Political “Science” under Attack
Yesterday, the world of political science—admittedly not a large world—was stirred up by an amendment that a Senator Coburn proposed to a spending bill. From his summary:
The National Science Foundation (which receives a 6.6% increase in this bill over last year) spent $91.3 million over the last 10 years on political “science.” The purpose of this amendment is not to restrict science, but rather to better focus scarce basic research dollars on the important scientific endeavors that can expand our knowledge of true science and yield breakthroughs and discoveries that can improve the human condition.
Here is the background research write-up that presumably his staffers have done.
American Political Science Association (APSA)—the principal professional association of political scientists—alerted the members of the amendment yesterday, attempting to mobilize against the amendment.
Political scientists with blogs commented on the development. Gelman from the Monkey Cage:
But, really, the list of “wasteful projects” seems pretty lame to me. Golden Fleece material, it ain’t.
Drezner from Foreign Policy argues for funding basic research across the board:
Basic research in the hard sciences or the social sciences is a public good — these things tend to get underprovided in a perfectly free market. It’s not clear to me at all why Coburn thinks that the $9 million spent on poli sci is a waste but the gazillions from the public trough spent on the hard sciences are not a waste when private corporations, industrial associations, scientific publications, universities, and private citizens couldn’t fund this stuff.
Sides from the Monkey Cage takes up the challenge by Coburn to generate research relevant to the human condition. Sides would like to create a new award called The Cobie for political scientists working on research relating to improving the human condition—Double Cobie if the research is funded by the NSF.
In general, I agree with Josh Tucker from The Monkey Cage, and wondered “Why is he picking on political science?” Among all the other social sciences supported by the NSF, Coburn singled out political science. Then I stopped wondering this morning when I saw this. Steve Krasner famously quipped in one of his earlier articles that “[s]tupidity is not a very interesting analytic category” (1976, 319). I would beg to differ at this point.
