Report on Grant Support from the National Science FoundationAuthor(s): David Calhoun LeegeSource: PS, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Summer, 1976), pp. 290-292Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/418008 .

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Report on Grant Support from the National Science Foundation

The financial outlook for political scientists seeking support to do basic research has im- proved substantially during the past year at the National Science Foundation. Previous reports have indicated (PS, Winter 1975; PS, Winter 1976) that the Political Science Program has been budgeted at approximately $1.4 million per annum for the last half decade; its expendi- tures have normally been within $100,000 plus or minus that figure. In Fiscal Year 1976, however, the Program's budget was increased to $1.7 million; its expenditures approached $2.2 million. The FY 77 request currently under consideration by the Congress calls for an additional increase in the Program's budget. In short, there is a developing recognition by the Foundation that the research questions and strategies offered by political scientists merit support. The discrepancy between a program's budget and its expenditures is a curious mix of fiscal year deadlines, heavy demands on a program's budget, unclaimed funds in other sectors of the Foundation, and extremely meritorious pro- posals at the right time. Augmentations totaled nearly $.5 million in FY 76 with the largest contribution coming from the reserve funds of the Director of the Foundation and being directed to the CPS 1976 Election Study. However, just as a program can gain from augmentations, it can also lose part of its budget to augmentations of other programs. If a program receives an insufficient volume of proposals judged highly meritorious by peer reviewers, it cannot lay strong claim to unspent funds with less meritorious proposals. From time to time, questions surface regarding peer review, program priorities, and related matters. A proposal is reviewed typically by the five-member panel which is appointed for the biennium, between two and seven external referees who are specialists in areas related to the proposal, the program director and other Foundation personnel. On the basis of these peer reviews, the program director formulates a recommendation which is reviewed and, if well-documented and convincing, concurred in by the division director, an action review board, the assistant director for the directorate, and the grants and contracts office. Large awards are also reviewed by the National Science Board, the governing body of the Foundation. Peer reviewers are to make judgments according to eleven criteria established by the Board.* Of

*For a complete listing of these criteria, see National Science Foundation, Guide to Programs, Fiscal Year 1976 (U.S. Government Printing Office, Stock Num- ber 038-000-00264), pp. v-viii.

David Calhoun Leege National Science Foundation

these criteria, clearly the ones relating to the internal structure of the science (probability that the project will lead to a significant discovery or extension of scientific knowledge or investigative technique) and the competence of the investigator predominate in the minds of referees.

Care is taken to avoid either the reality or the appearance of conflict of interest. Panel mem- bers and program directors do not review proposals originating in their own academic institutions or coming from recent collaborat- ors. When a proposal is received from a panel member, it is not reviewed by other panelists but is sent to an enlarged group of ad hoc referees. Not uncommonly, panelists are grant- ees; as active and creative scholars, however, typically they were grantees prior to panel service.

Responding to charges of institutional elitism, the Foundation has undertaken several studies of peer review systems. What may come as a surprise to the political and scientific communi- ties, one study has found that referees from the "top twenty" institutions (measured by several funding criteria) do not rate proposals from investigators at other "top twenty" institutions disproportionately higher. This funding may suggest that competent scholars are dispersed far more widely than leading institutions, that there is great variance in the scientific research capabilities of scholars in the so-called leading institutions, that rankings of institutions mean little, or perhaps that there is not a strong consensus among scientists regarding the most advantageous next steps for development of knowledge or research instruments. Any of these can be developed as interesting hypothe- ses by scholars studying the social structure of science. The Program deals almost completely with unsolicited proposals and, as a result, does not normally attach priorities to funding in specific fields. Nevertheless, charges of bias against a certain field may be made. Hopefully the charges can be allayed by the use of highly competent but widely representative panelists and by active specialists in that field. In the field of public choice, for example, some have alleged a program bias opposed to such research over the past biennium. Across all fields of the discipline during this period, however, about 25% of all proposals have been funded; among public choice proposals about 50% have been funded.

Unfortunately, charges of bias are fueled by the inaccessibility of Program declination decisions. Federal privacy regulations do not permit third- party access to proposals which have had

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adverse decisions. Thus, people outside the panels and Foundation staff see only the announcements of awards but not the declina- tions. It is easy to conclude from award lists that some universities or some scholars have inside tracks to funds. Yet the full data indicate large numbers and proportions of declinations at the same institutions that receive many awards. And scholars whose names appear on the Program's award lists over the past decade pepper the declination lists as well. Some places and people are more persistent.

Charges of bias are also fueled by applicants' failures to recognize that the Program is located in a social science division, a directorate, and a science foundation. It competes for funds with other sciences and its proposals are expected to take advantage of developments in other scien- ces. While the panel consists of political scien- tists, external referees offer competence in a specialized problem area. The majority of pro- posals during the past biennium received re- views from at least one-two scholars outside political science, primarily economics, sociol- ogy, social psychology, mathematics, statistics, anthropology, geography, and systems engineer- ing. To take two extremes, many proposals in public policy, while reflecting the level of understanding current in political science jour- nals, remain blithely unaware of important work in economics in the past two decades; some apparently sophisticated proposals in pub- lic choice fail to remain current with some advances in mathematics, economics, or dec- ades of experience and published literature in experimental psychology. The same phenome- non of course, operates in other programs; economists, for example, misspecify models, failing to capture key variables in political processes-and political science reviewers take relish in pointing out the literature gaps. What is less important is the normal push and haul among disciplinary orientations to problems. What is more important is the Foundation's feeling that it should attach low priority to funding projects which involve a great deal of remedial education.

In this respect, a declination is sometimes an important stage in developing a competitive proposal. Under new National Science Board regulations, the verbatim but non-attributed copies of referees' comments are now made available to the applicant upon signed request. Even under old regulations the program direc- tor provided feedback by telephone or para- phrased letter in many cases. Partially as a result of referees' comments, improved pro- posals are resubmitted. During the past bien- nium about one-third of the Program's awards have been made on resubmitted proposals which have profitted from reviewers' criticisms.

During the summer 1976 Professor Richard Dawson from Washington University, St. Louis, will begin a two-year appointment as program director and I will rotate back to an academic setting. He will announce the panel members for his term of office in the early autumn.

For virtually no renumeration, the panelists review between 90 and 180 proposals a year. Hundreds of others have been called on to review one-two proposals a year. The standards and judgments of referees, particularly the panelists, do much to establish the credibility of the discipline to the Foundation. The follow- ing 1974-76 panelists merit the enormous ap- preciation of their discipline and the social scientific community for their excellence in service: Richard Fenno, University of Roches- ter; John Gillespie, Indiana University; Robert Lineberry, Northwestern University; Richard Snyder, Ohio State University; and John Sprague, Washington University (St. Louis). The following awards, ranging from $11,600 to $777,200 for faculty projects and $700 to $6,200 for dissertation improvement projects, were made during FY 76 (nearly half of all awards were in the $60,000 to $100,000 range for a 24-month period):

Research

Enrique A. Baloyra and John D. Martz, Univer- sity of North Carolina. Politicization and Par- ticipation in a Developing Nation: Venezuela.

David Collier and Ruth B. Collier, Indiana University. Interest Representation and Politi- cal Modernization.

Richard I. Hofferbert, SUNY-Binghamton. Fi- nancing Education in Federal Systems (trans- fer). John P. Crecine, Carnegie-Mellon University. Federal Budget and Fiscal Policy Processes (supplement). Michael W. Traugott, University of Michigan. Data Resources for the Evaluation of Public Attitudes and Responses to Federal Energy Policy. John V. Gillespie and Dina A. Zinnes, Indiana University. Mathematical Models of Interna- tional Conflict.

Milton Lodge, SUNY-Stony Brook. The Cross- Modal Measurement of the Meaning and Strengths of Political Attitude Response. Dale Rogers Marshall, University of California, Davis; Rufus P. Browning and David H. Tabb, San Francisco State University. Collaborative Research on Implementation of Federal Policies in Local Settings.

Morris P. Fiorina, California Institute of Tech- nology. Retrospective Voting in American Na- tional Elections.

Robert Jackman, Michigan State University. Political Role of Indigenous Military in Third World Countries.

Douglas Hibbs, MIT. Testing a Disaggregated Model of Public Reactions to Macroeconomic Policy. Warren Miller, University of Michigan. The Study of the American Electorate in 1976.

W. Ladd Hollist and Harold Guetzkow, North- western University. Cumulating Theory in In-

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Report on Grant Support from the National Science Foundation

ternational Relations through Multivariate Analysis and Computer Simulation.

Robert D. Putnam, University of Michigan. The Birth and Development of Representative Po- litical Institutions: The Case of Regional Gov- ernment in Italy.

Edward S. Greenberg, University of Colorado. Worker Participation and Industrial Decision- Making.

William A. Lucas, RAND Corp. Testing a Model for Isolating Media Effects and Contextual Effects.

G. R. Boynton, University of Iowa. The Chang- ing Focus of Political Attention.

Norman Nie, University of Chicago. Preparation of Cross-National Participation Data for Ar- chiving.

Scott C. Flanigan, Florida State University; and Bradley Richardson, Ohio State University. Political Dissaffection in Japan.

John Sprague, Washington University, St. Louis; and Adam Przeworski, University of

Chicago. Collaborative Research on Industrial- ization and Comparative Party Strategies.

Dissertation Support

D. R. Mayhew (Chairman)/T. J. Eismeier (Can- didate), Yale University. Taxation and Repre- sentative Government.

E. E. Azar/A. Cisneros-Lavaller, University of North Carolina. Conflict and Cooperation in Latin America.

L. B. Mohr/J. L. Brudney, University of Michi- gan. Determinants and Consequences of Intra- organizational Power.

K. A. Shepsle/B. A. Ray, Washington Univer- sity, St. Louis. Congressional Influence and the Geographic Distribution of Federal Spending.

F. Greenstein/L. Berman, Princeton University. Bureau of the Budget-Office of Management and Budget-White House Relations: A Study of Variations and Responsiveness to Presiden- tial Style.

The International Political Science Associatlon

Invitation to Membership-1976

The International Political Science Association welcomes political scientists as members. The Association, founded in 1949, is composed of three cate- gories of members: individuals, institutions, and national associations.

Membership in the Association of $6.00 a year entitles members to receive the Newsletter giving information about IPSA activities and meetings; to purchase material published under IPSA auspices - including the Inter- national Bibliography of Political Science, published annually by Stevens in London and sets of papers submitted at IPSA meetings at reduced cost; and to register at IPSA meetings at lower rates.

Individual members are entitled also to receive at lower rates either the International Political Science Abstracts published bi-monthly by the Associ- ation itself or the International Social Science Journal, the quarterly organ of the Department of Social Sciences of UNESCO. To join the Association send your name and check to the International Political Science Association, General Secretariat, 43 rue des Champs Elysees, B-1050, Bruxelles, Belgium.

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