INFORMATIZATION AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION: A POLITICAL SCIENCE PERSPECTIVE

In recent years, both academic and policy making circles in the UK have shown a growing interest in the potential uses of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the delivery of government services. Much of the academic literature has been centred around the concept of 'informatization', and it has been suggested that the new technologies are transforming public services. Key theorists in the field of Public Administration have argued that informatization is one of a number of major trends likely to shape public services in the twenty-first century. However, the dominant theoretical approaches within public administration- those rooted in political sciencesuggest that inertia and stability are the norm in the public sector; clearly there is something of a contradiction between these two broad approaches. This paper outlines three political science perspectives that might be used in analysing informatization: the policy networks approach, rational choice and the new institutionalism. Evidence is then drawn from the social security, health care and social care sectors of the British public sector and related to the political science frameworks in order to examine their utility. Not only do these frameworks rightly highlight the incremental nature of change, but they also help to explain important variations in ICT use across the three policy sectors. It is concluded that combining the study of informatization and political science offers a fruitful avenue for future research.     

Bringing Sociology into the Public Policy Process: a Relational Network Approach

How does evidence-based sociological research influence public policymaking either directly or indirectly? Based on an analysis of a 2014 NSF-funded public policy research workshop and written case studies by workshop participants, this article provides a conceptual roadmap and varied examples of the pathways through which social science research and social scientists can inform public policy decision-making. Pathways include networks and relationships among academics, social scientists employed in government, special interest groups and non-profits, and members of the media. Many sociologists are committed to using their evidence-based findings to inform solutions to societal problems, yet are often too narrowly trained to write only for scholarly communities and are often unaware of the relations, connections, and networks that can increase the use of sociological and other social science research in public discourse and in the public policy arena. The paper highlights lessons learned about effective networks, communication channels and dissemination strategies from the workshop and case studies in order to better equip those social scientists interested to bring their research into a public policy realm with the tools to do so. Given the current political climate, this resolve seems all the more important.     

Public Relations and Symbolic Politics

In German-speaking countries public relations scholars emphasize the role of public relations (PR) in society in their theorizing. These scholars seek to understand PR as a macro-level, or sociological, phenomenon in contrast to the micro-level, or management, emphasis of scholars in the United States. This article builds a sociological theory of PR by comparing it with the practice of symbolic politics as conceptualized in political science. The theory states that both PR and symbolic politics develop and use symbols—signs that influence and guide conceptions—to achieve their purposes. They also rely heavily on journalistic media. Media reality, however, frequently departs from extramedia reality. The difference between these two types of reality makes it possible for symbolic politics and PR to influence the gap and perhaps to separate the symbolic world from the external world. On the other hand, attention is a scarce resource, and increased activity in PR and symbolic politics eventually will have a declining marginal social utility.     

Family policy and critical science research: Facilitating change

The principles of critical science for policy research are outlined and one research project is used as a case study. The study was intentionally designed to facilitate changes that would positively influence the economic well-being of children from divorced families. The project uses the critical science processes of public dialogue about child support guidelines for purposes of collaborative problem solving. The normative theories of procedural and distributive justice are used to guide the research reporting. The project contributes to changes in the practices of estimating the income needs of children, changes in estimating the relative monetary contributions of their parents, and proposed legislation and modifications in the state child support guidelines. She received her Ph.D. in family ecology from Michigan State University. Her research interests include the valuing issues of family life quality, family decision making, divorce,and the economic adjustments of families to economic stressors. She received her M.A. degree in Family Education from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include decision making and parenting. She received her Ph.D. degree in anthropology from the University of Minnesota. Her research interests include social and cultural change and the integration of research findings into public policy decision making.     

Does Activism in Social Science Explain Conservatives’ Distrust of Scientists?

Data from the General Social Survey suggest that conservatives have become less trustful of scientists since the 1970s. Gauchat argues that this is because conservatives increasingly see scientific findings as threatening to their worldview. However, the General Social Survey data concern trust in scientists, not in science. We suggest that conservatives’ diminishing trust in scientists reflects the fact that scientists in certain fields, particularly social science, have increasingly adopted a liberal-activist stance, seeking to influence public policy in a liberal direction.     

Scientific advice and public policy: expert advisers’ and policymakers’ discourses on boundary work

This article reports on considerable variety and diversity among discourses on their own jobs of boundary workers of several major Dutch institutes for science-based policy advice. Except for enlightenment, all types of boundary arrangements/work in the Wittrock-typology (Social knowledge and public policy: eight models of interaction. In: Wagner P (ed) Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991) do occur. ‘Divergers’ experience a gap between science and politics/policymaking; and it is their self-evident task to act as a bridge. They spread over four discourses: ‘rational facilitators’, ‘knowledge brokers’, ‘megapolicy strategists’, and ‘policy analysts’. Others aspire to ‘convergence’; they believe science and politics ought to be natural allies in preparing collective decisions. But ‘policy advisors’ excepted, ‘postnormalists’ and ‘deliberative proceduralists’ find this very hard to achieve.     

Constructing identity and oppositional knowledge: The framing practices of peace movement organizations during the Persian gulf war

Social movement organizations (SMOs) engage in the formation of public policy and social beliefs by framing issues and events for the public. These framing activities may offer an alternative source of knowledge and challenge status quo definitions of important social issues. Analyzing the statements and press releases of four peace movement organizations during the seven months of military escalation and war in the Persian Gulf in 1990 and 1991, this article explores the structure and content of social movement framing of a specific event. Findings suggest that the shape and content of the frames used by these SMOs are rooted in a complex amalgamation of each organization's historical and public identity, intended audiences, and contemporary motivations and organizational goals. The collective identity of an organization influences the shape and content of the organization's framing activities. The organizations studied made use of their specific structural and organizational strengths as part of a credentialing process, wherein they shaped their oppositional voices so they could be heard and accepted by specific audiences. This was in turn a matter of the organization's historical practice, the ways it presented that history, and how it constructed its con temporary collective identity (e.g., as Quakers or as Catholic peacemakers). All of this is done with a view toward claiming a voice in the public debate, a voice that may help the SMO create oppositional bases of knowledge, influence public policy, sustain and embolden members, and establish a historical record of opposition.     

Policy options: early intervention services for substance-exposed infants.

Substance-exposed infants, or babies that have been victims of their mothers' drug use during pregnancy, have reached substantial proportions. Currently, no comprehensive public policy exists to deal with these infants as they enter a society unprepared to respond to an issue increasingly fraught with substantial adverse economic, social, and political ramifications. In order to address the needs of this emerging sub-population, California's governor and state legislature must develop and adopt a concerted interagency policy which outlines: a) uniform criteria for local health care workers, social service agencies, and educators; b) consistent guidelines governing the exchange of information among a range of agencies, including hospitals, schools, and other public and private agencies; and c) increased prevention and early intervention services for these babies and their families. Addressing the needs of these infants requires a bold, comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach from the creators of public policy.     

Social movements and public relations in the early twentieth century: How one group used public relations to curtail venereal disease rates

ABSTRACT

A case study of the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) campaign to craft a national vision for social health showed that the group used public relations-like strategies to, as one of their officials said, “crystallize public opinion” years before Edward Bernays wrote a book of the same title. Although these efforts might not have been labeled public relations at the time, this study introduces some precedents of contemporary public relations. In this study, social activism offered a more robust approach to addressing an issue than using media relations alone could do. ASHA members used communication strategies such as segmenting audiences, utilizing events to reach appropriate audiences, using visual media, and creating house organs to arouse public sentiment, influence attitudes, and promote desired behavior.

This case study expands public relations history theory by examining why ASHA members practiced public relations as they did. In this case, ASHA used persuasive communication to pierce the veil of silence around venereal disease to craft a national vision for social hygiene and legitimize the group as the major voice on this topic. Lessons from this case can illustrate how public relations can be conducted more effectively, especially in relation to social movements.     

Public attitudes toward child maltreatment in Israel: Implications for policy

Objective

The public view of the severity of social problems and their perceptions of how effectively they are being addressed have a major impact on public policies and resource allocation. The present study focuses on public attitudes toward child maltreatment. It examines perceptions of child maltreatment as a social problem, and attitudes toward prevention and treatment strategies in cases of child abuse and neglect.

Methods

A survey was conducted among a representative sample of 812 Israeli adults: 688 Jews, and 124 Arabs. Fifty additional Ultra-Orthodox Jews were added for comparisons among Jewish participants.

Results

The participants tend to view violence and alcohol consumption among youth as a more serious problem than parental maltreatment of children. Low-income participants tend to view child maltreatment as a more serious problem than did high-income participants. Jewish participants (except for ultra-Orthodox Jews) view child maltreatment as a significantly more serious problem than did Arabs and Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Most of the participants believe that parents who maltreat their children should be punished, but they should be taught how to refrain from maltreatment, and learn to change their behavior. Many participants believe that the courts do not sufficiently punish parents who maltreat their children. In their assessments of the quality of professional work, the highest evaluations are given to services provided by physicians and social workers, whereas the lowest evaluations are given to judges and police. Most of the participants (70%) believed that social workers play an important role in protecting children.

Conclusions

The survey findings have implications for enhancing public awareness of child maltreatment as well for policy making in the area of child abuse and neglect. The differences in the perceptions of participants based on their religious, cultural and economic background toward child maltreatment should be further studied and addressed in policy and interventions in this area.     

Commitment to mothering and preference for employment: The voices of women on public assistance with young children

This study uses qualitative data to examine how welfare-dependent women with young children feel about the employment mandate in the 1996 welfare reform legislation, Personal Work Responsibility Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PWRORA). The voices of poor women have been overlooked in the policy debate about welfare reform, as well as in the social science literature. The data were drawn from individual and group interviews done with 14 women on public assistance during the initial phase of their participation in a voluntary welfare-to-work program. The women in this sample report that they have strong positive feelings about working outside of the home, as well as strong reservations. The paper presents new data on low-income women's role preference and perceived conflict regarding employment when their children are young. All the women in the sample had children under 2 years of age. The data demonstrate that there are aspects of role preference and conflict with employment that are unique to women on public assistance, as well as aspects that are universal across income groups.     

Labeling theory and community care of the mentally ill in California: the relationship of social theory and ideology to public policy

The practical merit of a labeling theory approach to mental illness is examined and assessed through an exploration of its application in terms of public policy, i.e., community mental health policy in the state of California since 1968. Primary focus is placed on the impact of the deinstitutionalization of mental health services in that state, and the release of former mental patients into the community. Similarities in the fundamental ideological underpinnings of labeling theory, an associated conspiratorial model of mental illness, and contemporary California mental health policy, are presented and examples of policy input by labeling theorists and researchers are detailed. The impact of the California policy on the mentally ill is generally negatively assessed in terms of three major criteria: (1) rehabilitation; (2) reintegration; and (3) quality and continuity of care. The "translation" of several theoretical misconceptions regarding mental illness, caused by putting labeling theory into official policy, is suggested to lie at the root of many of the policy's implementation problems. The uses of social science theory and research are discussed, and caution is advised in the translation and application of social scientific theory and research to public policy proposals and programs.     

The future of the social sciences and humanities in the science of complex systems

The modern world is characterized by problems that involve systems with social and physical subsystems. They are entangled systems of system of systems with multilevel dynamics. There is no methodology able to combine the partial micro-, meso- and macrotheories that focus on subsystems into a coherent representation of the dynamics of the whole. Policy requires prediction, but the traditional definitions of prediction are not appropriate for multilevel socio-complex systems. Heterogeneous multilevel systems have subsystems that may behave with great regularity over long periods of time, and then suddenly change their behavior due to weak coupling with other subsystems. Thus systems that are usually highly predictable may be subject to rare but extreme events, and this is highly relevant to policy-makers. New ways of thinking are needed that transcend the confines of the traditional humanities, social and physical sciences. Of necessity, this science will be embedded in the design, implementation and management of systems, and therefore the new science will be entwined with policy. Much policy is interventionist experiment. By themselves scientists cannot conduct experiments on socio-complex systems because they have neither the mandate nor the money to design and instrument experiments on the large scale. Policy-makers – elected politicians and their officers – design the future, making it as they believe it ought to be. New kinds of scientific predictions can inform policy but can only be instrumented and tested if there is goodwill between policy-makers and scientists, where scientists are junior partners. Scientists offer policy-makers theories and predictions of social systems based on logical-deductive methods. Policy is generally made on the basis of rhetoric, with the best possible arguments being deployed to support favored conclusions. To convince policy-makers that a particular scientific theory should be used, scientists move from the logical-deductive to the rhetorical. Thus the full theory of a science of complex systems has to provide a logical-deductive metatheory of the rhetorical and logical-deductive systems that make decisions and implement them. Traditional natural and physical science has avoided rhetoric, which is much better understood in the humanities and social sciences. Thus it is concluded that the science of complex systems must embrace the humanities and social sciences not just because their domains of study are relevant but also because their methods are necessary to understand how science and policy work together in complex social systems.     

Trust and recognition: a comparative study of client attitudes and workers' experiences in the welfare services

Since professional conduct is important in the lives of many people, trust and recognition between professionals and their clients are critical. Social professionals administer public resources on behalf of the welfare state, and their approaches and methods of intervention are mostly founded in current welfare policy. Despite this mandate, social professionals receive little acknowledgement and recognition. This article investigates the level of public trust in the Norwegian social services compared to the national insurance agencies, and to what extent the providers of these welfare services experience recognition and public approval. A central question is whether these aspects of external appreciation influence the professionals' motivation and feelings of accomplishment. Findings indicate that the social services receive less public support than the social insurance agencies, owing to the discretionary services provided and the stigma related to social assistance. The variation in institutional trust is reflected by the differences in workers' subjective experiences. That result notwithstanding, the service providers reveal a split view of themselves: while they experience themselves positively with respect to involvement and pride in their work, they also see themselves through the deprecating eyes of the public.     

Prometheus bound: The limits of social science professionalization in the progressive period

Conclusions The problem with professionalization theory is that it stops where we think it should begin. In the case of the new social scientists, we have argued that their need for massive resources opened them to collaborative cooptation by resource controllers. The two central principles to be drawn from our analysis are that during a crisis of ideology intellectual workers seeking to create new roles must worry about resources, and align themselves accordingly, and that resource holders, for their part, will support intellectuals who deliver something of value to them. Table I outlines how those principles might be applied to three likely knowledge and power alliances that might have occurred during the post-Civil War ideology crisis. The traditional social scientist role shown there reflects our understanding of the model American one existing before the influence of the German Historical School. The radical-populist role represents one of several routes not taken. It is presented to make clearer that significant alternatives did exist.How does role complementarity sum up how the new social science aligned itself with corporate capital? The new social scientists rejected the role content and alliances established by the traditionals; instead, they saw themselves offering a competitive expertise to the public. When the new social scientists under AEA auspices entered a resource exchange relationship with the nascent, national corporate leadership supporting the Spanish American War and the trust as a form of economic organization, they chose to ally themselves with the same resource controllers the traditionals were explicitly opposing in their anti-war, anti-monopolist stance. Indeed, the domestic and foreign positions secured by the new social scientists in the wake of the war provided a significant and large scale opportunity for exercising their expert role. In choosing an alliance with national capital and its managers, the new social scientists clearly differentiated themselves from the traditionals. They identified the strategic value of the resource rich corporate center, eschewing, as AEA President E. R. A. Seligman put it, the extremes of laissez-faire and socialism. Their analysis of the opportunity structure presented by the war and the trust question proved correct, as their version of professionalization informs us today.Of course, some new social scientists had at first been willing to align themselves with left of center and populist groups. However, the early academic freedom cases seem to have offered a powerful lesson. In particular, the new social scientists seem to have learned that even mildly popular actions were severely sanctioned and academics engaging in such actions would have extreme difficulty practicing their profession. These cases also made clear that left of centerists did not have many resources to exchange for new social scientific role performance in their causes. Economic radicals did not usually control the jobs or funds required for academic careers and professional development. As a result, the new social scientists did not create roles that complemented the radical popular movements. The few that did were not leaders of the associations. Having rejected the traditional and the radical expert roles for lack of sufficient complementary resources, the leaders of the new social scientists sought instead the indirect influence of expert advisers to businessmen, public figures, the new federal agencies, and national policy forums. From their collective biography as expert advisers, we may identify four aspects of their roles that seem to complement those of the new, nationally based corporate leaders. We see in the complementarity of the roles of the new social science leaders and the new corporate elite a significant shaping of modern social science expertise.The four aspects of the expert adviser role are these of technician, policy adviser, legitimator, and independent policy maker. Technicians solved problems, especially data problems, set by others. They gained access, or an opportunity to show their competence to those higher in the role system. The corporate leaders gained an opportunity to look over, and socialize new boys. Policy advisers had the ear of decision makers in the corporate sectors and in government, and managed technicians. The advisers gained prestige and some influence, while decision makers gained reliable management in the policy and reform sectors of an emerging state capitalism. Legitimators were often recruited from the ranks of well-published policy managers. They lent their greater public prestige as well as their reputations for non-partisan impartiality to particular policies or reforms. The corporate leaders gained public approval for policies in their perceived interests. Finally, a few new social scientists achieved positions of independent policy making after long years of expert service. Corporate leaders gained policy making congruent with their needs, often developed without their active participation. In short, when the new social scientists looked outside of academics to find the resources required to institutionalize their new skills as social scientists, they found at least two groups willing to complement their role performances. The left of centerists did not have sufficient resources to help establish the new social scientists' role performances within academics. But the new corporate leaders did, and they had the resources to act as social and political sponsors for the new social scientists' roles as expert advisers. In return, the new social scientists accepted as socially necessary the task of rationalizing the turn of the century economy and defusing social unrest.Our analysis of these cases — the Spanish American War and the trust (the Chicago Conference, the ICC, the NCF) — raises almost as many questions as are answered. These queries fall into two sets. The first involves theoretical issues, particularly the utilitarian assumptions implicit in our exchange analysis, and methodological issues, especially concerning the limits of available data. The second set of problems is substantive. Were the new social scientists the creatures of corporate capital, collaborative partners, or social actors with some independence? If they were willing and able to act independently, what defined the parameters of their action — professional interests, their own class interests or a commitment to the truth? If they were forced to act opportunistically to meet some constellation of class and professional interests, was opportunism confined to establishing a firmer resource base for the new social science? Were they later able to use their then established fields and positions to assert independent views of what was in the best interests of the nation as a whole? And, finally, was the expert role established by economists and political scientists accepted fully by sociologists? Our use of an exchange framework to organize the data in this paper might be read as bordering on a radical utilitarianism that assumes both individual and collective actors have a fulsome sense of their objective situation and its exigencies. Accordingly, there is little possibility for symbolic mediation of perceptions and motivations to intervene between social science leaders and their environments. At the risk of being thought unfashionable, reductionistic, and even economistic, we take a utilitarian position. Indeed, we stop short of radical utilitarianism only since perfect knowledge and information are inherently unattainable, especially in a world of rapid social and economic transition such as that occupied by the new social scientists.Rather than radical utilitarianism, we take a position of reasonable utilitarianism, viewing the collective efforts of social scientists assembled in their associations as often compensating for all manner of informational and behavioral imperfections at the individual level. We take this position for several reasons rooted in the detail of the period. (1) Organizing occupations (like the new social scientists in the AEA) have the clear possibility and capability for creating more nearly rational plans for collective action than do their individual members. This occurs when occupational associations gather together experiences and analysis from all their members and then, through full, frank, and candid discussion discern the proper joint actions required for success in their common enterprise. This is precisely what the new social scientists did. They used the AEA as an occupational forum to define collectively the expert role required to procure professionalizing resources from the industralizing American political economy. Thus, Hadley's speech quoted in the Spanish American War study is not an isolated exercise in role exploration. Instead, it is part of twenty years' detailed discussion on the expert social scientist's role. (2) As a group, the new social scientists themselves subscribed to and articulated a utilitarian or pragmatic view of their role and their science. In this they upheld and, in turn, were supported by the dominant American business ideology which, although varying with economic development, and regional and industrial interest, espoused a materialistic approach to contemporary problems. Indeed, AEA leaders usually presented a pragmatic, materialistic interpretation of the growth of economics as a science. As E. R. A. Seligman said in a presidential address: Economic science is an outgrowth of economic conditions ... of social unrest... of an attempt to unravel the tangled skein of actual conditions, and an effort to solve the difficulties of existing industrial society. Although the new social scientists worked collectively to develop their occupation along rational lines, there were, of course, all manner of cognative informational and behavioral imperfections at the individual level. Thus, the young Carter Adams saw Marx as a Christ-like figure, J. R. Commons and R. T. Ely early worked with the social gospel movement, and AEA leader Jacob Hollander accepted an investment bank's commission of $100,000 for placing a Santa Domingan bond issue while on the island for imperial duty. But all eventually came to accept and act on the associations' collective definition of the expert adviser role, finally perceiving theoretical Communism, militant Christianity and ad hoc greed as hinderances to sustained resource procurement and career development. Thus, rather than a radical utilitarianism assuming perfect knowledge and information on objective situation and environment, we posit imperfect individual knowledge and action with the reasonable possibility of collective utilitarian action by occupational associations acting after considered discussion.If we accept in principle the possibility of a reasonably utilitarian exchange analysis, what data limits do we encounter when we consider the professionalizing new social scientists in their associations? Following the Bernards' methodological imperative of reading the associations' own texts fully and carefully, we find the AEA, APSA and ASS's dusty tomes filled with heat and light on the substantive questions before us: What is the proper role of the social science expert? Who and how should he serve? In contrast with the fullness of organizational tests, our principle data limit is the thinness of historical analysis both of the period and the central actors. For example, there is no schematic synthesis of social structure for the period; nothing like Jackson Turner Maine's work on pre-Revolutionary America or Sidney Aronsen's on the Age of Jackson. There is, of course, a richly contested historiography of the period with Hofstader, Weibe, Williams (and their followers and critics) providing insightful chronological commentaries from center and leftist positions. But these chronicles rest more on sound judgments and intuitive leaps rather than on the details of sufficient biographical and organizational analysis. For example, there is one solid, historical treatment of the ASSA, and Sanborn, its most important figure, has no full biography and only a half-done autobiography. The new social scientists' lives are better recorded, but the coverage is still incomplete. These data limits make difficult precise and comprehensive answers to questions about the exact social mechanism — such as class, mobility and occupational status — working to create social scientists' biographical intersection with their associations' rich records. For example, A. T. Hadley's father was a Yale Classics professor, the father of fellow Yale economist Henry Farnam was a railroad president, and E. R. A. Seligman's father was a German-born New York investment banker. Are these professors upper class by social origins or by occupation? What is the direction of their mobility in an expanding, industrializing society? And what of the many professors on whom there is less detailed information, whose fathers were merchants, or publicists? Since neither the social structure at the time of their birth nor their entry into career is clearly agreed upon by scholars, we must answer our substantive questions somewhat more provisionally than we prefer.First, what was the relationship between resource holders and intellectual workers, particularly between new social scientists and corporate capital? Was there much room for independent action? Comparison of old and new social scientists gives some indication of the latitude possible in the period. Both sets of social scientists provided hegemonic idea systems for different sets of capitalist elites. The old were linked by sponsorship to New England capital throughout the nineteenth century. Sharply regional in composition and social base, they opposed many of the other social alternatives available, most notably the Southern sociologies legitimating slavebased agrarian capitalism, and the protective-tariff economics produced in the more industrial mid-Atlantic states. Tied to regional resources and definitions of social and economic problems through well-established cohort, friendship, and kinship networks, the old social science was faced with crisis when its region was. The rise of the mid-Atlantic states, especially New York, as a center for emerging national industrial finance capital made ASSAers face the choice of supporting relatively immobile New England merchant industrial capital or forging a new extra-regional alliance. By maintaining their original networks, as did much of their region's business elite, ASSA leaders effectively cut themselves off from acting as intellectual guides and legitimators for those rising national industrial finance capitalists creating the present social order. While ASSA leaders were tied to their region's resources, they seem relatively independent when compared to discipline association leaders. Their social science required fewer resources; they seem, on the average, much less dependent on academically contained careers and the favor of university managers for their livelihood. Their generalist training and experience, combined with their familiarity with the material and cultural allocation apparatus of New England meant they were not confined to the academy for the exercise of specialized skills. Sanborn, for example, translated classics, wrote biographies, founded secondary schools, and taught at Boston University when not directly serving New England capital as ASSA secretary. In contrast, new social scientists were most often located permanently in the academy. Even after incurring the displeasure of university managers, they invariably sought other specialized positions, preferably in emerging graduate centers, although this sometimes meant holding their tongues and changing their location. In short, given their institutionally based, specialized social science, the newer, national academics seem to have had less room for independent action than the old.Yet, the new had some room to maneuver because they had something to exchange for resources: the technical capacity both to create a new corporate ideology justifying monopoly capital (witness the Jenks address and the Chicago conference) and the skill to organize production efficiently (recall Adams on railroad accounting procedures and new social scientists' participation in the ICC). The nascent industrial finance corporate sector well understood its objective need for these skills. Widespread popular agitation and unstable pooling arrangements had taught them — and indeed, the nation — the dangers of centralizing capital without specialized academic assistance. And if the rising elite's instruction in its need for social science was direct, the nation's was no less detailed. Beyond its own participation and observations of industrialization, a wide range of extra-academic cultural workers offered lessons. For example, Daniel DeLeon's The People offered a continuous commentary countering the new social scientists' ideological positions. And the readers of Frank Norris' The Octopus (1901) found Lyman Derrick, a representative of newer social arrangements, advising his father, an older agrarian capitalist, on the technical accounting problems of monopolistic integration.The man who, even after twenty years' training in the operation of railroads, can draw an equitable, smoothly working schedule of freight rates between shipping point and common point, is capable of governing the United States. What with main lines, and leased lines, and points of transfer, and the laws governing common carriers, and the rulings of the Interstate Commerce Commission, the whole matter has become so confused that Vanderbilt himself couldn't straighten it out.... Cut rates; yes... any fool can write one dollar instead of two, but if you cut too low by a fraction of one percent, and if the Railroad can get out an injunction, tie you up and show that your new rate prevents the road being operated at a profit, how are you better off?Clearly in the increasingly complex American situation, the new social scientists had important ideological and technical skills to exchange for the resources held within the rising monopoly capital center. And they had, thereby, some degree of freedom in their negotiations with its leading figures. Their latitude for independent action becomes clearer when we ask, given the emerging corporate center's need for intellectual support and their willingness to supply resources, why didn't they employ established New England practitioners? In part, as previously indicated, the ASSAers were unavailable, being integrated into their own region and tied to their own sustaining, if relatively immobile, elite. Further, the older social scientists offered a slightly different intellectual product. Although both new and old social scientists were ideologues of state intervention designed to conserve capitalism, they differed on where regulation should occur. In the main, ASSAers worked for government intervention at the state level, while AEAers called for state solutions at the national level out of their shared German Historical experience. Finally, even though old social scientists often possessed much the same technical skills and used the same rhetoric of science as the new, they usually lacked graduate degrees, the prestige of university employment, and the growing authority of specialization in a society where credentials were increasingly seen as critical to success. These differences between old and new — availability, product, and certification—in all probability expanded AEAers' capacity to drive a harder bargain with capital.Given the ASSA's reluctance to break sustaining regional ties, the unsuitability of populist and socialist intellectual workers, and their own certified technical and ideological skills, the new social scientists had some latitude in their negotiations with national corporate capital. Yet they chose to serve power, fundamentally since this maximized their own career and professional interests while meeting the objective demand for resources outlined above. In this, academics were probably no more greedy or selfish than lawyers in the ABA or doctors in the AMA, but neither were they less so. We see the new social scientists' decision to serve power most clearly in their careful and collective clarification of opportunity, identifying and seeking service in that sector of the economy most likely to deliver sustained resource support — national corporate capital's leadership. Thus, new social scientists generally accepted corporate capitalism per se as the framework indispensable to conditions of human progress. Then all other social issues (labor unrest, urban crowding, plutocracy) became technical problems defused of interestladen content, and they could perform latent ideological and legitimation functions while correctly claiming a manifest value neutrality. That they understood the implications of grounding social and economic theory on acceptance of modern monopoly capital is made clear in Hadley's presidential address following his Spanish American War speech; it focused on the relation between Economic Theory and Political Morality. The address and following debate stressed the inadvisability of economic theory's acknowledging questions of class if social scientists were to have a role in public affairs. Instead, the impartial pursuit of an empirically artificial construct, the common interest, was deliberately substituted for any consideration of specific class interests. Thus, disinterested objectivity, the cornerstone of professionalization theory, became an artifact of career.With fashioning the expert role in the AEA's forum, the new social science became a collaborative partner in creating monopoly capitalism in the Progressive period. In return for their work in ideology production and technical amelioration, the economists insured the continued procurement of the resources required to industrialize US social science. What happened afterwards? After acting opportunistically to meet their professional and career interests, did establishing a firm resource base liberate the new social science from future opportunistic behavior? And could the established social science in time become resource independent, enough so to act in its own right; for example, participating in counter-hegemonic ideological and technical enterprises? In order to address these questions, we must move beyond our available data, guiding our speculations by the outline of our exchange analysis and our incomplete reading of the years following the fashioning of the new social scientists' expert role. We think that once accepted into collaborative partnership, opportunism was curbed by an emerging strategy for enhancing the long term interests of the profession. Consider, for example, the foundations then being invented by corporate capital. Russell Sage was lauded at birth by social science leaders, some of whom sought its funding, as did the American Political Science Association's leadership for their work rationalizing urban police forces. The Rockefeller Foundation, however, failed to attract the new social scientist leaderships' participation when it set up offices to offset the ideological cost of its victory in the Colorado Coal Wars. Seeking resources to perfect urban social control was professionally acceptable; justifying the Ludlow Massacre was not. Resource procurement continued to be crucial, but the new social science was not simply for hire to any corporate capitalist offering a subsidy. The critical point of distinction was perhaps whether or not accepting resources and projects made a mockery of professional claims to serve the public good.If opportunism declined with the institutionalization of new social scientists' expert role and the stabilized exchanges it created, did the new social science find within its ranks the voices and actions of independent, even counter-hegemonic views, speakers and agitators against monopoly capitalism? In the Progessive period there were few, and they either left the academy out of a sense that active opposition was not permitted (as was the case with Daniel DeLeon) or were forced out (as was the case with Scott Nearing). We cannot answer this question exactly for the several decades since the expert's role was put in place, but we have listened hard for oppositional voices and have failed to hear them. As sociologists, we were somewhat surprised, in part since our sense of the radical timbre of our field was heightened by repeated and well-reported surveys of faculty opinion placing this specialty at the left margin of academic attitudes. We have no particular quarrel with the survey results and know that individual sociologists have on occasion spoken forcefully against the established center of the American political economy. Still, sociology as a profession seems to have fully accepted the expert role and exchanges created long ago by the new social scientists, if organized counter-hegemonic activity is accepted as a fair index. Even if we accept sociology's somewhat self-conscious claim to be the left wing of academia, it is difficult to hear much counter-hegemonic (as opposed to countercultural) flapping going on. Perhaps the matter will be clarified by a more detailed analysis of resources and role for this later period.We would like to re-emphasize that the burden of this paper is the inadequacy of professionalization theory as an explanation for the modern social scientist's role. Although using an exchange framework, one in which disinterested technical expertise is offered in return for a monopoly of knowledge, it fails to explore fully its own implications. The resource demands of intellectual workers dependent on institutions for occupation are not considered; neither is the intent, function, and location of resource suppliers. By pointing to the importance of role resources through locating abstract entities (the profession, the community-at-large) in concrete groups (the leadership of social science organizations, specific groups of resource holders contributing to institutionalizing knowledge), we hope to focus professional attention on the material conditions for role emergence and the way in which complementarity can be negotiated. By continuing this examination of resource transactions surrounding role development, perhaps we will more fully understand the possibilities and limitations of the career structures in which we labor.     

Science,Policy, and Controversy in the Cholesterol Arena

This article investigates the relationships between scientific knowledge and dietary policy in the cholesterol arena, a site of controversy for over 40 years. It draws on the concepts and methods of Anselm Strauss, especially social worlds/arenas theory, to analyze the negotiations and conflicts through which both scientific knowledge and public health policy were created. Science/policy interactions were shaped by shifting distributions of power and legitimacy among many interested social worlds. These shifts reflected changing cultural, commercial, and political conditions which, over the decades, favored the entrenchment of initially provisional and tentative dietary recommendations. The cultural foundations of policy interventions can be as salient as scientific research. They can also contribute to ongoing instability in controversial arenas.     

Big Food,Nutritionism, and Corporate Power

Big Food corporations have capitalized on nutritionism—the reduction of food’s nutritional value to its individual nutrients—as a means by which to enhance their power and position in global processed and packaged food markets. Drawing on the literatures on nutrition and corporate power, we show that Big Food companies have used nutritional positioning to bolster their power and influence in the sector. Through lobbying and participation in nutritionally focused public–private partnerships, they have directly sought to influence policy and governance. Through market dominance in the nutritionally enhanced foods sector, and participation in nutrition-focused rule-setting activities in agrifood supply chains, they have gained power to influence policy agendas. And they have used public outreach and the media to present their views on the nutritional aspects of their products, which shapes public perceptions and the broader regulatory environment. Together, these strategies have enhanced the power of Big Food firms to influence policies in the food sector.     

One size fits all? On the institutionalization of participatory technology assessment and its interconnection with national ways of policy-making: the cases of Switzerland and Austria

Science and technology policy is often confronted with issues that are both complex and controversial and which have to be decided upon in a delicate constellation of policy-makers, experts, stakeholders, non-governmental organizations and the public. One attempt to deal with such a complex problem is via citizen involvement. Participatory technology assessment (pTA) already goes back to several decades, and countries have made various experiences. While in some countries, governments established technology assessment organizations, which also included pTA in their methodological portfolio, others primarily rely on experts to make decisions on science and technology policy. In a third group of countries non-state actors, such as social scientists, experimented with pTA. However, they were often unable to link these experiments to policy-making. This paper deals with the question of why this variation exists and compares the use of pTA in Switzerland and Austria. Despite similarities between the two countries, both had quite different experiences with pTA so far. Whereas several pTAs have been carried out in Switzerland until today, Austrian pTAs have remained infrequent. The aim of this paper is to explain this difference as a result of different ways of policy-making which affect the use and chances of pTA.     

The Empirical Side of the Power Elite Debate: an Assessment and Critique of Recent Research*

From the earliest writings in social science there have been lively debates over the extent to which societies are dominated by elites. Recently, empirical data have been considered for elite backgrounds, elite interlock, elite unity, and elite influence on public policy, but interpretation of the data continue to be problematic. The findings are often confusing and conflicting mainly because of differing methodologies, definitions and indicators of elite status. Focusing on the four areas of quantitative research listed, we compare the findings in an attempt to explain some of the conflicts. When possible, we have prepared summaries of the consistent findings, which tend to show, with respect to these issues, greater support for elite theories as opposed to pluralist theory. Finally we discuss some of the major questions in the debate that current research is unable to answer, and outline future research needs.