on political science. Instead of on biology. Your government at work.

By the way, Drezner, nice work on trying to break down the figure to a year/year basis. Instead of the way costs are usually listed. $9.13 million a year TOTALLY looks better than $91.3 million over ten years.

You could work for CNN.

Coburn is clearly trying to stay ahead of the wave of the Ensign Scandal that is crashing down and threatens to sweep him away as well as Ensign.

He is going to need all the political allies he can get and what better way to soften the ground than to threaten funding for as broad a range of pet projects affecting as wide a swath of his esteemed colleagues as possible...

Or maybe this is a ploy to open a door for his future employment which might be closer at hand than we realize...

There was an effort a few years ago to cut all social science funding from the NSF, which ultimately failed... I assume this will go the same way. But I do think political scientists might be concerned with the fact that, when it came time to sacrifice a discipline from the social sciences, theirs was first on the block.

President Woodrow Wilson was a political scientist. I wonder if Coburn realized he just insulted the life's work of a US President.

An online petition has started to rally opposition to the Coburn amendment

http://www.petition2congress.com/2/2508/go/440961/

It's insane that the NSF is spending money on political science. I thought they were supposed to fund only hard sciences. Funding social sciences seems like absurd mission creep.

The Golden Fleece Award was an invention of the late Sen. William Proxmire (D-WI), who bestowed it at regular intervals on government agencies that spent money on things he considered unworthy. Generally the manner of bestowment included a Senate floor statement and a press release worded cleverly enough to be picked up by national media.

Some of Proxmire's Golden Fleeces represented genuine misuse of taxpayer money. Many others were assigned to research projects that merely sounded strange to people outside the relevant field of study. Confronted by a government study of the mating habits of tree frogs or the life span of grizzly bears, Proxmire never let awkward questions about the potential value of knowledge about obscure subjects get in the way of a good press hit.

There are some things to admire about Proxmire's record in the Senate, but the Golden Fleece Award is not among them.

I joined so that i could laugh at this:

'Theories on political behavior are best left to CNN, pollsters, pundits, historians, candidates, political parties, and the voters'

LoL

A Republican thinks theories on political behavior should be left to CNN?? Maybe he is just trying to display his keen sense of irony?

The other question is, why do historians get lumped in with the other cringe-inducing "theorists on political behavior." On the one hand, I thought this would be a good reason for historians and political scientists to unite, since they definitely have more in common with each other than the other "politcal behavior theorists" mentioned here.

Nah...It's just too tempting to go the other way: Coburn is right on the central point: poli sci is not science. And, no, that terrorism study doesn't prove that it is science. Manipulating data and cherry-picking evidence written by historians, economists, and anthropologists does not constitute science.

It's too bad Coburn couldn't have just made his point without showing why Congress is so ineffectual. If Congress is relying on cable news, pudits and political parties to theorize on various social issues (much less foreign policy), no wonder they suck so much.

Milton Friedman pointed out some years ago that the NSF was the academic equivalent of industrial policy that tried to pick which industries should be winners. Industrial policy has been a consistent failure. Friedman's specific point with respect to economics was that it tilted the profession toward particularly sterile mathematical exercises. I note as well that although you have challenged Coburn's denigration of some NSF funded studies, you have given exactly no evidence or indication of how any of that NSF money has generated social benefit. This is curious, since you use the public goods argument to defend NSF funding. What social benefit, in excess of the funding, has been generated by NSF funding that would not have arisen without it?

He is correct that Political Science is not considered one of the 'hard' sciences. However my thinking is in line with Drezner's on this.
A. 91.3 million dollars is chump change in the United States. We have an economy well over ten TRILLION* dollars and that gigantic military budget of ours barely takes up 4% of our GDP.
B. Yes we spend money of economic and social studies. That might be because anyone in the government should have a very good idea of how invaluable that data is.
And lastly C. Americans already have very little understanding of politics, I don't think we need CNN and pollsters making things worse.

*Take one billion dollars (which is more than 99% of the country will ever see individually) and multiply it by 100, then take that number and multiply it by 10, then take THAT number and multiply it by 10. There is a reason the United States is called by some a 'hyperpower'. Our nearest competitor is 'only' close to three trillion.

... as Anthropology. Easily.

As a political science major I am somewhat disheartened by the pile-on. Of course, international security doesn't matter at all, much the same way it won't matter when the world erupts in nuclear war. Additionally, studies of democratization and social movements don't matter at all because dissidents in Iran will never move against their theocratic government. I hope my sarcasm brings the point home, but just in case, Coburn doesn't have a freaking clue!

"OK, dear readers, I want you to close your eyes and imagine a world in which your entire knowledge of political behavior emanated only from CNN, pollsters, pundits, historians, candidates, and political parties."

Sorry, false dichotomy. Coburn doesn't want to kill all the political scientists, he just doesn't want to give them NSF grants.

As for the Human Rights Project study you cite, well, anything with findings that politically charged, with a dataset as liable to abuse, I would not take at face value. Have you personally reviewed that study down to the level of data collection, classification, and integrity, or has someone you know and trust done so? If not, I wouldn't go staking my argument on it. On the surface, very reminiscent of the bogus Lancet articles about Iraq casualties, published right befiore the 2004 and 2006 elections. Maybe this is good work, but I wouldn't assume so.

I don't have an answer, but I do know that the government is WAY too big to be sustainable, and spends way too much on things that are or at least sound nice, but are not essential and maybe not even cost-beneficial. My guess is that some NSF-sponsored Poli Sci studies would pass that criterion, some would not.

I am not a political scientist but am a policy analyst in government and I can tell you that every time I go looking for academic sources to inform my work, I am terribly impressed with how much of all social science work, with the POSSIBLE (but not highly likely) exception of economics is not only useless but insulting. And that is based on targeted searches. When I hit a journal and see the table of contents full of "critical" this- or that-studies, crazy gender and race-based interpretations and so on, often crediting grant support, I do want to vomit.

I will suggest there are probably 5-to-10 times as many social scientists trying to get grants and publish, as are capable of doing decent work, and I sure don't see why taxes should be taken from struggling blue-collar families to support all of them.

You need better arguments with a stronger factual basis.