SOCIAL SCIENCE AND POLICY MAKINGFeatherman and Vinovskis’s

Abstract

A review essay on Social Science and Policy Making: A Search for Relevance in the Twentieth Century, David L. Featherman and Maris A. Vinovskis, Eds. University of Michigan Press, 2001, pp. ix, 228. This volume contains eight papers occasioned by the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Institute of Social Research at the University of Michigan. Most of the essays can be bracketed into two distinct groups. The first surveys the interactions between academic social scientists and decision-makers on public policies as they have evolved in the United States. The second is built around case studies of the influence (or lack thereof) of social scientists in the shaping of policies for Head Start, the various attempts to “fix” welfare programs, and potential programs to assist the elderly in an aging society. The thread connecting these contributions is signaled in the sub-title. Whether the insights of social sciences have lost relevance in public decision-making and, if so, how they might regain it, pose questions that are very much worth asking.

Citation

Barber, W.J. (2005), " SOCIAL SCIENCE AND POLICY MAKINGFeatherman and Vinovskis’s", Samuels, W.J., Biddle, J.E. and Emmett, R.B. (Ed.) A Research Annual (Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology, Vol. 23 Part 1), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 237-243. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0743-4154(05)23014-6