As someone with a Poli Sci Ph.D. who has done a bit of work on both sides of the divide, I have to express sympathy with the "too long to be read by policy makers" critique.

One of the big differences between the academic and policy realms is that academics have a far greater ability to control their agenda and timelines. Sure, course loads impose a certain schedule and grants may have deadlines (and, at the top institutions you only get so many years to achieve tenure or be forced to move on) but it's not unusual to spend years on a book or months on an article. And while publishers and journals impose length limitations, deciding when the work is "enough" is largely in the hands of the scholar. And to a large extent, there is agreement that the more “important” a topic the more time should be spent upon researching and analyzing.

Conversely, policy makers usually have a wide range of issues to deal with and much greater time pressure that increases the tradeoff costs of spending more attention on one memo or article versus another. Additionally, in most cases within the policy realm the more “important” a topic is perceived to be the greater the urgency of a quick decision.

Yes, everyone wants to be the author of the book that a newspaper article says the president is reading but what is the president not doing while he is reading that book? The simple reality is that being able to distill an issue down to a couple pages is a requirement for exerting policy influence. It is not unreasonable to expect an expert on a topic to be able to produce a short summary of the issues and a succinct recommendation.

An effective path to producing scholars with more policy influence would be requiring graduate students to produce a few short policy memos in seminars or as part of their comprehensive exams. Junior scholars could be encouraged, and appropriately rewarded, for successful publication of an Op-Ed or two. However, giving reasonable weight to briefer products goes against the grain of academic tradition—as indicated by the “oh, no” remark suggesting this is appropriate only for post-tenure activity.

I agree. I think that there are three main issues that come into play. One is the divide that exists between policymakers and those in the academic world versed in foreign policy. The negative effects of this divide are pretty obvious as the US has consistently made ill-advised, self-serving international policy decisions. A lot of this, unfortunately, is deeply rooted in the way the US government operates, as there is not enough power granted to those in the academic world when it comes to making foreign policy decisions.

Yet, there also exists a divide between those versed in political science/international affairs and those working for our country's mainstream news publications. Obviously there are many who are well-respected and educated in the policy arena who produce very fine pieces of writing. Yet, it seems that these pieces are primarily confined to publications that specialize in this field, such as Foreign Policy.

Last but not least, there's the divide between those who hold Ph.D.'s and are considered "experts" in the field and us young, lowly peons on the totem pole. As a recent undergrad who studied political science/international relations, I think that a big problem is that my peers (myself included), realize how "little" we know and how much more there is to know in our field, particularly as we venture off to graduate/law school. Consistently surrounded by this type of influence,we begin to lose sight of the value of our opinions. I think that if we were encouraged to get more involved in "real world" (rather than campus) politics and if more of the higher-ups in our field made us realize the value of our opinions (as you did), it would help.

Blogging also helps.
http://thehiccupaccount.blogspot.com

As someone who began their career in academia and has spent most of it at a think tank that attempts to bridge the academic and policy worlds, this essay certainly resonated with me. I think it's important to understand the history. The discipline made a decision post-Vietnam to walk away from involvement with government because it was tainted by involvement during the war. Over the next decades, it created a discipline which walled itself off from the government. Then academics complain because political officials don't listen to them.

I really believe the key is for academics to learn how to express themselves in a policy relevant way rather than expecting policymakers to work through academic style analysis and writing. Heck, I remember participating in a workshop early in the Bush administration that brought together the elite of security studies professors. The stated purpose was to develop policy relevant analysis. But all I heard over two days was that the Bush administration needed to jettison its worldview and adopt the one advocated by the speaker.

If I were at a university today, I'd encourage all of my Ph.D. students to spend time as an intern with a government agency, even if they intended to pursue an academic career rather than one in government. We demand that regional specialists do field work to fully understand their subject, but don't make the same demand of policy experts. A simple process like this would go a long way toward helping academics frame their thoughts in a way that might influence policy.

I agree with everything Dan says here. Each of the three commenters upthread also makes valid points.

I don't know how much importance we should ascribe to the idea that many scholars believe that imparting their superior knowledge to others -- teaching -- is not just part of their job but of their identity as well. To the extent this is a factor at all in the scholar's interaction with policymakers, it is probably more important the higher one goes on the policymaking totem pole.

Henry Kissinger observed that people in high office know what they brought with them. They don't learn there -- except how to make decisions -- because there just isn't time. The limitations this circumstance puts on a scholar's ability to contribute to the policymaking process would be considerable in the best case. It is worth scholars' time and effort to find ways to keep those limitations from becoming greater than they need to be.

Some years ago I was an intelligence analyst in the Dept. of Energy, in charge of putting together a "Daily Intelligence Highlights" newsletter for our 7th floor policy customers. One of my most productive analysts was a hard-core poli-sci type, fresh masters degree from a good school, & I had to spill a lot of red ink on his submissions before they saw the light of day. Deeply-buried leads, all that tortuous analysis leading up to conclusions -- sure, it was policy-relevant if you had all day to study and reflect. You've got to grab the policymaker with the subject line, get the main point up front, and for God's sake eschew nuance! Goes against the academic grain, I know, but there it is....

the difference between policymaker and academic timelines, but lose sight of the fact that policy makers may have the upperhand when it comes to anecdotal evidence (intelligence and reporting), it's the academics who've taken the time to gather data.

So academics need to be concise. Very well.

Policymakers, though, need to question their assumptions, and test them against the data academics bring them.

Of course, then come the politics . . ..

The solution is simple but unlikely. Meritorious work, even if it does not consist of peer reviewed articles, should be accepted as qualification for tenure track teaching positions and eventual tenure. The problem, however, is that review committees would be forced to exercise judgement, and actually judge work by its merit, losing the CYA safety of refferal to standard article acumulations.

Professor Dan, this is reassuring in a way. I had been told previously the challenge to my getting on a tenure track was my Fletcher PhD. Now I see it was because I tried to solve real world problems, naming names where merited.