Interesting comment, certainly I feel that political studies (particularly international) have grown more popular. I would require more information such as journals published, the role political scientists in the government, and the view they are given by elected leaders. However it is hard to comment on your links when at least one* requires a subscription.

*I am referring to the military/political scientists one.

I think it is probably correct that there's somewhat more policy relevant research in political science today than a decade ago. It is also true that some leading political scientists have made substantial efforts to get involved in the public arena (for example, Mearsheimer and Walt, Putnam, Drezner, other bloggers affiliated with the profession). But citing this fact does not effectively address Sen. Coburn's complaint that political science has not contributed nearly as much to the world as have physics or chemistry. Sen. Coburn implicity raises the question: has political science given us anything remotely as useful as the X-Ray machine (invented by the recipient of the first Physics nobel prize in 1901), fiber optics (the 2009 physics prize), aspirin pills, bridges, airplanes or many other testimonies to the prowess of the natural sciences? To say that political scientists are influencing public debates on foreign or domestic policy is not quite the same as to say that political science as a discipline is as useful as the natural science disciplines supported by the NSF.

DD:

1) How do you think PoP measures as a transmission belt from the APSR to the masses?

2) How would one assess the impact political science is having on policy over time?

3) As an aside, I'm no sure political risk firms qualify - as the owner of one local affiliate of the EIU told me, a lot have one person covering about 30 countries (the EIU business model of outsourcing to local affiliates seems smarter).

Didn't SM Walt say that PoP was supposed to be the equivalent of the Journal of Economic Perspectives?

Also, didn't he and Bruce Jentleson write some articles on policy relevance that might be worth reviewing for your esteemed audience?

Thanks

As someone who has been on both sides of the equation, I have to say I agree with Sen. Coburn. Political science is useful, we definately shouldn't get rid of the field, but I am not sure it lives up to its utility with regards to NSF funding. From personal experience I would say large a part of this has to do with the way Political Science departments train and value new graduate level students, and thus have been creating (and promoting) the next generation of political scientists for the last 20 years.

I was asked to leave my graduate Poli. Sci. department because I "was not enhancing the reputation of the department by publishing articles in academic publications or presenting at conferences." When I explained that I could not undertake these activities as serving as the political director for the state Senate Majority leader didn't give me much free time and I figured it was a prestigious enough position for the department (of a public university) as we would soon be undertaking the budget hearings, I was told that my occupation did not meet the goals of the department. My public policy professor required all public policy evaluations to be done the same way, i.e. evaluating stakeholders, listing possible outcomes, etc. Every paper written had to be in the same form, with the same sections, with the same variables, with the same evaluations. I explained that as someone actually creating and implementing public policy, I had never seen any papers of these types when making decisions, it was always one-pagers or evaluations from think-tanks, or discussions with interest group or professional organizations. I said I appreciated learning the public policy process from the political science point of view, and it was a valuable point of view, but that perhaps more flexibility in presentation and evaluation would make the work more relevant to policy makers. The professor (and the department supporting him) said no, that this particular format and process had been decided within "the field" as the highest standard and unless it was done this way, "it was not science."

Another seminal momment for me was a survery (it might have been in FP, but my memory fails me) in January of this year asking Political Science professors what is the most worrying issue facing the world today. The schocking (and narcisistic) number one answer (to be fair it only had 18%) was that "we [political scientists] were not being listened to enough by policy makers." Not Afghanistan, not terrorism, not muslim radicilization, not the economic crisis, but political scientists were being ignored.

These experiences have stuck with me as I have gone up the policy-making ladder I find it easier and more useful to reach out to Brookings and CSIS, the Center for New American Policy, etc, then to my former colleagues in academia (I know many of the staff at these institutions come from academia but for whatever reason, different audience, different funding, different rewards, they produce and act much more constructively). In a hat-tip to Mr. Brezen, the FP.com blogs are far more widely read in my building than anything from APSA.

If academia knew how little policymakers read or talked about what they said, they would be shocked.

Hello professor,

I would guess that a decade ago is not the time frame to compare with. I mind you should check the American Political Science Review, Foreign Affairs, American Journal of International Law, from the 1920´s and 1930´s to really appreciate that those analysis were as deep, or even deeper than today´s, but were written in a reader-friendly manner, not with that pretetious scientific wannabe language of today´s articlem only addreesed to get tenure track positions.

I think some of you may be missing Drezner's point. His point is that the $9 million a year that goes to political science is funding exactly that type of research that IS useful science. A great example of that is the National Election Study. This is the main data source for knowledge about the American electorate. It's the baseline from which many news organizations depart when they do some of their survey work on more current issues.

If you want the discipline of political science to exist (and to be clear, Tom Coburn does not), then funding things like the National Election Study seems like a valid enterprise.

Moreover, this is a question of relative spending. There is very little private money available for things like survey research and other work by political scientists. Private foundation money for political science, as opposed to political activism, is drying up. So it is not like if this money is cut, other people will fill in. And while $9 million is a drop in the bucket as far as the overall NSF funding goes, it is a *huge* chunk of the total research money available for political scientists in universities.

I kind of wonder how the democracy example would play out, actually -- specifically, democracy and peace, one of the biggest literatures in political science from the past couple of decades and a huge thread in US foreign policy in the past two administrations. I wonder why this doesn't come up more in the Coburn debate.

I mean, on the one hand it's easy for people to say, "Woodrow Wilson knew that democracies were peaceful!" Sure. But Tsar Alexander "knew" that autocratic states were peaceful, and Lenin "knew" that socialist states were peaceful, and even now there are debates and qualifications about democracies.

The point is, this is really the perfect case to look at, because it's central to both the political science literature and to American foreign policy. And I would forward three arguments about that case that debunk a lot of what's being said at present:

* The discipline of political science has not ignored the subject; far from it, it has been nearly exhausted.

* The policy debate does not (seem to? -- Dan, I'd defer to you on this, obviously) reflect the state of knowledge in the field of political science much, if at all, beyond a simple "democracy produces peace" argument. (It's fairly clear, for example, that whatever the peace dividends of democratization, they won't extend to cases of partial democratization or democratization in only one state in an undemocratic region -- both of which insights would be sobering if applied to, say, Iraq.)

* Obscurity, scientism, and jargon are not the problem; the conclusions of the vast majority of the articles written on this subject, and much of the articles themselves, are understandable to nonspecialists.

I'm actually not sure why there's a disconnect between political science and policy to the degree that there is, but I don't think it's fair for the Senator to say that political scientists study things that aren't relevant to policy. That said, I admit, it's a useful corrective to be nudged in that direction once in a while.

Dear professor,

I found it a very good article. Very sharp analysis and it was very informative. However, I don't believe that the Iranian regime will back down whenever the International community decides to implement more sanctions. We must not forget that the Iranian regime has already accepted three rounds of sanctions, which were adopted within the framework of the UN Security Council against it because of its nuclear activities.

However, I'm for stringent, comprehensive sanctions. I think that the permanent members of the UN Security Council should wake up and realize that this regime will not change its attitude. If Russia and China do not cooperate for more sanctions, then the US should together with the EU, outside the framework of the UN Security Council, adopt more sanctions against this regime.