Can Social Science Shape the Public Agenda?

In: Contexts / American Sociological Association: understanding people in their social worlds, Band 4, Heft 2, S. 41-47

Abstract

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