørnskov (2004) concluded that a high level of social trust is
strongly correlated with a low level of corruption. Another study,
also based on comparative survey data, concludes that ‘the central
contention … is that political institutions that support norms of
fairness, universality, and the division of power, contribute to the
formation of inter-personal trust’ (Freitag and Buhlmann 2005).
Using scenario experiments in low trust/high corruption
Romania and in high trust/low corruption Sweden, Rothstein and
Eek (2009) found that persons in both these countries, who experi-
ence corruption among public health-care workers or the local
police, when travelling in an ‘unknown city in and unfamiliar coun-
try’, do not only lose trust in these authorities, but also in other
people in general in that ‘unknown’ society. Another recent large-
scale survey, consisting of 84,000 citizens/respondents in 212
regions within 25 European countries, gives strong support to the
theory that high levels of corruption and low levels of quality of
102 Bo Rothstein
government are important causal factors behind low social trust. In

addition to the standard question about social trust, this survey had
detailed questions about both perceptions and experiences of the
extent to which three regional public services (policy, health care,
education) were seen as impartial, of high quality and free from
corruption. Taking advantage of the extreme variation among
European countries and regions in both levels of social trust and
quality of government (QoG), this study shows evidence of the
impact of QoG on variations in social trust in European regions,
and when controlling for wealth. The effects of civic engagement,
income inequality and ethnic diversity (as measured by the percent-
age of citizens in each region that were born outside the European
Union) are negligible, while the effects of QoG are robust and
strong (Charron and Rothstein 2014).
In sum, what comes out of this research is that the major source
of variations in generalized trust is to be found at the output side of
the state machinery, namely the legal and administrative branches
of the state, that are responsible for the implementation of public
policies. Thus, the theory that high levels of a state’s administrative
capacity and quality of government generate social trust, which
makes it easier to create large sets of public goods in a society, and
that explains why such societies are more successful than their
opposites in fostering human well-being, is currently supported by
extensive empirical research.
Conclusions: the seven sins depriving political

science of its potential for being relevant to human
well-being
1. When thinking about the relevance of what they do, most polit-
ical scientists think about being advisers either to the political
elites or to inform the general public. These are aspects of rele-
vance with limited importance.
2. Most political scientists are uninterested in explaining what the
‘political machine’ (that is, the state) can do for improving
human well-being, broadly defined. There is a lack of under-
standing that a very large part of human misery in today’s world
is caused by the fact that a majority of the world’s population
live under deeply dysfunctional government institutions.
3. Most political scientists, especially the American branch, have

for ideological reasons concentrated their thinking about the
state on how to tame and limit its power and therefore been less
interested in issues about a state’s administrative capacity and
the quality of government.
4. Most political scientists take for granted that democracy is the
main source of political legitimacy, which seems not to be the
case.
5. Issues of ‘bad governance’, especially corruption in public
administration, have largely been ignored by political scientists.
6. The detrimental effects of ‘bad governance’ upon political legit-
imacy, prosperity and human well-being are mostly unknown to
political scientists.
7. Normative efforts in political theory about how to increase
social justice have ignored problems about implementation and
governance that are empirically and theoretically well estab-
lished.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Sheri Berman, Sören Holmberg, Desmond

King, Sven Steinmo as well as the editors of this volume for many
valuable comments.
Chapter 6
Why did nobody warn us?

Political science and the
crisis
GRAHAM WILSON
In 2008, Queen Elizabeth II went to the London School of

Economics and Political Science to open a new economics building.
To the consternation of the British economics profession, she took
the opportunity to ask of it why nobody had warned us of the
danger of a global financial crisis (Pierce 2008). The suffering the
crisis brought her people may well have prompted Her Majesty’s
question; in the first 18 months of the crisis, the British economy
contracted by 7 per cent, a faster rate of decline than in the notori-
ous Great Depression of the 1930s. Her question also prompted
unusual soul searching within the economics profession and articles
about a ‘shamed subject’ (discipline) (Skidelsky 2009). It is of
course tempting for political scientists to gloat over any adverse
development affecting the economics profession, which it might be
said shows more than a little hubris. Before gloating too much,
however, political scientists might also reflect on whether their
discipline showed any greater percipience in relation to the crisis
than economics.
This is not an easy question to answer, in part because political
science is a much more intellectually, methodologically and even
ideologically varied discipline than economics. Large parts of the
discipline continued their established research agendas as if bliss-
fully unaware of unfolding events, somewhat in the manner of a
lovable but eccentric classics professor continuing to read Latin
poetry while the bombs of the blitz fall around him. This is perhaps
understandable for the thousands of political scientists who focus
104
Political science and the crisis 105
on public opinion, political behaviour and the actions of individual

citizens and elections. It is less understandable for others, including
the specialist in comparative political economy who continued to
debate pressing questions such as exactly how many varieties of
capitalism there are while capitalism itself almost foundered. As we
often say, negative findings are important, and it says much about
the practice of political science today that, four years after the
crash, almost nothing has appeared in any of the most prestigious
political science journals relating to it. Indeed many political scien-
tists would not see these comments as criticism; they might reply
that political science should be a rigorous discipline whose agenda
is set by academic controversies rather than events and whose
rigour in research is more important than relevance to current
events.
A second difficult and more important question asks what the
causes of the global financial crisis were (Baily et al. 2008). Clearly,
there are many possible explanations, some of which involve
phenomena like trading in over the counter derivatives of which
few political scientists have much expertise. There is probably some
linkage between the global imbalances in trade, such as the
surpluses China accumulated but was eager not to bring into its
domestic economy and the crisis (Obstfeld and Rogoff 2009). At a
less abstract level, the greed of many in the financial sector induced
by incentives to maximize short not long term gains also clearly
played a part. Again, political scientists are not by and large
renowned for their insights into behaviour in financial markets.
However, many of the explanations offered for the crisis do
include phenomena dear to the hearts of at least some political
scientists, such as the behaviour of regulatory agencies. In the
words of the US inquiry into the origins of the crisis, ‘we conclude
widespread failures in financial regulation and supervision proved
devastating to the nation’s financial markets’ (US Financial Crisis
Inquiry Commission 2011: xviii). The Commission went on to list
factors that had produced this failure of regulation, including the
growth of policy beliefs inimical to regulation and actions by
Congress and successive administrations pressured by the financial
industry that had produced this regulatory failure. It is harder to
imagine a list closer to the topics that political scientists claim as
their special expertise – the establishment of policy paradigms and
their persistence, the biases of institutions and the influence of inter-
est groups. Moreover, at a deeper level, political scientists can or
106 Graham Wilson
perhaps should be able to comment on the creation and mainte-

nance of the legal/institutional order that produced irresponsible
behaviour in the financial sector. As is often remarked, neither
markets nor the corporations that operate in them (least of all,
financial institutions) are naturally occurring phenomena. Laws
and regulations, not nature, create markets and corporations. It is
therefore reasonable to assume that political science would
contribute to understanding the reasons why financial markets
became so unstable and perhaps remain so.
A few political scientists to their great credit did so, Andrew
Gamble (2009) being one of the most notable. Mark Blyth (2013)
has made a fascinating attempt to explain the reasons why reactions
to the crisis have been surprisingly conservative, leaving open the
possibility for future crises. One of the best of the attempts by polit-
ical scientists to synthesize the causes from an American perspective
is McCarty et al. in Political Bubbles (2013). Apart from the inter-
esting arguments they provide, McCarty et al. also provide the
useful framework for analysing the origins of the crisis using the
categories of ideas, institutions and interests, a framework adopted
here.
Ideas
Many economists adhered to an extreme faith in the efficacy and

self-regulating character of markets. Markets always priced assets
correctly and government regulation of them was at best ineffec-
tive, at worst damaging. In spite of the crash, many economists still
adhere to this faith; indeed one who was recently awarded a Nobel
Prize in economics, Peter Fama, has declared that he does not
believe that ‘bubbles’ in asset prices exist, as assets are always
priced correctly. For such economists, the global financial crisis was
all the fault of governments which had pushed banks to give mort-
gages to undeserving lower income applicants. These economists’
faith in markets prompted them to oppose the calls for more regu-
lation in trading in derivatives when this was proposed in the last
years of the twentieth century.
Few political scientists have such an exalted view of markets.
They did, however, have their own beliefs that discouraged regula-
tion. It is fair to say that in the two decades leading up to the crisis,
political scientists were more likely to stress the failings than the
successes of traditional ‘command and control’ regulation. An old

tradition in the discipline had argued that regulators inevitably
became the servant of the regulated, not the public interest
(Huntington 1953; Kolko 1965). This tradition might be seen as
part of a broader trend in the discipline to be sceptical of govern-
mental institutions and the efficacy of public policy. Although there
were important exceptions, political scientists stressed the fallibility
of government. Policy as a field within political science was charac-
terized more by an emphasis on flawed implementation and delete-
rious, unintended consequences than on the successful use of
governmental power to improve society. Public servants were in
fact merely self-interested actors focused on maintaining their hold
on power or on maximizing power, budgets and salaries. Although
presenting itself as hard headed social science, this perspective was
no more empirically grounded than had been the Progressives’
belief in the benign intentions of government officials. True or false,
however, this perspective discouraged further regulation. New
regulations would have perverse, unintended consequences or
would be used by politicians to reward friends and punish enemies.
Better, therefore, not to try.
Again, however, the heterogeneity of political science resulted in
there being important exceptions. Schwartz (1983) resisted the easy
assumption that public policies always failed, revealingly entitling
his book America’s Hidden Success: A Re-assessment of Twenty
Years of Public Policy.
Although talk of regulatory capture persists to the present, the
livelier discussion of regulation focused on its reinvention. There
was considerable discussion of reinventing many aspects of govern-
ment in the 1990s and early years of the twentieth century. This
produced initiatives such as the executive agencies in the UK and
the contracting out of policy implementation or even policy devel-
opment in many countries including the USA. Reinvention in the
regulatory sphere focused on moving away from traditional
‘command and control’ regulations that specified the required
behaviour in detail and towards a variety of strategies intended to
secure voluntary, ‘beyond compliance’ behaviour by the regulated
(Kettl 2000). Examples include corporate social responsibility
reporting and attempts to leverage good corporate behaviour
through awarding certification, as in the Sustainable Forestry
Initiative, to those complying with recommended practices. This
new approach on the one hand freed businesses from struggling to
108 Graham Wilson
comply with overly cumbersome regulations that achieved little

good while motivating corporations to do the best they can, rather
than the minimum required to comply with the law. Private sector
or self-regulation can achieve good results, though mainly in stable
situations in which the same corporations, communities, NGOs
and government agencies are part of a continuing network. This has
not been the situation in finance, however.
New players such as Deutsche Bank emerged rapidly in both
New York and London, while important trades made for long
established players were made by offices outside their home coun-
try. AIG was brought down by a relatively small office based in
London; and the ‘London Whale’, whose behaviour cost J. P.
Morgan a very large fine again, as the name implies, was in London,
not New York. The rapidly evolving, global financial industry was
not a good candidate for self or private sector regulation. However,
the spirit of the times in regulation suggested that attempts to
impose additional ‘command and control’ regulation were based on
outdated attitudes and approaches. As Carrigan and Coglianesi
(2012) note, these attitudes were to change rapidly in the twenty-
first century as the global financial crisis and a series of major acci-
dents, such as a mine disaster, seemed to demonstrate the need for
stricter regulation. Back in the twentieth century, the climate of
opinion on regulation was more sceptical; had not even a
Democratic President declared that the era of big government was
over?
Institutions
The key institutions involved in the global financial crisis operate

largely outside the purview of most political scientists. It is true that
there have been some good studies of the Federal Reserve Bank in
the United States (Kettl 1986; Woolley 1986), but most of the focus
was on the role of central banks in either macro-economic manage-
ment or exchange rate management. The role of central banks in
insuring systemic financial stability was discussed as little by politi-
cal scientists as by policy-makers. Even less attention was paid to
the alphabet soup of the numerous different financial regulatory
agencies in the USA – the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
(FDIC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Office of
the Controller of the Currency, the Securities and Exchange
Commission (SEC), and so on almost ad infinitum. The Financial

Services Authority (FSA) in the UK was even more obscure, existing
in territory that British political scientists began to explore only in
the last years of the twentieth century (Rhodes 1997). This territory
is inhabited by agencies that, contrary to the Whitehall model, are
not accountable to any minister and hence are only distantly
accountable to Parliament. Thus the FSA operated outside the
conceptual framework of most political scientists writing on
Britain. When its failure to prevent a catastrophic financial crisis
resulted in its demise, its work was transferred to the now highly
autonomous Bank of England.
If American political scientists had been forced to focus on the
FDIC, SEC, etc., they most probably would have reached for the
principal–agent model popularized by writers such as Weingast
(1984). This model would have suggested that these agencies would
be responsive to political principals, just as, in Weingast’s account,
the SEC was responsive to the changing political balance in
Congress. This hypothetical principal–agent model would in fact
have misidentified the principal. Most of these agencies received
their funding not from Congress but in ‘user fees’ from the busi-
nesses they regulated. This therefore produced competition among
regulatory agencies for ‘customers’ in the financial sector, competi-
tion that was waged by offering less stringent regulation. Financial
institutions could change from one regulator to another by making
modest changes in the legal definition of their business or articles of
incorporation.
Detailed oversight by Congressional or parliamentary commit-
tees was unlikely. As Kaiser (2013) describes it, most members of
the House Finance Committee have little grasp of the financial
system that their Committee supposedly helps control. The
Committee has grown considerably in size, however, necessitating a
redesign of its meeting room to accommodate the extra members.
These members have been added not because they increase the
Committee’s understanding of admittedly complex issues but
because both the Democratic and Republican parties have placed
new Congressional members – freshmen – on the Committee so that
these more electorally vulnerable legislators (as they lack incum-
bency advantage) can raise money from the financial industry to
fight future elections. The most relevant agency in the executive
branch, the Treasury Department, usually has leaders from the
financial sector. Bush’s last Secretary of the Treasury was Hank
110 Graham Wilson
Paulson, formerly CEO of Goldman Sachs. His successor, Timothy

Geitner, had previously been at the Federal Reserve Bank of New
York. Unfortunately, political science says little about the workings
of the Treasury. Contemporary political scientists would be unlikely
to write a book on the Treasury Department or indeed on the most
prestigious Cabinet positions in general. (The excellent studies of
the federal executive by Aberbach and Rockman (2000) are of a
different genre, exploring broader samples of political appointees
and civil servants. Studies of agencies within the Presidency are of
course more common.) Indeed there would be significant profes-
sional disincentives to writing such a study as it would necessarily
be qualitative rather than quantitative and based on small numbers.
In consequence, only journalists give us any insight into the world
of the top policy-makers in the Treasury and its Secretaries. Mutatis
mutandis, much can be said of the extent of our knowledge of the
UK Treasury; Heclo and Wildavsky’s (1974) wonderful study is
now four decades old.
The global financial crisis also raised a question about institu-
tions that is considered to be on the fringes of political science: what
is the relative strength of political and societal institutions? One of
the peculiarities of the crisis was the imbalance between the size of
banks and the size and strength of the state in which they were
embedded. Put simply, some countries were massively overshad-
owed by their financial sectors. The most extreme example was
Iceland, but similar stories could be told of Ireland and Spain. States
were responsible for banks – and were forced to guarantee their
depositors – even though their banking sectors were far too large
for them to bear this burden.
Interests
Many Americans are worried about the role of money in the poli-
tics and the power of organized interests more generally. Over the
years, to a remarkable degree, American political scientists have
reassured the public that their fears are exaggerated or groundless.
This was of course true of the pluralist tradition that dominated
American political science in the 1950s and 1960s. Power, the
pluralists reassured people, was multifaceted and widely dispersed.
Some organized interests had power because they had a lot of
money, others because they had a lot of members. Almost all groups
enjoyed some significant power, however. In the most comprehen-

sive empirical study of the late 1950s and early 1960s, Bauer et al.
(1963) also argued that organized interests were generally poorly
funded, poorly staffed and not the instruments of power.
It became apparent that the account provided by Bauer et al. was
not an accurate portrayal of interest group politics from roughly the
mid-1970s onwards. There had been a massive increase in interest
group activity, in the number of organizations represented in
Washington, in the number and quality of staff they employed, and
in campaign contributions by these interests (Wilson 1981). This
was in effect an arms race, as increased spending by one organized
interest prompted increased spending by the others.
The comforting pluralist conclusion was undisturbed by these
developments for several reasons. First, one of the striking aspects
of the explosion in interest group activity was that it included,
perhaps was even driven by, interests previously under-represented;
in fact interests that a prestigious political scientist had suggested
(Olson 1965) were unlikely to be represented. These interests were
diffuse or were public interests in the environment, good govern-
ment and consumer concerns. Although it was obvious that the
interest group system still does not represent all interests (the poor
being an obvious omission), it was fair to say that it was much more
inclusive than in the past.
Second, studies of the political action committees (PACs) created
post-Watergate supported the conclusion that there was no rela-
tionship between their receiving donations and voting in Congress
(Wright 1990). This was often translated into a broader claim there
was no relationship between campaign contributions and legisla-
tive behaviour. Thus in the critical years when the policies that
caused the crash were being put in place, the prevailing view in
political science was that fears of excessive interest group power
were over-rated. These comforting arguments were open to criti-
cism.
The argument that the interest group explosion of the 1970s had
produced a much more pluralist system tended to obscure the very
real differences between the two types of organizations involved in
terms of their staffing and financing. As anyone who has visited
both will have seen, there is a substantial difference between the
often lush, well-staffed offices of major corporations in Washington
DC and the usually over-crowded frenetic, intern-dependent world
of public interest groups.
112 Graham Wilson
Comforting conclusions about PACs were also possibly

misleading. Indeed, PAC studies were arguably a major setback to
understanding the links between money and politics. Arguably
driven by the appeal of the ease of acquiring data on PAC contri-
butions from the Federal Election Commission, PAC studies both
oversimplified the legislative process and ignored the alternative
routes for money into politics. As all experts on Congress have
noted, studies of votes in Congress or even in Committees do not
capture the full picture of decision-making. In particular, such
studies cannot capture the degree to which informal bargaining
on detailed, often-complicated issues results in decisions of great
significance to many organized interests. While floor votes
provide the drama, what happens elsewhere in the Capitol can be
critical for organized interests. PAC contributions were also
quickly supplemented or even displaced as channels for money
into politics. Organized interests could make ‘soft money’ contri-
butions to candidates via their political parties that were much
larger than the mere $5,000 permitted under PAC regulations.
Similarly, ‘bundlers’ could collect cheques from individuals such
as corporate executives and hand them to politicians that were
much more in total than the corporation’s PAC could contribute.
While Senator Obama could claim in the 2008 campaign that he
would never accept money from PACs, he was receiving large
amounts of money from organizations with a large stake in public
policy. For example, Obama received over $1.3 million from the
executives of Goldman Sachs while high-mindedly rejecting the
$5,000 its PAC could have contributed (data from www.Open
secrets.org).
Two major studies broadened the focus beyond the sterile focus
on PACs. Schlozman et al.’s (2012) study of inequality provided
very clear evidence of the differences in groups’ resources. Their
analysis provided a major challenge to comforting conclusions that
the interest group system had attained pluralism. However, their
challenge was countered by another major empirical study by
Baumgartner et al. (2009). This study argued that changes in public
policy were not determined by the inequality of resources between
groups. They argued that there were always two organized sides to
public policy debates and that each side was a coalition of different
groups, some with few and others with considerable resources.
Baumgartner et al. therefore argued that resources are not decisive
in American politics.
Whatever the merits of the arguments advanced by Baumgartner

et al. in general, there are significant problems in applying them to
policy-making in the financial industry. It cannot be argued convinc-
ingly that there were two well organized sides in the debate in the
late 1990s about whether to regulate trading in derivatives. One
brave regulator, Sheila Bair of the FDIC, did argue presciently for
more regulation. However, a bipartisan consensus, led by
Democrats such as Charles Schumer, speedily saw off the challenge.
There was no organized coalition in support of what at the time
would have been seen as a highly technical, obscure proposed policy
change. No public interest group had the staff and resources
required to grasp the significance of the issues involved. As we have
seen, the financial sector has been a major contributor to politicians
of both the major parties, a fact that most people would consider
relevant to its influence. Not only Senator Schumer but also key
figures in the Clinton Administration, such as Robert Rubin and
Larry Summers, actively imposed reforms that might have prevented
the crisis, while the anti-governmentalism of the Republicans
inclined them similarly to oppose reform (Sorkin 2009).
In general, therefore, we can conclude that political scientists,
with very honourable exceptions (such as Schlozman et al. 2012),
supported reassuring arguments about the power of organized
interests, thereby reducing concerns that the gods of finance were
out of control.
We know less about the relationship between money and politics
in other advanced democracies than we do in the USA. Comforted
by the fact that nowhere else are huge sums required to buy TV time
to promote political parties during elections, political scientists
have paid comparatively little attention to politicians’ quests for
money for other purposes. The rise of ‘capital intensive’ campaign-
ing dependent on consultants, focus groups and opinion polls has
increased politicians’ needs for money, irrespective of their ability
to use free TV time. State support of political parties also helps to
contain this need but is clearly not regarded as adequate in coun-
tries such as the UK. New Labour’s solicitude towards financial
interests was perhaps influenced by a hope for contributions,
though two further factors were perhaps more important. First, the
British economy and the Treasury became dependent on the success
of the City of London, which was responsible for generating a
significant proportion of British GDP and tax receipts. Second,
British policy-makers were aware that the City of London would
114 Graham Wilson
not succeed in a globalized financial system if it were regulated

more restrictively than competing centres such as New York.
Gordon Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer took a deliberate
‘hands off’ approach to the financial sector; as long as the money
and taxes flowed in, why worry?
While few other countries could hope to compete with financial
centres such as New York or London, the appeal of jobs, income
and taxes from successful financial institutions discouraged govern-
ments in countries such as Iceland, Ireland and Spain from asking
probing questions of their banks. While in retrospect there is some-
thing a little odd about Banco Santander buying up American banks
in places such as Boston, this structural dependence discouraged
inquiry.
Political scientists had been largely but not exclusively sceptical
of the consequences of globalization. Experts on regulation such
as Vogel (1995) emphasized that, contrary to fears of a ‘race to the
bottom’, no country had repealed environmental regulations in
order to attract investment. Linda Weiss (1995) argued that the
capacity of the state to regulate was undiminished. There was
contrary evidence that might have been considered, such as the
international trend towards lowering corporation tax, probably
(as in Ireland) as a strategy for encouraging direct inward invest-
ment. Again, however, whatever the validity of the arguments in
general, it is highly likely that, in the perhaps unusual case of the
financial industry, globalization did exert a significant depressing
effect on proposals for stricter regulation. We might argue, there-
fore, that the tendency in political science to assert that globaliza-
tion did not in practice prevent stricter regulation provided false
comfort. Globalization or widespread beliefs about the conse-
quences of globalization discouraged policy-makers from impos-
ing stricter standards on their own financial centres or institutions
for fear of making them less competitive with those in other coun-
tries. Whether or not this constraint is objectively true may be
debated. We know, however, that this argument was advanced at
critical moments when regulations on the finance industry might
have been tightened. That was the case in the late 1990s; it
remains the case today. The British and other members of the EU
have argued over measures that, depending on one’s point of view,
are essential reforms or are measures that damage London as a
major financial centre, perhaps to the advantage of Frankfurt or
Paris.
What did political science get right?
The verdict so far might be that while political science as a disci-

pline has less to answer for than economics in creating or defending
ideas and practices that facilitated the global financial crisis it was
to some degree complicit. Can anything be said in its defence before
sentence is passed?
First, as we have seen in passing, prominent political scientists
resisted the spirit of the age and adhered to traditions underpinning
the discipline. Long before it became fashionable, Verba et al.
(1995) and Schlozman et al. (2012) were studying the relationship
between social inequality and our politics. As the title of one of their
books, echoing Schattschneider’s famous comment, reminds us, this
concern has been the bedrock of our discipline. In politics, worry-
ing about inequality was regarded as passé in the 1990s and early
years of this century. In political science it was not.
Second, and similarly, many political scientists retained faith in a
positive role for the state. This was evident in Vogel’s defence of
command and control regulations; in comparative political econo-
mists’ admiration of countries in which the state played a stronger
role in economic management; and in defences of strong welfare
states. In important respects, these political scientists went against
the grain of current politics and indeed of their own profession. The
heterodoxy of political science in assumptions, methods and there-
fore conclusions meant that their voices rose to criticize the domi-
nant view in the discipline and in policy-making circles.
Conclusion
Political science as a discipline contributed little to warn Queen

Elizabeth II or anyone else that a catastrophic financial crisis was a
real danger. Having done little to warn, the discipline has done less
than might be expected to analyse the crisis ex post facto. It is a sad
commentary on the discipline that, although many have pointed to
causes such as poor regulation or the excessive influence of the
financial industry that might have seemed to be its core expertise,
in fact it had and continues to have little to say. While not as culpa-
ble as economics for the crisis, what political scientists did have to
say of relevance tended to discourage effective regulation to
prevent it.
116 Graham Wilson
It is, however, the silence of the discipline that is most striking.

This is not unprecedented. Similarly, after the Word Bank and
other international organizations said that good governance was
key to economic development, political science studiously ignored
the chance to be central to a major global issue. Two aspects of the
contemporary discipline help explain this. First, contemporary
political science is heavily weighted towards the study of politics,
not government. Implicitly, the majority of political scientists, at
least in the United States, consider the thinking and actions of indi-
vidual citizens more important than the inner workings of institu-
tions or how policy-makers grapple with problems. This weighting
towards politics rather than government might be appropriate but
it is a weighting that is little considered. Second, the discipline’s
appropriate concern for scholarly excellence has encouraged it to
distance itself from major current events. The story is told of a
reporter, after the announcement of a record US trade deficit,
phoning the chair of a major economics department and asking
which of his colleagues had expertise on trade balances who might
comment. ‘Oh!’ replied the chair with pride, we don’t have anyone
who studies that sort of thing!’ Political science is not dissimilar.
Yet is this distancing really a mark of scholarly rectitude? Are seis-
mologists equally indifferent to massive earthquakes? One rather
doubts it. Surely a discipline with more knowledge and under-
standing of the underlying issues and problems could have said
something of value before and, even more, after the global finan-
cial crisis broke?
Fortunately, some scholars are intent on reconnecting the disci-
pline (and other social sciences) with politics and government.
Andrew Gamble has noted considerable activity in this regard in the
UK. Not only are sessions at conferences on the financial crisis well
attended (for one example see: http://www.britac.ac.uk/events/
archive/forum-economy.cfm) but there is also a less visible buzz of
activity, such as involvement in the Policy Centre at the British
Academy (Gamble 2012). In the United States, Theda Skocpol has
organized the Scholars Strategy Network which seeks to connect
the expertise of scholars and their research to policy-makers, the
media and citizens’ associations. These initiatives show a confi-
dence that scholars can make useful contributions based on their
expertise which goes beyond the role of advocate or of informed
commentator on current events. Such involvement can benefit both
society and the academy. Scholars’ knowledge and expertise can
contribute to making better public policy. Involvement with policy-

makers and policy problems brings scholars insights, perspectives
and ideas that improve their research.
The question that arises is what the incentives or disincentives
will be for scholars to engage in this. In some circles in political
science today any contact with politics or government is considered
suspect; at least one expert on Congress took pride in never going to
Washington DC, an extraordinary wilful denial of the benefits that
flow from the direct observation of people, institutions and events.
Going the extra step of contributing to public debates – for those
who favour a monastic form of political science cut off from earthly
political temptations – at present brings political scientists no career
rewards and probably lowers their prestige in the eyes of profes-
sion. Few if any would want political science to be driven by current
events or political debates or to stop rewarding careful rigorous
scholarship. In the context of mounting public criticism of the acad-
emy in general and political science in particular (Kristoff 2014),
surely deans, chairs and promotion committees should take a posi-
tive view of contributions to public debates and policy development
by political scientists.
PART II
RELEVANCE: THE
CONTRIBUTION OF
SUB-DISCIPLINES AND
DIVERSE APPROACHES
Chapter 7
The relevance of the

academic study of public
policy
SARAH GIEST, MICHAEL HOWLETT AND
ISHANI MUKHERJEE
Introduction: linking policy research to policy

practice
The field of policy studies is an interdisciplinary one that has

evolved out of political science, public administration, economics,
law and sociology, among other fields. As the primary academic
discipline involved in the study of the exercise of power in society,
political science has much to contribute to policy studies, and many
policy theories and concepts owe their origin or substance to
inquiry in political science. Policy-making is a central activity of
governments and the study of policy processes, tools and outcomes,
and the forces and variables which determine and affect them, and
is an essential part of political science.
But policy-making is also an exercise in the application of
knowledge about policy problems and solutions to their resolu-
tion, and how to integrate knowledge and power successfully in
policy-making processes is and has been an ongoing concern in the
discipline. This is an issue and subject of much research in itself in
the policy sciences, going back well over 50 years (see, for exam-
ple, Caplan and Weiss 1977; Wildavsky 1979). Policy studies as a
whole is very much concerned with the relevance of its research
and theorization since, as Harold Lasswell (1956; 1963) pointed
out in his pioneering works in the field, policy scholars want to
generate knowledge which is useful to practitioners and helps to
improve public policy outcomes.
121
122 Sarah Giest, Michael Howlett and Ishani Mukherjee
Although political science has been less involved in the study of

knowledge processes in society and other fields have contributed
extensively to empirical studies and conceptual development in this
area, its focus on governmental decision-making and its explo-
ration of the politics of public policy-making has made a major
contribution to the policy sciences and to its desire to remain rele-
vant.
The contribution of political science: reconciling

knowledge and power in public policy-making
In his foundational work on the ‘policy science’, Harold Lasswell

(1970; 1971) derived several key precepts for policy studies which
he expected would help it remain relevant. These included adopting
an explicitly multi-disciplinary orientation, a clear focus on policy
problems and possible solutions, and the need to consider both
normative and empirical aspects of problems and solutions in
proposing and enacting alternative policy measures.
For Lasswell, being multi-disciplinary meant breaking away from
narrow study legal institutions and structures of government and
embracing the work and findings of such fields as sociology and
economics, law and politics. Being ‘problem-solving’ meant adher-
ing strictly to the canon of relevance, with the field orienting itself
towards the solution of real-world problems rather than engaging in
purely the theoretical or philosophical debates that, for example,
often characterized the interpretation of classical texts on govern-
ment. Finally, by being explicitly normative, Lasswell meant a policy
science should also not be cloaked in the guise of ‘scientific objectiv-
ity’, but should recognize the impossibility of separating goals and
means, or values and techniques, in the study of government actions
(Torgerson 1985). He expected policy analysts to say clearly which
solution would be better than others when two options were
compared, and to be able to communicate this to decision-makers.
This general orientation towards the policy sciences remains
with us along with the desire that policy science must remain rele-
vant in the sense of providing insights and solutions to real-world
problems. Although some efforts to create a new policy discipline
altogether or to restrict the study of public policy to single fields
such as economics or political science, or the desire on the part of
some analysts to avoid normative discussions occasionally chal-
The relevance of the academic study of public policy 123
lenge aspects of these foundational canons, for the most part they
have been upheld in the half century since Lasswell set them down.
Researchers interested in policy-making and the work of govern-
mental and non-governmental actors in such processes were thus,
from the outset of the field, very much concerned with the activities
of knowledge generation, transfer and utilization, and how these
activities informed the content of the various levels or elements
(regime, programme and mechanism) which comprise a policy
(Howlett et al. 2009). These activities typically involve the effort to
promote better knowledge use or ‘policy learning’ in order to avoid
policy failures. This involves the attempt to integrate better policy
knowledge with political calculations and ideas about both the
desirability of certain goals and means, and their feasibility
(Howlett 2012). Each stage of policy activity, from agenda-setting
to policy evaluation – entails different constellations of policy
researchers, advisers and actors interacting with each other, using
their knowledge and power to create policies. Understanding how
these knowledge mobilization efforts operate at different stages of
the policy-making process – agenda-setting, policy formulation,
decision-making, implementation and evaluation – has been a
central concern of policy scholars, and political science has
contributed in many ways to this endeavour.
Studies of activities such as policy formulation and decision-
making undertaken by political scientists and others have shown, for
example, that attaining and communicating policy knowledge
which is ‘relevant’ to practice does not occur naturally or on its own
in policy-making but rather requires dedicated effort on the part of
policy researchers and policy-makers if it is to happen (Grimshaw et
al. 2012). As Carol Weiss (1995) pointed out in her studies of efforts
to better systematize policy evaluations in government, if evaluation
is to fulfil its potential for driving policy learning, it must be fully
integrated into the ongoing discourse and help policy-makers think
‘more intelligently’ about the domain in which they work.
Political science is well suited to the study of many of these activi-
ties and Lasswell highlighted the role it had played in helping to
develop and inform the problem-solving orientation of policy studies
(Lasswell 1956; 1963). Political science, he argued, enjoyed a strong
tradition of ‘distinguished achievement in many areas of problem-
solving importance’ (Lasswell 1963: 4). As others such as David
Webber (1986a) later put it, the contributions of political science to
policy-making involved knowledge of problem identification and
especially the consideration of the ‘feasibility’ of policy alternatives

designed to address those problems, along with the improved
understanding of the role and practices played by authoritative
government institutions and social actors in policy creation and
execution.
The study of political science hence has been and remains signifi-
cant to policy studies and policy practice through the insights it brings
to the study of how governments and societal actors interact in the
exercise of power and authority. It helps further the understanding of
how these actors constantly engage in the activity of defining and
redefining socially imperative problems and goals and presenting
possible alternatives for addressing them. It also provides detailed
insight into how governments decide on policy content and how
administrators and the judiciary, among others, implement them. In
an excellent example of disciplinary cross-fertilization, policy schol-
ars have also developed detailed models and explanations of policy
processes which have helped inform political science research into
areas such as public opinion, media studies, and aspects of party and
government behaviour (see, for example, Kingdon 1995).
Concerns for relevance and the two-communities

metaphor of policy knowledge utilization
The main purpose of policy research in the Lasswellian conceptual-

ization has always been the pursuit of knowledge and its transmis-
sion to decision-makers. This is understood as the action of
amassing ‘intelligence’ and scrutinizing the results of policy
‘appraisal’ in order to further the ‘intelligence of government’ and
promote better policies – that is, those more likely to attain their
goals (Lasswell 1975).
It should not be surprising then that the goal of making and
ensuring that knowledge gained in the policy sciences remains rele-
vant to policy-makers has itself been a major subject of investiga-
tion and analysis in the field. This work has contributed many
insights into the impact of policy research on policy practice, and
vice versa. These insights have had practical consequences for how
policy research is mobilized and used in government – to which
political science has also contributed significantly.
Since the 1960s and 1970s this question has been approached
in policy studies through the lens of ‘knowledge utilization’, that
is the study of how policy-makers actually use knowledge of all

kinds in their day-to-day practices, including knowledge derived
from policy studies (Huberman 1990; Oh 1997; Oh and Rich
1996; Rich 1979). Policy researchers have examined many
aspects of knowledge utilization processes in government, includ-
ing whether or not patterns exist in the use of scientific versus
social scientific research (Rich 1981; Weiss 1977a); who utilizes
knowledge and in what ways (Landry et al. 2003; Ouimet et al.
2009; Weiss and Bulmer 1987; Whiteman 1985a; 1985b);
whether such knowledge serves an enlightenment function or
more ‘instrumental’ or ‘strategic’ uses (Weiss 1986); what consti-
tutes ‘useable evidence’ (Nutley et al. 2007; Pawson 2006); and
whether more evidence equals better policies (Tenbensel 2004). In
addition, many studies have also been conducted into topics such
as the sources of knowledge and the kinds of techniques used to
measure and evaluate policy knowledge (Howlett and Wellstead
2011); the role of specific knowledge communities and the ideas
they hold in policy formulation (Haas 1992); and the mechanics
and content of the provision of policy advice (Halligan 1995).
Political science and political scientists have contributed to these
studies along with researchers in fields such as sociology, educa-
tion and many others.
Although it was often initially assumed by policy scholars such
as Lasswell that policy knowledge would be relevant more or less
by definition, a pivotal finding in studies undertaken by researchers
in the 1960s and 1970s into the use of policy research by policy-
makers was that little of the large volume of output emanating from
formal policy analysis and research was in fact being used to inform
policy decisions directly (Caplan 1979; Caplan et al. 1975; Weiss
1976). Decision-makers were shown to seldom directly use policy
research results, and it was also shown that there was a strong polit-
ical motivation in the use which did occur. Studies showed how
policy-makers deliberately often scoped and used evidence that
supported their pre-existing standpoints and strengthened their
desired interactions and associations in policy subsystems rather
than created or challenged them (Weiss 1986; Whiteman 1985a;
1985b). As Caplan noted very early on in his analysis of informa-
tion use by senior US policy-makers in the 1970s:
Only rarely is policy formulation guided by concrete, point-by-

point reliance on empirically grounded information alone. This
is not to deny that many respondents cited the use of specific

social science research studies in discussing important decisions,
but such information was usually only one of many sources used.
Rather than relying upon any single piece of information, the
final policy decision was likely to depend upon an appraisal of
scientific (hard) and extra-scientific (soft) knowledge from a
variety of sources. Both types of knowledge are combined
conceptually, resulting in a judgment or a perspective which is
then applied broadly to decisions involving problems at the
meta-level range. (1979: 464)
Such results were repeated again and again over the next several
decades (see for example, Landry et al. 2003; Shulock 1999).
Scientific evidence, for example, was found to be assessed differ-
ently by researchers and policy-makers. As Sebba (2013: 395)
noted, ‘decision makers view evidence colloquially and define it by
its relevance’, while researchers took a scientific approach and
defined evidence by its methodology.
The idea of a sizable gap existing between policy researchers and
policy-makers, and between policy research and use, soon became a
well entrenched one in the field: the so-called ‘two communities’
model of policy research utilization. Although the questions they
examined were different, the central problematic in all of the stud-
ies mentioned above was concern for a gap in the supply and
demand for information in the policy process, or between knowl-
edge generation and utilization, which undermined notions in the
policy sciences of the relevance of policy research to decision-
making and other policy practices.
Given these findings, researchers quickly assumed the stance that
policy-making shared many similar knowledge utilization charac-
teristics as the situation which existed between scientific researchers
and those involved in the humanities within university settings.
This was a relationship which C. P. Snow (1959) had referred to as
involving ‘two cultures’ which spoke to each other but rarely if ever
understood what each other said. By analogy policy-makers and
analysts were also considered to be divided into ‘two communities’
of knowledge producers and consumers whose relationship was
fraught with the potential for misunderstandings and missed
opportunities (Caplan 1979; Dunn 1980; Glaser and Taylor 1973;
Havelock 1971; Tenbensel 2004). This was soon seen as a funda-
mental, structural problem built into policy-making in the situation
in which different sets of actors produced knowledge and

consumed it.
In the ‘pure’ two-communities argument, modelled on Snow’s
(1959) insights into science communication patterns, the concern
was always that communications were infrequent or non-existent;
that the information communicated and/or received was poor or
inaccurate; and that the impact of these communications was either
weak or, in the event of poor information, ineffective. These
circumstances could exist either as a general pattern across govern-
ment, or in specific areas or agencies.
This work was updated in the 1980s and applied to the policy
sphere by political scientists such as William Dunn (1980). Like
Snow, Dunn argued policy-making was an activity characterized by
a ‘community’ of producers located in places such as universities,
think tanks and research institutes, statistical agencies and else-
where, and a group of consumers located in political institutions
such as parliaments and legislatures as well as administrators and
managers in government agencies. Given their separate locations, a
significant issue was always the extent to which the two communi-
cated, what they communicated and the impact these communica-
tions had.
Knowledge utilization, and the attainment of the goal of policy
relevance, thus came to be seen as a much more complex subject
than initially assumed and one which required specific dedicated
study and action in order to be overcome. But it also suggested
that conscious action on the part of either community could
contribute to overcoming these gaps in knowledge utilization. As
shall be discussed below, the desire to ensure that the research
generated by policy scholars remains relevant – that is, incorpo-
rated into policy-making – has led to the development of more
complex knowledge mobilization ecosystems including the
creation of ‘third’ and ‘fourth communities’ of policy brokers and
specialized bodies and agencies whose sole purpose is to facilitate
better exchange of knowledge between these two principal sets of
knowledge producers and consumers (Knight and Lyall 2013;
Lindquist 1990; Lomas 2007; Oliver et al. 2013). This area
remains one of ongoing research interest and one the analysis of
which political scientists have and are contributing their expertise
and knowledge. In the process they ensure the continual relevance
of policy research to policy practice and political science research
to public policy studies.
Moving beyond the two-communities model:

knowledge brokerage
The two-communities model represented a significant advance on

earlier thinking about the ‘naturalness’ or ‘automaticity’ of policy
advice. However, many observers argued that a pure ‘two commu-
nity’ structure either had never actually existed in policy-making
circumstances or, that if it had once accurately characterized policy-
making. This was was no longer accurate precisely because of
significant and dedicated efforts made on the part of both commu-
nities to bridge any gaps which might exist.
The political scientist David Webber, for example, noted ‘if left to
policymakers and policy researchers, there is little reason to expect
the use of policy research to increase in the future’ (Webber 1983:
558). However, he also noted a lack of homogeneity within the two
communities in a policy context and that, in order to foster more
use of policy research, policy researchers often assumed multiple
roles as advisers, lobbyists and brokers in the policy process
(Webber 1983; 1986a; 1986b; 1991).
This suggestion that other communities of knowledge-relevant
actors existed beyond the two initially posited by Caplan (1979)
implied that the boundaries between the knowledge suppliers and
producers were more open and flexible than in the case of the
university-based knowledge communities first examined by Snow
(1959). And, more importantly, it also implied that the mechanisms
which could be employed to overcome the gaps between the
communities could extend well beyond simply improving commu-
nications. Recommendations for bridging this perceived gap, or
what Weiss (1977a) calls the ‘great divide’, initially involved largely
suggestions for the deliberate design of collaborative arrangements
between the two communities (Caplan 1979), improved communi-
cation and better dissemination of innovative ideas (Katz and
Lazarsfeld 1955; Rogers and Schumacher 1971).
As Caplan had noted as early as 1979 (461), however, more
specialized mechanisms are also available to fill the gaps between
knowledge users and producers in the policy area. He argued simple
solutions such as increasing contacts between the two groups were
unlikely to be sufficient in bridging the two communities:
It does not follow from our data, however, that an alliance of

social scientists and policy makers is the panacea which will
produce relevant research and allow translation of the results of

scholarly analysis into terms of practical politics. The notion that
more and better contact may result in improved understanding
and greater utilization may be true, but there are also conditions
where familiarity might well breed contempt rather than admira-
tion. The need for reciprocal relations between knowledge
producers and knowledge users in policy-making positions is
clear, but the problem of achieving effective interaction of this
sort necessarily involves value and ideological dimensions as well
as technical ones.
Contemporary research and empirical studies by political scientists

into knowledge creation and use for policy-making have pursued
this line of thinking over the past three decades and have moved
well beyond the two-communities metaphor. Knowledge utilization
in policy contexts, for example, is now typically discussed in terms
of the interactions between at least three communities –of
consumers, producers and knowledge ‘brokers’ arranged in
complex ‘policy advisory systems’ (Halligan 1995; Lindquist
1990). These systems represent ‘interlocking sets of actors, with a
unique configuration in each sector and jurisdiction, who provide
information, knowledge and recommendations for action to policy-
makers’ (Craft and Howlett 2012: 80). Their function, to a very
great extent, is to overcome the two-communities problem and
ensure policy-making remains relevant by ensuring accurate and
up-to-date knowledge of real world events and activities serves as
the basis for policy deliberations and the formulation, adoption,
implementation and evaluation of policy actions.
Brokerage mechanisms to facilitate the activities of these differ-
ent kinds of policy advisers and knowledge brokers create multiple
alternative paths in which information can flow (James 1993;
Knight and Lyall 2013; Phipps and Morton 2013). Several mecha-
nisms exist which are used to encourage or facilitate brokerage. The
main characteristic of such mechanisms is their position in-between
the worlds of research and policy-making (Lightowler and Knight
2013; Ward et al. 2009). Or, as Meyer (2010) puts it, as ‘bridging’
the gap between the research and policy communities (Lightowler
and Knight 2013; Nutley et al. 2007). The term ‘mediation’ is
sometimes used to highlight the translation function played by
these mechanisms and acknowledges the facilitative role that policy
brokers play, both of which can contribute to greater research use
in policy-making (Ward et al. 2009). Overall, brokerage involves all

the activities that bring together decision-makers and researchers,
facilitating their interaction and ultimately influencing each other’s
work as well as promoting the use of research-based evidence in
policy (Lightowler and Knight 2013; Lomas 2007). Brokers engage
in three kinds of activities which help translate research into appli-
cable lessons for policy-makers. The first includes diffusion of
knowledge, which is essentially passive and unplanned, leaving the
user to seek out information. The second activity is knowledge
dissemination, which is a more active process of communication of
findings that involves customizing evidence for a particular target
audience. The third is knowledge implementation, which is an
active process that ‘involves systematic efforts to encourage adop-
tion of the evidence’ (Sebba 2013: 396). These activities can also be
framed as ‘push’ and ‘pull’ efforts, where brokers disseminate or
push information out in the hope of its usage by other stakeholders,
or where stakeholders pull and a demand is created for such infor-
mation as filled by brokers.
These knowledge brokers serve as ‘intermediaries between the
knowledge generators and proximate decision-makers, repackag-
ing data and information into usable form’ (Howlett 2011: 33).
And the tasks which knowledge brokers typically perform include
knowledge management or finding, packaging and disseminating
information; linkage and exchange or facilitating discussions
between researchers and decision-makers; and capacity building, or
developing capacity for future knowledge exchange (Lightowler
and Knight 2013: 319). As Kammen et al. (2006) point out, this
means brokerage is not just about the direct transfer of results of
research, but also about organizing the interactive processes of
knowledge and exchange. In fact, Sebba (2013) argues that often
knowledge brokers not only link researchers and decision-makers,
but are in many situations also able to enhance communication
among policy-makers and therefore become in themselves integral
parts of the decision-making process (Kirst 2000; Sebba 2013).
Knowledge about brokers and brokerage activities has gained
importance in response to the increased complexity of policy-
making, as the amount of information policy-makers must absorb
and master increases and as the fast pace of problems and public
demands has heightened. Another development which has
enhanced their role is ‘the decentralization of much delivery and
decision-making, and the pressure to devolve delivery and/or
decision-making to local and regional government and to the not-

for-profit sector’ (Eichbaum 2007: 465). This takes direct leverage
out of the hands of policy-makers and enhances the role brokers
play in policy-making as their connecting role becomes more vital.
Research has recently highlighted this aspect of knowledge broker-
age after analyses from many countries, such as Australia, UK, the
US and Canada, revealed that decision-makers are often still not
efficiently using research evidence in domains like education,
health, criminal justice and social care (Lomas et al. 2005; Nutley
et al. 2007; Sebba 2013; Stevens et al. 2009). Policy mediators
tackle this low uptake by moving beyond mere access to informa-
tion and towards: helping define the problem; challenging existing
programmes; expanding the public debate based on, for example,
public outreach; innovating through policy research; and collabo-
rating with various stakeholders (McNutt and Marchildon 2009;
Sebba 2013). Research mediators ‘build on existing networks of
users in research designs, improve clarity of communication, gain
key contacts including funders, and develop media “savvy” timeli-
ness which anticipates future policy interests’ (Sebba 2013: 405),
which ultimately makes them valuable assets in the policy-making
process.
Details on some of the more prominent and well-known specific
techniques or mechanisms identified by policy researchers to
enhance the interactions between policy knowledge producers and
consumers are set out below. These include specialized advisory
boards and commissions (Brown 1955; 1972; Howlett et al. 2009;
B. Smith 1977; T. Smith 1977) and think tanks and research insti-
tutes (Haas 2007; McNutt and Marchildon 2009; Towne et al.
2005; Wilson 2008). Much of this research has been pioneered by
political scientists.
Specialized advisers and advisory boards and commissions

Policy-makers often follows the advice provided by ‘civil servants
and others whom they trust or rely upon to consolidate policy alter-
natives into more or less coherent designs and provide them with
expert opinion on the merits and demerits of the proposal’ (Howlett
2011: 32). Policy advisers in particular can be part of government
or non-governmental organizations or current or former colleagues
(Dobuzinskis et al. 2007; Eichbaum and Shaw 2008; Howlett
2011; Maley 2000; Peled 2002).
This is true for individual advisers, while advisory committees

mostly involve officially selected representatives that sit on tempo-
rary or permanent bodies. Howlett et al. (2009) list the characteris-
tics of this type of knowledge broker as:
• advisory bodies that are closer to societal actors than to the

formal government;
• they are working with a specific focus;
• they engage in dialogues that seek to build consensus;
• they are not created to develop new knowledge, but are a venue
for different interests and framing issues.
Ideally, a good advice system contains all of these elements by

combining in-house advisory service with specialized political
units and third-opinion options (Halligan 1995; Howlett and
Newman 2010). Policy advisers, for example, take on a brokering
position beyond the minister–department relationship to address
policy overlap or conflict and resolve differences (Dunn 1997;
Maley 2000). Complex issues which span multiple levels of
government require customized advice structures to cope with the
mass of information and localized expectations (Howlett and
Newman 2010).
Think tanks and research institutes

As a subset of knowledge brokers, think tanks are defined as
‘organizations that have significant autonomy from governmental
interests and that synthesize, create, or disseminate information,
research, ideas or advice to the public, policy makers, other organ-
izations (both private and governmental), and the press’ (Haas
2007: 68; see also Sebba 2013).
Think tanks are intellectually independent from government, but
their output is geared towards government needs (James 1993).
This implies that researchers in think tanks strategize about the
timing of their advice and who the recipient is. Second, they under-
take public interest and strategic research. Thus, they focus on
pressing issues in the public realm, but also take on projects that are
financed by other groups. And finally, most think tanks are politi-
cally partisan. This characteristic is common, but manifests itself in
varying degrees depending on the political system and the issue at
hand (James 1993). Based on these elements of their work, think
tanks also serve as ‘mediators’ between research and policy

(McGann and Johnson 2005; Smith et al. 2013; Taylor 2011;
Worpole 1998).
However, there is an ongoing discussion in the literature in terms
of their independence and usefulness for policy-making. As Smith et
al. (2013) point out, that there is no accepted definition of precisely
what think tanks do or should be doing. Another issue which is a
subject of current research is related to how independent these
brokers are. There is also a lack of empirical studies that assess the
extent to which think tanks have been successful in influencing
policy (Sherrington 2000; Smith et al. 2013). Think tank reports
have to be treated with caution as they are often not as independent
as they are sometimes portrayed (Evans and Lewis 1993; Smith et
al. 2013). Clients of think tanks can play a role in shaping the
outputs – this is true for political parties and industry funding alike.
Ultimately, the discussion has led to a distinction between inde-
pendent research-based think tanks and advocacy-based think
tanks with vested interests – defining varying degrees of independ-
ence from sponsors and government (McNutt and Marchildon
2009).
The influence of knowledge brokers, such as think tanks, on
policy-making and their ability to cross over community bound-
aries and enhance the relevance of policy research and results is
clear. However, it is difficult to measure this influence accurately.
Researchers point out that ‘the boundary between university or
research institute and think tanks’ in many countries has become
blurred, making the ‘bridge’ analogy somewhat misleading
(Sebba 2013: 400). Also some brokers create policy ideas that
provide apparent solutions and store them until a window of
opportunity opens up for them to be retrieved and used reminis-
cent of Kingdon’s (1995) work in which ‘policy entrepreneurs’
seize a window of opportunity. This situation makes it harder to
evaluate the contribution of this knowledge during specific time
periods (Sebba 2013) and confuses roles as ‘brokers’ and ‘entre-
preneurs’. The same applies to research mediators and policy
advisers. Looking at the relationships existing between expert
ideas and policy decisions, Lindvall (2009) point out the litera-
ture has rarely distinguished between the effects of knowledge
brokerage on policy objectives and its effect on policy content or
output.
Conclusion: research relevance in policy studies – an

ongoing research agenda in political science
Constant attention is required to ensure the academic study of

public policy led by policy scholars, political scientists and others
remains relevant to policy-making through its influence on the
creation and mobilization of knowledge used in, and about, the
policy process and policy outcomes. Much research into these ques-
tions by political scientists has shown that ‘eternal vigilance’ and
dedicated institutional engineering is required to overcome a prob-
lem built into the nature of policy-making, which can feature a
sharp division of labour between different communities of know-
ledge producers and consumers.
The two-communities view of the problem of translating
research into policy has often depicted the world of researchers and
policy decision-makers as a disconnected one. This stems from an
assumption that policy researchers work outside of the policy-
making process and that policy-makers occupy the policy-making
core within it (Caplan 1979; Caplan et al. 1975; Weiss 1977a).
However, policy studies have seen a revitalized interest in better
understanding the role of policy analysis and re-exploring the rele-
vance of policy research in policy-making, and in moving beyond
the two-communities metaphor as the borders between these two
groups have blurred.
Specific techniques are now used in policy-making in the effort to
overcome gaps between theory and practice and to promote better
policies and policy outcomes (Meadowcroft and Steurer 2014),
such as think tanks and research institutions. However, not all tech-
niques are used by all governments and the question of what kind,
and how many mechanisms are required to overcome gaps between
theory and practice, and knowledge and power, are ongoing ones
with which policy scholars continue to grapple in their work.
Just as they have in the past, political scientists are contributing
to these inquiries and helping to provide answers to these questions.
For example, as Sanderson (2002) noted, the relationship between
evaluative techniques in government and their effects on outcomes
is not straightforward and such mechanisms need ‘to be conceived
as instances of practical reason rather than solely technical exer-
cises’. And political scientists have developed a wide spectrum of
concepts and definitions of policy behaviour in the effort to address
the political aspects of these questions (Bennett and Howlett 1992;
Dunlop and Radaelli 2011; Radaelli 2007). Recent forays into

explaining scientific expertise and the formation of learning rela-
tions using network analysis, for example, have confirmed that ties
forming between policy actors based on substantive instrument-
level learning need not be the same as those that form based on
political knowledge (Bernstein 2001; Cashore et al. 2013; Delmas
and Young 2009; Leifeld and Schneider 2012; May 1992). Such
findings underline the significant role continuing to be played by
political scientists in furthering the understanding of knowledge
processes in government and hence in continuing to augment the
relevance of policy research to practitioners and to the public.
Chapter 8
Why political theory matters
THOM BROOKS
Introduction
Political theory matters. But why? Unfortunately, this simple claim

about the importance of political theory may be controversial. This
is because it runs contrary to what we might call a common miscon-
ception dominant in many informal circles that real world impact is
the stuff of other sub-disciplines in political science and not made to
order for political theorists. If we search for examples of politics as
practised, then too often an orthodox perspective for many politi-
cal scientists is that theorists are expected to always come up short.
One implication is that this orthodox view favours those sub-disci-
plines believed to offer some contribution to politics as practised
above the perceived importance of political theorists to politics as
understood.
This contributes to a significant challenge for political theory.
The perceived inability to contribute substantially to politics as
practised and our collective political lives is not only a belief about
political theory’s failure to engage with politics on the ground, but
it can undermine the one domain theorists are thought to have rele-
vance, namely, to our understanding of politics if only abstractly.
Some might argue: if political theorists cannot engage with the
world and change it, then does political theory even matter?
This exceptionalism about political theory has additional nega-
tive effects. The concern is that political theory is by its nature
abstract and often thought to be substantially impractical. Political
theorists more readily apply themselves to the consideration of
ideas, but not always their relation to practices. The problem is that
it has become more common to require evidence of research impact
in funding applications and research assessments of departments.
136
Why political theory matters 137
Political theorists are disadvantaged by this development and the

impact agenda developed in the UK and the concern about rele-
vance expressed in North America and elsewhere may threaten its
future. In fact, this orthodox view is not only shared widely by most
non-political theorists, but even by many political theorists, too.
There is a danger that this orthodoxy might exercise dominance to
the point of becoming a truism for too many people.
The orthodox view rests on a deep misunderstanding about the
relation between ideas and practices. Political theorists can – and
often do – affect practice. I offer a defence of political theory and its
impact in this chapter. I will argue that the primary obstacle for
political theorists is overcoming scepticism about the kind of
impact theorists may offer. The issue is not about whether political
theorists create impact, but rather the kinds of impact we should
expect from political theorists.
I will make the case for the impact that political theory has made
and the opportunities for future work. I will consider the contribu-
tions made by leading political theorists to policy debates, the
lessons learned from their successes, and how political theorists
might further pursue existing and new opportunities to develop
impact. The discussion will close with consideration of several
potential threats that theorists should become more aware of in
order to avoid them. Political theorists should welcome – and not
oppose – recent trends towards demonstrating impact because they
(and perhaps the wider discipline of political science) can benefit.
A chequered past?
It is curious that any misperception about the impact of political

theory has taken hold given the long history of impact-rich political
engagement by theorists over the centuries. Examples abound of
such cases. Several political theorists from antiquity had influence
that many today might only dream of. Consider Aristotle and his
famous pupil Alexander the Great with his later empire. Or think of
Seneca and Imperial Rome with its powerful legacy. We owe much
today to these figures from antiquity. Not only were philosophers at
the heart of some of the most significant political developments in
Western history, but their ideas have lived far beyond their political
empires. Seneca’s claim that he was a citizen of the world remains
the centrepiece of contemporary cosmopolitanism. Furthermore,
138 Thom Brooks
his embrace of freedom as a form of non-domination has re-

emerged in new work bringing back to life this (Roman) republican
theory of freedom (Pettit 1997).
The influence of political theorists continues in modern history,
too. For example, John Locke’s (2004) Second Treatise of
Government had a particularly profound impact on the founders of
the United States, such as Thomas Jefferson, and was a cornerstone
for much natural rights jurisprudence. Where it was once contro-
versial to argue that every individual possessed rights to life, liberty
and property, this has now become more commonplace. Or
consider Immanuel Kant’s (1957) Perpetual Peace and its
contributing to the establishing of the League of Nations, a precur-
sor to the United Nations.
My brief, historical survey is not meant to claim that the only
impact we should expect from political theorists must be at the level
of Aristotle, Seneca, Locke or Kant. Instead, my discussion should
make clear that, yes, political theorists have exercised a profound
impact on both our understanding about political science and its
practice. Our question is not whether political theorists can create
and deliver real world impact; but, instead, we should ask what
kinds of impact we might expect. So we should not ask if political
theory matters, but how it matters.
Many political theorists have contributed to a chequered history
that may have led to scepticism about the value of their impact.
Again, there is little disagreement about the fact of impact: the issue
is about the kinds of impact we find. For example, the great major-
ity of canonical figures in political theory – including Plato,
Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche
and many others – did not defend democracy as the most superior
form of government (Brooks 2006a). While Aristotle taught a
young Alexander the Great, Plato’s students included the future
tyrant Dionysius II of Syracuse. Plato’s powerful arguments in
support of a government ruled by philosopher-kings and not elected
leaders is more often cited as evidence for the danger of his ideas
rather than as a case of promising future impact (see Brooks 2006b;
2008). Plato along with Hegel and Marx has also been (falsely)
accused of providing philosophical justification for totalitarianism
(Popper 1945; see Brooks 2012a). It is perhaps one of the more star-
tling facts about political theory’s leading figures that so few
supported democratic governance (Brooks 2006a). This may be one
source of scepticism about the value of political theory – if so many
key figures supported regimes contrary to what most might endorse

today, then this could lead some to question the value of their
contributions with regard to how we think about political issues
today.
Scepticism about the value of political theory’s impact is perhaps
exacerbated by other high profile cases. One important illustration
is Niccolo Machiavelli (1995) and his brilliant treatise, The Prince.
This work exhibits a wide range of political insight and critical
perspective, but it is too often associated with the ‘dark arts’ of poli-
tics, a tome rendered both illuminating and almost dangerous at
once (see Powell 2011). So we might accept his work produces
impact that may have real practical usefulness, but some may still
question whether its advice lies beyond the horizon of acceptable
modern politics. To be clear, such critics profoundly misunderstand
Machiavelli’s work (Viroli 2013). Nonetheless, the point this raises
is that it is perhaps not enough that political theorists demonstrate
impact because they face an additional hurdle about the value of
their impact. If their leading figures support objectionable (and
perhaps odious) political institutions, then what useful practical
instruction might contemporary political theorists still provide? We
might clarify existing norms that guide the conduct of combatants
in just wars (McMahan 2009) or provide a new understanding
about punishment that illuminates a new approach to modern
sentencing (Brooks 2012b), but there will still remain this deeper,
ethical question about its value – that is, the value of political theory
– for many in light of the popular scepticism arising from political
theory’s chequered past.
Political theory has a long and controversial record of genuinely
substantial and significant contributions to politics and public
policy of lasting merit. But what is the state of play today? I will
now turn our attention to how many political theorists have been
creating impact and the value this work has for politics and public
policy – and why it should be celebrated.
Political thought: creating an impact
Political theorists generate impact in three broad ways: through our

thinking about politics, through our thinking about public policy
more broadly, and through public engagement. I shall address each
in turn.
140 Thom Brooks
First, political theorists create impact on our thinking about poli-

tics. This impact is found across several levels. One level is the realm
of political decision-making. Several significant political theorists
of distinction have become Members of the House of Lords, includ-
ing Onora O’Neill, Raymond Plant and Bhikhu Parekh. Each has a
voice in Parliamentary affairs where their political expertise may
more directly impact on government policies. Furthermore, each
has contributed enormously to the intellectual tenor of
Parliamentary debates – consider O’Neill’s speeches on autonomy,
consent and education as well as Parekh’s speeches on community,
multiculturalism and political justice – and beyond to issues of
medical ethics and religious toleration (Manson and O’Neill 2007;
Parekh 2005; 2008; Plant 2001). Of course, other theorists provide
significant contributions as well, helping to clarify and reconfigure
our understanding about autonomy and consent, the nature of
democratic governance, the foundations of our multiple identities
and issues pertaining to political authority, as well as religious toler-
ation and reasonable difference amongst others (Brooks and
Nussbaum 2014; Miller and Wertheimer 2009; Modood 2009;
Nussbaum 2000; Rawls 1996; Weale 2007). The field of political
theory is rich and its contributions are diverse, including from
within Parliamentary government. It is interesting to reflect on how
much different – and improved – American political discourse on
Capital Hill might be if it provided a space for carefully selected,
but unelected, appointments like the many distinguished academics
that have served in the House of Lords. Political theorists can and
do benefit political debate at its coalface.
The second broad way in which political theory creates an impact
is related to the first and concerns our thinking about public policy
more broadly (Smits 2009; Wolff 2011). Distinctive contributions
include work on ethics and public health policy, including issues
concerning the challenges posed by the great disparities in global
health inequalities (Lenard and Straehle 2012). Climate scientists
help us understand the evidence for climate change, but not the
normative justification for choosing particular policy solutions.
Political theorists have helped lead the way in creative practical
work as to how we should understand the challenges presented by
climate change and what future policies are most preferable (Brooks
2012c; Giddens 2009; McKinnon 2012; Stern 2010). There is also
significant work in the area of criminal justice and punishment
where political theorists have made important contributions to the
importance of restorative justice in reforming sentencing practices

(Brooks 2012b; Mills 2003).
These first two ways in which political theorists create an impact
has real value for how we understand politics and may improve
public policies. The tools of the political theorists’ trade are rich
conceptual analysis and analytical rigour that illuminate the gram-
mar of our political understandings and draw greater attention to
inconsistencies of both practice and principle. Political theorists
perform more roles than simply helping us to understand politics
and public policy, but they do actively contribute to improving our
knowledge about how institutions and policies work and how they
might be improved. Thus, contemporary political theorists promise
both impact and practical value that should overcome the popular
scepticism which owes far more to disagreement with the past than
the present.
One illustration is my work on immigration policy, specifically
relating to British citizenship. Individuals that want to become UK
citizens are required to satisfy several criteria, including passing the
‘Life in the United Kingdom’ citizenship test. This test has been used
to confirm that applicants possess a sufficient grasp about the coun-
try; the questions are designed to ensure that only persons with a
satisfactory level of English language proficiency should pass. It is
possible to sit the test in languages other than English, although this
is restricted to Scots Gaelic and Welsh. Of course, the idea of ‘citi-
zenship’ is a contested concept that has received significant exami-
nation from political theorists from Plato’s discussion of the good
citizen in a just city-state to Rousseau’s reflections on the good of
active citizenship (Brooks 2013a; Plato 1997; Rousseau 1997). A
citizenship test is one of several possible instruments for concretiz-
ing this often abstract political concept. Political theorists are in a
strong position to evaluate the coherence of a test’s conception
about citizenship and how well it connects this in the practical
application of a test.
I launched a report, The ‘Life in the United Kingdom’
Citizenship Test: Is It Unfit for Purpose?, that is an example of how
political theorists can impact on practices (Brooks 2013b). The
report is the only comprehensive examination of the test across all
three editions of the test. Over one million tests have been sat since
it was launched in 2005 and over 150,000 people took it in 2012:
this is not some negligible area of public policy that affects only a
few. Most popular commentary looking at the new third edition
142 Thom Brooks
appearing in 2013 highlighted the ‘inclusion’ of British history and

culture in the test, but all failed to notice several striking facts. The
first is that some element of British history and culture has always
been incorporated in previous editions of the test’s official hand-
book – and so this was an error that could have been addressed
through better research. The second and more pressing problem is
that all attention was directed to the question of whether to be
‘British’ it was necessary to know certain historical facts listed in an
early chapter of the test handbook without any notice about more
serious omissions, such as the removal of information about how to
contact emergency services, how to register with a local doctor, how
to report a crime, and one’s rights when under arrest.
These facts about practical life were overlooked, in my view,
precisely because commentators failed to examine the test from the
perspective of identifying the concept of citizenship and testing
whether it is applied satisfactorily. If they had done so, they would
have taken more seriously the test handbook’s claim – on its cover
– to be ‘a guide for new residents’ and where we are told on its first
page that it is designed to assist new migrants ‘integrate into society
and play a full role in your local community’, advocating a positive,
constructive role of active citizenship (Home Office 2013). These
claims lack any clear substance given the absence of information
about how potentially new citizens might engage given the wide
range of omissions which render the test ‘unfit for purpose’ and
more like a poorly designed ‘pub quiz’ (Brooks 2013b). Knowing
something about what citizenship can and should be about helps us
pinpoint the connection between theory and practice. This perspec-
tive can reveal problems too quickly overlooked – and may help
point the way to future solutions. My report was covered in over
300 media outlets worldwide including all major UK newspapers
and was the subject of over a dozen interviews across the country.
The report has also been cited at least six times in Parliamentary
debates in the Hansard, including written questions to government.
My report concludes with 12 recommendations on how the Life in
the United Kingdom citizenship test should be revised and
improved in a new, fourth edition. Political theorists can provide a
critical insight on policy, revealing problems that others have over-
looked.
Finally, political theorists create an impact through forms of
public engagement. Perhaps the most widely recognized illustration
is the widely popular lectures on justice by Michael Sandel. His
later Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? has exposed substan-
tial research into the idea of political justice and what it means for
most citizens to new audiences (Sandel 2010). Similarly, Richard
Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge has caught the imagination of the
public and influential policy-makers while rekindling interest in the
potential promise of applying insights from behavioural economics
to everything from government policy to everyday life (Thaler and
Sunstein 2009).
These examples of public engagement are perhaps few and high
profile, but others are no less important. For example, there is a real
and growing appetite for engagement with ethics and political ideas
that should be welcome – and where political theorists have helped
play an active role. Groups, such as the Café Philosophique and
Sceptics Clubs, have sprung up across many parts of the United
Kingdom and elsewhere, bringing together leading figures in politi-
cal theory with a popular audience to address critically pressing
issues of common concern. In 2012 the city of Newcastle upon Tyne
hosted its second annual Festival of Philosophy with academic talks
open to the public over two weeks. Such activities are often over-
looked in favour of other engagement activities, such as public
policy think tanks and political party conferences, where political
theorists also actively contribute, but not exclusively so. My
purpose is to draw greater attention to wider spheres of engagement
where political theorists create an impact beyond the so-called
‘usual suspects’ of seminar rooms and policy-maker boardrooms.
Political theorists generate an impact across several areas. They
help us think more sharply about politics and public policy as well
as to contribute to public engagement. The ability to grasp political
concepts better is not merely doing good philosophy, though this
can have a genuine practical application across a wide range of
policy areas, such as the idea of citizenship or the use of citizenship
tests.
The challenge of demonstrating an impact
So it is clear that political theory has an impact across the several

different areas highlighted above, though it has not always been
easy to demonstrate it on the basis of experiences in the UK. That
country’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 programme
includes an assessment of research ‘impact’. This is to be assessed
144 Thom Brooks
through narrative case studies describing impacts made during the

period 1 January 2008 to 31 July 2013. Each case study is limited
to a maximum of 750 words that must refer to at least one or two
‘outputs’ (including, but not limited to, academic publications)
produced by the submitting department (or ‘units of assessment’).
Departments must produce roughly one impact case study for every
ten full-time academic staff (REF2013 2011). This timeframe may
appear too brief, but it reflects the start of the current assessment
period. Now that ‘impact’ is a part of research assessment for the
foreseeable future it would be surprising if the timeframe were not
extended much further in future. This might have been unfair to
implement now because previous research assessments did not
require evidence of research impact.
The crucial distinctions concern how ‘impact’ is defined and
applied. The REF2014 considered ‘impact’ in terms of many
geographical types (local, regional, national, international) and
beneficiaries, such as the community, the environment, individuals
and organizations (REF2013 2012: 68). Each is to have an equal
status, so that impact on a local community is not necessarily infe-
rior to impact on international organizations. Evidence had to be
provided in the form of: citations in public consultation documents
or journals; citation by international bodies such as the UN or
UNESCO; citation in policy documentation; public debate in the
media; media reviews; measures of improved welfare or equality; or
documented evidence of influence on guidelines, legislation, policy
or standards (REF2013 2012: 72).
Impact is divided into several spheres. The first concerns impacts
on creativity, culture and society. This includes the production of
television programmes, shaping public or political debate,
improved access to justice and equal opportunities, enhanced
understanding of issues informing public attitudes or values, and
influential contributions to campaigns for social, political and/or
legal change. Examples from political theory are Michael Sandel’s
popular book and television programmes on justice and important
work on social justice, Archon Fung’s influential research on public
policy and transparency, and Martha Nussbaum’s illuminating
work on lesbian and gay rights (Fung et al. 2007; Nussbaum 2010;
Sandel 2010).
The second sphere is economic, commercial and organizational
impacts including improvements in business governance and corpo-
rate social responsibility policies such as Will Hutton’s well-known
contributions on stakeholding and economic justice (Hutton 1999;

2011). A third sphere concerns impacts on the environment, which
include improved management or conservation of natural resources
or environmental risk, and improved design or implementation of
environmental policy. Political theorists have made numerous
contributions in this area, including critical examinations about
carbon trading and the ‘polluter pays’ principle (Gardiner 2011;
Singer 2002).
One further sphere worth highlighting concerns impacts on
public policy, law and services. This includes changes to legislation
or legislative practices, influence on regulation or access to justice,
shaping or influencing policy made by government or private
organizations, impact on democratic participation and ‘enabling a
challenge to conventional wisdom’ (REF2013 2012). This sphere of
impact captures perhaps the more traditional understanding of
impact – and in the wide sense of including challenges to received
public understandings that might accommodate work focused on
our knowledge about intellectual history (Skinner 1997), contem-
porary policy debates (Sen 1999) or immigration policy (Brooks
2013b).
The impact agenda of UK higher education policy is not a threat
to the future of political theory in the United Kingdom. First, the
policy’s understanding of ‘impact’ across multiple spheres captures
much, if not all, of the areas where political theory has had an
impact. Some spheres, such as impact on public policy or political
debates, may be more readily achieved than others. But political
theory has impact and the forms it might take are captured by the
diverse ways in which it will be assessed.
Secondly, impact is appropriate for all political theory. One
possible concern is that the new importance of it for research assess-
ment will incentivize less ‘blue skies’ research and more short-term
impact work. For example, blue skies research may often require
more time to generate an impact. John Rawls’s landmark A Theory
of Justice was celebrated shortly after publication, but its lasting
impact grew for many years afterwards, leading to this work being
understood today as one of the most important texts in political
philosophy that continues to influence public policy debates (Rawls
1971). The timeframe for the REF2013 impact case studies is rela-
tively brief, but again this is because there has not been a previous
requirement for researchers to consider more centrally the potential
impact of their work. Now that impact has become embedded in
146 Thom Brooks
research assessment expectations we should expect the horizon to

expand and cover a larger timeframe in future. The impact agenda
need not demand all research to demonstrate immediate impacts
because the timeframe will likely change.
A second potential worry is that the impact agenda will favour
some forms of political theory and not others. Political theorists are
sometimes divided between those engaged in the history of political
ideas and others focused on contemporary debates. The concern is
that ‘impact’ will promote the latter at the expense of the former. So
it is clear that the impact agenda may benefit contemporary politi-
cal theory focused on current problems, such as climate change or
the ‘just war’. Historians of political thought might also clearly
benefit from this agenda. Note that ‘impact’ includes challenges to
conventional wisdom, such as our common view about the influ-
ences on contemporary customs and practices, and also media pres-
ence. These are areas where intellectual historians may readily
engage and create an impact, too.
Bright future
I have rejected the idea that political theory has something to fear
from the impact agenda. In fact, this is something that all political
theorists would do well to embrace. Critical engagement with prac-
tice is what much political theory is about at its heart. The big chal-
lenge for political theorists is not whether they have an impact, but
to overcome the traditional popular scepticism about the value of
the impact that they might offer. Political theory is about much
more than hypothetical thought experiments for people that have
never existed. On the contrary, it is a rich subfield of our discipline,
not unlike others where impact is created for practical and popular
benefit.
This fact – that political theorists provide valuable contribu-
tions to the development of politics and public policy – is not lost
on many policy-makers. Indeed, it may be surprising how
frequently political theorists are called upon for their insights and
advice. This is not to say political theorists have all the answers –
they don’t – but rather they provide a useful perspective that can
capture what might otherwise go unnoticed because of the distinc-
tive skill set of conceptual tools and analysis that political theorists
can offer.
I warmly welcome the impact agenda as an opportunity to be

embraced that may help improve the public standing of political
theory and draw greater attention to the many contributions we
offer.
Acknowledgements
This chapter is an expanded and reworked version of Brooks

(2013c). My sincere thanks to two anonymous referees and Gerry
Stoker for their outstanding advice that much improved this essay.
Chapter 9
Constructivism and
interpretive approaches:
especially relevant or
especially not?
CRAIG PARSONS
The fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the global
financial crisis after 2008, the sudden fall of authoritarian govern-
ments in the Arab Spring: these may be the biggest political devel-
opments of the past few decades. Each also constitutes a significant
failure for the long-dominant approaches in political science and
international relations (IR) that analyse politics in terms of rational
individuals pursuing known interests. Of course we might not
begrudge rationalist approaches for failing to predict these events,
even if they typically endorse a philosophy of science in which their
research should generate useful predictions. No social science
approach has ever been very good at forecasting, and we might
class major political events in a category with complex phenomena
like the weather that we can understand fairly well but not predict
very far out. Their failure is clearer, though, in the difficulty that
such approaches meet with in accounting for these developments
with hindsight. Without claiming that rationalists have nothing at
all to say about the evolving material or organizational constraints
to which individuals responded in these contexts, it seems fair to
say that models of people rationally pursuing clear interests in well-
structured interaction look only marginally relevant in these stories.
All seem to involve massive uncertainty, considerable contingency
and what looks like rather rapid change in how many people under-
stood their interests.
148
Constructivism and interpretive approaches 149
The assumptions of formally rationalist approaches also make

them seem weakly relevant when we move from historic change to
a more quotidian level of politics. Both from modern psychology
and our personal experiences as human beings, we know, beyond
a shadow of a doubt, that people are never close to being perfectly
rational. Some may challenge that claim (Tsebelis 1990: 31–9) but
many other rationalists justify their conscious use of unrealistic
models with a philosophy of science in which parsimonious
assumptions deliver useful predictions (Friedman 1953c). When
such models predict successfully, their authors conclude not that
they have perfectly represented the mechanisms of action, but that
they have roughly captured the stripped-down core of a political
story. The problem, however, is that such successful predictions or
‘retrodictions’ seem few and far between – not just in giant histor-
ical developments, but also in simple contexts like voting behav-
iour – and, oddly, this gives pause to few rationalist scholars
(Green and Shapiro 1994). At points, to put it bluntly, they seem
frankly uninterested in why real people actually do anything.
Extremely clear, moreover, is that many care little that anyone
outside of restricted academic circles reads their work. In the
name of parsimony and logical rigour they often translate
accounts of political action into equations. Subjects that might, in
principle, interest politicians or citizens become literally illegible
to those without doctorates.
But we need not despair. Constructivists, together with diverse
fellow-travellers whom we can broadly call interpretivists, have
risen to save political science from self-marginalization. These
scholars criticize ‘outsider’ social science that assumes monolithi-
cally rational action and naturalizes apparent constraints in favour
of more grounded ‘insider’ research that captures how actors
perceive and interpret their context. The message of a socially
constructed ‘world of our making’, they often add, has an impor-
tant normative value. It encourages people to ask questions and
empowers a voluntarist, humanist vision of political possibility
(Onuf 1989).
The currents in this movement fly the flag of relevance in several
different ways. For the most ‘modern’ constructivists, increased
relevance will come mainly from better science. We can show that
our political world is largely socially constructed, and a political
science that does so will better grapple with everything from
quotidian political participation to IR.
150 Craig Parsons
For the most ‘postmodern’ constructivists or interpretivists,

increased relevance will come mainly from rejecting science in
favour of critical engagement with real politics. They see academic
writing as just another form of political action, and call for us to
recognize and embrace this condition. A Derridean break with any
claim about reality is the prerequisite to more honest and open
political debate, and scholars who refuse this step will remain
‘marginal to international relations’ (and politics more generally)
(Zehfuss 2002: 37, 263).
In-between these poles stands perhaps the most interesting
group: interpretivists, some of whom identify as IR constructivists,
who call for increased relevance through a more engaged and prac-
tical science. They want to ‘make political science matter’ by
making it more attuned to meaning, more pragmatic, and more
normative (Schram and Caterino 2006). Though they agree on
these goals, they are a diverse group, ranging from fairly main-
stream leaders of the ‘Perestroika Movement’ within the American
Political Science Association (Shapiro 2007; Smith 2002; 2011), to
champions of Bourdieusian approaches (Adler and Pouliot 2011;
Guzzini 2000), to post-positivist methodologists who seek a rigor-
ous but practical basis for interpretive social science (Flyvbjerg
2001; Yanow and Schwartz-Shea 2006).
Or perhaps we should despair after all. The most aggressive posi-
tion in this movement, on the postmodern side, posits a stark choice
between doing political science and being relevant. Though it osten-
sibly opts for the latter, it also argues strongly that academics have
no special claim to knowledge – begging the question of why any
audience would turn to its dense, heavily theoretical, introspective
scholarship rather than to more accessible sources of wisdom.
Advocates of perestroikan-interpretivist positions hold out greater
hope in principle, clearly seeing themselves as able to generate
useful knowledge. Yet we will see that their recipe for relevance
melts the category of academic knowledge into something more like
investigative journalism – similarly begging the question of why any
audience would turn to the turgid writings of PhDs when they can
get the same kind of knowledge from good newspapers, magazines
and other social commentators. Even modern constructivists, who
surely believe that they focus more on big questions and relevant
meanings in politics than their rationalist colleagues, tend to write
in ways that are so wrapped up in meta-theory and methodology
(not to say jargon) that they are just as illegible to laymen as is
formal modelling. It is not obvious, then, that constructivists and

interpretivists are actually better suited to crafting and communi-
cating broadly relevant messages than any other denizens of the
Ivory Tower.
Yet all is not lost. Constructivism and interpretivist approaches
do, in my view, have some modest potential for directly relevant
policy work and a larger potential for indirect relevance to non-
academics. Constructivists can write things for policy-makers’
consumption, and there is one reason to think that policy-focused
versions of their work may be especially helpful to policy-makers:
of the various conditions that affect policy domains, historically
and culturally situated contexts of norms and identities may be the
hardest for policy-makers to perceive and digest themselves. A
version of the same logic underlies constructivists’ larger potential
for indirect relevance, which operates through teaching rather than
research. Since social construction tends to be naturalized into the
background of political life, it is especially important to help
students perceive it alongside the material or institutional condi-
tions in politics that are often harder to miss. In teaching students to
ask of any political situation ‘What seem to be the underlying ideas,
norms, identities, practices and discourses at work here?’, academic
constructivists fulfil a valuable function for their societies that
cannot be performed by other academics, journalists or some other
group.
To be clear-eyed about constructivists’ potential for relevance,
however, we must recognize that there are logical and practical
limits to that potential. I will now consider how strong postmodern
and perestroikan-interpretivist visions of direct relevance ulti-
mately undercut themselves by blurring constructivists’ claims to
distinct expertise. I will then stress that, even if modern construc-
tivists make a more coherent case that their academic work tells
extra-academic people something they need to know, there is
tension between their academic credentials and policy relevance.
The very theoretical and methodological practices that uphold their
claims to distinctive expertise make their research fairly impenetra-
ble to others; seeking relevance means somehow finding the time
and motivation to translate their work into non-academic presenta-
tions. This can be done, and we should celebrate those who do it,
but we cannot expect it on any large scale. Indirect relevance
through teaching will remain the main way in which constructivists
impact on society.
152 Craig Parsons
Of gadflies and journalists: problems with

postmodern and interpretivist claims to specific
and direct relevance
I take it for granted that readers know what constructivism is, but
in order to discuss the possible relevance of constructivist social
science we must also define ‘relevance’ and ‘social science’. When
academics question their ‘relevance’ they mean something like
‘perceived by a non-academic as usefully worth reading or listening
to’. Relevance is determined by the audience, of course – I cannot
simply declare myself relevant – and so a call for academic rele-
vance must logically take the form of arguments about why non-
academics would listen to academics. Thus we can rephrase the
question for this chapter as: for what insights would academic
constructivists claim that non-academics must come to them rather
than to other kinds of people?
Equally important is our definition of ‘academic social science’,
since we are asking about how constructivist academics can be rele-
vant as constructivist academics – not by leaving their university
jobs and joining a political campaign. Defining ‘social science’ is a
rather large challenge, but at a minimum it seems to involve the
notions of distinctive methods and explicit competition between
points of view. Unlike anyone else in society, social scientists
(constructivist or otherwise) aspire to arrive at conclusions by
highly explicit methods – often, we must recognize, in meticulous
and quite tedious forms – that involve a relatively open clash
between opposing perspectives. Any claim that people should look
to academics for knowledge they cannot find elsewhere depends on
their commitment to some version of these processes.
The problem with both postmodern and interpretivist calls for
relevance, at least in their strong versions, is that their views of rele-
vance and scholarship provide no case for why non-academic audi-
ences should listen specifically to people like them.
Postmodern constructivism and relevance as gadfly –

or crank?
Postmodern constructivism, including approaches from post-
structuralism or critical theory, is largely based around a rejection
of social science in the name of being relevant. Scholars like Richard
Ashley (1984), R. B. J. Walker (1993), Robert Cox (1987), James
Der Derian (1987), Roxanne Doty (1996), David Campbell (1992),

Ann Tickner (1992), Stephen Gill (1990) or Maja Zehfuss (2002)
seek to deconstruct the political world to reveal and criticize the
role of power and particular political values therein. This includes
deconstructing and criticizing academic writing about politics,
which postmodernists see as just another arena of politics itself. The
payoff, as Ashley and Walker stressed in an influential early state-
ment of such approaches in IR, is to open ‘a space in which it is once
more possible to think’ (Foucault 1973: 386, cited in Ashley and
Walker 1990a: 263). Clearly they intend this space to include
people beyond their colleagues, since they situate critical theory (in
IR) ‘at the uncertain interstices of international theory and practice’
(Ashley and Walker 1990a: 263). Some such scholars make their
call to relevance very explicit. For example, Maja Zehfuss
announces that she aspires to empower ‘a more responsible politics’
(Zehfuss 2002: 37). Her book on constructivism ends with a section
titled ‘Responsibility in International Relations’ (ibid.: 254), where
she argues that without fully accepting that all of reality is
profoundly political – a space of clashing normative agendas, not a
reality amenable even to the most caveated truth statements – schol-
ars will shirk their responsibility to engage in important political
debates. Jim George suggests that critical work offers ‘more sophis-
ticated, inclusive, and adequate reference points for understanding
a complex world’, and opens up the opportunity for ‘a more
comprehensive and insightful agenda by which questions might be
answered and problems might be “solved”’ (George 1994: 23).
As an abstract logical position and as an empirical claim about
how academia works in practice, the postmodern stance must be
taken seriously. Even most rationalist political scientists today
accept a Lakatosian philosophy of science that identifies theoretical
contributions and ‘progress’ only according to academic conven-
tions, not through proven concordance with reality (Lakatos 1970).
In some hard sciences concrete results in launching rockets or fight-
ing cancer support the notion that such conventions give some
purchase on reality, but theoretical contributions in political science
have no such foundations. As concrete as some of our outcomes
may seem – war, economic growth, electoral victories – both these
outcomes and the causes and conditions by which we explain them
are deeply embedded in social meanings that greatly complicate
broad acceptance of specific claims about definition, measurement
and what causes what. Our human subjects also do not react to
154 Craig Parsons
these conditions as apples do to gravity, instead seeming to display

non-automatic mechanisms of contingent choice that many see as
frustrating the very notion of causality. These complications mean
that even contributions that attract wide admiration from some
parts of the discipline may be enduringly rejected as flawed or
wrongheaded by other schools. In practice, the resultant theoretical
and methodological contestation plays out in hugely divergent
reviews of submitted manuscripts, hiring battles and other patterns
that often look more like political jockeying for advantage than any
sort of rational engagement within shared conventions. Thus no
sophisticated political scientist – and especially no political scientist
who has lived through a few experiences of peer review and hiring
decisions – can blithely rule out that the postmodern view of politi-
cal science might be right. It may be more politics than science.
To the extent that this vision of academia as politics is right, the
relevance of constructivist academics is best described as a role of
gadflies. They pose uncomfortable questions, shine light in dark
corners, challenge assumptions and generally shake up the compla-
cent citizenry of twenty-first-century democracies. They may go no
further than offering a destabilizing discourse, since both the logis-
tics and norms of academic employment limit most professors’ abil-
ity to become actual activists in politics, but they nonetheless may
fulfil an important social role in the grand tradition of the original
gadfly, Socrates.
Yet if the postmodern analysis of academic life is difficult to
dismiss, this logic for its relevance has a flaw. The more they are
right about political science as politics, not science, the less of a
foundation they have for claims to relevance. Even the role of
gadfly presumes that the audience lends the speaker some credence:
a self-described gadfly with no particular claim to credibility is just
a crank to ignore. If long years in PhD programmes, mind-numb-
ingly minute attention to methods and debate with our peers, and
all the other trappings of academia do not convey some sort of
special claim to less politicized knowledge, why should non-
academics value them as gadflies rather than dismissing them as
cranks? Why listen to them any more than to people on Rupert
Murdoch’s payroll?
Postmodern constructivists are clearly aware of this issue, but
seem oddly untroubled by it. Zehfuss does not shy away from
declaring her own lack of foundations with admirable pithiness,
dismissing the ‘rhetoric of reality’ upon which any claims to special
knowledge are built: ‘the rhetoric of reality gives a special status to

what is being claimed, a status which is unfounded’ (Zehfuss 2002:
258). Ashley and Walker give extended attention to the risk that
academic work unmoored from truth claims will hold no particular
interest for any audience:
Surely, then, there is cause for pessimism. The scholars of a disci-

pline governed by iterations of this strategy might claim to be
seriously engaged in the great social and political struggles bear-
ing on questions of freedom, dignity, justice, welfare, ecology,
and peace. But in fact they would be obsessed with the perform-
ance of an art of scholarly self-making that is conducted in a
register of desire that is radically detached from the material real-
ity of a far-reaching crisis of representation, and that neither
listens nor speaks to the real problems of people who must labor
with scant resources to question limitations and generate possi-
bilities in the paradoxical localities of life. (1990b: 407)
They offer no retort to this observation, and even go further in a

wonderfully crafted series of imagined responses to their work. If
postmodern constructivists are just another kind of provider of
political debate, argues one of their imaginary interlocutors, their
writing style might well lead most non-academics to prefer consum-
ing political ideas from journalists, pundits and baby-kissing politi-
cians:
If this be theory, it is theory of, by, and for a jet-set elite. Its
language – so sophisticated, so ‘lit crit’, so French – has the ring
of so much alien and impenetrable jargon. I wait to hear it clar-
ify our political situations; it confuses. I anticipate its precise
answers to our problems; it celebrates ambiguity. I await its
respectful treatment of our place in life; it seeks to displace. Who
could relate to such theory, save those who can afford self-
consciously to embrace a ‘postmodern style’ and leap off in
pursuit of the so-called ‘free-play of self-referential signifiers’ in
nonstop flight. (Ibid.: 370)
Yet as lucidly as Ashley and Walker perceive this risk, they make no
effort to dispel it. Apparently they are comfortable recognizing that
there is ultimately no reason why others should read their work,
resting the justification for their labours on a modest hope that their
156 Craig Parsons
thoughts just might resonate with someone. I suspect that, at some

semi-conscious level, this cannot be the real view held by most self-
described postmodernists – especially the large number of such
scholars who undertake elaborate and often very insightful empiri-
cal work (such as Epstein 2008; Campbell 1992; Weldes 1999; and
many others). It seems to me that they must at least believe for
themselves that they are coming to a better understanding of the
issue or context they study, and that they publish their studies due
to some sense that others will profit from that understanding as
well. They can see themselves as gadflies, not cranks, because in
some sense they actually think that their knowledge is not totally
without foundation. Still, if we simply accept their explicitly
announced views, we must see their aspirations to relevance as
incoherent. They insist that there is no particular reason why non-
academics should listen to them rather than to Rush Limbaugh (a
conservative American radio talk show host widely listened to
across the USA) .
Perestroikan interpretivism and relevance as investigative

journalist
Louder, more explicit, and more optimistic calls for greater rele-
vance from constructivists have come recently from a large, diverse
group for which ‘perestroikan interpretivists’ is a reasonable label.
The best-known focal point of their appeals for relevance is the
movement that emerged in the United States after an anonymous
email in October 2000 by ‘Mr Perestroika’, who denounced the
American Political Science Association (APSA) and its flagship
journal, the American Political Science Review (APSR), as a
‘coterie’ of quantitative, rationalist, formal-modelling white males
who were disconnected from the real world (Anonymous 2000).
The subject line of the Perestroika email was ‘On the irrelevance of
APSA and APSR!’; and relevance was a central emphasis of the
discussion that followed. As Rogers Smith rephrased Perestroika’s
vitriolic questions in a following letter that attracted wide support,
‘Why do the APSR and other professional fora seem so intensively
focused on technical methods, at the expense of the great, substan-
tive political questions that actually intrigue many APSA members,
as well as broader intellectual audiences?’ (cited in Rudolph 2006).
Though not all participants in the Perestroika Movement identi-
fied as constructivists, most of their diagnosis of the irrelevance of
rationalist quantoids (with their commitment to quantitative

methods) implied that ‘relevance’ meant being more constructivist.
Suzanne Hoeber Rudolph (APSA President at the height of the
debate) characterized the Perestroikan episode overall as pitting a
‘scientific’ mode of inquiry against an ‘interpretive’ one that
emphasized meaning, contingency, thick description, multiplicity
of truth, context and subjective knowledge (Rudolph 2006). In
other words, the core claim of Perestroikans was that, in order to
address ‘great, substantive political questions’ and speak to
‘broader intellectual audiences’, political scientists must give more
attention to constructivism and related variants of interpretive
institutionalism.
And though the Perestroika Movement was an American
phenomenon, it dovetailed with similar and contemporary calls for
relevance-through-constructivism in Europe. In the early 2000s a
variety of European interpretivists called for a practical, relevant
version of constructivism rooted in Bourdieusian sociology, stress-
ing that attention to meaning was both necessary to capture how
politics works and to render explicit academics’ broader social
embeddedness and relevance (Guzzini 2000; Kauppi 2003). This
same emphasis on constructivism with a practical, relevant focus
has since blossomed into a larger Bourdieusian literature (see Adler
and Pouliot 2011; 2012; Hopf 2010; Kauppi 2003; Mérand 2010a;
2010b; Pouliot 2008; 2010). In a tone much like that of many
Perestroikan writings, Stefano Guzzini ended his Bourdieusian
‘reconstruction of constructivism’ article with an anecdote (Guzzini
2000: 175):
In a keynote speech to an Association of Economists, the chair-

man criticized the discipline for the little impact it had on actual
politics. His speech was met with outrage. The audience recalled
numerous examples of policies influenced by the discipline’s
thoughts or main protagonists. After listening to these examples,
the chairman addressed the floor by asking how it could be, then,
that so little research has been done on this link, why the disci-
pline was not reflecting on its eminently social role.
Constructivism would have helped to avoid the embarrassed
silence which followed.
The highest-profile version of this theme from Europe came with

Bent Flyvbjerg’s (2001) epistemological treatise, Making Social
158 Craig Parsons
Science Matter. Flyvbjerg proposed what he called ‘phronetic social

science’ as ‘an antidote to the “so what” problem’, resolving:
to conduct my research in ways that make it relevant to practical

politics, administration, and planning … to work with problems
that are considered problems, not only in the academy, but also
in the rest of society … to actively feed the results of my research
back into the political, administrative, and social processes that I
studied. (Ibid: 156)
Flyvbjerg’s phronetic social science is constructivist by definition, as

well as synthetic and holist. His key reason to re-centre social
science around what Aristotle called phronesis, or practical wisdom
that displays how best to realize certain social values, is that the
contextual variation introduced into human action by socially
constructed meaning renders it too contingent and particularistic to
allow for the universalistic if–then relationships sought by natural
science (ibid.: chs 3–4). He takes his most direct inspiration from
Foucault, Hubert Dreyfus and above all Bourdieu, for whom the
importance of social construction in all human action is a basic
ontological assumption (Foucault 1973; Dreyfus and Dreyfus
1986; Bourdieu 1977; 1990; 1992). Yet also like Bourdieu,
Flyvbjerg sees social construction just as one piece of a synthetic
understanding of human action: any worthwhile analysis combines
attention to material conditions as well as cultural meanings. And
since the real world is a synthesis of material and ideational
processes, Bourdieu argued, we should adopt a synthetic approach
that emphasizes the interdependence of many conditions rather
than setting misleadingly separate accounts of action in competi-
tion. Flyvbjerg even goes beyond Bourdieu to see these elements as
so entangled that the linear connotation of ‘analysis’ exaggerates
our ability to separate them out. As Sanford Schram summarizes
Flyvbjerg in Making Political Science Matter, ‘understanding can
never be grasped analytically; it has a holistic character, given that
the social world is both historical and connected by narrative struc-
tures’ (Schram 2006: 9). Good phronetic work, then, seeks out the
blend of material and cultural conditions that allow us to under-
stand a given arena or issue while avoiding any imposition of false
dichotomies and cartoonish theories on a complex reality. Rather
than parsing out elements of action in pursuit of a scientistic fantasy
of specified causes, we should try to convey a multifaceted sense of
action in ways that can be concretely related to extra-academic

values and problems.
What answer, then, do perestroikan interpretivists give to the
question of why non-academics should listen to academic construc-
tivists? First we must recognize the diversity of scholars that might
accept this label, some of whom do not argue for radical departures
from prevailing social-science practices. The most prominent
American Perestroikans, like Rogers Smith or Ian Shapiro, call for
pluralistic methods and approaches, defining research projects
around real-world problems, and including serious attention to
meaning and social construction in the standard research toolkit
(Smith 2002; Shapiro 2002; 2007). If Flyvbjerg cites them approv-
ingly, though, he and other proponents of phronetic social science
argue that the pursuit of relevance requires a much sharper break
with mainstream social-science practices. At points Flyvbjerg seems
to recognize some non-constructivist work as valuable, citing
Putnam’s Making Democracy Work as a phronetic model and
applauding the scholarship of James C. Scott (who is often
mistaken as an ideational thinker, but in whose work culture,
norms and identity derive mainly from material conditions). Since
neither Putnam nor a clear version of Scott would accept Flyvbjerg’s
core argument that all human action is contingent and socially
constructed at a deep level, this praise seems incoherent. Together
with his citing of even some non-academic work as phronetic
models if they simply speak to important issues in interesting ways,
like Naomi Wolf’s Promiscuities (1997), this seems to suggest that
he values any work that addresses large social issues, irrespective of
other criteria. Yet his longer abstract definition of ‘phronetic work’
suggests otherwise. Flyvbjerg and Schram leave little doubt that
they see work that is not constructivist, synthetic, holist and explic-
itly normatively engaged with real-world debates as frankly inap-
propriate to human disciplines.
And therein lies the rub. Flyvbjerg’s formula for ‘making social
science matter’ unravels around this insistence on a single formula
for good scholarship. It might well deliver work that is relevant, but
it is hard to see how the results retain a distinctive claim to being
social science. Without maintaining distinctively academic methods
that aspire to competition, even with approaches that we think are
woefully misguided, academics (constructivist and otherwise) ulti-
mately class themselves as a group of investigative journalists: well-
informed, engaged thinkers who may offer useful, interesting and
160 Craig Parsons
perhaps even well-founded arguments, but who do not display

exaggeratedly explicit methods and compete with a wide range of
alternatives to arrive at the most robust conclusions possible.
Moreover, people who arrive in university positions through PhD
programmes probably do not write as well as real investigative
journalists. If social scientists simply become turgid investigative
journalists, I, for one, would prefer to read the New Yorker.
Let me elaborate on how these interpretivists neglect a methodol-
ogy of competing alternatives, and why this amounts to erasing a
distinctive claim to academic knowledge rather than making it rele-
vant. Flyvbjerg’s writings leave little doubt that it would be pointless
to set up a phronetic interpretive narrative against one of the scientis-
tic, non-interpretive arguments that are ontologically and epistemo-
logically wrong. Bourdieusian constructivists, too, stand out for their
explicit refusal to engage direct debate with non-constructivist alterna-
tives. Bourdieu himself was strictly opposed to any attempt to parse
out what he saw as false dichotomies; one of his students even summa-
rized his scholarship under the heading ‘The Refusal of Theoretical
Alternatives’ (Pinto 1999). Today’s Bourdieusian constructivists in
political science and IR follow this advice. Much as Flyvbjerg advises,
they set out a Bourdieusian ontology and epistemology, and use those
tools to guide their research and tell a synthetic (or holist) story about
the world. Other approaches are set aside for having the wrong theo-
retical commitments, not for evidentiary reasons.
Like most constructivists I am sympathetic to the synthetic ontol-
ogy that Flyvbjerg and Bourdieusians share, but their neglect of explic-
itly competing alternatives represents a profound and ironic error of
epistemology. As Imre Lakatos argued (Lakatos 1970), and as more
post-positivist epistemologists like Flyvbjerg would argue more
strongly, we are in debates between scholars, not with Truth itself.
This implies that alternatives are not just obstacles to our claims; they
are parts of our own contributions that give our claims meaning.
When phronetic or Bourdieusian constructivists take a certain theoret-
ical toolkit into the field without a competition with decidedly differ-
ent alternatives, they thus make the same error as rationalist game
theorists who claim to have understood something once they
construct a model for it: both imply that, since they have obtained
correctly the key theoretical assumptions, their approach alone now
offers direct illumination of the world. This position is considerably
more ironic for constructivists than for game theorists, though, since
the core point of the formers’ stance is that knowledge is contextual.
The upshot is that, unless interpretivist constructivists show

concretely how their interpretations differ from non-interpretivist
alternatives – engaging sustained empirical debate with at least some
of the scientistic approaches they abhor – they lose the most impor-
tant methodological basis for making social-science claims. This is
why the more aggressive perestroikan-interpretivists’ calls for a sharp
break with scientistic, non-Perestroikan approaches end up leaving
social science rather than making it relevant. If social science means
anything, it means an attempt to understand social phenomena in an
open-ended way – allowing a priori that a variety of things might be
going on, and then attempting carefully to arrive at our best under-
standing of what mix of things actually is going on. Competition
between alternatives is the core of science. A corollary of that princi-
ple is that complex arguments need foils to make any sense. In
committing to strong theoretical views and eschewing competition
and foils, Flyvbjerg and most Bourdieusians adopt a model much
more like investigative journalism. They set aside competition over
some very deep issues that non-academic audiences are ready to take
for granted and focus on telling a good, plausible story about some-
thing that people care about. They may make recommendations as
well, as Flyvbjerg did in his work on planning processes in Aalborg,
Denmark (Flyvbjerg 1998). These are worthy goals, and investigative
journalists often produce important work that is accessible partly
because it is liberated from the tiresome methodological competition
that defines social science. Once we depart from this competition,
however, our PhDs and university positions no longer provide argu-
ments for why non-academics should pay any special attention to us.
We pursue relevance right out of the door. (Note that by this argu-
ment rationalist game theorists who do not seriously consider
constructivist or other alternatives also effectively left social science
long ago – and, unlike Flyvbjerg, they do so without any hope of real-
world relevance. This is basically a rephrased version of the argument
of Green and Shapiro 1994.)
Constructivism as eye-opener for policy-makers and

especially students
In my view, then, the potential for making constructivist social

science relevant lies mainly with modern constructivists like Mark
Blyth (2002), Jeffrey Chwieroth (2007), Martha Finnemore (1996;
162 Craig Parsons
2003), Peter Katzenstein (1996) or Alexander Wendt (1999). Even

for them, I see rather limited potential for direct relevance in gener-
ating research that will be seen as concretely useful by non-academ-
ics. The commitment that modern constructivists make to some sort
of truth claims – asserting, with many caveats, that they are right
when they argue that social construction operates in certain ways
with certain consequences – at least allows for a coherent role as
credible gadflies. Yet the academic processes that undergird those
truth claims require so much attention that few academic construc-
tivists have the time to translate their arguments for other audi-
ences. The less tension-ridden route to constructivist relevance
takes the more indirect route of teaching. By opening their students’
eyes to the possibilities of social construction, constructivists offer
our citizens and future leaders useful lessons that no one else can
provide as credibly and clearly.
In terms of the content of political action outside of academia, a
modern constructivist’s perspective is basically the same as that of a
postmodernist or Flyvbjergian interpretivist: action always oper-
ates within an ideational context, and in elucidating the socially
constructed interpretations that constitute and regulate certain
actors and actions we reveal fundamental aspects of action that are
often difficult to see at first glance. All these strands of construc-
tivists could agree that people who fail to perceive the operative
norms, identities, cultural practices and other social constructs
within an arena are likely to misunderstand it and fail to achieve
their goals, whatever they may be. History both recent and distant
is replete with examples of how analytic failures to perceive the
interpretive context led to concrete failures to make money in finan-
cial markets, win elections, deter security threats or accomplish
other tangible goals. Only modern constructivists present an argu-
ment, however, that they hold special, credible knowledge of these
dynamics. Postmodernists reject the notion of especially credible
knowledge; Flyvbjergian interpretivists seem to assume that credi-
ble knowledge flows from correct theory. Modern constructivists
hold that, through explicit methods and debates with contrasting
theoretical perspectives – not just despite the fact that they see non-
constructivist perspectives as wrongheaded, but precisely because
their wrongheadedness makes them powerful foils – they arrive at
demonstrations of social construction that are as robust as possible.
Such demonstrations are still not terribly robust, requiring many
caveats about the subjectivity and fallibility of academic debate, but
they claim to enjoy at least some margin of credibility by passing

through explicit methods and competition.
This margin of credibility makes them plausible gadflies, at least.
As tentative and potentially wrong as they still may be, modern
constructivists can point to reasons why others should see their
claims as insightful and possibly relevant to broader political
action. Thus they can coherently do what postmodernists seek inco-
herently: speaking (caveated) truth to power; destabilizing compla-
cent, ideologically blinkered politics; and pushing people to
problematize their political views and strategies more profoundly.
To take an example from my own work, it could matter in real life
whether we see the construction of the European Union as reflect-
ing a rather straightforward aggregation of material ‘national inter-
ests’ (as in the rationalist account of Moravcsik 1998) or, as I tell it,
as the partial victory of a certain ideological interpretation of
national interests that was never widely shared across European
elites (Parsons 2003). Had European elites in the early 2000s been
more aware of my version of their history, they might not have so
hastily assumed that European citizens (and many politicians them-
selves) would rally around a ‘Convention on the Future of Europe’
and a European ‘constitution’ – which instead stirred up the scepti-
cism and opposition that had been barely suppressed in earlier
decades. The euro’s travails in recent years also make more sense if
we understand the single currency as a deeply political step toward
a contested ideological vision than as a technical and rational
response to underlying economic trends.
There are general reasons, too, to think that the messages
constructivists might translate into policy circles or that public
debates could tend to play an especially relevant gadfly role.
Constructivist arguments are unusually likely to underscore aspects
of political action that escape the notice of actors themselves.
Material conditions and institutions – the two biggest alternatives
to constructivists’ emphasis on interpretive social constructs – are,
in principle, hard for actors to miss. Indeed, though materialist or
institutionalist scholars might claim to uncover counterintuitive or
complex patterns that flow from these sorts of conditions, they
would never claim that real actors do not realize that their action is
significantly influenced by those conditions. Yet that is very often
the key point of constructivist work: highlighting the taken-for-
granted interpretive context for political action; and suggesting that
once we perceive this interpretive context we gain a different sense
164 Craig Parsons
of actors’ motivations and possibilities. This was not actually the

point of my own work on the EU, admittedly. To the contrary, polit-
ical actors were often aware of ideological battles in EU history –
denouncing each other openly as nationalist sovereignty hoarders
or starry-eyed Euro-federalists – and it was largely academics who
had constructed a discourse of technical economic interests around
the EU project. Still, most constructivist research draws our atten-
tion to ideas, norms or identities that political actors naturalize in
some way. Accessible translations of such research should play a
more useful gadfly role than those anchored in any other theoreti-
cal tradition.
On the other hand, there are built-in limits to how much
modern constructivists can translate their research into a directly
relevant gadfly role for society at large. They confront any
academic that aspires to relevance, not just constructivists.
European elites were not likely to become conscious of my version
of their history, even had my first book been published earlier
than 2003, because of how it was written. Since I attempted to
support my version of EU history in highly explicit methods and
against a tough competition with contrasting approaches, its
distinct story is buried in academic procedures and discourse that
make it slow going for the uninitiated. My father-in-law, an engi-
neer, politely bought the book and tried to read it, but
pronounced it too full of ‘jargon’ for him to understand. I tried to
explain to him the difference between method and jargon – and
pointed out that he would never accuse a hard-sciences publica-
tion of ‘jargon’ just because it used big, uncommon words – but
either way he saw it as inaccessible. Of course I could have writ-
ten an entirely different version of my argument, stripping out the
methods and competition to make it more accessible, but the indi-
vidual incentives of a university career steered me away from
spending too much time on such popularizations. In order to
generate the kind of person who can even claim to follow a special
methodological process to a special kind of knowledge, universi-
ties incentivize professors to publish for research audiences first
and foremost. They also fill up their time by asking them to teach
high theory and methods to the next generation of scholars. Thus
the research practices and organizational context that uphold
claims to special knowledge from social science create obstacles –
above all in the allocation of our finite time – to translating that
special knowledge into widely accessible venues.
Some of us still manage to do so, and should indeed be celebrated

for our energy and multiple contributions. Just to cite one example,
Mark Blyth draws very directly on his constructivist work in polit-
ical economy in regular media commentary, and his book on the
‘dangerous idea’ of austerity has attracted a huge policy audience
(Blyth 2013). Still, the methods that validate special academic
knowledge are exactly what non-academics do not want to hear
about, and there are rather severe trade-offs between the time
academics spend doing their research and making it directly rele-
vant and available. The most that can be asked of most academic
constructivists in the face of this trade-off is probably the kind of
stance advocated by moderate Perestroikans like Smith and
Shapiro. Constructivists should define their projects around issues
or debates that are widely important to non-academics, in some
variant of what Shapiro calls ‘problem-driven research’ (Shapiro
2002). Their research efforts will then at least lend themselves to
translation into relevant conclusions, even if it remains to be seen
who has the time and inclination to do the translation.
Constructivists should thus rest their main claim to relevance on
the indirect and diffuse condition they can realize as part of their
jobs and incentives as academics, not as an additional effort.
Academic constructivists are relevant because they are the best-
placed actors in society to teach others about the possibility of
social construction, which is simultaneously one of the least obvi-
ous and most fundamental eye-opening possibilities that anyone
can learn about politics.
To a certain degree, my version of this point parallels Smith’s
bottom line on the relevance of political science in general, which he
too locates in teaching. He wants political scientists to aspire to a
gadfly role that ‘speaks truth to power’, but sees tension in this role
as a basis for relevance. Gadflies are inherently annoying to many
non-academics and especially to the ‘power’ they seek to unveil,
making such a role a risky basis on which to rest one’s worth in soci-
ety. Powerful players may seek to characterize gadflies as cranks
and take away their public funding, as did Nebraska Senator Tom
Coburn in a recent assault on political science grants through the
US National Science Foundation. Thus Smith sees basic ‘tension
between doing good political science research and sustaining broad
public support for such research’, and calls for basing a defence of
the extra-academic relevance of political science above all on teach-
ing (Smith 2011). Senator Coburn may react against the specific
166 Craig Parsons
and direct ‘truths’ that political scientists advance, but he and other
critics are less likely to dispute the general and indirect value of
teaching students to ask tough questions and think critically.
I have emphasized a different tension surrounding directly rele-
vant political science, but end up in a similar place. The only
coherent bases for proclaiming that one does ‘good political
science’ require commitments to elaborate debates and methods
that obstruct accessibility to non-academics, so generating ‘good
political science’, and generating directly relevant work means
having two jobs. But academic political science can teach students
new questions to ask about their political environment that will
help them to think more critically and carefully about political
and social problems. And of all the questions that political scien-
tists could teach students to pose, the kind advanced by construc-
tivists surely delivers the most added value for would-be political
actors.
Why? As a card-carrying constructivist, I am tempted to say
that students must be taught to pose questions about social
construction because these are obviously the most fundamental
kind of questions to ask about any sort of social action. As much
as I believe that claim, the problem with resting my case there is
that only other committed constructivists are likely to agree – and
constructivists do not need to be persuaded of the relevance of
constructivism. (To the contrary, I have suggested in this chapter
that they need to be pushed in the other direction, recognizing
that the relevance of constructivism is not obvious to many people
and needs to be thought through carefully.) Another reason,
though, may make sense to a broader audience. It was foreshad-
owed by my point vis-à-vis policy-makers above. Of all the ques-
tions that political scientists can teach students to pose, questions
about social construction are the least obvious and the most chal-
lenging to the ways of thinking students more commonly absorb.
It is difficult to become a somewhat-educated person in a Western
country without getting a grip on the gist of materialist rational-
ism: that there are always clear and conscious ‘interests’ behind
everything. Almost as difficult, probably, is to miss the basic
insights of institutionalism. In the United States and the European
Union, the powerfully dominant historical myths are that overar-
ching federal institutions have organized these continents in ways
that brought stability and prosperity. Citizens of the West today
also most commonly diagnose other countries’ problems as a
consequence of less well-designed institutions. Political beliefs

and ideology may admittedly be just as hard to overlook, since
they shape and animate the everyday language of politics every-
where, but this is not true for a sense of the possibility that our
world is deeply socially constructed. Students may easily see that
advocates of the free market can be animated by certain ideologi-
cal views, but not many will spontaneously grasp that the very
notion of a ‘market’ may be a social construct. They may perceive
a role for ideology in conflicts with communists or Islamists, but
will many recognize the possibility that ‘anarchy is what states
make of it’? They may see that Naomi Wolf and Phyllis Schlafly
hold contrasting ideological views of feminism, but without an
instructor pushing them deeper, are they likely to even consider
that gender and sexuality are more socially constructed than
biological?
Even non-constructivist academics are likely to allow that posing
these kinds of questions about social constructs opens students’
eyes to the possibilities of politics in an especially profound way.
Since constructivism problematizes the given, taken-for-granted
quality of contexts of action more deeply than any other school of
thought, students who learn to ask constructivist questions will
gain the most far-reaching ability to consider why the world is as it
is (and how it could be otherwise). Such questions will not necessar-
ily make them into card-carrying constructivists; asking why we
take certain things for granted may just lead students to accept
materialist arguments that some of these things could not be other-
wise and should indeed be taken for granted. Learning to ask
constructivist questions thus pushes students to think about the
make-up of their political context in the deepest and widest sense,
whatever credence they ultimately lend to constructivism itself.
They encourage non-academics to consider alternatives in their
lives and in the world – and the ability to imagine alternatives is the
root of all critical thinking.
It is above all for this valuable lesson that non-academics should
keep modern constructivist academics around: they can provide
coherent, confident reasons why such questions are important to
ask. Non-academics will likely continue to find most constructivist
writing as too scholarly to be accessible, since such writing is what
gives constructivists the coherence and confidence to motivate the
lesson. With good teaching, though, they will perceive the relevance
of constructivism.
168 Craig Parsons
Conclusion
In this chapter I have made four points about the potential relevance
of constructivist theorizing. First, it makes little sense to suggest path-
ways to relevance for constructivist academics in which they cease to
be constructivist academics. Our subject is not whether or not
constructivists can leave their desks and become policy advisers or
political activists – they can – but whether or not the distinctive work
they do as academic constructivists can be relevant. Second, relevance
is defined by the audience; to argue that academic constructivists are
relevant to a broad audience means providing arguments that they
provide non-academics with a distinctive and valuable kind of
knowledge. Third, the claim of any academic to offer special knowl-
edge that is not available elsewhere rests on methods and an explicit
clash of alternatives that lend a tentative but quite distinctive credibil-
ity (if not, of course, any sort of unquestionable Truth) to their
conclusions. Since postmodern and most interpretivist constructivists
disavow such bases for their work, only the modern strand of
constructivists retain a distinctive claim to such special knowledge.
Fourth, these foundations in explicit method and competitive argu-
ments push constructivists, like all academics, away from directly
relevant dissemination of concrete arguments and toward indirect
relevance through teaching. Since explicit methodology simultane-
ously justify academics’ special claim to knowledge and typically
render their work inaccessible to a broad audience, it is rare that
constructivists can make directly relevant contributions without
effectively taking on a second job as popularizers. Teaching students
to pose questions about social construction, though, is an especially
powerful way to help them become critical thinkers.
Let me end on a more ecumenical note that reopens the door to
relevance for all strands of constructivism. In the classroom,
students may not perceive much difference between modern, inter-
pretivist and postmodern constructivists. Whether or not construc-
tivists hold to a philosophy of science that gives them a claim to
special knowledge, they can all teach the broad lesson of posing
constructivist questions. Smart students who push their instructors
may pose a deeper level of questions about these questions – and at
this level only modern constructivists have answers. For most of the
students whom constructivists of all sorts can help to become criti-
cal thinkers, though, most of what I have written here is academic
and irrelevant.
Chapter 10
Is comparative politics
useful? If so, for what?
B. GUY PETERS
One of my favourite findings in comparative politics was published

several decades ago. A distinguished student of comparative public
policy determined that the best predictor of per pupil educational
expenditures among Swiss cantons was the altitude of the canton.
The causal logic behind this finding is apparent, with lower popula-
tion densities and higher general cost levels at high altitudes
producing higher expenditures in the schools relative to the number
of students. But is that finding really relevant, as there is nothing
any political leader or institutional designer can do about altitude?
Political science is becoming a more experimental social science,
but for most research the real world of numerous countries and
even more numerous different sub-national governments is the
laboratory from which we can learn most readily. At times those
governments perform natural experiments that enable political
scientists to confirm our assumptions about the behaviour of indi-
viduals or political systems (Dunning 2008). More commonly,
however, we must depend upon identifying significant differences
among existing cases and using those to understand the factors that
produce different outcomes. Why, for example, have several Asian
countries been economically successful and capable of making the
movement toward political democracy, while most countries in
Africa have not been able to make these transitions, at least not on
a sustained basis (see Acemoglu and Robinson 2012)?
This natural laboratory existing among the numerous govern-
ments of the world, each one of which may be considered a quasi-
experiment of a sort, provides an immense dataset for political
scientists to explore what works and what does not in governing.
169
170 B. Guy Peters
These governing arrangements are quasi-experiments because

researchers have little or no control over the choices being made
about institutions and processes, so that we have to discover cases
that match our research questions. The most important issue in
comparative research design is the selection of cases, and this is
perhaps even truer for developing a body of findings that has rele-
vance for the ‘real world’ of governing (Geddes 1990; Peters
2013).
Comparative politics therefore should be the most relevant sub-
discipline within political science. The basic logic of comparative
politics is to examine cases (ranging from 1 to very large Ns) to be
able to make generalizations about politics and governing. While
the comparative method per se (Collier 1993; Lijphart 1971)
utilizes a limited number of carefully selected cases to tease out
differences and similarities, contemporary comparative politics
employs the full range of social science methodologies to ask the
same sorts of questions. Most comparative politics focuses on the
level of the state, but comparative sub-national politics (Snyder
2001) also has a lively research tradition, especially in federal states
and for cities.
Like most other components of political science comparative
politics now avoids most prescriptive statements in favour of theory
development and extensive statistical analyses. That said, if those
empirical findings are indeed valid they should have substantial
capacity to inform decision-making in the real world. In principle
those empirical findings could be applied to the real world, but we
must question the extent to which those findings are indeed being
utilized. More fundamentally, we must question the capacity of
most of the findings in contemporary comparative politics to make
any substantive contribution to the performance of political
systems.
In this chapter I will first discuss several different interpretations
of relevance, and argue that comparative politics is more capable of
providing enlightenment than it is of more exact statements about
what courses of action to follow. I will then proceed to examine the
contributions that comparative politics has made to making politi-
cal science more relevant – and they are important. At the same
time, there are also substantial challenges and limits to the rele-
vance of this sub-field, and these will be discussed. The chapter will
end with some modest ideas about how to enhance relevance in this
component of the discipline.
Is comparative politics useful? 171
Varieties of relevance
For comparative politics, perhaps more than for other components

of the discipline, relevance and utility may be present at two levels.
The first and more basic is whether comparative research can iden-
tify relationships among characteristics of political systems that can
inform decision-makers about what they should expect from their
own governments, or from other governments with which they
interact. A demonstrated relationship among variables may help us
understand what is occurring in one case, and therefore lead us to
expect, or to understand better, the occurrence of a similar phenom-
enon in another case. This ‘enlightenment function’ (Weiss 1977b)
may not solve problems but it does assist in making more informed
choices.
This enlightenment function of comparative analysis is also
apparent in more ideographic studies of individual countries or
even sub-national political units, perhaps now especially evident in
area studies (Avery and Desch forthcoming). It could also be argued
that V. O. Key’s (1956) Southern Politics, as a study of politics and
the roots of politics at the state level in the American South, remains
one of the most interesting and perceptive comparative analyses
ever published. While this type of scholarship has largely been
evicted from the major journals and the major presses in the disci-
pline, and is scorned as ‘stamps, flags and coins’, area studies and
individual country studies remain the type of research that is most
sought after by decision-makers in the public sector.
The second and more difficult criterion for relevance would be
whether those findings from the comparative research can be trans-
lated directly into suggestions for reform or for the adoption of
particular structural or policy innovations. Do we understand
enough about the internal dynamics of political structures and
processes, and about the social and cultural foundations of those
entities, to be able to transplant them into other settings? The
answer, regrettably, in general has to be no. Even if we can observe
a strong statistical relationship that may not be sufficient to say that
we can transfer the findings into another setting and expect the
same result.
These two versions of relevance to some extent correspond to the
familiar dichotomy of internal and external validity. The majority
of the focus for contemporary political science has been on internal
validity, attempting to assure that observed relationships between
172 B. Guy Peters
independent and dependent variables are indeed valid. The internal

validity may have been purchased at the price of external validity,
or the ability to extrapolate from the findings to the ‘real world’.
Some degree of internal validity is necessary if the findings from
which the lessons are drawn are indeed to be useful, but an appar-
ent lack of concern for relevance – and therefore external validity –
cannot help but be noticed in a good deal of contemporary political
science research.
Both of these versions of relevance and utility can make contri-
butions to the real world of governing. If we can understand how
individual political systems function and what their behaviours are
likely to be in different circumstances then this is indeed relevant
and useful. Likewise, it is also useful to understand how various
institutions or processes function, and therefore what the likely
consequences of any changes within a political system are. The
latter version of ‘relevance’ is generally what is meant by the term,
but for foreign policy decision-makers the former may be equally if
not more useful.
The contributions of comparative politics
The comparative politics literature contains some examples of

highly relevant research, as well as some that, while interesting and
intellectually sound, does not appear to be particularly relevant for
improving the quality of governance, nor the quality of life for citi-
zens. The glass of relevance is therefore half-full and half-empty. In
this section I want to discuss some of the clear successes of compar-
ative politics, demonstrating how the empirical and theoretical
content of the research has been able to contribute to solving real-
world problems in governing.
Institutions
The most obvious contribution that comparative politics can make
is through the analysis of political institutions. The development of
the ‘new institutionalism’ returned the study of institutions to the
centre of the discipline, though institutions were really the founda-
tion for political science. The historical foundation of comparative
politics was in the study of institutions, beginning with Aristotle’s
discussion of the institutions of tyranny and good government. For
much of the history of comparative politics the emphasis within the

sub-discipline was on formal-legal differences among systems, with
the assumption that the formal structures indeed operated as they
were designed (Eckstein 1967).
Although the assumptions behind formalism in comparative
politics, and the formal study of institutions, now appears some-
what naive, that approach to institutional analysis was indeed rele-
vant for would-be designers of institutional structures (see Peters
and Wright, 1996). For, example, even if subsequent studies have
elaborated the dynamics more fully (see Gerring and Thacker 2004;
Tsebelis and Money 1997), the selection of a bicameral legislature
could be argued to produce certain costs and benefits for a political
system based only on an understanding of the formal structures and
processes within the legislature.
The period during which many counties in Africa and Asia
gained their independence, and a second period during which the
countries of Central and Eastern Europe also gained their inde-
pendence, were the proving grounds for much of this presumed
knowledge about institutions and their presumed effects. While
American presidentialism, in various formats, was exported to the
countries of Latin America a century earlier, the end of communism
led to the adoption of some European innovations such as semi-
presidentialism to newly independent regimes (Elgie 2011). The
constitutional engineering that was tried then and in subsequent
reforms (see Sartori 1997) demonstrated the utility of understand-
ing political institutions, as well as providing a number of tests of
the assumptions of the institutional designers.
The various strands of contemporary institutional theory have
elaborated on the understandings of formal structure, while at the
same time accepting the premise that indeed structure is important
and can to some extent shape outcomes of the political process.
Weaver and Rockman (1983; see also Hammond and Butler
2003), for example, sought to understand the impact of presiden-
tial versus parliamentary governments, and more particularly
whether parliamentary government would change policy
outcomes in the United States. Although the approaches within
contemporary institutional theory to some extent all ask rather
different questions, they are bound together by the basic premise
that organizations and institutions do matter and that these struc-
tures constitute at least as valid a beginning point for analysis as
does the study of individual behaviour.
174 B. Guy Peters
As well as the macro-level analysis of the principal institutions

of government, there is the micro-level analysis of the interactions
of institutions in the public and private sectors, as they are
involved in making and implementing policy. For example,
Culpepper (2003) sought to explain the success or failure of
labour-market training through rather conventional institutional
mechanisms but found instead that public sector action was essen-
tial for creating cooperation between labour-market actors and
businesses on the one hand and labour unions on the other. The
public sector organizations involved were most important in creat-
ing the conditions under which potentially antagonistic economic
actors could cooperate. Kathleen Thelen’s work on labour-market
policy has many of the same micro-institutional characteristics
(2004), demonstrating factors that can make these markets more
or less effective. At an even more micro-level, social institutions
can provide the mechanism for instigating public policies (Tsai
2007).
This example from comparative political economy also demon-
strates the relevance of thinking about politics in organizational
terms. The original version of the new institutionalism (March and
Olsen 1983) attempted to move contemporary political science
away from its dependence upon the individual level of analysis (see
below). The central argument of this approach is that individuals
receive many or most of their political preferences from member-
ship in, or identification with, organizations, and therefore begin-
ning an analysis with the organizations in the public sector
(including perhaps political parties and interest groups) is more effi-
cient than beginning with the individuals who comprise the organi-
zations.
Other versions of institutional theory, such as the late Elinor
Ostrom’s ‘institutional analysis and development’ (see Polski and
Ostrom 1999) and Fritz Scharpf’s (1997) ‘actor-centered institu-
tionalism’, have a more individualist set of assumptions. Despite
the emphasis on agency, they consider the design of institutions as
the means of overcoming the collective action problems created by
individual utility maximization, notably the ‘tragedy of the
commons’. In this perspective the creation of rules, as the founda-
tion of an institution, are the mechanisms for solving policy prob-
lems. Further, the example of solving certain cases of collective
action problems has been extended so that this general model has
demonstrated its utility in a variety of settings.
Historical institutionalism basically warns decision-makers that

they should be very careful when they make decisions because the
institutions and policies created are likely to endure. This is a useful
warning, but gives little real guidance. So although some versions of
institutionalism appear less useful to decision-makers, the study of
institutions does provide political decision-makers with some
substantial level of useful guidance about governing and the design
of institutions. Beginning the analysis of politics and policy with
organizations and institutions provides those decision-makers with
more guidance than does an individualistic perspective. Further, we
tend to have greater confidence in the information available
concerning the effects of institutional choices than we do about the
more variable aspects of individual behaviour. Thus, as well as the
general level of utility of institutional analysis, the experience of
institutional change does appear portable.
Electoral systems
Perhaps the clearest case of our comparative understanding of poli-
tics influencing the design of political systems has been in the selec-
tion of electoral systems, especially within emerging democracies.
Going back at least to ‘Duverger’s law’ there has been an under-
standing that the outcomes of elections can be shaped effectively by
shaping electoral laws (Taagapera and Shugart 1989). The
academic understanding of electoral laws has been verified any
number of times in practice, and several international advisory
services are available for advising on, and monitoring, electoral
systems.
The choice of electoral systems can be seen as a simple mechani-
cal, or political, exercise, but it also has significant normative impli-
cations. The choice between single-member districts and
proportional representation is not, however, just a choice of the
number of parties likely to gain seats in the legislature. It is also a
choice about representation, and the possible trade-offs between
representativeness and the capacity to form easily a majority
government. This is a choice that cannot be made without some
understanding of the nature of the political systems in question.
Westminster systems, everything else being equal, tend to favour
single-party majority governments, or at least limited coalitions,
while most others tend to prefer closer relationships between the
proportion of votes cast and the proportion of seats won. Thus,
176 B. Guy Peters
although we may know perfectly well how to engineer the

outcomes from electoral systems, designers must still consider the
context into which the electoral laws are being introduced.
Democratization
One of the most important areas in which comparative politics has
demonstrated its relevance is in the study of democratization. While
democracy has long been a focus for political theory (Dahl 1989)
and for empirical analysis (Cnudde and Neubauer 1968), the
increasing number of successful democracies formed in Europe,
Latin America, Africa and Asia has produced a spate of important
work on the characteristics of successful democratic transitions
(Linz and Stepan 1996; Sørensen 2010) and on the consolidation of
those transitional systems into (more or less) stable democratic
systems.
The findings of studies of democratization have been suffi-
ciently robust to be capable of predicting the likelihood of
successful changes, and also to be able to provide some advice to
would-be democratizers. As with almost any area of political
science research, the findings are sufficiently probabilistic that no
guarantees can be offered to regimes attempting to create and
consolidate democratic government, though there are some
prescriptions that can be extracted from the experience of democ-
ratizing regimes.
One of the more important pieces of advice emerging from the
research about democratization is that would-be democratizers
should not be seduced by their apparent capacity to produce
changes in structures and some aspects of behaviour. It may be rela-
tively easy to create ‘shallow democracy’, but creating ‘deep democ-
racy’ that is embedded into the social and political lives of the
population is much more difficult (Haerpfer et al. 2009). This
understanding of context is crucial for those attempting to produce
change, and should lead to substantial caution when observing
events such as the ‘Arab Spring’.
Another of the instructive findings from the literature has been
the importance of elites in democratization. There is a major role
for leadership in producing transformation and ensuring a peaceful
acquiescence from traditional elites. As noted below concerning
conflict management, that leadership may involve the capacity to
make agreements with historical opponents in order to assure the
transition to democracy and the maintenance of some stability after

the transition.
Conflict prevention and conflict resolution

In addition to the general discussions of institutionalizing demo-
cratic governance, there has been an increasing understanding of
the manner in which governments, including democratic govern-
ments, can manage potential social conflict. These conflicts can
arise from two types of divisions within society and economy. One
source of potential conflicts are social cleavages based on race, reli-
gion, language or simply region. The other source is economic, and
especially the differences between management and labour. Both of
these types of difference have been the source of major social
conflicts, though comparative politics has learned a great deal
about how to manage both. And in both cases there have been
developments in the manner in which the institutions for managing
conflict have been conceptualized.
There has been a long tradition in comparative politics of study-
ing the political relevance of social cleavages and the mechanisms
for managing potential social conflict. Arend Lijphart’s seminal
study (1975) of consociational politics in the Netherlands, and the
numerous other studies that investigated the possibilities for conso-
ciational solutions in other settings (for a review see Lijphart 1991),
sought to understand the influence of social divisions and ways of
mitigating potential conflict. Lijphart’s basic puzzle was: how could
a country deeply divided along religious lines find ways to manage
successfully in a democratic manner? Politics is driven by differ-
ence, and social differences have been a continuing source of
conflict; and so to govern effectively and democratically some
means must be found to cope with these differences.
Consociationalism represents one clear instance of political
systems attempting to learn from the successes of other systems.
The example of the Netherlands and to a lesser extent Belgium
demonstrated that deeply divided political systems could indeed
manage those differences successfully; those findings were used to
attempt to address other difficult political situations. These
attempts at transplanting the consociational solution have met with
varying levels of success, with some seeming positive results
(Malaysia) and others that were total failures (Northern Ireland,
see Rose 1971).
178 B. Guy Peters
The consociational solution represented one era of conflict resolu-

tion utilizing bargaining among the possibly conflicting groups. In
the era of democratization, and post-conflict societies, there has been
a growth of ‘elite pacts’ as the means for managing the potential for
conflicts (Higley and Gunther 1991). These pacts have many of the
features of consociationalism, e.g. the agreements among elites in the
face of possible serious consequences and the relatively small
numbers of actors involved. They differ in that, instead of being
organized on the basis of political parties, they generally have been
the contending factions in civil wars. The logic, however, is similar to
that in consociationalism in that elites agree to cooperate in order to
govern in situations that might otherwise produce conflict or
ungovernability, and that cooperation may be conducted with rela-
tively little involvement of the mass population. Thus, somewhat
paradoxically, the transition to democracy may involve some
arrangements that appear, at least at first glance, undemocratic.
The diffusion of the idea of elite pacts has been an important case
of the apparent relevance of comparative politics for the perform-
ance of political systems. For example, various forms of elite pacts
and governments of national unity have been implemented in
Africa, often after serious internal strife. While these arrangements
have been far from universally successful, they have in many cases
produced a means of restraining inter-ethnic conflict and producing
some movement toward effective governance (LeVan 2011). Pacts
of this sort have also been important for countries in Latin America
(Higley and Gunther 1991).
The economic foundations of conflicts have been the principal
driver of politics for more than a century. The Industrial Revolution
produced the class conflict between industrial labour and the
owners and managers of enterprises. While the violent revolution at
the centre of Marxist theory only rarely materialized, there has been
the continuing political struggle between the Left and Right. This
struggle over political and economic power was at times more than
a little disruptive to governance, mainly in the alternation of politi-
cal parties and their associated economic policies. The question
then became one of how to manage these conflicts that are inherent
in contemporary economic systems.
One of the effective responses to these economic conflicts has
been corporatism. Although in use as a remedy for potential
economic conflict since the late nineteenth century, this mechanism
became a major focus for political theory during the 1970s (Berger
1981; Schmitter 1974). The corporatist literature, and the varia-

tions such as corporate pluralism (Rokkan 1966), were central in
the study of comparative politics and helped to shape a broader
debate on the relationships between state and society (see Migdal
2001). This thinking therefore helped to elaborate some of the gross
generalizations about linkages between social actors and the ‘black
box’ of government inherent in political systems analysis (Easton
1971).
While corporatism was a dominant strand of theorizing during
one era of comparative politics, its analogue – social pacts – is pres-
ent, albeit playing a smaller role, in contemporary comparative
analysis. The basic logic of social pacts – agreements between
labour and management mediated by government, or with govern-
ment as a participant – is the same as for corporatism, although the
range of public policy affected is generally smaller. And given the
prevailing neo-liberalism in most industrial democracies, these
pacts tend to be more constraining on labour than they are on busi-
ness or government, unlike traditional corporatism (Rhodes 2001).
Still, these arrangements constitute a means of preventing overt
economic conflict and disruptions.
Quantitative comparative analysis

Much of the linear statistical methodology that dominates contem-
porary political analysis tends to lessen the relevance of compara-
tive politics for the real world of governing. Without going into a
detailed discussion of the quantitative–qualitative divide within the
discipline (Brady and Collier 2010), the fundamental point is that
the disaggregation of governing systems into collections of vari-
ables has tended to mask the complex interactions among variables
that define national governments. In their seminal work on
comparative social science, Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune
(1970) argued that the goal for comparative analysis should be to
replace proper names of countries with the names of variables. For
most comparativists, however, context and place still matters, and
we assume that there are country effects on individual level behav-
iour that remain significant (intellectually if not statistically).
The development of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) has
provided a means of identifying the way in which multiple variables
that shape political outcomes combine to explain the occurrence or
non-occurrence of those phenomena (Marx and Rihoux 2013).
180 B. Guy Peters
Rather than identifying the proportional contribution of variables

to outcomes, QCA identifies whether the presence or absence of
those variables (at least within crisp-set versions of QCA) is related
to the outcome. Thus, the underlying logic is more deterministic
than probabilistic, and therefore tends to be more suited to the
more holistic basis of comparative politics. However, the fuzzy-set
version of QCA approaches the proportional contribution form of
analysis by measuring the variables involved with at least an ordi-
nal level of measurement (rather than dichotomies) and then assess-
ing their contributions to the presence or absence of a dependent
condition (see Ragin 2009).
The other virtue of QCA for comparative research is that this
method is able to introduce context perhaps somewhat easier than
do the usual quantitative methods. Given that many of the compar-
ative contextual variables tend to be dichotomous – Asian versus
non-Asian for example – they can be included readily in qualitative
analyses. In terms of relevance, however, the contextual variables
may be of relatively little use, given that there is little that can be
done to transfer those effects. The ‘Little Tigers’ may all have been
small and Asian, but there may be little that can be done to trans-
late those conditions elsewhere.
Challenges to the relevance of comparative politics
Despite the positive statements concerning the relevance of compar-

ative politics, there are some significant challenges to that rele-
vance. Further, these challenges may be increasing as political
science, and comparative politics, become more quantitative and
more concerned with theoretical development as the primary goal
for research. Again, the emphasis on quantitative research and
some aspects of theory may not necessarily undermine the relevance
of the research, though some aspects of that research agenda may
pose significant challenges to that relevance.
Methodological individualism and rational choice theory

As is true for all corners of the discipline, comparative politics is being
influenced heavily by both behavioural approaches and rational
choice theory. These approaches to social and political life assume
that the best, or perhaps only, means of understanding politics is
through the behaviour of individuals. The behavioural strand of

methodological individualism focuses on social, and later more on
psychological, factors that shape individual behaviour. The rational
choice approach adopts a more economic and calculating perspec-
tive and assumes that all political actors are utility maximizers that
use the political arena as a locus through which they can enhance
their own utility.
The question about the domination of individual explanations is
another statement of the familiar structure–agency problem in the
social sciences. It is easy to argue that comparative politics tradi-
tionally had relied on holistic explanations, drawing on concepts
such as the state, class and institutions to explain political phenom-
ena. This holism often turned into formalism, with unexamined
hypotheses that formal rules and structures could indeed shape
behaviours. The fundamental question is therefore whether these
collectivities that are so familiar in comparative politics can only be
understood as compilations of individual choices, or whether
indeed they have some explanatory powers of their own.
The basic assumptions about the common motivations of actors
tend to devalue much of comparative politics, given that much of
the logic of comparison is to identify differences. For example,
much of the study of issues such as political culture and identity,
that have been significant components of comparative analysis,
depends upon differences in these more social and psychological
variables that produce differences in political behaviour and ulti-
mately perhaps performance (see Eriksson 2011).
The above having been said, however, there are some utilizations
of rational choice approaches and their relationship with compara-
tive politics that can enhance the relevance of this sub-discipline. In
particular, if we assume that individuals do have relatively homoge-
neous preferences then understanding the manner in which these
preferences interact with institutions and other structures can assist
in the design of structures. Given that governments have experi-
mented, wittingly or unwittingly, with a range of institutional struc-
tures, then having a clear assumption about the role of individual
preferences helps to predict how those institutional choices might
produce different outcomes.
From the perspective of the relevance of comparative politics,
the capacity to explain outcomes of political processes through
individual actions and characteristics, even if it were indeed the
only way ultimately to understand the choices being made, may be
182 B. Guy Peters
an inefficient means of providing that explanation. This is true for

both rational choice and behavioural approaches. More holistic
variables such as class, political parties or institutions may be more
proximate causes for outcomes than are the behaviours of individ-
uals, even if we could identify those behaviours one by one and find
effective ways of aggregating them. Even areas of the discipline that
have long been able to identify individual behaviours effectively
and make predictions based on those behaviours may find it useful
to utilize more collective properties. For example, students of judi-
cial behaviour have begun to consider courts as entities and exam-
ine their strategic behaviour (see Besabe-Serrano 2008; Hammond
et al. 2005).
This concern with the role of individuals in explaining political
phenomena is analogous to the more familiar structure and agency
debate (Sibeon 2002) in the social sciences. The fundamental ques-
tion is: can we better understand social life by beginning with indi-
vidual action or by beginning with collectivities, including
organization and institutions? Comparative politics has always had
a strong institutional component and we must question whether
those institutions are a more efficient explanation than are the
actions of the individuals within them (see above). And additionally
we need to understand how institutions aggregate individual action
as they make and implement public policies.
Therefore, for comparative politics, the methodological individ-
ualism that constitutes the fundamental approach of contemporary
politics provides both opportunities for, and significant challenges
to, the utility of the sub-discipline. On the one hand, if we assume
that motivations are indeed rather homogeneous then we have a
better chance of understanding the consequences of altering partic-
ular structural features of the public sector. On the other hand, the
emphasis on individual level behaviour tends to emphasize factors
that may have little to do with cross-national differences.
Non-manipulable variables
The example presented at the beginning of this chapter points to
one of the major factors affecting the relevance of contemporary
comparative politics. A large number of the variables that are used
in comparative analysis are not readily manipulable, and therefore
any findings about their capacity to predict certain desirable or
undesirable outcomes may not be relevant for political leaders or
institutional designers. It may interesting to know that some vari-

able is indeed correlated with those outcomes, but if there is noth-
ing that can be done to manipulate those variables then those
findings will not be really relevant.
Several sets of findings within comparative politics help to illus-
trate those points. The comparative political economy literature has
helped to emphasize the importance of the linkage of politics and
economics (see Hall and Soskice 2001). It has, for example, been
analysing the effects of trade openness of countries on aspects of
their policy and political choices for some decades (Cameron 1978;
Rogowski 1990). This literature has demonstrated a number of
interesting relationships between patterns of trade and the actions of
governments, and the strength of various political actors such as
trade unions, but there is relatively little that governments can do to
alter the factors involved in these relationships. Further, there is little
sense of endogeneity in the relationships, so that altering the depend-
ent variables in those relationships, e.g. the nature of the welfare
state, does not appear to feedback into the trade relationships.
Also, although I was singing hymns of praise to studies of democ-
ratization above, one of the common explanatory variables for
successful democratic transitions has been the level of economic
development. This argument goes back at least to the work of
Seymour Martin Lipset (1959), though it has been a continuing
finding since that time (Acemoglu and Robinson 2006). From an
analytic perspective it is important to understand that we should
not expect to encounter effective democracies in extremely poor
countries. But if indeed we wish to be able to provide useful advice
to governments or NGOs about promoting democracy, saying
simply ‘get rich’ is not very useful, as surely they would if they knew
how. That said, however, the demonstrated relationship between
capitalism and democracy may be more manipulable, although that
economic system may in turn generate inequality that may under-
mine democracy.
The concept of political culture also illustrates the importance of
non-manipulable variables in comparative politics. Although politi-
cal culture has been utilized less commonly as comparative politics
has become more quantitative and more focused on rational choice
theory, it remains an important concept for understanding the envi-
ronment within which politics functions. Political culture does
change in response to external events and the replacement of politi-
cal cohorts, but it is difficult to change through overt manipulation.
184 B. Guy Peters
Even when autocratic regimes attempt to alter the underlying

values of their countries, those values may be suppressed for some
time, though they often reassert themselves.
Although not frequently discussed in these terms, social capital is
one important dimension of political culture (Putnam 2002). Trust
is an important dimension of political culture, and it has been
emphasized by the trust required in the creation of social capital
and the relationship of social capital to democracy, as well as to
successful governance more generally. This dimension of culture is
perhaps especially important in understanding the differences
between developed and less developed political systems. The
absence of social trust in many less developed political systems
removes opportunities for governance through social actors (see
Jamal 2007) while at the same time converting most political issues
into zero-sum games that engender the possibilities for conflict.
Trust does appear to be an important resource in governing, but
can it be manipulated? Some authors have argued that it can,
largely through the development of effective political systems. In
contrast to most approaches that assume citizens themselves create
trust, Rothstein and Stolle (2003; 2008) have argued that institu-
tions and institutional performance are significant influences in
building trust. Their arguments are based largely on the historical
evidence from Scandinavia, and it is far from clear if the lessons
from that long period of relatively autonomous development are
relevant for Suriname or Swaziland.
While it may be difficult or impossible to manipulate, under-
standing political culture is far from irrelevant for understanding
the outcomes of political processes. Indeed, as political psychology
becomes more important within the discipline, understanding polit-
ical culture becomes more relevant for understanding political
outcomes (Sheafer and Shenhav 2012). In particular, a higher level
of congruence between political values and the institutions that are
created to provide governance may contribute to the stability of
governments. At a lower level of generality, congruence between the
design of bureaucracies and the general conceptions of manage-
ment within the society may contribute to the effectiveness of those
institutions (see Hofstede et al. 2010; Painter and Peters 2010).
Further, although political cultures and levels of social capital
may not be manipulable in the short term, they are capable of
significant change in the longer term. The transformation has been
far from complete, but political cultures in the countries of Central
and Eastern Europe have become more democratized (Klingemann

et al. 2006) in what in historical terms is a short time. These
changes are to some extent a function of conscious attempts at
change, but they also represent natural evolutions through the
replacement of cohorts and the influence of continual interactions
with other members of the European Union. Similarly, there is
evidence that social capital can be created, albeit with some diffi-
culty, in order to enhance the possibilities for democratic stability
(Kumlin and Rothstein 2005).
Comparative policy and administration

At one point in the development of comparative politics there was
a significant concern with comparative public policy and the role of
’political’ and ’institutional’ in shaping policy choices
(Heidenheimer et al. 1983). There was at the same time also a
significant comparative literature that focused on public adminis-
tration and the place of the public bureaucracy in the processes of
governing (Peters 2010; Riggs 1964). Both of these aspects of polit-
ical action have very strong applied elements and demonstrate the
consequences of actions within the public sector and changes in the
surrounding society and economy.
Unfortunately for the relevance of comparative politics, most
public administration and even most public policy studies have
been written out of contemporary political science. As the discipline
became more concerned with individual behaviour, whether under-
stood from a sociological or economic perspective (see above),
there was declining interest in organizations. Even institutional
theory appears to have had relatively little interest in public admin-
istration, despite the clear institutional and organizational elements
of this component of the public sector (but see Frumkin and
Galaskiewicz 2004).
This diminished concern with public administration and public
policy is perhaps particularly unfortunate because these areas of
the discipline tended to contain more manipulable variables than
did most of the other areas. A good deal of the research in public
administration had been about how to organize the public sector
in ways that will produce better policy outcomes. This focus has
been particularly true for public administration and its continuing
fascination with administrative reorganization as a means of
enhancing government efficiency. Lester Salamon (1981) argued
186 B. Guy Peters
that the search for efficiency through reorganization was pursuing

a ‘will-o’-the-wisp’, but did recognize that reorganization could
have significant effects on policy choices. Processes and general
managerial perspectives can also be, and have been, manipulated.
This has been demonstrated throughout the history of public
administration and particularly in the emphasis on adopting the
new public management (Christensen and Laegreid 2001).
It appears extremely unfortunate, if relevance is one of the goals
of political science, that public policy and administration have been
removed from the mainstream of comparative analysis. While these
areas of study persist, and even flourish, they tend to do so outside
of political science, which should be their natural home. Certainly
some research on bureaucratic behaviour remains within political
science, but it is generally not work that is informative for, nor
informed by, the work of real world administrators.
Finally, having said rather rude things about rational choice
theories above, in fairness it should be noted that comparative
policy may be one area in which this approach becomes more rele-
vant. Many public policies are designed based on assumptions of
individual rationality and utility maximization, especially in areas
such as tax policy. Likewise, much of the instruments literature in
policy studies tends to have underlying it assumptions about human
behaviour that are largely rational (see Howlett et al. 2009: ch. 5).
Even if not always sustainable empirically, these assumptions do
provide useful beginning points for an analysis.
The limits of relevance in comparative politics
The above discussion about the potential relevance of studies of

public administration and policy points to the capacity for learn-
ing from other political systems and their experiences. The
growth of ‘evidence based policy-making’ as a paradigm for many
governments has meant that not only do they attempt to learn
from their own experiences but they also attempt to learn from
the experiences of other countries (Bogenschneider and Corbett
2010). Many contemporary governments are using the rest of the
world as their laboratory for policy-making, just the type of
opportunity we argued above should be possible with compara-
tive politics.
Evidence based policy-making also illustrates one of the major

limitations of attempting to learn from comparative examples. Any
policy, administrative structure or other aspect of political life is
embedded in the social and political environment from which it
emerged and must be understood within that context. Thus, policy
learning, and learning from comparative examples more broadly, is
more difficult than it might appear and runs the risk of making
many false equivalences and false analogies in attempting to trans-
plant programmes and structures (Marston and Watts 2003).
Comparative public administration provides perhaps a clearer
example of the difficulties in transplanting institutions and proce-
dures that have been successful in one setting into others. The
success of the new public management in many industrialized
democracies, and its failure in most other settings, demonstrates the
importance of understanding how structures and processes function
within particular settings. Allen Schick (1998) for example, made a
very strong argument concerning the inappropriateness of these
reforms for less-developed political systems which lacked an institu-
tionalized bureaucracy as a starting point for the changes. The fail-
ure to think comparatively and to understand the nature of the
system into which an innovation is being introduced severely limits
the capacity for effective policy and institutional diffusion.
That said, there has been significant attention in the academic
community, as well as in the world of government, to ‘evidence
based policy-making’ and policy learning (Bogenschneider and
Corbett 2010; Stone 2012). To some extent the experiences of other
systems in making and implementing policies have become a form
of policy analysis on the cheap for governments, and academics
have also returned to thinking about the means through which
effective transfers of policy may occur. While recognizing the
importance of comparative analysis, this research has yet to
develop effective methodologies for facilitating the identification of
the relevant cases and for preventing learning the wrong lessons
from cases that appear analogous.
The above challenges to relevance arising in comparative poli-
tics demonstrate to some extent the absence of one of the most
important aspects of comparative politics – the role of context –
and has been tending to diminish the utility of this sub-discipline
(see Pollitt forthcoming). The logic of context is that variables
affecting political life do not act independently but instead often
interact in complex packages, so that their effects cannot be readily
188 B. Guy Peters
disaggregated. As noted above, the development of QCA in the

social sciences has been an important methodological tool for
coping with that complexity, but theoretical development does not
appear to have moved as far. Robert Jervis’s interesting discussion
(1997) of international relations theory, and to some extent
comparative politics, in terms of complexity and the interaction
among variables, demonstrates the need to think about compara-
tive politics in other than linear terms. It also demonstrates that,
like QCA, conjunctures of factors may be essential for understand-
ing outcomes of the political process.
Therefore, to be increasingly relevant, comparative politics must
become more concerned with ‘deutero learning’, or learning about
learning (Visser 2007; see also Cortazar 2006). For purposes of
relevance, comparative politics needs to understand better how to
extract lessons from evidence from the available cases in order to
generate usable prescriptions. Prescription has not been a primary,
or even significant, focus for political science for the past several
decades, so the absence of thinking about how to learn to make
those prescriptions is not surprising. There have been some notice-
able exceptions to that generalization. The literature on policy
diffusion (Shipan and Volden 2008) and the literature on evidence-
based policy both have attempted to understand better how to
transfer programmes and therefore how to make better prescriptive
statements. But in general if the sub-discipline is indeed to be useful
then some capacity for prescription may be desirable, and this will
in turn require thinking about how to utilize the available evidence
for making those prescriptions.
Conclusion
The verdict on the relevance of comparative politics must be mixed.

There have been some notable successes, including the study of
democratization and the very important literature on managing
social and economic cleavages. Other factors that may be very
successful in explaining differences among political systems may be
counted as failures in relevance terms, given that there is little that
can be done to produce the desired outcomes. Further, the sub-disci-
pline appears to be moving away from relevance, increasingly
focusing more on individual sources of behaviour rather than the
more manipulable aspects of political structure.
In addition, the above discussion of the relevance of comparative

politics appears to contain some inherent paradoxes. One of the
more important of these paradoxes is that some of the variables
that provide an understanding of the context of political action, and
therefore to some extent make comparative politics comparative,
are among the least manipulable. If we want a rich understanding
of the differences among political systems we need to understand
political culture and similar factors that function as context in polit-
ical life; but there is nothing that the would-be manipulator of poli-
tics can do in the short run about those factors in order to generate
systemic change.
The need to consider culture and other collective factors raises
some other points about the relevance of comparative politics.
First, the emphasis on individual sources of causation in contempo-
rary political science theories tends to be contradicted by the domi-
nance of statistical and aggregating forms of empirical analysis.
Second, methodologies such as process-tracing (Bennett and
George 2005) that are better suited to identifying the immediate
influence of individual actors have generally been associated with
less individualistic theoretical approaches. For comparative politics
the employment of these case-oriented methodologies requires
careful selection of countries, and the cases within those countries,
so that this limited number of observations could have a limited
range of generalizability.
These contradictions, or paradoxes, and others, affect the capac-
ity of comparative politics to be relevant, especially in terms of the
capacity to link theoretical explanations for phenomena with the
methodologies appropriate to the level of explanation being
pursued. Much of our empirical work deals with aggregates while
most of our theorizing is about individual motivations and behav-
iours. What may be needed more than anything in this field is the
capacity to link those two levels more directly, for example through
social mechanisms (Hedström and Swedborg 1998), rather than
depending so heavily on assumptions.
Chapter 11
Can political science address

the puzzles of global
governance?
JON PIERRE
The idea of global governance continues to be little more than an

idea. The failure of the Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 to
produce a global agreement on carbon dioxide emission was yet
another illustration of the tremendous difficulties in getting states
to commit themselves to collective solutions. While transnational
regions like South East Asia (Katzenstein 2005; Pempel 2005),
Mercosur, the EU and the NAFTA area continue to develop
concerted governance, the prospects of global governance continue
to be bleak. At the same time, however, many of the top issues on
the agenda of most nation states – environmental protection,
national security, financial instabilities and pandemics – are inher-
ently transnational or global issues requiring some degree of collec-
tive, concerted action to be resolved or at least addressed. Thus, it
is fair to say that there is a global governance deficit. Despite the
increasingly global nature of the most salient issues on the agenda,
and the common view on the contemporary era as that of globaliza-
tion, creating global governance remains extremely difficult.
At the same time, there is now a growing debate on the relevance
of political science to policy-makers and public bureaucracies
(Flyvbjerg 2001; Peters et al. 2010; Schram and Caterino 2006; see
also Williams 2009). Political science, the argument goes, is preoc-
cupied with its internal debates and theory building, is detached
from social practice, and has failed to produce solutions to contem-
porary problems or even to provide politicians and the public with
useful analyses of past reform or future reform options.
190
The puzzles of global governance 191
In the context of global governance these issues have had a some-

what different spin compared with most other policy fields. It
would be misleading to argue that global governance has failed,
since it never really existed in any deeper meaning. The United
Nations, which is the institutional structure that would come clos-
est to a framework for global governance, lacks both the authority
to impose policies on individual member states and the authority to
make binding decisions. This helps to explain why the most ambi-
tious attempts to create globally coordinated programmes of
actions like the Rio Summit and the Kyoto Protocol have evolved
within rather loose institutional frameworks, and with the UN as a
supporting partner, at best. Some believe that global governance on
specific issues such as pandemic control, climate change or financial
stability is attainable. Very few, if any, seem to believe that global
governance covering several policy sectors is possible. Thus, the key
obstacles to global governance are not so much related to a lack of
knowledge about how best to organize it but should instead be
attributed to the pursuit of national self-interest.
The task facing the global community of leaders, then, is to
devise frameworks and procedures of governance to which nation
states will be willing to commit themselves in order to produce
binding, collective courses of action, instead of going it alone. In
this chapter I discuss the extent to which political science research
on governance and collective action has anything to offer to facili-
tate such concerted international action. How relevant is political
science in the search for sustainable global governance mechanisms
and frameworks? The basic argument I present is that Elinor
Ostrom’s (1990) common pool resources framework in many ways
offers the most relevant theory in terms of showing how submitting
to a regime, while suboptimal to the individual actor, helps facilitate
a Pareto-optimal equilibrium governing collective action and the
consumption of common resources. However, successfully imple-
menting the model in real-world contexts hinges to a large extent
on exogenous factors like the quality of political leadership and
deliberation procedures.
Global governance is probably an extraordinarily challenging
task for political science to prove its relevance. For almost all coun-
tries vast interests are at stake, either in the prospect of global
governance to address some salient problem or in avoiding globally
binding agreements which are believed to be detrimental to the
interests of the country. Given those strong interests, political
192 Jon Pierre
science models of global governance will be reviewed first and fore-

most with regard to the extent to which they promote or obstruct
the interests of individual countries rather than global governance
as such.
Second, global governance remains to a large extent a theory or
something desirable which has not yet existed. Many observers
would look at the Kyoto Protocol as the closest we have come to
global governance so far, but several key international players such
as China, Australia and the US were not part of that governance
arrangement. That means that there is no real-world model of
global governance to change, develop or depart from if the political
science community is to prove its usefulness to solving political
problems. The risk of being considered academic, in the most pejo-
rative meaning of the word, is imminent.
A third problem regarding political science making a contribu-
tion towards global governance is related to time. Creating and
reproducing global governance is an extremely long-term and
highly complicated project, covering several election terms. If we
are to take the rational choice model of political behaviour seri-
ously, where only those projects that will produce a visible return
during the election period will be considered by politicians, we soon
understand that short-term considerations are likely to prevent any
more long-term measures towards global governance (Downs
1957). Even if we were to dismiss the short-term view of political
leadership and electoral strategy, there is much to suggest that
politicians will be cautious about devoting massive energy and time
to long-term projects with uncertain yields. Honourable as such a
cause might be, there are only so many hours in a day, and voters
will also want their political leaders to focus on more immediate
and concrete issues.
Fourth and related to the previous point, the yields of investing
political leadership in the pursuit of global governance are not only
uncertain – the risk of failure being significant – but also diffuse.
Even if the effort were to be successful in so far as there would be
emergent global concerted action to address specific policy prob-
lems, the very nature of global governance as a problem-solving
strategy involving nation states, global and national corporations
and NGOs makes it difficult for a single politician to persuade the
electorate that he or she should have all the credit.
Fifth and finally, creating global governance is one thing, and for
that governance to actually address and solve salient global problems
is another. Even if global governance on some specific issue such as

global warming were to evolve, the effects of that governance
would be uncertain and long term. No single actor would be able to
claim credit with any creditability.
Each of these issues poses formidable challenges for global
governance and also for political science to be of relevance to politi-
cians or society. In the remainder of the chapter I will first discuss
global governance in some detail and then the potential for political
science to make a contribution towards that end.
Towards global governance?
The challenge of creating some form of global governance is not

new. Following the peace treaty of almost every major international
conflict there have been conferences aimed at creating a new model
of world order, as happened after the two world wars. Notions of
‘the war to end all wars’ have been easy to sell to political leaders
and peoples that have suffered the consequences of military conflict
which, as the historical record shows, has destroyed civilians’ lives
and the economic infrastructure of countries much more than mili-
tary personnel andequipment .
That said, the political agenda during the 1990s and 2000s has
seen a set of arguably new issues rapidly becoming more salient.
Environmental protection has been on the agenda since the 1970s
but had its definitive political breakthrough with the alarming news
about global warming. This was a truly global issue – no national
measure, however far-reaching and effectively implemented, would
significantly address the problem – and since previous international
agreements like the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro or the
Kyoto Protocol conference in 1997 had shown that widespread
global agreements could indeed be reached, the global warming
issue intensified the political work to develop a global regime that
could enforce and implement policies which would reduce carbon
dioxide emissions worldwide.
The political attention given to international terrorism followed
a similar path. The 1970s witnessed the initial wave of terrorist
actions: Munich 1972, the Brigate Rossi in Italy, the Rote Armee
Fraktion (Baader–Meinhof Group) in Germany, and the IRA in
Northern Ireland. Terrorist attacks triggered a governmental
response, security worldwide was stepped up and the issue seemingly
194 Jon Pierre
lost some of its former salience until September 11, 2001. Thus, for
both the environmental protection issues and international terror-
ism the turn of the millennium saw a rapid leap in salience and the
subsequent call for global strategies and institutions to respond to
the new challenge.
The search for global governance has also been driven by
increasing inequalities in wealth and life chances between the North
and the South. Despite massive international aid these inequalities
keep growing. There is today widespread belief that unless some
global order is set in place to address this issue with some institu-
tional force this pattern will persist. Needless to say, concrete
proposals to this effect like the Tobin tax on global financial trans-
actions have been met with fierce opposition from a variety of
actors and interests.
Global governance will display a complex mixture of nation
states, transnational institutions, NGOs and private capital
(Jönsson and Tallberg 2010). It is also fair to assume that such
governance arrangements will be issue-specific rather than seeking
to provide governance across a large number of issues. The stakes
and willingness of different (types of) actors to commit themselves
to such governance processes will vary considerably. All these
factors suggest that there is no standard model for global gover-
nance but that such governance, to the extent that it is attainable at
all, must factor in a large number of contextual factors. How does
political science prove relevance to such challenges?
Enter the scholar: the political science contribution
Political science research and theory building on global governance

would, prima facie, have plenty to offer towards designing regimes
and institutions for global governance. On closer inspection,
however, there are several aspects of the issues now most frequently
identified as suitable for global governance that question the rele-
vance of political science theory. One such problem is the multitude
of agencies. The liberal and (neo)realist theories of international
relations defined nation states as the key players, simply because the
international scene was for long dominated by states along with
corporate actors. Today, agencies can be defined in almost any
number of ways, ranging from transnational organizations such as
the EU, the WTO or the UN, to ad hoc treaties like the Kyoto
Protocol and regional instruments of economic governance (like

NAFTA and Mercosur), to terrorist cells.
It is intriguing to note that as the world system of nations was
able to enjoy a rapidly decreasing level of armed conflict, domestic
conflict in fact began to increase. Today, most armed conflict is
domestic, not international. Certainly, this pattern could be taken
as proof that peace-keeping efforts now are more efficient than
previously. Another interpretation would be that the ethnic and
economic cleavages that were concealed during the process of
building nations – such as in the former Yugoslavia, several African
states and most recently Georgia and the Ukraine – have resurfaced.
Thus, agency in the field of military conflict and international
terrorism has seemingly become too diverse for any theory to
accommodate. Or, as is the case in the global warming issue, agency
is nowhere – or everywhere, depending on how you define the prob-
lem. Thus, the contemporary heterogeneity of agency in global
governance poses a very real and significant problem which politi-
cal scientists have difficulties addressing.
With these difficulties in defining agency comes the problem of
analysing power in global governance. Barnett and Duvall (2005a:
6) argue that ‘prevailing definitions of global governance … have
liberal undertones and mask the presence of power’. The problem is
that, in the absence of formal authority which is the conventional
locus of political power, there is a need to rethink the sources of
power and the ways in which it is exercised. Here, global gover-
nance scholars face the same problem as their colleagues in most
governance research fields: how to conceptualize power in a
context where it derives less from formal institutions and offices
and more from a capacity to harness resources from a variety of
different actors and interests towards collective goals. Jacob
Torfing and his associates (Torfing et al. 2012: ch. 3) approach this
issue by distinguishing between ‘power in governance’, ‘power of
governance’ and ‘power over governance’ as three different aspects
of power in the context of governance.
More specifically applied to global governance, Barnett and
Duvall (2005a: 3) bemoan the scant attention that the global gover-
nance community pays to the power dimension of global gover-
nance. They outline a typology of power comprising ‘compulsory
power’ (based in threats of coercive measures), ‘institutional power’
(the submission to an international regime promoting the interests of
a group of countries in juxtaposition to other countries), ‘structural
196 Jon Pierre
power’ (derived from ‘the constitution of social capabilities and

interests of actors in direct relationship to each other’) and ‘produc-
tive power’ (‘the socially diffuse production of subjectivity in
systems of meaning and signification’). The realist school of
thought in international relations perceives power as primarily
compulsory, whereas critical theory emphasizes the structural and
productive types of power (ibid.: 4).
If the power dimension of governance in a general sense is a chal-
lenging issue, this is particularly the case in global governance
where national interests are at stake, military capabilities are pres-
ent and there is no recognized authority to make collective deci-
sions. The common distinction between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power is
useful in describing the different strategies available to nation states
and other actors in global governance (Nye 2004). ‘Hard power’ is
closely related to compulsory or institutional power, whereas ‘soft
power’ is akin to structural and productive power in Barnett and
Duvall’s typology. Again, the absence of formal authority and a
commonly recognized process of making and enforcing decisions
have driven the search for alternative conceptions of power and its
sources.
In addition to these problems in defining or contextualizing
agency and power, current political science also has problems with
defining institutional arrangements for collective problem solving
in the absence of formal authority. Where such authority exists, the
obvious collective problem-solving institution is government. How
do we, as Rhodes (1997) would say, design governance without
government?
In part this problem is related to the complexity that surrounds
agency, but there are other issues as well: the absence of legal
authority and subsequently the complexity of imposing sanctions
on defecting behaviour. The defining problem in global governance
is the absence of formal authority and, therefore, there is a search
for a regime which can impose order on sovereign actors. Models
derived from rational choice theory would define this as either a
collective action problem or a common pool resource problem. The
collective action problem suggests that free riding is rational behav-
iour since it allows the actor to collect the benefits without carrying
the costs of the collective action (Olson 1965). For instance, the
perverse logic of public goods is that it would be considered
‘rational’ for governments not to be a forerunner in carbon dioxide
emission reduction policy but rather to let other countries take the
lead. In order to prevent such ‘rational’ behaviour and instead

promote collective goals in carbon dioxide emissions, global gover-
nance must be facilitated and imposed by a regime that has some
formal leverage on individual countries.
Thus, the solution to the problems of shirking and free riding, in
theory as in real life, is imposing a sanction on free riding. In global
governance, such sanctions are extremely difficult to design and
even more difficult to impose. If there is no authority controlling
global governance, how is a sanction imposed? Exclusion, which
might be an effective sanction in some forms of governance, is not
an efficient instrument in global governance because the basic idea
of such governance is that it is global. By conveying the idea that all
actors swim or sink together, actors are more likely to commit
themselves to the global governance regime.
If sanctions, then, are problematic in global governance, can
incentives achieve the same commitment to the regime?
Participating in, and contributing to, global governance might offer
incentives which may or may not be sufficient to commit an actor.
Again, however, the free riding strategy poses a problem. A country
can choose not to sign the Kyoto Protocol and to refrain from
domestic regulation to reduce carbon dioxide emission. At the same
time it will benefit from the restrictions imposed in other countries.
How does a global governance arrangement prevent that strategy,
which incidentally is the choice of (in)action that the United States
has pursued in the global warming issue so far?
To Elinor Ostrom (1990), the solution to this dilemma is reci-
procity. A regime among sovereign, rational actors can be formed
and sustained if they represent equilibriums among rational actors,
i.e. if the regime is Pareto-optimal and no actor can be better off
without at least one being worse off. A Pareto-optimal regime is a
situation in which actors find it more rational and goal-fulfilling to
submit to the regime than to remain outside the collective arrange-
ment because it allows for a sustained consumption of the collective
resource. Thus, actors submit to the regime because it is in their
interest to do so. The alternative strategy, going it alone and maxi-
mizing consumption, is not an option because the resource is
common. For the same reason, the only sanction which is available
to the regime, reciprocity, becomes effective because the actor is
committed to the locality; in Ostrom’s model the fishermen do not
have much choice but to fish in that particular lake, and in global
governance exiting the system is not an option.
198 Jon Pierre
So is common pool resource theory an appropriate and effective

political science model for guiding the design of global governance?
Well, yes and no. Yes, because it tells us something about how to
devise regimes for regulating the consumption of common
resources without relying on formal, legal authority. No, because
there is essentially very little to suggest that the equilibrium that
would sustain such a regime would be effective or sufficient in
resolving the collective problem. Indeed, the Kyoto Protocol has
been criticized for not setting reduction targets that will signifi-
cantly slow global warming. The price for getting all major (or the
vast majority of) players on board might well be a diluted and
substantively speaking insufficient policy.
Another aspect of the global governance problem which contem-
porary theory has problems addressing stems from within the polit-
ical science community itself. Going through the first volumes of
the journal Global Governance, one cannot escape the impression
that this is a scholarly field which is probably just as much
concerned with devising theories and models as it is with studying
real cases of global governance. The constructivist ‘turn’ in
International Relations has made a distinct imprint on global
governance, something which raises questions about the extent to
which this is a research field which is likely to be able to make a
contribution to the real-world struggle to create global governance.
The problem is not so much the basic ontological argument that
different actors perceive governance issues differently but rather the
tendency among scholars in the global governance genre to be more
inclined to debate the virtues of that ontological preference at the
expense of debating global governance proper.
Furthermore, the increasing interest among political scientists to
position themselves on normative issues complicates the prospects
of proving political science to be relevant to solving societal prob-
lems. While normative theory could make a useful contribution to
solving policy problems, ‘the ongoing divorce of normative theory
and empirical analysis leaves a good deal of work in the Theory
camp isolated from things that matter, here and now’ (Gerring and
Yesnowitz 2006: 105). All of this means that while the potential
relevance for political science remains high, developments, trends
and fads among the political science community effectively prevents
that relevance from being a factor in the real world.
I have previously mentioned time and political leadership as
indigenous problems in solving long-term problems such as global
governance. That would suggest that Ostrom’s model of regime

building in and of itself is not sufficient to provide advice in the
pursuit of such governance. For all its brilliance, common-pool
resource management theory is almost devoid of an analysis of
political power (Galaz 2005). It also has problems taking into
account time and change. Mainstream political science would prob-
ably suggest that some form of deliberation among the key players
would be an efficient strategy towards accommodation and
commitment to collective objectives. Ostrom’s interest-based model
argues that actors will submit to a Pareto-optimal regime as long as
there is stability and reciprocity. In the real world, the amount of
common resources – real or perceived – varies, as does the number
of players. A deliberative model of governance would probably be
more apt at accommodating those types of changes than would an
Ostromian model be.
Discussion
The brief discussion earlier in this chapter on the prospects of

global governance and the role of political science towards that end
suggests a couple of important differences between politics and the
academic, theoretical models of collective problem solving. One
such distinction is that between substantive and instrumental goals.
In the political sphere, substantive problems are to be resolved by
politicians which are frequently assumed to be all about instrumen-
tality. The dichotomy to some extent exaggerates the difference
between substantive and instrumental goals since there is political
currency in solving societal problems. That said, however, politi-
cians sometimes give a clear priority to substantive considerations
over strategic objectives and pursue politics that, at least in the
short term, are not vote-maximizing.
Another distinction, again, is related to time. Creating global
governance is a long-term challenge which is not easily collapsed
into election terms and ‘deliverables’. Without going too far down
the rational choice avenue of thought it can be assumed that elected
officials have an interest in acquiring substantive results to present
to the electorate in the election campaign. Yet, such short-term
objectives may be counter-productive to the more long-term
process of developing governance structures, and political science is
far more likely to be able to offer advice on the latter problem than
200 Jon Pierre
the former. Political science, particularly the formal modelling

versions of political analysis, does consider time in terms of
sequencing and the coupling of policy to the electoral cycle.
Institutionalists have a somewhat more awkward relationship with
time and change (see Pierson 2004) and tend to see change as
discontinuous, abrupt processes followed by extended periods of
institutionalized choice.
A third distinction relates to the previous discussion concerning
responsiveness and leadership. This is obviously a perennial discus-
sion in democratic theory: should political leaders first and fore-
most be responsive to the demos, or should they impose unpopular
decisions and programmes if they are believed to be in the long-
term interest of the demos? Again, institutionalists appear some-
what oblivious to time while rational choice theory would link such
choices to the electoral cycle.
At the end of the day, both institutional theory and rational
choice theory – which together dominate much of contemporary
political analysis – have indigenous flaws in the perspective of their
utility. Institutional theory still grapples with conceptualizing
agency. Informing a political decision-maker that there are impor-
tant sources of inertia and fixity in both political structure and
process will not raise any eyebrows. Rational choice theory is of
little help, too, since it assumes complete instrumentality on the
part of the politicians and, perhaps more challenging, complete
knowledge of preferences and options. The main contribution of
political science in the context of global governance has been to
diagnose the problem and to uncover the huge complexities in
creating global governance. It has been far less successful in provid-
ing any answers to the issue of how these problems are to be
resolved.
In fairness, it should be noted that research on global governance
thus far has only been marginally concerned with designing models
that would work on the ground. The utility dimension of political
science research is a yardstick which is not self-evident and has not
been systematically applied hitherto. Global governance research
faces a particularly difficult challenge in this respect: history is
replete with examples of failures to create international or global
governance and it is not easy to see any prospect as to where politi-
cal science can move the idea, let alone the practice, of global gover-
nance forward. Since global governance is still evolving the
potential relevance of global governance should be significant – this
would be the time when practitioners turn to academia for advice.

It is now up to the scholarly community to rise to that challenge,
perhaps spending less time scrutinizing theories and approaches
and more on focussing on making a concrete contribution.
Conclusions
It is not difficult to dismiss political science as a source of ideas and

prescriptions for global governance. Several circumstances
contribute to the problems facing the discipline in trying to perform
such a role. The global governance community is still devising theo-
ries and models while being internally divided over issues related to
ontology and epistemology.
Secondly, relevance or utility have not been intra-academic crite-
ria (Peters et al. 2010): when allocating research grants or making
tenure decisions relevance is rarely a salient factor except perhaps in
professional schools. Since such decisions are essential to academic
life, scholars will conform to institutional rules of publication and
teaching.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the problems facing the
development of global governance are not organizational or techni-
cal or derived from insufficient knowledge. They are first and fore-
most real-world problems of making states and other global actors
comply with collective rules in a world where no authority exists.
Elinor Ostrom (1990) shows how such compliance can be attained
among rational actors; but then rationality itself becomes an empir-
ical question rather than a postulate. Again, theory and real-world
political behaviour seem to have very little to do with each other.
Political science is not alone in this situation. In sociology, glob-
alization has triggered extensive research on the impact of global
political and economic forces on society. The ‘world polity theory’
has emerged as an attempt to reconceptualize the state and the
demos in the globalized world (Boli and Thomas 1999; Lechner and
Boli 2005; Meyer et al. 1997), but on closer inspection it is highly
uncertain as to whether this offers a promising path towards new
theory. Economic theory, too, struggles with similar problems.
Although institutional economic theory has brought parts of the
discipline somewhat closer to real-world problems, mainstream
economics still appears to follow Milton Friedman’s argument that
‘theory is to be tested by the accuracy of its “assumptions” as
202 Jon Pierre
photographic descriptions of reality, not by the correctness of the

predictions that can be derived from it’ (Friedman 1953c: 91), a
motto which does not speak to utility. In all three disciplines the
tension between theory building and the development of academic
discourse seems to stand in the way of relevance and utility. It is
indicative that in areas such as public administration and policy
analysis, where the utility dimension is much more present, there is
a perennial criticism of eclecticism and atheoretical analyses.
Global governance is in many ways the ultimate test of the rele-
vance of political science: if the discipline can provide robust theory
which could make a contribution, however small, to promote
global governance, then it could probably perform even better in
most other areas of governance and public policy, too. The key
reasons why that has not happened so far is in part the scope and
complexity of the challenge and in part because the discipline as of
yet does not have a theory to offer. Here, global governance pres-
ents an interesting point of comparison with the relevance of policy
research. As argued in Chapter 7 in this volume, public policy as a
research field has been able to prove its relevance by embracing
inter-disciplinary approaches and to engage intermediary institu-
tions like think tanks, professional organizations and transnational
organizations devoted to the diffusion of policy concepts and
models. The global governance community of scholars, so far,
appears more preoccupied with internal debate than to engaging
the world of practitioners.
Chapter 12
Maximizing the relevance of

political science for public
policy in the era of big data
HELEN MARGETTS
The environment in which public policy is made has entered a

period of dramatic change. Widespread use of digital technologies,
the internet and social media means most of the activities of citizens
and governments leave a digital imprint which can be harvested to
generate so-called ‘big data’. So policy-making takes place in an
increasingly rich data environment, which offers both promises and
threats to policy-makers. The worlds of science and business have
been quick to recognize and exploit the research and financial
values of big data. For example, in physics, systems biology, neuro-
science and climate change there have been enormous advances
based on big data analysis of particles, cells, brain activity and
weather. Corporations routinely exploit big data relating to
customer behaviour. But in terms of establishing the public value of
big data, and its potential for better governance and more efficient
provision of public goods, the policy-making community has
lagged behind. Policy-makers face cultural, organizational and
technological barriers to generating and using big data, lack the
expertise and analytic skills to maximize its potential for public
sector innovation, and are deterred by unresolved ethical chal-
lenges. Although there is some exciting social science research that
has applied a multi-disciplinary perspective to large-scale data and
virtual environments to understand the changing political world, in
the UK mainstream political science has been slow to capitalize
upon the potential of big data, and is therefore not yet equipped to
assist policy-makers in this endeavour.
203
204 Helen Margetts
As forms of data previously used only by the physical and life

sciences become available to social science research, there is great
potential to apply natural science models and concepts to enhance
our understanding of politics. In this chapter I argue that this
changed environment and the reluctance of political scientists to
embrace it could threaten the relevance that political science can
have for practical policy-making. I will lay out the shifts taking
place in political life and the policy-making environment from the
perspective of both citizens and governments, outline the potential
for big data to feed into policy-making, detail the challenges facing
policy-makers in the big data era, and make some recommenda-
tions for how political science as a discipline might use big data to
maintain and even increase its relevance for policy-makers strug-
gling to cope with a deluge of data.
Citizens, social media and big data
The context in which people decide whether to participate politically

has undergone a period of radical change. People in both democra-
cies and authoritarian regimes spend growing proportions of their
lives on the internet and social media. At the time of writing,
YouTube receives four billion views a day; Twitter has 140 million
users, while its Chinese equivalent, Sina Weibo, has 368 million
users; and Facebook has 600 million users. Half of US and UK adults
use a social networking service. Even in countries with lower levels
of internet penetration, social networking sites are popular, with
Facebook the third most popular news source across Arab nations
with 12 million users in Egypt alone (Dennis et al. 2013).
Social media were mostly developed for social use, but they all
have the potential to host a wide range of political activities and
civic engagement, such as: receiving and sharing news, information
and views; expressing opinions; discussing issues; coordinating
activities; and matching individuals across political, geographical
and economic boundaries. And there is every sign that the swelling
ranks of social media users are employing these sites for political
activities. In the US, nearly half of younger users of social network-
ing sites have used them to share political views (Pew 2012), while
in Arab countries more than 60 per cent of users (around one third
of citizens in Lebanon, Tunisia and Egypt) report using the sites to
share views about politics (rising to 70 per cent for community
Public policy in the era of big data 205
issues). In addition to general social media sites, there are also a

huge range of internet-based platforms dedicated to political activ-
ity (such as Avaaz, Kiva, MoveOn, 38 Degrees, change.org,
JustGiving, government petition sites and the MySociety suite of
sites) where users can participate quickly and easily, such as joining
an email campaign or online protest, signing a petition, writing to a
representative, complaining or commenting on a public service or
contributing money.
It is via these social media and campaigning platforms that most
contemporary political participation takes place. They make possi-
ble new ‘micro-acts’ of political participation and civic engagement,
such as a status update on Facebook, a tweet or re-tweet, signing an
electronic petition, sharing a political news item, posting a
comment on a blog or discussion thread, making a micro-donation
of funds to a political cause or campaign, uploading or sharing a
political video on YouTube, ‘rating’, ‘ranking’, complaining about
or giving feedback on a public service and so on. All these are very
small acts of participation that for most people were not available
until the advent of social media, adding rungs to the ‘ladder’ of
participation (Verba et al. 1995) at the bottom end. The mechanism
is the lowering of transaction costs in relation to participation costs,
meaning that it becomes possible to donate smaller and smaller
amounts as potential participants receive requests for micro-dona-
tions of political resources in the course of their normal lives both
online and offline. Taken individually they may seem insignificant,
but these tiny acts of participation scale up to major mobilizations,
from mass demonstrations during the Arab Spring to the petitions
that have brought about policy change in liberal democracies,
which are qualitatively different from traditional, offline mobiliza-
tions as discussed in Margetts et al. (2013; 2015). Early work on
understanding how these mobilizations start up and gain momen-
tum shows that a (very) few of them succeed dramatically, while the
vast majority fail absolutely, making them unstable and unpre-
dictable. Political mobilization of this kind forms part of the new
‘democratic weather’, a challenging environment for policy-
makers. My colleagues (Peter John, Scott Hale and Taha Yasseri)
and I have developed a model to encapsulate these changes.
‘Chaotic pluralism’ (Margetts et al. 2015) is a political pluralism
that is characterized by non-linearity and interconnectivity and is
far more disorganized and individualized than the original archi-
tects of pluralist political theories ever envisaged.
206 Helen Margetts
So widespread use of social media can create new uncertainty in

political life. But it can also provide new means of understanding
it. Every participatory act, however small, carried out on social
media leaves a digital imprint. So political mobilizations or fluctu-
ations in political opinion produce digital trails that can be
harvested by researchers to generate large-scale datasets, so-called
‘big data’. Big data emerged as a key trend in the corporate world
(Gartner 2012; IBM 2012; Manyika et al. 2011) from around
2010 and has engendered great interest from journalists, academic
commentators and entrepreneurs (see Mayer-Schoenberger and
Cukier 2013). There is much debate over what exactly the term
means, but typically it refers to data too large to be manipulated in
a desktop computing environment and that is produced in real
time, representing actual transactions or interactions. Real-time
transactional data have the potential to tell us what people are
really doing or have done, as opposed to survey data that tells us
what people think they did or might do in the future. They can be
retrieved and analysed with software, text and data-mining tools,
and sophisticated network analysis (as in Aral and Walker 2011;
Goel et al. 2012; González-Bailón et al. 2011; González-Bailón
and Barbera 2013; Hindman 2008). So as well as being a major
sphere of political participation and civic engagement, social
media and other web-based platforms can provide a new way to
research and understand it.
However, the UK social science community in general, and politi-
cal science in particular, has not yet fully appreciated and capitalized
on the potential of big data for understanding the social and politi-
cal world. As forms of data previously used only by the physical and
life sciences become available to social science research, there is
potential to apply natural science models and concepts to social
behaviour. According to the growing field of ‘social physics’ big data
could revolutionize the social sciences in the same way as the tele-
scope did for physics and the microscope for biology (Pentland
2014). Yet UK social science departments remain mono-disciplinary,
while the burgeoning fields of computational social science and data
science, which incorporate mathematics, physics and engineering
expertise into social science enquiry, are still largely US-based. The
data science programmes within the UK are so far dominated by
computer science, engineering and business, and remain critically
uninformed by social science theories, models or questions. As a
consequence, many technological and methodological barriers to
generating and analysing big data to understand the social world

are yet to be tackled. So in the seven years since Savage and
Burrows’s (2007) article predicting the ‘Coming Crisis of
Empirical Sociology’ and the replacement of surveys with large
scale datasets of real-time transactional data, little progress has
been made in terms of developing big data capacity and tools for
understanding the social world, especially in the UK.
In political science, this state of affairs is particularly
pronounced. Most of the work quoted above based on big
datasets of political data is carried out by large multi-disciplinary
research teams, incorporating computer scientists, mathemati-
cians and physicists, and it is in the US research environment that
such teams thrive. In 2009 David Lazer and 14 colleagues from
across the social sciences, physics and computer science published
an article entitled ‘Computational Social Science’ in the journal
Science (Lazer et al. 2009), as the first step in developing the
nascent field of ‘data-driven computational social science’,
involving the collection and analysis of data on social and politi-
cal behaviour at an unprecedented breadth, depth and scale. They
cite as a forerunner cognitive science, which has involved fields
ranging from neurobiology to philosophy to computer science,
and which has attracted the investment of substantial resources to
form a common field and ‘created enormous progress for public
good in the last generation’. They urged social scientists to start
paying attention to big data developments, warning that compu-
tational social science was occurring principally in internet
companies such as Google and government agencies such as the
US National Security Agency (NSA), out of which there might
emerge a privileged set of academic researchers ‘residing over
private data from which they produce papers that cannot be
critiqued or replicated’. Yet although three of the co-authors came
from political science, this work has been little referenced by
political scientists operating in the mainstream (indeed of the
authors listed, only a handful come from the social sciences,
suggesting that concern over the lack of social science input comes
from the other side of the social science/natural science bound-
ary). Likewise the entire literature on government information
technology has long been ‘ghettoized’ in political science in
general and public administration in particular (see Dunleavy et
al. 2006; Hood and Margetts 2010; Margetts 1999).
208 Helen Margetts
Governments, digital technologies and the promise

of big data for policy-making
Just as citizens spend increasing proportions of their political life in

online settings, leaving digital traces, so do governments and polit-
ical institutions of all kinds. From the 1950s onwards, large govern-
ments have progressively moved their administrative operations
onto large scale information systems, and smaller states have
followed suit to the extent that in the twenty-first century very few
governmental processes in developed countries take place without
the use of digital technologies (Dunleavy et al. 2006; Margetts
1999). So do most government–citizen interactions leave a digital
trail of some kind within government, as well as on internet-based
platforms outside government?
Most governments have a poor record on using this kind of inter-
nal administrative data to feed into policy-making (Margetts 1999),
but with the wave of e-government initiatives that spread across the
world in the early 2000s, the modernization of legacy computer
systems, and the slow but now substantive move towards digital
transactions, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis when
governments like the UK turned to ‘Digital by Default’ initiatives as
a way of doing more for less, there are more and more opportuni-
ties to use the data generated by internal administrative operations
and government–citizen interactions to shape policy-making
processes and improve service delivery.
Likewise, in an age where government agencies ‘are’ their
website or digital presence on social media (Dunleavy et al. 2006;
Steinberg 2012), clearly there is much understanding of their struc-
ture and operations to be gained from analysis of their digital inter-
actions. This kind of big data can provide real insight into
institutional change over long time periods. So for example Bright
(2012) has used the digital parliamentary record to investigate the
hypothesis that politics is becoming more contentious over time,
analysing 75 years of parliamentary debates in Hansard (12 giga-
bytes, 740 million words) to show that the rate that speakers are
interrupted by other MPs has risen dramatically during the period
from 1980 to the present time. Similarly, Hale et al. (2014) have
used the entire .uk domain dataset of the British Library to analyse
changes in the UK university network over 15 years. For newer
organizations which exist partially or entirely in digital settings, big
data of this kind is the only way to understand institutional change.
So the first ever complete transaction history of an organization,

Wikipedia, is provided by the complete download of the entire edit
history of that website (Loubser 2010), given that the production of
Wikipedia takes place entirely online. Likewise the analysis of the
Twitter network of the Indignados (González-Bailón et al. 2011),
showing how information spread across this movement’s prime
method of communication, provides a comprehensive picture of a
protest movement.
So what opportunities do this ‘data deluge’ (Margetts 2013),
including big data generated by governments and other political
institutions and the digital trails left by citizens on social media,
offer to policy-makers? First of all, ‘big data’ provides a real chance
for policy-making to be more citizen-focused, taking account of
citizens’ needs and preferences (as expressed on social media) and
actual behaviour (as recorded digitally whenever citizens interact
with government). Policy-makers can mine data from social media,
generating a picture of how a very large proportion of the popula-
tion view policies and services, and what their concerns and experi-
ences in dealing with government are. For example, data from
Google Search API and Google Trends can provide useful indicators
of where citizens get information from about government, policy
change or service delivery, and what issues they are thinking about,
which could allow departments to adjust their communication
strategies. Social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook
present an understanding of how many people are discussing policy
or services and can provide information about the experiences of
services that people have publicly shared, or their opinions about
specific policies. Twitter in particular is used by some corporations
as a way of gathering and responding to complaints, although this
is not as yet done by governmental organizations. Comparing
comments on social media, ratings and ranking sites, or discussion
threads on sites like Mumsnet can highlight differences in perform-
ance across local offices (like job centres, hospitals or schools) or
different contract providers. Together with a multi-disciplinary
research team from the Oxford Internet Institute, the author of this
chapter has carried out a feasibility study for the UK Department of
Work and Pensions, investigating the use of all these data sources in
relation to that department (Bright et al. 2014).
The insight provided by such data can give policy-makers a much
clearer picture of their own activities, for example through log
usage data of their own electronic presence or transactions
210 Helen Margetts
recorded on internal information systems, which are increasingly

interlinked with web-based platforms. In this way, policy-makers
can use data from social media for self-improvement, by under-
standing what people are saying about government, and which
policies, services or providers are attracting negative opinions and
complaints, enabling identification of a failing school, hospital or
contractor, for example. So, social media data can act as a barome-
ter of public services, showing where things are going wrong. If
usage of such data really becomes sophisticated, then it might
become possible to predict from underlying patterns in such data
when a hospital or school is going to fail, rather than waiting until
some public scandal of complete service breakdown (such as the
case of the Mid Staffordshire Hospital Trust) bursts into the public
and media eye. It also becomes possible to model and even predict
both collective and individual behaviour such as riots and health-
care crises caused by high demand, with obvious policy-making
benefits (Moat et al. 2014), just as the use of large volumes of
search data to detect epidemics can allow the planning of interven-
tions (Ginsberg et al. 2009). Likewise Wikipedia data may be used
to predict electoral behaviour in countries where opinion polling is
problematic, such as Iran (Yasseri and Bright 2013).
Big data challenges
Capitalizing on the potential of big data for public policy is not a

simple matter, however. First, big data is technically and technolog-
ically challenging for government, particularly those governments
(like the UK) which have always struggled with large-scale informa-
tion systems and technology projects (Dunleavy et al. 2006;
Margetts 1999) and, as noted above, in extracting data from its
own systems to inform policy-making and service delivery. There
are cultural barriers to government using social media on account
of the informal style and blurring of organizational and
public–private boundaries which they engender (Clarke 2012;
Margetts and Dunleavy 2002). Gathering data from social media
platforms, with technical barriers distinct to each platform,
requires coding skills which will be difficult for policy-makers to
acquire. Indeed, in the UK civil services the majority of civil
servants outside communications departments do not have access
to social media while at work, presenting an obvious challenge to
using social media data for innovation in service delivery or for

developing the technical skills required. The technical challenges of
manipulating and analysing big data require quantitative skills far
out of reach of most civil servants and unlikely to be offered in the
training and educational environments they typically use.
Second, big data presents new moral and ethical dilemmas to
policy-makers. In part these are reputational: there is an image
problem for government in the use of big data – this chapter
contains a few sentences like this which include both the word ‘big’
and the word ‘government’ and that is an unpopular combination.
Policy-makers’ responses to Edward Snowden’s revelations of the
US Tempora and UK Prism programmes have done nothing to
improve this image, with their focus on the use of big data to track
down individuals and groups involved in acts of terrorism and
criminality – rather than on anything to make policy-making better,
or to use the wealth of information that these programmes provide
to improve public services. Such challenges can be far greater for
governments than corporations. Citizens (reasonably) happily
allow Tesco and Facebook to use their data on the basis it will
improve their products and minimize costs for the consumer, but if
government tries to use social media to understand citizens and
improve its own performance, there is the danger that it will be
accused of spying on its citizenry in order to quash potential resist-
ance.
The ethical challenges of using big data go beyond the presenta-
tional, however. Most obviously, privacy is a serious issue: just
because many of the data generated online are available ‘does not
mean that their analysis is legitimate’ (boyd and Crawford 2012).
And there is the question of those who are under-represented or
misrepresented in the data; or those who are non-users or only
partial users of the internet, for example. There are also groups that
are systematically excluded or under-represented in the production
of the world’s digital knowledge and information (Graham et al.
2012; 2014), and they will be under-represented in many big data
sets. The strong focus of the computational science research on
those data sources that are easiest to collect (such as Twitter) exac-
erbates this problem.
There are even more complex moral issues further down the line.
For example, big data increasingly facilitates probabilistic policy-
making, where policy is made on the basis of what segments of indi-
viduals will probably do, rather than what they have done.
212 Helen Margetts
Predictive policing for example has had some success, particularly

in California, where robberies declined by a quarter after the use of
the ‘PredPol’ policing software, but it can lead to a ‘feedback loop
of injustice’, as one privacy advocacy group put it, as policing
resources are targeted at increasingly small socio-economic
groups.
Big data provides unprecedented levels of knowledge about
people’s life expectancy or likely educational attainment. What
responsibility does the state have for the education of those school
pupils who are, probabilistically, almost certain to drop out? The
more that these kinds of data and methods become mainstream
with policy-makers, the more that policy-makers will have to tackle
this kind of moral dilemma.
Maintaining relevance
So how can political scientists help policy-makers in this changed

environment, ensuring that political science research can maintain
its relevance? As for public policy-making, I have argued above that
big data holds major promise for political science, which should
enable us to further extend our record in policy research. We now
have access to a cornucopia of data of a kind more traditionally
associated with the natural sciences. Rather than being dependent
on surveys, the traditional staple of social science empirical data,
general social media platforms – such as Wikipedia, Twitter,
Facebook, Google Search and platforms dedicated to political
activism or civic engagement (such as change.org, MoveOn.org and
Avaaz.org) – present us with the opportunity over time to scrape,
generate, analyse and archive huge quantities of comparative data
about political activity. Some such data is of a comprehensiveness
and quality (in terms of representing real transactions) that political
science has never had before. Take for example the entire dataset of
all petitions to the UK government created over the last four years –
scraped every hour to provide an hourly signature count – and the
time stamps and geocodes of every signature, collected and
analysed by the author’s own research team at the Oxford Internet
Institute (see Hale et al. 2013; Lowther 2013; Yasseri et al. 2013),
which will allow for the first time a complete geographical ecology
of petition signing, one of the most popular participatory acts
outside voting. Following these petitions through social media gives
a further picture of the process of dissemination of these thousands

of mobilizations around individual petitions throughout a popula-
tion; similar activities in the US and Germany provide a compara-
tive picture. This data has attracted attention from policy-makers in
the UK, the US and Canada and is currently being used by the UK
House of Commons in the redesign of the petitions platform,
including the selection of thresholds and deadlines for petitions.
One reason for the lack of development in ‘computational polit-
ical science’ discussed above is that just as big data presents chal-
lenges to policy-makers, it also presents new challenges to political
scientists in terms of the technical skills, multi-disciplinary expert-
ise, ethical procedures and computing resources required to
harvest, store and analyse it. First, the technological challenge is
ever present. To generate their own big data, researchers and
students must learn to code – and for some that is an alien skill. At
the Oxford Internet Institute, a multi-disciplinary department of
the University of Oxford, we run a course on Digital Social
Research that all our postgraduate students can take. But not all
social science departments could either provide such a course or
persuade their postgraduate students that they need it. Ours, who
all study the social science of the internet, are obviously predisposed
to do so. Furthermore, big data analysis requires multi-disciplinary
expertise. Of the immediate research team working on our petitions
data, there is a computer scientist (Scott Hale), a physicist (Taha
Yasseri) and a political scientist (myself). It would be virtually
impossible to carry out this sort of research without such expertise,
and as a multi-disciplinary department the Oxford Internet
Institute is (reasonably) free to recruit these types of research
faculty. But few social science departments outside the US can
promise a research career for computer scientists, physicists or any
of the other disciplinary specialists that might be needed to generate
and manipulate big data.
There is a strong rationale, however, for political science as a
discipline to overcome these challenges. The need for normative
and theoretical development to accompany the use of big data for
both research and public policy interventions is high. The more that
engineers, computer scientists and physicists take the lead in devel-
oping the computational social science agenda in general and
‘computational political science’ in particular, the more unlikely it is
that theoretical development and interesting research questions will
keep pace with the generation of data, and meaningless analyses of
214 Helen Margetts
those data which may well find their way into public policy
processes, if political scientists are not in a position to aid policy-
makers in extracting sense out of the data deluge.
So, how can political scientists overcome these challenges, and
thereby be in a good position to aid policy-makers to tackle their
own barriers to making the most of the possibilities afforded by big
data? First, political scientists may have to accept that multi-disci-
plinary research teams are going to become the norm for social
science research, extending beyond social science disciplines into
the life sciences, mathematics, physics and engineering. At the
‘IPP2012: Big Data: Big Challenges’ conference, the keynote
speaker, Duncan Watts (himself a physicist turned sociologist),
called for a ‘dating agency’ for engineers and social scientists – with
the former providing the technological expertise and the latter the
interesting research questions. We need to make sure that forums
exist where social scientists and technologists meet and discuss big
data research at the earliest stages, so that research projects and
programmes incorporate the core competencies of both. Political
science departments will need to reach out to other departments
across their universities, and those in universities which lack the
natural sciences (such as the London School of Economics) will
need to build collaborations with researchers in other universities.
As Lazer et al. (2009) pointed out, tenure committees and editorial
boards need to understand and reward the effort to publish across
disciplines, as do research funding councils.
Second, political scientists need to provide the normative and
ethical basis for policy decisions in the big data era. Again as Lazer
et al. (2009) pointed out, ‘quarks and cells neither mind when we
discover their secrets nor protest if we alter their environments
during the discovery process’, but if we apply the methods of
physics or computational biology to social settings, we face very
different ethical barriers. That means bringing in normative politi-
cal theorists and philosophers of information into our research
teams, again crossing disciplinary boundaries, this time into the
humanities where the nascent field of the ethics of information can
start to provide a normative basis (Floridi 2013). It also means
university social science ethics committees tooling up to understand
the risks to privacy and data protection that big data generation
and analysis can hold, developing expertise in what is legal or ethi-
cally permissible. This may involve developing the same kind of
rigour and expertise as ethics committees in the medical sciences,
but with a far steeper learning curve. Ethical issues are crucially
important and must be taken into account at all stages of research
using big data, but the political science research community should
not let the dangers obscure the potential benefits. Perhaps there are
lessons from health research, for example where researchers using
animals for experimentation have overcome huge ethical (and
sometimes life-threatening) resistance to develop viable ethical
frameworks for such research. Often, big data itself may be used to
highlight issues such as under-representation in information geog-
raphy (Graham et al. 2012; 2014). And some of the reputational
problems for governments using big data for policy-making are
minimized where research designs are developed in an academic
setting. In any case, as González-Bailón (2013: 157) points out,
‘since large data sets that track our behaviour are here to stay, it is
probably best to start demanding responsible use of that informa-
tion than to prevent its use’.
Third, there is going to be a need for training in data science, to
be available to both political science postgraduates and policy-
makers. Harvard admitted 300 students to the first year of its new
data science course in 2013, but the course was born out of the
computer science department with little social science input. Of the
20 US masters courses in big data analytics compiled in 2013 by
Information Week (Henschen 2013), nearly all came from
computer science or informatics departments, with no evidence of
political science involvement. Political science research training
needs to incorporate coding and analysis skills of the kind these
courses provide, but with a social science focus. If we as political
scientists leave the training to computer scientists, we will find that
the new cadre of data scientists will tend to leave out political
science concerns or questions.
Fourth, we need to bring policy-makers and academic
researchers together to tackle the challenges that big data present.
At Harvard in September, 2013 the Oxford Internet Institute (OII)
and the journal Policy and Internet convened a workshop on
‘Responsible Research Agendas for Public Policy in the Big Data
Era’, which included various leading academic researchers in the
government and big data field, and government officials from the
Census Bureau, the Federal Reserve Board, the Bureau of Labor
Statistics and the Office of Management and Budget. Senior offi-
cials in all these departments face fundamental questions in the light
of the big data era. What is the role of the Federal Reserve, for
216 Helen Margetts
example? Is it still necessary to run a census when so much data is

freely available and could be gathered non-obtrusively? Which
labour statistics do governments need to produce, when so many
can be derived from corporate data? The discussions revealed that
there is a continual procession of major events on big data in
Washington DC (usually with a corporate or scientific research
focus) to which US federal officials are invited, but of whom very
few are really dedicated to tackling the distinctive issues that face
government agencies such as those represented around the table.
Finally, political scientists have a responsibility to take forward
theoretical development in the age of big data. Big data offers the
beguiling possibility of hypothesis generation, working against the
social science tradition of establishing a theoretical research ques-
tion to test, and designing the data collection (such as a survey)
accordingly. But as González-Bailón (2013) argues, theory is still of
vital importance in building credible stories of what the data reveal.
Indeed, big data can allow social scientists to revisit old theoretical
questions, testing some of them for the first time as data becomes
available. And the very fact that so much of political life does take
place in online settings may challenge some of those theories and
concepts, particularly those concerning participation of young
people or minorities. If political scientists don’t take on this role,
then researchers from other disciplines will do it for us, in ways that
ignore decades of political science research and theoretical develop-
ment. An example of this is provided by the sub-field of socio-
physics, where physicists (largely unbeknownst to political
scientists) have developed a ‘statistical physics approach to social
behaviour’ (Castellano et al. 2009), developing models to under-
stand at large scale the collective effects of the interaction among
single individuals, considered as relatively simple entities. Socio-
physics is attracting a great deal of interest in the age of big data
mined from the social web (see Mestyán et al. 2013, for example,
who predict box office sales of movies from Wikipedia data), but the
seminal review article on the topic (Castellano et al. 2009) shows
clearly that this field is proceeding without input from recent social
science research at all, with topics like ‘social influence’ introduced
with reference to works published in 1950. There could be exciting
possibilities here for theoretical and conceptual development at the
boundaries of political science and physics, now that big data on
political systems could take a form akin to the kind of data used by
physicists; but this will not take place in ghettoized sub-fields.
Public policy pay-offs
So what might be the pay-offs of the development of capacity

within political science to maximize the potential of big data, offer
policy-makers access to new computational skills and expertise,
and tackle the ethical and theoretical challenges that big data
throws up? First, as outlined above, insight derived from such
research could enable policy-makers to improve services and make
policy-making more citizen-focused, by mining data from social
media to understand preferences and issue salience, to identify
problems, and to work out where citizens are willing to be engaged
and to participate in policy-making. Crowdsourcing initiatives of
the kind suggested by Noveck (2009) have already illustrated the
potential of marshalling willingness to participate in collaborative
platforms such as Wikipedia (which as famously observed ‘works in
practice but not in theory’) for a policy context. Some of the biggest
pay-offs from this type of initiative have come from crisis, disaster
or post-conflict situations, where necessity has forced innovation in
unlikely contexts (such as in Japan, in the wake of the 2011
tsunami; Hale 2012). A promising example of this is the UN global
pulse initiative (www.unglobalpulse.org), developed by the United
Nations in response to the need for information to track and moni-
tor the impacts of crises, which has done much to mainstream the
use of data mining and analytics in development organizations. But
even here, the importance of theoretical insight to keep pace with
methodological development has been well illustrated (Welch et al.
forthcoming).
Such data can also be used to design interventions. In the 2012
US election for example, James Fowler and his research team
collaborated with Facebook to undertake a massive field experi-
ment in voter turnout (with 61 million subjects), in which individu-
als were shown pictures of their Facebook friends who had voted
and were able to record whether they themselves had voted via a
‘Voted Today’ button. The experiment showed that people were
more likely to vote if their friends had voted, suggesting that
Facebook might be used in this way to increase voter turnout (Bond
et al. 2012). Although the experiment was criticized for its low
effect size and various methodological issues, there is little doubt
that it was computational political science in action and that it did
cause more people to vote than would otherwise have done so.
‘Nudge’ interventions have become popular in the UK government,
218 Helen Margetts
with the experimental work of the Behavioural Insights Team

generating efficiencies, for example by ‘nudging’ citizens to pay
taxes, fines and penalties on time. But most interventions are largely
paper or mobile-based, rather than based on a huge digital field
experiment of this kind. Virtual worlds that capture a complete
record of individual behaviour offer incredible potential for exper-
imentation of this kind, once the challenge of trawling data from
social networks is overcome (Bainbridge 2007), in this case by
collaborating with the internet company that runs it.
Another possible pay-off in terms of relevance could be the abil-
ity to detect underlying patterns of political activity, which could
provide important indicators of future events. Other chapters in
this volume have pointed to political scientists’ failure to predict the
Arab Spring of 2011. Even in the years that followed this event,
each new wave of mobilization, from the ‘Occupy Movements’ to
the protests from Brazil to Turkey, from the Ukraine to Thailand,
has seemed to take political commentators by surprise. The internet
and social media are fingered in all of these events, but far more
attention is paid to (sometimes heated and often pointless) debate
as to whether these new media provide a greater boost to demo-
cratic participation or to authoritarian regimes (see Gladwell 2010;
Morozov 2011). Meanwhile, across liberal democracies political
science continues to bemoan the decline of politics and falling levels
of civic and political engagement, particularly among the young
(precisely the demographic who have taken to using social media to
make the kind of ‘micro-donations’ of political time and effort
discussed in the first section), rendering political scientists ever
more surprised by each new mobilization.
Thus as well as contributing to the unpredictability of political
participation, social media can provide a solution to understanding
it and, perhaps, even to prediction. The new ‘political superstar’ of
big data, Nate Silver, shot to fame when his use of big data enabled
him to predict the election results in all 51 states in the 2012 US
presidential election. His otherwise excellent new book, The Signal
and the Noise: The Art and Science of Prediction, discusses how
various phenomena such as the financial crash of 2008, or the 2001
terrorist attacks, were not but might have been predicted. It does
not discuss social media and political mobilization, or the Arab
Spring, or any of the above. It is time, perhaps, to start applying the
same methods to the even more messy and uncertain activity of
political participation. As noted above, social media and digital
systems are providing political scientists with the kind of data that
natural scientists have. So just as social media inject instability,
unpredictability and even chaos into contemporary political life, in
a model of ‘chaotic pluralism’, it may be that they enable the
employment of scientific models of chaos theory in natural systems
(characterized by non-linearity and a high degree of interconnectiv-
ity) to understand a changed world and even to predict it, or at least
identify underlying patterns.
As political scientists, we enjoyed some jokes at economists’
expense over their inability to predict the financial crash of 2008.
But post-2011, the joke has been on us. So perhaps we have some
responsibility to make use of the massive potential that big data
generated from social media provides to understand the changing
face of contemporary political participation, to detect underlying
patterns of political behaviour, and to aid policy-makers in using
such data to provide a more ‘citizen-focused’ form of policy-
making and service delivery.
Conclusion
GERRY STOKER, B. GUY PETERS AND JON PIERRE
In this conclusion we explore three issues. First, are there any ‘in
principle’ objections to relevance that stand up? Our answer is a
clear no. Second, what is stopping political science being relevant
and how could the chances of relevance be increased? Here our
answer is more nuanced and reflects several of the issues raised
throughout the book. Third, we conclude the book with a new
manifesto for relevance. Here we echo some of the arguments made
by David Easton in 1969 in his call for a credo of relevance but
argue that rather than an implied trade-off between methodological
rigour and relevance the two need to go hand in hand alongside a
broad commitment to methodological pluralism.
The case for relevance
There are some that hold the view that the job of political scientists
begins and ends with their description and analysis of politics.
Many political scientists view the connection between the discipline
and the world of politics as appropriately detached: they are neutral
observers of the political world. None of the authors in this book
would question the idea that there should be some distance between
political science and everyday politics since relevance is premised
on the idea of a distinctive contribution stemming from political
science. Yet the position of the authors and the editors of this book
is that a discipline that studied politics but had nothing to say to
those involved in politics or who might be involved would be fail-
ing.
Political science is engaged with the wider world whether it
wants to be or not, a point made more generally by John Gerring
about social science in his contribution to this volume. Relevance is
an already present issue as there is no such thing as a neutral or
value-free political science. What is chosen to be studied or not
220
Conclusion 221
studied is itself likely to involve some, at least implicit, value judge-

ments. Beyond that there are always issues about the appropriate
connection between empirical and normative theorizing that need
to be considered. Political science in its everyday practice therefore
has to be sensitive to the implications of its findings and arguments
and the intersection of empirical analysis and normative judgement.
By its very presence in a world of social choice, political science
needs to be sensitive to the challenges of relevance. Not one of the
authors in this book is suggesting that political scientists become
moralists or constantly engage in normative arguments about the
good polity. Nor do we think that political scientists do or should
be expected to share a normative framing of political issues. In
practice, rather like the rest of the population, political scientists
have different views of political issues and values. That is as it
should be, as individuals the political position of political scientists
is a matter for them. But equally we do not think that the discipline
should restrict itself to studying simply what is, rather than exam-
ining what should be. Some engagement with normative issues is
inevitable. A number of the concepts used by empirically oriented
political scientists, such as democracy or justice, are contested or
disputed. You simply cannot avoid the challenge of relevance if you
are studying an aspect of human society, as political scientists do.
Moreover it would be odd indeed if there was no connection
between the agenda of political science and the concerns raised in
‘real’ world politics. Political science should as part of its vocation
seek not to pursue an agenda driven by its own theories or methods
as if it were in a separate world, sealed off from the concern of its
fellow citizens. Rather the problems of the political world as
perceived, or at least as can be understood, by our fellow citizens
should set the bulk of our agenda. We should be asking questions to
which others outside the profession want to know the answer; and
as, in different ways, Hay and Flinders conclude that political
science should be better at promoting and communicating the rele-
vance of its findings.
None of the arguments presented for relevance in this book
argue against rigour in the methods of study and analysis. On the
contrary if political science is going to have any relevance it has to
deliver more than good quality journalism and certainly something
different to the vote-seeking speeches delivered by politicians.
Parsons makes this point powerfully but is joined by many others in
the book. Above all both the editors and contributors agree that it
is the pluralism of approach embedded within political science that

offers the best chance of achieving relevance in a variety of ways.
Political science has to offer ‘science’ in the sense of an ordered,
reflective and meticulous analytical practice, a point established by
Hay and Parsons among other contributors to this volume, though
it has to do so in a way that makes a virtue out of the variety of ways
of knowing the political world.
Following the shifting patterns of the daily news is not appropri-
ate, but that does not deny the case for political science to pick
away continually at issues of concern in modern societies. A focus
of relevance does not demand a downplaying of developing the best
means of investigating politics. Indeed methodological innovation
is, if anything, likely to be simulated rather than hindered by such
dealing with the intractable and complex challenges thrown up by
‘real world’ politics. There is nothing as practical as good theory,
and theory can find no tougher test than achieving effectiveness in
the world of practice. Moreover, as both Rothstein and Wilson
point out, there are big issues about human welfare and the work-
ing of economies that affect all citizens and to which political
science could and should devote more of its attention.
Nor do we naively wish to deny, just as in other areas of expert
knowledge, that the evidence may not be good enough to allow for
clear findings to be identified. Causality in particular is indeed diffi-
cult to establish, and events in human society are always influenced
by elements of contingency. But that should not stop political scien-
tists making probabilistic statements that such and such an inter-
vention is likely to achieve some outcome or other. This does not
stop us developing accounts that allow scope for, and an under-
standing of, the role of contingency. Solutions do not need to be cast
in the nature of ‘iron laws’. ‘Do this and all your problems will be
solved’ is not a message we should offer our fellow citizens; and nor
is it likely to be believed by them. But it should be possible for us to
intervene in public debates, to offer tentative solutions to problems
and at the very least to help to frame public debate.
Why is relevance difficult to deliver?
Much of the advice about getting relevance right is couched in

terms of improving the communications skills of political science.
In this book, for example, Matt Flinders offers up in his chapter the
Conclusion 223
idea of ‘triple-writing’ as part of a smarter approach to political

science. The art of triple-writing sees research results presented,
first, in traditional academic outputs like books and articles, and
then, second, the research is captured in shorter note form that is
written in a jargon-free way and made both accessible and of value
to a range of user groups. The third stage involves making research
available through short, sharp and even controversial articles for
newspapers, magazines or popular websites. We would certainly
endorse this advice from Matt Flinders, though many colleagues
are already delivering on that agenda.
This observation begs the question whether there are other
blocks on relevance other than communication, and the answer
from various authors in this book is a clear ‘yes’ – and they are
moved to do so on the back of decades of analysis of politics. The
judgement about whether to undertake a policy or political action
revolves around not only evidence about whether it will work but
also on its political acceptability, administrative achievability and
its resource consequences. To demonstrate that ‘the science is
right’ is really only the start of a policy decision, and even that
process can, of course, be fraught with difficulty; but, beyond that,
other decisions need to be made. There are always value choices in
politics (what does society prize?) and above that there are the
issue of realpolitik (are the votes there to support this measure?). If
something is politically doable then the next issue is whether effec-
tive governmental or administrative action processes can be
designed to achieve the political goal. Designing effective imple-
mentation strategies is by no means easy and can provide a major
stumbling block to giving a policy idea the go-ahead. Finally
spending resources on one thing means foregoing spending on
another, and the opportunity cost of undertaking an intervention is
always a feature of the choices involved in policy-making.
Moreover the agenda of the policy process can be fast moving and
difficult to predict, and unless a policy idea hits the right ‘window
of opportunity’ – so that evidence meets policy interest meets polit-
ical capacity to take action – then, no matter how good the science,
it will not have an influence. If relevance is to be determined by
whether a contribution is made to the making of public policy then
political scientists are subject, as are all participants, to the play of
power in that exercise.
There may also be some internal blockages to relevance as iden-
tified by Gerry Stoker in his chapter with a lack of incentives for
demonstrating the relevance of political science among political

scientists. In addition, as Graham Wilson and Bo Rothstein argue,
there may be times when political science has not offered enough
in terms of grappling with pressing issues, such as the financial
crisis of the post-2007/08 era or even more directly the determin-
ing qualities of good governance. Of course it would be difficult
for any discipline to offer clear cut responses to such complex yet
highly salient issues, but it is probably fair to say that political
science has not always set for itself the agenda that our fellow citi-
zens might have thought or imagined we would automatically
address because of their pertinence to certain issues. Insularity is
the enemy of relevance and the editors and authors here join the
legion of other political scientists in arguing that it is vital to guard
against it.
In the roll-call of different sub-disciplines within the profession
that occupies the second part of the book we are offered a complex
set of mixed reviews. Brooks, Peters and Pierre, for example, in
covering the diverse fields of political theory, comparative politics
and global politics, show that there is plenty of work that does pass
a threshold of relevance, even if there is plenty of work that fails to
meet the challenge. It is difficult to say how much work should be
expected to be at the highly relevant end of the spectrum, and it is
fair to argue that work that gets the acclaim of being directly rele-
vant often builds on the shoulders of work that might be less
immediately engaging. The issue from the point of view of political
science is whether the balance should be tilted more in favour of
work with a stronger relevance focus; and the overall judgement of
the editors and most of the authors in this volume is that most
parts of the discipline could and should do more.
One theme that comes through is that relevance is most likely to
be achieved in partnership with others. The study of public policy
as Howlett and colleagues argue has a lot going for it in terms of
relevance, but the key to sustaining its impact is most likely to
work through think tanks and various other intermediaries. The
theme of working at one remove is also captured in the case made
– by Craig Parsons for example – for achieving relevance through
teaching and creating critically aware political actors. Finally
Helen Margetts argues that if the advantages of big data analysis
are going to be used to enhance the relevance of political science
then it will require partnerships with other disciplines to reap the
full rewards.
Conclusion 225
A manifesto for relevance
In the Introduction we quoted extensively from Easton’s Presidential

Address to the American Political Science Association in which he set
out a seven-point credo for relevance, a plea that, as we note since its
delivery in 1969, has fallen on largely deaf ears. So, approaching half
a century later, let us have another go. Of course our new manifesto
for relevance may meet the same fate, but we hope it will not for two
reasons. First, unlike Easton, our manifesto does not assume a trade-
off between relevance and social science rigour. On the contrary we
agree with the explicit and implicit argument of several chapters in
this book that in order to be relevant political science has to be rigor-
ous. There is no point in political science offering second-rate schol-
arship, non-expert investigative journalism or political rhetoric, no
matter how flowing and compelling. Its job is to offer science: organ-
ized, evidenced and methodical knowledge. Second, we do not want
political scientists to sign up to any particular principles or ethics such
as those embodied in Easton’s call to promote ‘humane values of civi-
lization’. We editors have no problem with the substance of that
particular call – it is just that its vagueness and cosy blandness does
little to make the case for relevance. Rather, for us, the case for rele-
vance is made by the embedded nature of political science, given its
subject matter is such that you cannot avoid the challenge of rele-
vance if you are studying an aspect of human society, as political
scientists do.
Our manifesto is not a call for a different political science that is
engaged in a moral crusade. Instead we want a political science that
produces high quality research tested through systematic and chal-
lenging peer review, yet one that is less insular and more willing to
devote a greater share of its effort and commitment to the tasks of
achieving relevance for its work. Too often over the past three or four
decades political science has constructed for itself a way of working
that appears to give little or no credence to the demands of relevance.
If political science is therefore judged irrelevant by others, most of the
blame, though not all, rests with the profession. It is in the hands of
the profession to react; and we hope that this book shows how
thoughtful and reflective that reaction can be. But ultimately political
science will need to act differently, and so we offer our guide below.
Our seven-point manifesto for relevance ends the book, and
hopefully it will encourage greater relevance for political science in
the future.
1. Have confidence in the value of rigorous scientific analysis and

so do not let relevance compromise high quality investigation
but embrace it as a critical friend, providing tough and different
challenges for your evidence and argument.
2. Develop relevance not as an afterthought in the construction of
your research but put it at the heart of what you select to inves-
tigate and how you present and share the outputs of your
research. Set your agenda in dialogue with others outside the
profession and improve your communication skills using tradi-
tional and new media.
3. Offer solutions as well as analysis of problems and take on
board some of the arguments for a design orientation in your
analysis so that evidence and argument can be applied as thor-
oughly to the construction of potential answers as well as
spelling out the challenges facing desired change.
4. Support methodological pluralism in the discipline as that vari-
ety of approaches most likely to deliver a rich array of relevant
work that can reach out to a diverse group of potential users.
5. Be committed to work in partnership with other disciplines to
improve the relevance of your work. Good and innovative work
often is cross-disciplinary. Many issues have a ‘wicked’ or multi-
dimensional quality, so again working across disciplinary
boundaries enhances the chances of relevance.
6. Actively cultivate links with intermediaries as appropriate –
think tanks, journalists, special advisers, political parties, citi-
zens’ organizations and social media networks – in order to
boost the relevance of your work.
7. Celebrate the role of teaching as a means of delivering relevance
by encouraging a cadre of critically aware citizens and policy-
makers.
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Index
Notes: bold = extended discussion or word highlighted in text; f = figure; n =
endnote or footnote; t = table.
Aalborg (Denmark) 161 anti-scientism 68

Aberbach, J. 110, 227 apartheid 87
‘abstracted empiricism’ (Mills) 67 Arab Spring 148, 176, 205, 218
academics: varieties of policy input Aral, S. 206, 227, 244
23t Aristotle 85, 137–8, 158, 172,
accessibility (Flinders) 65, 71, 227
74–7, 79–80 Arneson, R.J. 94–5, 96, 227
Acemoglu, D. 169, 183, 227 ‘art of translation’ 66
activist scholarship (Flinders) 66 Ashley, R. 152–3, 155–6, 227–8
Adler, E. 147, 227 Asia 89–90f, 169, 173, 176, 180,
administrative reorganization 242
185–6, 253 Augustine of Hippo, St 138
advisory boards 131–2 Austerity 165, 229
Afghanistan 32, 89–90f Australia xii, 90f, 131, 192
Africa 89–90f, 169, 173, 176, authoritarianism 218
178, 195 auto-critique 51, 54
agencies 194–5 autocracy 184
agency [empowerment] 174, 196
agenda-setting 22t, 123 Bair, S. 113
AIG 108 Banco Santander 114
Alexander the Great 137, 138 Bank of England 109
algebra 53, 57, 59 banks 110
Almond, G. 78–9, 227 see also central banks
America’s Hidden Success Barbera, P. 206, 238
(Schwartz, 1983) 107, 254 Barnett, M. 195–6, 228
American Political Science Bauer, R.A. 96, 228
Association (APSA) 1, 3, Bauer, Y. 96, 228
9–10, 27, 82–3, 150, 156, Bauman, C. 72, 228
225, 227, 251 Baumgartner, F.R. 112–13, 228
American Political Science Review BBC 72, 245
(APSR) 6, 10, 97, 156, 234, Beard, C. 68
246, 255 behaviour/behaviouralism ii, 69,
American Science of Politics (Crick, 78, 105, 124, 182, 188–9
1959) 56, 67–8, 232 Behavioural Insights Team 218
anthropology 62 Belgium 90f, 177
anti-governmentalism 113 Berman, S. 103n
anti-politics 68, 69 Besabe-Serrano, S. 182, 228
263
264 Index
bicameralism 173, 257 Campbell, D. 153, 156, 230

big data viii, 15, 84, 203–19, 224 Campbell, R. 6, 230
challenges 210–12 Canada 131, 213
description 206 capitalism 105, 183, 236, 239
literature 229, 236, 240–1, Caplan, N. 121, 125–6, 128–9,
246–7, 254 230
promise for policy-making Carr, E.H. 43–4, 231
208–10 Carrigan, C. 108, 231
public policy pay-offs 217–19 Castellano, C. 216, 231
theory 216 Castles, F.G. 92, 231
big government 108 causality 28–9, 37–8, 48, 85, 154,
big ideas (trickle-down) 25 189, 222
Billig, M. 69, 229 definition debate 37
biology 46, 214 censuses 215–16
Bjørnskov, C. 101, 229 central banks 57, 108
blue skies research 21, 145 ‘chaotic pluralism’ (Margetts et al.)
Blyth, M. 106, 161, 165, 229 xi, 205, 219, 246
Boston 114 child deprivation 87, 91, 239
Boswell, S. 22t, 229 Childs, S. 6, 230
Bourdieu, P. 150, 157–8, 160–1, China 87, 89f, 105, 192, 204, 254
229, 242, 247 Chwieroth, J. 161, 231
box office sales 216, 247 citations 144
Brazil 218 cities 170
‘bridge’ analogy 133 citizen participation 33, 245
bridging (Flinders) 65, 71–4, citizens 1, 10, 34, 47, 62, 64, 100,
79–80 105, 116, 149, 204–7, 209,
Brigate Rossi 193 211, 217, 219, 221–2, 224,
Bright, J. 208–10, 229, 260 226, 246
British Academy 116, 236 citizenship 28, 141–2, 230
Brooks, T. x, 13–14, 136–47, 224, City of London 113–14
230 city-states 85
Brown, J.G. 114 civic behaviour 32, 242
‘Brunei’ [Negara Brunei civil service and bureaucrats 25,
Darussalam] 89f 69, 92–3, 107, 131, 184–5,
Brzezinski, Z. 24 187, 210–11, 237, 241
Buhlmann, M. 101, 236 see also public administration
Burawoy, M. 66, 250 civil war 46, 87, 91, 98, 178, 195,
bureaucracy see civil service 244, 248
Burma/Myanmar 32, 90f see also just war
Burrows, R. 207, 253 class 178, 181, 182
businesses 31, 174 classic tradition 68
Butler, C.K. 173, 239 classical Bildung 41
clientelism 99
Café Philosophique 143 climate change 34, 140, 145–6,
California 212 190–1, 193, 195–8, 203, 230,
Cambridge University 41 237
Index 265
Clinton Administration 113 computer science 213, 215

coalition governments 175 conceptual clarification 22t
Coburn, Senator T. 165–6 consensus 132, 252
Coglianesi, G. 108, 231 consociational politics 177–8, 244
cognitive science 207 constitutional issues 8
Cohen, G.A. 95, 96, 231 constructivism vii, 14, 148–68,
Cohen, P. 70, 232 198, 261
Cold War 148 ‘eye-opener’ 161–7
collective action xi, 32, 34, 68, context 31, 34, 160, 162–3, 167,
174, 191, 196, 246, 249 179, 187–8, 189, 191, 196,
Collins, R. 48, 232 204, 217
colonialism 38 conventional wisdom 145, 146
‘Coming Crisis of Empirical Cook, T. 68, 232
Sociology’ (Savage and Copenhagen meeting (2009) 190
Burrows, 2007) 207, 253 Coppedge, M. 42, 232
command and control regulation corporate social responsibility (CSR)
107–8, 115 107, 144–5
commissions 131–2 corporation tax 114
Commodity Futures Trading corporations 108, 111, 192, 203,
Commission (USA) 108 209
common-pool resources 32, 191, corporatism 178–9
196, 199, 249 corruption 68, 85–6, 88, 91, 237,
communication 11, 25, 35, 52, 241–2
54–5, 63–4, 122–3, 127, cosmopolitanism 137
129–31, 221, 222–3, 22 counterfactuals 48
see also accessibility courts [of law] 182
communism 87, 167, 173 Cowley, P. 22t, 232
comparative advantage 5, 239 Cox, R. 152, 232
comparative government 75 Crick, Sir Bernard x, 4, 33–4, 56,
comparative politics viii, 14, 67–8, 75, 77–8, 79–83, 232
169–89, 224 criminal justice 131, 140–1
case selection 170, 189 crisis 61
contributions 172–80 ‘crisis of relevance/irrelevance’ 50,
limits of relevance 186–8 53, 57, 61
paradoxes 189 see also relevance crisis
comparative politics: challenges to critical theory 196
relevance 180–6 same as ‘post-modern
methodological individualism constructivism’ 152
and RCT 180–2 crowdsourcing 217
non-manipulable variables Cukier, K. 206, 246
182–5 Culpepper, P.D. 174, 232
policy and administration culture 47, 142, 144, 239
185–6 curiosity 12
comparative research ii, 13 current events 105, 116, 117
‘computational social science’ 207,
211, 213, 244 Dahlberg, S. 93, 232
266 Index
‘daring to be Daniel’ 82 ‘Digital by Default’ 208

data collection 22t Digital Social Research course 213
data deficiencies 133 digital technologies xi, 208–10
‘data deluge’ (Margetts) 209, 246 ‘dignity’ (Lasswell) 28
data-mining 206, 209, 217 Dionysius II (Syracuse) 85, 138
deceit 74 Donovan, T. 22t, 229
decision-makers 175 Doty, R. 153, 233
decision-making 19, 122–3, 140, Dreyfus, H. 158, 233
170–1, 257 Dreyfus, S. 158, 233
rational model 20 Dryzek, J.S. 28, 233
structuring 22t Dunleavy, P. xi, 207, 233–4, 246
Delhey, J. 101, 233 Dunn, W.N. 127, 234
democracy 34, 42, 138, 218, 245 Duvall, R. 195–6, 228
‘deep’ versus ‘shallow’ 176 Duverger’s law 175
generation of political legitimacy
92–3, 103 ‘earthquakes of change’ (Mills) 72
literature 227, 230, 232–3, Easton, D. 9–10, 220, 225, 234
237, 240, 242, 248–9, 254 Eckstein, H. 42, 234
production of well-being 86–8 economic factors 37
democratic deficit 22t, 235 economic growth 153, 233
democratic designers 6 see also development
Democratic Innovations (Smith, economics 13, 36, 42, 84, 86, 94,
2009) 33, 255 97, 104, 115–16, 121–2, 157,
Democratic Party (USA) 109, 113 236, 241
democratic politics 78, 80 modelling 58–9
democratization 14, 42, 86–7, 88, ‘private language’ 59
93, 169, 178, 183, 185, 188, see also neo-classical economics
232 economists 98, 106, 219, 231,
comparative politics 176–7 243
education 48, 87, 100, 125, 131,
Denver, D. 22t, 232
169, 212
Der Derian, J. 152, 233
Eek, D. 101, 253
derivatives 105, 106, 113
Egypt 89f, 204
Derrida, D. 40, 150
Einstein, A. 74
design 30–5
elections 84, 92–3, 153, 162, 192,
three moments 31
210
Designing Democracy in Dangerous
electoral cycle 199–200
World (Reynolds, 2011)
electoral laws/rules 7, 175
31–2, 251
electoral reform 22t, 229
deutero-learning 188, 258 electoral systems 15
Deutsche Bank 108 comparative politics 175–6
developing countries 100, 187, electronic mail 205
254 Eleventh of September attacks
development 116, 183, 245, 248, (2001) 194, 218, 219
252, 254 elite pacts 178
Dewey, J. 36, 48–9, 233 elites 6, 52, 59, 84–5, 88, 102,
Diamond, L. 88, 233 155, 163–4, 176
Index 267
elitism 28, 56 Facebook 204–5, 209, 211–12,

Elliott, M. xiv 217
emotion 67 facts versus values 27–8, 67, 77–8
empiricism i, 9, 23, 27, 29–30, fairness 92, 101, 145, 227, 231,
33–4, 60, 71, 92, 94, 96–101, 241, 252
102–3, 107, 112, 121–2, 125, Fama, P. 106
129, 133, 153, 156, 161, 176, Farr, J. 27–8
186, 189, 198, 207, 221, 253 fate 82, 236
‘endism’ (Gamble) 82 Fay, B. 39, 41, 235
engaged scholarship 54, 67 Fearon, J. 2, 235
engineering/engineers 31, 213 Federal Deposit Insurance
‘enlightenment function’ (Weiss) Corporation (FDIC) 108–9,
171, 259 113
entheos (inspiration) 71, 77 Federal Election Commission 112
‘entrance into fruitlessness’ (Mills) Federal Reserve Bank 108
70 Federal Reserve Bank of New York
environment xi, 9, 34, 114, 110
144–5, 190, 194, 258 Federal Reserve Board 215–16
epidemics/pandemics 190, 191, federalism 170
210 ‘feedback loop of injustice’ 212
epistemology 59, 78, 160, 201 feminism 6, 30, 167, 257
see also knowledge financial markets 105–6, 162
Epstein, C. 156, 234 Financial Services Agency (FSA, UK)
equality of opportunity 144, 252 109
Eriksson, L. ii, 181, 234 financial stability 13, 190, 191
Estlund, D. 95, 234 Finnemore, M. 161–2, 235
ethics 139, 140, 143, 214–15, Fischer, D.H. 43, 235
225, 230, 260 Flinders, M. x, 11, 12, 51–2, 54,
Eulau, E. 28 56, 57–8, 65–83, 221, 222–3,
Europe i, 89–90f, 92, 100, 101–2, 235
176, 249 ’flying’ metaphor (Shapiro) 70–1,
Europe: Central and Eastern 173, 73
184–5 Flyvbjerg, B. 14, 157–60, 162,
European Union 89–90f, 114, 235
163–4, 166, 185, 190, 194 Follesdal, A. 22t, 235
democratic deficit 22t, 235 foreign policy 41
evaluation 26, 259 see also international relations
evidence 7, 11–12, 19, 20–3, formal authority 196
26–30 formalism 173, 181
experience 22t, 27, 102 Foucault, M. 40, 153, 158, 236
expertise 27, 42, 115–17, 127, Fowler, J.H. 217, 229
135, 140, 151, 203, 213, 229 Frankfurt 114
experts 69, 222, 245 free market 167
moderation of inter-party free riding 197
discussion 22t Freeden, M. 80, 236
explanation 38 Freedom House 89n
268 Index
Freitag, M. 101, 236 Global Governance (journal) 198

Friedman, M. 59, 201–2, 236 global governance deficit 190
Frumkin, P. 185, 236 global politics 14, 224
Fukuyama, F. 93–4, 236 globalization ii, xii, 34, 114
Fung, A. 144, 236 Goel, S. 206, 238
Future of Political Science (King, Goldman Sachs 110, 112
Schlozman, Nie, 2009) 3, González-Bailón, S. 206, 209,
248, 251 215–16, 238
Goodnow, F. 68
Gadflies 152–6, 161–7 Google 207, 209, 212
Galaskiewicz, J. 185, 236 governance ii, xii, 6, 13–14, 22t,
Gamble, A. 82, 106, 116, 236 32, 88, 140, 178, 184,
game theory 10, 160, 161 190–202
Gardiner, P. 37, 236 bad 91, 97, 103
GDP 91, 100, 113 deliberative model 199
Geitner, T. 110 good 91, 97, 115, 224, 249
gender ii, 22t, 66, 85, 256, 257 literature 233–4, 236, 239,
general public 84, 85, 102 248–9, 251, 257
see also quality of government
genocide 38, 43, 96, 228
‘governance without government’
genius 44, 74
(Rhoses) 196
George, A.L. 3, 237
Governing Commons (Ostrom,
Germany 193, 213, 257
1990) 99, 249
Gerring, J. v, x, 11–12, 36–49,
government 116, 124, 135, 172,
173, 198, 220, 237
241
Giddens, A. 72, 237
government effectiveness 93
Giest, S. vii, x, 13, 121–35
government service 24
Gill, J. 81, 237
government size 100
Gill, S. 153, 237 governments 20, 39, 107, 121,
Gilley, B. 93, 237 134, 169, 171, 175, 177–9,
Gladwell, M. 218, 237 181, 183–4, 186–7, 196,
Glasnost thesis 56–8, 59, 60 208–10, 215
global financial crisis (2007–8) vii, ‘grand theory’ (Mills) 67
12–13, 58, 104–17, 208, Great Depression (1930s) 104
224 ‘great divide’ (Weiss) 128
causes 105–6 Greece 90f, 100
ideas 106–8 Greeks (ancient) 39
interests 106, 110–14 Green, D. 22t, 161, 238
institutions 106, 108–10 Guzzini, S. 157, 238
literature 231, 236, 246, 258
prediction failure 218, 219 Haas, E. 132, 238
what political science got right Hale, S.A. xi, 205, 208, 212–13,
115 229, 239, 246, 260
global governance 190–202, 228 Hall, P.A. 86, 183, 229
attempted 192–4 Halleröd, B. 87, 91, 239
political science contribution Hammond, T.H. 173, 182, 239
194–9 handbooks 97–9
Index 269
Hansard 142, 208 ‘humane values of civilization’

‘happiness’ 85, 86, 249, 257 (Easton) 9, 225
‘life satisfaction’ 91, 97 humanism 4, 34, 69, 149
Hart, A.B. 68 Hutton, W. 144–5, 241
Harvard University 215
Hay, C. ii, vi, xi, 12, 50–64, 68, Iceland 110, 114
221–2, 240 identity 4, 181
health 85, 87, 92, 95–6, 100, 131, ideology 7, 42, 92–3, 103–4, 129,
239, 257 163–4, 167
versus control of corruption imagination of alternatives 167
90f, 91 immigration 7, 141, 145, 229
versus level of democracy 89f, impact 6, 52, 74, 136–7
91 see also political theory
see also public health ‘impact imperative’ 6, 66, 230
health care 201 In Defence of Politicians (Riddell,
health research 214 2011) 80, 252
Heclo, H. 110, 240 In Defence of Politics (Crick,
Hegel, G.W.F. x, 128, 230 1964/2000) 33–4, 75, 79,
Henschen, D. 215, 240 80, 232
Herod 79 India 87, 244, 254
higher education 66, 145 Indignados 209
Higher Education Funding Council individuals 174, 182, 185, 186, 189
for England 52 inequalities/cleavages 87–8, 91–2,
Hindman, M. 206, 240 114, 177, 183, 188, 195
Hirschman, A. 8, 240 infant mortality 85–6, 97
historical institutionalism 175 information 87, 91
history 31, 39, 43, 142, 145–6, Information Week 215, 240
162–4, 184–5, 200, 232, 235, Informed consent 140, 245
248, 250, 261 Institute for Government 70
Hix, S. 22t, 235 ‘institutional analysis and
Hobbes, T. 138 development’ (Ostrom) 174,
Hofstede, G. 184, 240 250
holism 181, 182 institutionalism 166
Holmberg, S. 86–7, 91, 93, 103n, ‘actor-centred’ (Scharpf) 174,
232, 240–1, 253, 257 253
Holocaust 38, 43, 96, 228 see also new institutionalism
Hood, C. xi, 207, 241 institutionalists 200
Hopf, T. 157, 241 institutions 31, 86, 99–100, 101,
House of Commons 213 106–7, 108–10, 122, 124,
Howlett, M. vii, xi, 13, 121–35, 127, 134, 139, 141, 163, 181,
186, 224 182, 184
publications 228, 231, 233, comparative politics 172–5,
241 258
human action: unintended literature 228–9, 236–7, 239,
consequences (Hirschman) 8 248, 250, 252–3, 257–8
human nature 68 output side 102
human rights 85 transnational 194
270 Index
intellectual history 145, 146 Justice: What’s the Right Thing to

‘intelligence of government’ 124 Do? (Sandel, 2010) 143,
international development 41 144, 253
international relations (IR) 6,
148–50, 153, 160 Kaiser, R.G. 109, 242
constructivist ‘turn’ 198 Kammen, J. 130, 242
liberal theories 194 Kant, I. 138, 242
literature 234, 237–8, 241, Katzenstein, P.J. 162, 242
257–8 Kauppi, N. 157, 242
practice 3, 237 Kellstedt, P. 4, 242
realist and neo-realist theories Key, V.O. 171, 243
194, 196 King, D. 103n
theory 3, 23–4, 237, 258 Kingdon, J. 124, 133, 243
Internet 34, 203–5, 211, 213, 218 Kissinger, H. 24
literature 238–9, 246, 248, 260 knowledge 121, 122–4, 130, 134,
see also digital technologies 150, 201, 230, 245
interpretivism 40, 148–68 causal versus descriptive 37–8
claims to relevance 152–61 relevance 5
interviews 72 see also epistemology
Iran 89f, 210 knowledge brokerage 128–33,
Iraq 32, 89–90f
242, 247, 258
Ireland 110, 114
‘mediation’ 129–30, 131, 133
Isaac, J. 3, 5, 242
see also policy knowledge
Islamism 167
utilization
Italy 90f, 98, 100, 193, 251
Kristof, N. 2, 243
Krugman, P. 84, 243
J.P. Morgan 108
Kyoto Protocol (1997) 191–5,
Jamal, A.A. 184, 242
197–8
Japan 89–90f, 257
tsunami (2001) 217
labour 179
jargon 25, 57, 70, 74–5, 81, 150,
labour markets 174
155, 164, 223
Jaschik, S. 1, 70, 242 labour statistics 215–16
Jefferson, T. 138 Lakatos, I. 46, 153, 160, 243
Jencks, C. 42 Lamont, M. 86, 239
John, P. xi, 5–6, 32, 58, 205, Landry, R. 126, 243, 249
242 language 74–5, 77, 177
Johnston, M. 98, 242 see also private language
journalism and journalists 8, 11, Lapuente, V. 91, 244
14, 75–6, 150–1, 155, Lasch, C. 41
156–61, 206, 221, 225–6 Lasswell, H.D. 3, 27–8, 121, 122,
journals 4, 10, 23, 70–2, 96–7, 123–5, 235, 244
105, 144, 171, 198, 215 Latin America 89–90f, 173, 176,
judges 42–3, 69 178, 228
just war 139, 146 law 145
see also peace Lazer, D. 207, 214, 244
Index 271
leadership 191–3, 198–200 March, J.G. 174, 246

Learn to Write Badly (Billig, 2013) Margetts, H. xi, 15, 203–19, 224
69, 229 publications 229, 233–4, 239,
Lebanon 89f, 204 241, 246, 260
legitimacy 92–3, 94, 103, 237, markets 106
245 Marsh, D. ii, 61–2, 246
Lerner, D. 3, 225 Marx, K.H. 48, 138
liberal democracies 34, 179, 205, Marxism 178
218 maternal mortality 86, 87
liberalism 194, 227, 255 mathematical formalism 53–4
life expectancy 86, 87, 212 mathematics 70, 214
life sciences 214 Mayer-Schoenberger, V. 206, 246
‘Life in United Kingdom’ McCarty, N. 106, 246
Citizenship Test (Brooks, McCloskey, D.N. 36, 246
2013) 141–2, 230 media 2, 11, 20, 24, 40, 116, 124,
Lijphart, A. 177, 244 131–2, 142, 146, 165, 223,
Lilla, M. 85, 244 226, 238
Limbaugh, R. 156 medical sciences 31, 214
Lindvall, J. 133, 245 Meier, K. 81, 237
Lipset, S.M. 183, 245 Melander, E. 91, 248
liquidity (Bauman) 72, 228 Mérand, F. 157, 247
literacy 85–6, 97 Mercosur 190, 195
local government 130–1 Mestyan, M. 216, 217
Locke, J. 138, 245 ‘methodological manifesto’ (Gill and
lobbying 128, 228 Meier) 81
‘logic of discipline’ 69, 252 methodological pluralism 220,
London School of Economics and 226
Political Science 104, 214, methodology I, x, 2, 4, 23–4, 37,
235, 242 48, 69, 74, 104, 126, 150–1,
‘London Whale’ 108 154, 160–1, 164, 168, 170,
low-income countries 87 179, 187–9, 206–7, 217,
Lowell, A.L. 68 221–2
Lowther, E. 212, 245 literature 232, 236, 243, 251
‘luck egalitarianism’ 95–6 Meyer, M. 129, 247
Lupia, A. 5, 245 Mid-Staffordshire Hospital Trust
Lynd, R.S. 47, 245 210
middle-income countries 87
Macedo, S. 27, 245 Migdal, J.S. 179, 247
Machiavelli, N. 75, 139, 245, 251 Miller, J.D.B. 30, 247
Making Democracy Work (Putnam, Mills, C.W. 51, 65, 67. 68, 70–83,
1993) 98, 159, 251 247
Making Social Science Matter modern constructivists 149,
(Flyvbjerg, 2001) 157–8, 161–3, 167–9
235 Money, J. 173, 257
Malaysia 89f, 177 Moneypenny, P. 68, 247
Mandela, N. 87, 245 Moore, B. Jr 39, 41, 247
272 Index
morality 34, 65, 67, 71, 77–9, 80, non-governmental organizations

86, 221, 225, 240 (NGOs) 1, 24, 108, 131,
Moravcsik, A. 163, 248 183, 192, 194
Morozov, W. 218, 248 non-scientific approach 40–1,
‘Mr Perestroika’ 156 41–2
Mukherjee, I. vii, xi–xii, 13, normative approach 4, 27, 29–30,
121–35 33–4, 43–5, 55, 60, 92, 103,
multi-disciplinary approach 121, 122, 140, 149–50, 153, 175,
122, 124, 213–14, 224, 226 198, 213–14, 221, 237
multiculturalism 140, 249 Norris, P. 88, 91, 248
Mumsnet 209 North, D.C. 59, 99–100, 248
Munich (1972) 193 North America i, 137
Murdoch, R. 154 North–South (global divide) 194
Northern Ireland 177, 193, 252
NAFTA 190, 195 Noveck, B. 217, 248
nation-state 85, 190, 194 Nudge (Thaler and Sunstein, 2009)
National Endowment for 143, 257
Democracy (USA) 88 ‘nudge’ interventions 32, 217–18,
national interest 163, 191, 196, 242
259 Nussbaum, M.C. 140, 144, 230,
natural sciences 46, 206, 214, 248
219 Nye, J.S. 3, 24, 34, 70, 248
see also philosophy of science
naturalist vision 48 Oakeshott, M. 43
Nebraska, 165 Obama, B.H. Jr 112
neo-classical economics 53, 58, Öberg, M. 91, 248
59, 94, 99 objectivity 3, 43–5, 68, 77–8, 122
neo-liberalism 179, 231 obscurantism 54, 56–8
neo-Marxism 70 ‘Occupy’ Movements 218
neo-realism 194 Olsen, J.P. 174, 246
Netherlands 177, 244 O’Neill, O. 140, 245
network analysis 135, 206 ontology 53, 55, 59, 78, 160, 198,
networks 6, 116, 208, 239, 251 201
new institutionalism 172, 174, optimism 77–82
246, 250 Orwell, G. 77, 80
New Labour 113 Ostrom, E. 6, 33, 99, 174, 191,
new public management 186, 187, 197, 199, 201, 249, 250
233 design principles 32
New York 108, 114 interest-based model 199
New York Times 70, 232, 235, model of regime-building 199
243 Ott, J.C. 91, 249
New Yorker 160, 237 ‘outside the whale’ (Mills) 81
Newcastle: Festival of Philosophy Oxford Handbook of Comparative
143 Politics 97–8
Newton, K. 101, 233 Oxford Handbook of Mexican
Nietzsche, F.W. 138 Politics 99
Index 273
Oxford Handbook of Political Pierre, J. xii, 1–15, 61–4, 94,

Behavior 98 103n, 190–202, 220–6, 250,
Oxford Handbook of Political 257
Economy 98 Pierson, P. 200, 250
Oxford Handbook of Political Pinto, L. 160, 250
Science 98 Piven, F.F. 27, 29, 250
Oxford Handbook of Welfare State Plant, R. 140, 250
(Castles, 2010) 92, 98, 231 Plato 85, 138, 230, 250
Oxford Internet Institute xi, 209, pluralism 111, 112, 179, 219, 220
212–13, 215 policing 33, 212
Oxford University 41 policy analysis 134, 202, 258, 260
‘policy entrepreneurs’ (Kingdon)
Painter, M. 18, 249 133
paradigm shifts 50 policy input: varieties provided by
Parekh, B. 140, 249 academics 22t
Pareto-optimal equilibrium 191, Policy and Internet (journal) 215
197, 199 policy knowledge utilization
Paris xi, 114 124–7, 128–9, 134, 230, 243,
255, 258–9
parliamentary systems 173, 175,
‘policy learning’ 123
239
policy research 13, 125, 259
Parsons, C. xii, 14, 148–68,
linked to policy practice 121–2
221–2, 224, 249
‘policy science of democracy’
Parsons, T. 74–5, 249
(Lasswell) 3, 27–8, 235
participation 33, 98, 149, 245
‘policy science of participatory
peace 138, 193, 195, 242
democracy’ (Dryzek) 28,
see also war
233
peer review 57, 58, 60, 154
policy sciences 13, 28, 122, 124,
perception 102 244, 250–1
Perestroika 10, 14, 28, 52–3, policy studies 121, 135
55–6, 59–60, 150–1, 165, research relevance 134–5
227, 247, 253–4 policy-makers 1, 2, 5, 10, 12–13,
Perestroikan interpretivism 42, 47, 54, 57, 59, 64,
156–61 116–17, 125–6, 132
Perpetual Peace (Kant) 138, 242 constructivism as ‘eye-opener’
Peters, B.G. viii, xii, 1–15, 61–4, 161–7
94, 103n, 169–89, 220–6, ‘false accusations against political
249–50, 257 science’ 6–7
petitions 212–13, 245 policy-making 122–4, 230
philosopher-kings 138 evidence-based 186–8, 253
philosophy of science 45, 148, gap between theory and practice
149, 261 134
see also science partisan 27
phronesis (Aristotle) 158 power rather than evidence
phronetic social science (Flyvbjerg) ‘determining factor’ 11, 19,
158–9, 160 20–3
physics/physicists 213, 214, 235 promise of big data 208–10
274 Index
policy-making environment methods 10–11

203–4, 212 ‘myopia’ 8–9
political action committees (PACs) ‘neutrality lacking’ (Easton) 9
111–12 ‘not a response-mode discipline’
political analysis ii, 179 (Hay) 64
Political Bubbles (McCarty et al., ‘not value-free’ 220–1
2013) 106, 246 versus ‘political studies’ 67
political culture 181, 183–5, 189 practice 12
political debates 145 problem-oriented 62–4
political disengagement 3, 71 ‘produces knowledge, therefore
political economy xi, 13, 92, 115, relevant’ 5–6
165, 174, 257 ‘promise’ (Mills) 65
political engagement (partisan) 78 public interest defence 51
political imagination vi, 12, 65–83 public role 3, 251; see also
political outcomes 184 political scientists
political parties 42, 92–3, 98, reconciling knowledge and power
112–13, 133, 143, 178, 182, in public policy-making
226 122–4
political science 14, 42, 50, 78, 80 research agenda 134–5
agenda (versus citizen concerns) research rationale (explanation to
8–10 wider community) 64
American 2–3, 4, 232 schools and sects (Almond) 227
bad versus good 55–6 scientific behavioural revolution
big data era vii, 15, 203–19 9
blockages to relevance ‘seven sins’ (Rothstein 102–3
(challenged) 19–35 sub-disciplines 13
capacity for engagement and subject matter 93–4
impact 6 theory and applied theory 63
contribution 122–4 ‘unsung relevance’ (human well-
‘credo of relevance’ (Easton) being) 84–103
9–10, 220 validity (‘external’ versus
differentiation from ‘common ‘internal’) 171–2
sense’ 8 vulnerability 7–11
embedded nature 225 ‘wobbly’ (Mills) 80, 81
empirical measures of relevance political science: needs (Flinders) to
96–9 become more
‘falsely accused by policy-makers’ amateur 80–1
6–7 daring 80, 82–3
global financial crisis 104–17 optimistic 80, 81–2
global governance (puzzles) viii, Political Science and Politics 36
14, 190–202 political science profession 2, 4,
‘guilty as charged’ 84–103 78
heterogeneity 104, 107, 115 histories 15
histories of discipline 15 political science research 4, 242,
level of analysis 174 245
literature 232, 235, 240, case-selection 170, 189, 220–1,
242–4, 247, 250–2, 254, 256 226
Index 275
communication of findings 11 as practised 136

evidence-based 7, 11, 19, 20–3, public understanding 80
41 quotidian 220
methods 12 sub-national 170
specialized topics ‘meet only as understood 136
indifference’ 8 ‘politics of crisis’ 72–3
political scientists ‘Politics and English Language’
comparative advantage 5 (Orwell, 1946) 77
contribution to global politics of impact 66
governance 194–9 Polity 89n
detachment 220 Pollitt, C. 21, 23, 187, 250
lack of incentives to make ‘polluter pays’ principle 145
research relevant 11, 19, Polski, M.M. 174, 250
23–6 Porter, T.M. 48, 251
‘lateral form of influence’ (John) ‘post-autistic economics movement’
6 58, 65
‘obligation to act’ (Easton) 9 post-conflict situations 178, 217,
prediction failure 218 259
role and public responsibility post-modern constructivism:
12, 50–64 relevance as gadfly/crank
political silence (Zinn) 40 152–6
political system 179 post-modern constructivists 150,
core outputs 13 154, 155, 168
significance 13–14
post-modernism and post-
political theory 94–6, 224
modernists 14, 40, 150,
‘bright future’ (Brooks) 146–7
162, 168
‘chequered past’ 137–9
claims to relevance 152–61
impact (creation) 139–43
post-positivists 150, 160
impact (demonstration) 143–6
post-structuralism: same as ‘post-
impact (‘fact’ versus ‘value’)
modern constructivism’ 152
138
Pouliot, V. 157, 227, 251
importance 13–14, 136–47,
poverty 44, 85–6, 88, 91–2, 97–8,
230
politicians 14, 54, 69–70, 72, 78, 111, 227
84, 149, 192 Powell, J. 139, 251
biases 7 power 11, 19, 20–3, 27, 88, 93,
role 79 101–13 passim, 121, 122–4,
politics 30, 62, 79, 116, 122, 153
139–40, 141, 143, 146, 154, ‘hard’ versus ‘soft’ 196
222 literature 227–8, 230, 247,
administrative and institutional 251
sides 95 typology (Barnett and Duvall)
‘bad faith model’ (Flinders) 68, 195–6
69 practice 3, 12, 121–2, 134, 229,
and evidence 20–3 235, 237
literature 232, 235–6, 240–1, prediction/forecasting 26, 148–9,
247, 259 218–19, 255
276 Index
PredPol software 212 public interest 107

prescription 26, 38, 188 public intellectuals 24, 40, 66, 85,
presidentialism 173, 239 86
Prewitt, K. 3, 30, 251 public opinion 105, 124, 210
Prince (Machiavelli) 75, 139, 245 public policy xi, 13, 43, 57–8, 63,
principal–agent model 109, 259 95–6, 107, 112, 115, 117,
privacy 211–12, 214–15 121–35, 139, 140–2, 143–6,
private language (of political 179, 182, 185–6, 202–3, 224
science) 53–5. 56 literature 228, 241, 243, 250,
private sector 174 259–60
‘problem-driven research’ (Shapiro) pay-offs from big data 217–19
165 public sector 174, 185, 236
problem-solving 10, 21, 22t, public services 31, 145
122–3, 174, 192–3, 196, 198 improvement 203, 209–12,
evidence-based solutions 217, 219, 248
11–12, 26–30 public spending 100, 240
instrumental versus substantive punishment 140–1, 230
goals 199 ‘punk politics’ 82
process-tracing 189 Putnam, R. 3, 98, 159, 251
professional associations 24
professionalism 69
qualitative approach 110
professionalization 56–7, 58, 74,
quality of government (QoG) xii,
81
88–92, 94–6, 97, 99–102,
professors of politics 67, 71, 73,
231, 244, 257
78, 79–83
see also governance
Promiscuities (Wolf) 159
quality of life 87, 254
property rights 100
quantitative comparative analysis
proportional representation 175
Protecting Mothers and Soldiers (QCA) 179–80, 188
(Skocpol, 1992) 98, 255 quantitative studies 10, 110, 156,
prototyping 31 157, 179–80, 211
Przeworski, A. 179, 251 questioning false assumptions 22t
psychology 37–8, 149, 181, 184
public administration 75, 81, 92, race 177
94, 96, 102–3, 121, 185–6, radio 75, 146
187, 202, 207 Ragin, C.C. 180, 251
literature 232, 241, 249–50 ‘Rallying Cry to University
see also civil service Professors of Politics’ (Crick,
public choice theory see rational 1964) 80
choice theory randomized controlled trials (RCTs)
public debate 63 22t, 32
public engagement 139, 142–3 rational choice theory (RCT) 10,
public goods 63, 99–100, 102, 57–8, 60, 68, 99, 180–2, 186,
196 192, 196, 199, 200, 201, 234,
public health 140, 255 240
quasi-market mechanisms 57 rationalism 148–9, 166
see also health Rawls, J. 140, 145, 230, 251
Index 277
reciprocity (Ostrom) 197, 199 the thorny (‘doubts about

Reagan, R.W. 42 intellectual case for relevance
real world 10, 21, 54–5, 62, 122, undermine its practice’) 12,
129, 136, 138, 156, 158, 161, 19, 26–30
169–70, 172, 179, 186, relevance crisis
198–9, 201, 221–2, 236 diagnosis and resolution 61–4
realism (IR) 194, 196 semantics 61
Realpolitik 223 see also crisis of relevance
redistribution 7 relevance debate 52
region 130–1, 177 relevance of relevance v, 12,
regulation 107, 113, 114, 115 36–49
regulatory agencies 105–6 religion 140, 177
regulatory capture 107 Republican Party (USA) 109, 113
rejection 55–6 reputation 23, 211, 215
relevance Rescher, N. 48, 251
‘attained’ versus ‘deserved’ research (specialized) 24
58–60 Research Excellence Framework
attribute to be bestowed by 2014 143–4
others 60 REF 2013 (2011) 144, 251
case for 220–2 REF 2013 (2012) 144, 145, 251
communication (better) of case research funding 2–3, 4, 52, 58,
64 76, 136, 165, 201, 214
contribution of sub-disciplines research institutes 127, 131,
119–219 132–3
defence (standard lines) 5–7 ‘Responsible Research Agendas for
difficulty of delivery 220, Public Policy in Big Data Era’
222–4 (workshop, 2013) 215
‘divided by common language’ Revolution 178
51–3 Reynolds, A. 22t, 31–2, 251
manifesto 220, 225–6 ‘rhetoric of reality’ (Zehfuss)
maximization in era of big data 154–5
203–19 Rhodes, R.A.W. 22t, 196, 251
public policy (academic study) Ricci, D. 69–71, 73, 252
13, 121–35, 202 Riddell, P. 54, 56, 57, 70, 80, 252
and rationality 55–8 Rio Summit (1992) 191, 193
variability 5 ‘road to relevance’ (Flinders) 65
varieties 171–2 roads to irrelevance 66–71, 72,
relevance: blockages 11–12, 77, 79
19–35 Roberts, A. 69, 252
designing solution 30–4, 256 Robinson, J.A. 169, 183, 227
the avoidable (lack of incentives Rockman, B.A. 110, 173, 227,
to make research relevant) 258
11–12, 19, 23–6 Rodrik, D. 84, 100, 252
the obvious (power rather than Roemer, J.E. 95–6, 252
evidence ‘determining factor’) Rogowski, R. 7, 252
11–12, 19, 20–3 Romania 101
278 Index
Rome (ancient) 137–8 selection panels/tenure committees

Rorty, A. 49, 252 20, 71, 214
Rose, R. 177, 252 self and other 50
Rote Armee Fraktion 193 self-knowledge 38
Rothstein, B. xii, 12–13, 84–103, seismologists 116
184, 222, 224 Sen, A. 87, 145, 254
publications 231, 239, 241, Seneca 137–8
244, 253, 257 sexual orientation 144, 248
Rubin, R. 113 Shapiro, I. 30, 62, 70, 73, 77–8,
Rudolph, S.H. 156, 157, 253 159, 161, 165, 238, 250, 254
Rule, J.B. 48, 253 short-termism 105, 199
rule of law 93, 100 Shulock, N. 126, 255
rules 32, 174 Sigelman, L. 24, 255
‘runaway world’ (Giddens) 72, Signal and Noise (Silver, 2012)
237 218, 255
Rwanda 38, 89f Silver, N. 218, 255
Simon, H.: ‘science of artificial’
Sabatier, P. 21, 253 versus ‘science of nature’
Salamon, L.M. 185–6 30–1, 255
sanctions 197 Singapore xi, 89f
Sandel, M. 142–3, 144, 253 single-member districts 175
Sanderson, I. 134, 253 single-writing 76
Sartori, G. 173, 253 Skinner, Q. 145, 255
Sceptics Club 143 Skocpol, T. 69–70, 98, 116, 255
Scharpf, F.W. 174, 253 slavery 43
Schattschneider, E.E. 115 Smith, G. 22t, 33, 255
Schick, A. 187, 254 Smith, K.E. 132, 255
Scholars Strategy Network (USA) Smith, R.M. 159, 165, 250, 255
116 Snow, C.P. 126–7, 129, 255
scholarship/academic rigour 73, Snowden, E. 211
80, 105, 107, 116, 221, 225, social capital 3, 101, 184–5, 229,
226 242, 253
Schlafly, P. 167 social care 131
Schlozman, K.L. 112, 113, 115, social conflict: comparative politics
254, 258 177–9
Schram, S.F. 158, 254 social construction 166–8
Schumer, Senator C. 113 ‘social influence’ 216
science 150, 153, 222, 243 social insurance 92, 100
definition problem 45 social justice/injustice 9, 95, 103
see also natural sciences social media xi, 6, 7, 203, 204–12,
science of social science 39–43 217, 218–19, 226, 229, 246
scientific perspective 4 social pacts 179
Scott, J.C. 159 social policy 42, 44, 255
Sebba, J. 126, 130–2, 254 social science 8, 14, 21
Second Treatise of Government academic curiosity ‘not sufficient
(Locke) 138, 245 justification’ 12
Index 279
contribution to society 46–7 stakeholders, 32, 131, 145, 241

definition problem 45 ‘stamps, flags, coins’ 171
engagement and objectivity Standard & Poor’s 91
43–5 state ii, 93–4, 102, 110, 115, 170,
foundations (possible) 45–6 181, 202, 232, 237, 253, 259
‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’ 149 input–output perspective 93
institutional turn 99 state capacity 88–92, 94–6, 98,
literature 230, 235–6, 240, 99–100, 103
245, 247, 251, 253–4, 259 ‘statistical physics approach to
naturalist or positivist model social behaviour’ 206, 216,
37, 39–43 231
pragmatic inquiry 46–9, 251, Statistical Society of London 48
252 statistics and statistical methods
‘promise’ (Mills) 65 36, 42, 101, 127, 170–1, 179,
purpose 49 189, 251
relevance 12, 36–49 Steinmo, S. 103n
versus ‘social studies’ 67 stock market 47
Social System (Parsons, 1951) Stoker, G. ii, xii–xiii, 1–15, 61–4,
74–5, 249 103n, 147n, 220–6
social transformation 42 challenging blockages to
social trust see trust relevance 11–12, 19–35
social welfare 44 publications 242, 246, 250,
societies (successful) 86, 91, 239 256
society 46–7, 144, 240 Stolle, D. 184, 253
socio-physics 206, 216, 231 structural transformations 83
Sociological Imagination (Mills, structure–agency problem 181,
1959) 67, 71, 72, 79, 247 182
sociology 42, 45, 51, 65, 86, students i, 161–8
121–2, 125, 157, 185, 207 Sudan 32
literature 229–30, 232, 242, Sunstein, C.R. 143, 257
247, 253 Suriname 184
Socrates 154 Sustainable Forestry Initiative
‘socspeak’ (Mills) 74 107
software 206, 212 Svallfors, S. 92, 257
solutions 30–4, 35 Svensson, R. 89n, 90n
Soskice, D. 183, 239 Swaziland 89–90f, 184
South Africa 87, 89–90f Sweden xii, 89–90f, 101, 244
South East Asia xii, 89–90f, 190 Switzerland 90f, 169
Southern Politics (Key, 1956) 171, Syracuse 85
243 Systems Analysis of Political Life
Spain 90f, 110, 114, 244 (Easton 1971/1979) 10, 234
speaking truth to power 7, 21, 84,
163, 165–6, 260 ‘talking human’ 74
specialization i, 8, 24–5, 53, 81 Tawney, R.H. 68
specialized advisors 131–2 taxation 87, 92, 10–0, 113–14,
Squires, J. 22t, 256 186, 218
280 Index
teaching 151, 161–7, 168, 201, triple-writing (Flinders) 11, 76–7,

226 213
technical tips 22t trust 68–9, 85–6, 131, 184, 233,
television 75, 113, 144 236, 253
telos 48 truth 3, 44, 153, 155, 160, 162,
Teorell, J. 87, 257 168
terrorism 193–4, 211 see also speaking truth to power
Tesco 211 Tsebelis, G. 173, 257
Teune, H. 179, 251 Tunisia 204
Thacker, S.C. 173, 237 Turkey 218
Thailand 218 Turner, S.P. 48, 258
Thaler, R.H. 143, 257 Twitter 204–5, 209, 211–12, 237
Thelen, K.A. 174, 257 two-communities metaphor
theory i, 33–4, 42, 222, 234, 248 124–7, 128–9, 134, 230, 234,
‘applied’ versus ‘general’ 23 259
empirical–normative divide ‘two cultures’ (Snow) 126–7, 255
29–30, 33–4
Theory of Justice (Rawls, 1971) Ukraine 195, 218
145, 251 Ulubasoglu, M.A. 88, 233
Theory and Methods in Political uncertainty 148
Science (Marsh and Stoker, understanding 38
2010) 61–2, 246 unemployment 88, 96
think tanks 1, 24, 127, 131, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
132–3, 143, 202, 224, 226, 148
238, 255 United Kingdom x–xiii, 52, 54–5,
definition 132 60, 68, 104, 107, 109, 116,
serve as ‘mediators’ 133 131, 137, 193, 203–4,
third community (of policy system) 206–13, 217–18
13, 127 citizenship test 141–2
Thomson’s Web of Science 96–7 literature 230, 239, 241–2,
Tickner, J.A. 153, 257 246, 257
time 21, 144, 145–6, 164–5, 192, research impact 143–6
198–9, 199–200, 201, 208, university network 208, 239
250 United Kingdom: Department of
Times (London) 70 Work and Pensions 209
Tobin tax 194 United Kingdom: Prism programme
Tocqueville, A. de 100–1 211
Torfing, J. 195, 257 United Kingdom: Treasury 110,
totalitarianism 138 113–14
trade 105, 116, 183 United Nations 144, 191, 194
trade unions 174, 183 global pulse initiative 219
‘tragedy of commons’ 174 UNESCO 144
‘tragedy of political science’ (Ricci) see also WHO; World Bank;
69–71, 73, 252 WTO
transition countries 100 United States x–xiii, 24, 27, 52–6,
transparency 144, 236 59, 60, 68, 88, 89–90f, 94,
Index 281
103, 106, 116, 125–6, 131, variables 172, 179, 189

138, 156, 171, 192, 197, 204, non-manipulable 182–5
206, 213, 216 Verba, S. 115, 254, 258
federal executive 110, 227 vested interests 39, 110–14, 133,
literature 227, 229, 231–2, 166, 191–2, 194, 260
237, 242–3, 245–6, 254–5, ‘virtue’ (Aristotle) 85
257–60 Vogel, D. 114, 115, 258
money and politics 110–13 voters and voting 10, 30, 43, 99,
presidential election (2008) 149, 217
112; (2012) 217, 218, 229 voting age 22t, 232
public policy (hidden success)
107, 254 Walker, D. 206, 227
regulatory system 108–9, 231 Walker, R.B.J. 152–3, 155–6,
universities 3, 9, 24–6, 126–7, 227–8, 258
133, 208, 214–15, 239, Walt, S. 21, 23–5, 28–9, 258
243–4, 259 war 37, 84, 153
University of Southampton xiv, 1 see also civil war
US Cabinet 110 Ward, V. 130, 258
US Civil War 98 Washington 111, 117, 216
US Congress 3, 105, 109, 111–12, water 32, 87, 91
117, 242 Weaver, R.K. 173, 258
US Financial Crisis Inquiry Webb, B. 68
Commission (2011) 105, Webb, S. 68
258 Webber, D.J. 123–4, 128,
US House Finance Committee 258–9
109 Weber, M. 42
US National Science Foundation websites 208, 223
165 Weingast, B.R. 109, 259
US National Security Agency (NSA) Weiss, C.H. 20, 21, 121, 123,
207 125, 171, 230, 259
US Office of Controller of Currency Weiss, L. 114, 259
108 Welch, J. 217, 259
US Presidency 110 Weldes, J. 156, 259
US Securities and Exchange welfare distribution 94–5, 227
Commission (SEC) 108–9, welfare state 92, 98, 115, 183,
259 257
US Tempora programme 211 well-being 12–13, 222
US Treasury Department 109 dependent variable 93
utility 37, 181, 186, 202 quality of government and social
trust 100–2
value added 41, 44, 47, 166 quality of government and state
values i, 3–4, 19, 69, 79–80, 122, capacity 88–91, 99–100
129, 153, 184, 220–1 relevance of political science vi,
pro-market and anti-political 12–13, 84–103
77–8 Wendt, A. 162, 259
see also ‘facts versus values’ Whitten, G. 4, 242
282 Index
WHO (World Health World Values Study surveys

Organization) 89n, 90n 101
‘Why I Write’ (Orwell, 1946) 77 Wright, V. 173, 250
wider world 83 WTO (World Trade Organization)
Wikipedia 209–10, 212, 216–17, 194
247–8
Wildavsky, A.B. 7, 21, 84, 110, Yasseri, T. xi, 205, 212–13, 229,
121, 240, 260 239, 246–7, 260
Wilson, E. 41 Yesnowitz, J. 198, 237
Wilson, G.K. xii, 12–13, 104–17, YouTube 204, 205
222, 224, 260 Yugoslavia 195
Wilson, T.W. 68
window of opportunity 20–1, 23, Zehfuss, M. 153, 154–5, 261
34, 133, 223 zero-sum game 184
Wolf, N. 159, 167 Zilak, S.T. 36, 246
Wolff, J. 95, 260 Ziman, J. 45, 261
women 86, 87, 230, 248 Zinn, H. 40, 41, 261
World Bank xii, 90n, 116 Zižek, S. 40

(Political Analysis) Gerry Stoker, Jon Pierre, B. Guy Peters (Eds.) - The Relevance of Political Science-Palgrave Macmillan (2015)

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Political

Political Analysis Series

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First published 2015 by

Palgrave in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited,

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Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,

ISBN 978-0-230-20108-8 hardback

Typeset by Cambrian Typesetters, Camberley, Surrey, England, UK

List of tables and figures ix

PART I PERSPECTIVES ON RELEVANCE

1 Challenging three blockages to relevance and political

2 The relevance of relevance 36

3 Relevant to whom? Relevant for what? The role and

4 The rediscovery of the political imagination 65

5 Guilty as charged? Human well-being and the unsung

PART II RELEVANCE: THE CONTRIBUTION OF

7 The relevance of the academic study of public policy 121

8 Why political theory matters 136

9 Constructivism and interpretive approaches: especially

10 Is comparative politics useful? If so, for what? 169

11 Can political science address the puzzles of global

12 Maximizing the relevance of political science for public

1.1 Varieties of policy input provided by academics 22

5.1 Healthy life years vs level of democracy 89

Thom Brooks is Professor of Law and Government at Durham

John Gerring is Professor of Political Science at Boston University,

Sarah Giest is Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the

Colin Hay is Professor of Political Sciences at Sciences Po, Paris,

Michael Howlett is Burnaby Mountain Chair in the Department of

Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet, a professo-

Ishani Mukherjee is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew

thematic focus on environmental sustainability, renewable energy

Craig Parsons is Professor of Political Science at the University of

B. Guy Peters is Professor in the Political Science Department at the

Jon Pierre is Professor of Political Science at the University of

Bo Rothstein holds the August Röhss Chair in Political Science at

Gerry Stoker is Professor of Politics and Governance at the

Graham Wilson joined Boston University in 2007 having taught

This book has taken longer to produce than we originally hoped

As editors we should start this book by stating that we think that

Gerry Stoker shared ‘a wicked thought’ he had when planning a

much whether practising politicians or the media judge political

Tensions over relevance

As political scientists we can offer one immediate explanation for

access to National Sciences Foundation research funding was

Notwithstanding these pleas from leaders in the profession it is

for the political science profession to be concerned with the topic.

Relevance: the standard lines of defence

The first line of defence in the debate about relevance can be

Academics should stand their ground and have more confidence

His point finds many echoes in the commentary of others (Isaac

consume it can do so. Indeed John (2013: 172–3) claims that

cover their tracks falsely accuse political science of lacking rele-

Contemporary political science suffers from too much policy

Rogowski goes on to identify diverse areas of policy over immigra-

Three lines of vulnerability

So how is the defensive fortress assembled by political science to be

The first argument is captured by a simple and telling question:

• Substance must dominate over technique. What is studied

While the second line of challenge over relevance reflects a more