From @DanDrezner:
Fun exercise: imagine a SecState or NSC Advisor referring to “studies” — i.e., the literature — as much as Yellen has in Cong. testimony.
This is partly a problem of “senior policy officials don’t read research”, or even try to keep up through staffers.
Also at issue is that an immense amount of what the best political scientists are doing is irrelevant to what State or the NSC does, and what is relevant is often of mediocre quality. I think this is improving but I’m not very sure.
2 Responses
fortunately there’s a new journal designed to help fix this very problem: Behavioral Science & Policy, http://bsp-journal.org/
Chris your last paragraph is bang-on. From daily interactions at the research-policy interface, I can report that the problem is not just policymakers’ lack of incentives to demand research. The problem also substantially lies in social scientists’ lack of incentives to supply research whose 1) topics are of interest to policymakers and 2) findings are communicated in a way that’s useful to policymakers.