Why Political Scientists Aren't Public Intellectuals

Why Political Scientists Aren't Public IntellectualsAuthor(s): Andrew StarkSource: PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 35, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 577-579Published by: American Political Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1554691 .

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_ I il I 1 11I i Mom THE PROFESSION

Why Political Scientists Aren't Public

Intellectuals

Andrew Stark, University of Toronto

In a New Republic cover story published three years ago entitled "Irra-

tional Exuberance: When Did Political Science Forget about Politics?" the jour- nalist Jonathan Cohn (1999) lamented the disappearance of a certain kind of academic-typified by the Harvard professors James Q. Wilson, Samuel Huntington and Stanley Hoffmann- from contemporary political science departments. Wilson "was more than just a scholar," Cohn wrote, "he was a public intellectual" whose "byline was as apt to appear on some policy-related article in the New York Times (or The New Republic) as it was on a peer-reviewed paper in the American Political Science Review." Huntington, "arguably his generation's most influential student of international relations," helped to start a popularly read foreign-policy journal. And Hoffmann, whose scholarship spanned "political theory, comparative government and international relations," still found "time to write regularly for the New York Review of Books."

While Wilson, Huntington, and Hoffmann of course continue to be active public intellectuals, Cohn's larger observation-that political scientists today are by and large absent from the contemporary public stage-rings true. But the explanation he offers does not. Cohn claims that political scientists have become increasingly obsessed with using abstruse mathematical models- the apparatus of rational-choice and game theory-to understand politics. Hence, Cohn says, the discipline now produces work that at face value seems to have little to do with the real world of politicians, bureaucrats, and citizens. But if scientization were the problem, then one would expect the more "sciency" social scientists-economists, for example, let alone physical or life scientists-to be even less evident in

Andrew Stark is professor of strategic management and political science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Conflict of Interest in American Public Life (Harvard University Press, 2000).

public debate than political scientists. And yet the reverse seems more the case. Flip through the past year's issues of the New Republic or the New York Review of Books, or the New York Times, and the bylines of economists such as Amartya Sen, James K. Galbraith, Benjamin Friedman, Joseph Stiglitz, Lester Thurow, Glenn Loury, Paul Krugman, Robert Skidelsky, Robert M. Solow, and Robert Frank crop up regularly, as do those of physical or life scientists: Richard Lewontin, Oliver Sacks, Steven Weinberg, Freeman Dyson, Jerome Groopman, and the late Stephen Jay Gould and M.F. Perutz.

Likewise, psychologists such as Jerome Bruner, Steven Pinker, Jerome Kagan, Adam Phillips, and Howard Gardner are more in evidence in these public pages than are political scientists. So are or sociologists such as Nathan Glazer, Paul Starr, Amitai Etzioni, Todd Gitlin, and Orlando Patterson. I would include Theda Skocpol and Alan Wolfe here, since-although they are public intellectuals currently in political science departments-they began their careers as sociologists; sociology is their home discipline and original academic culture. Robert Putnam might seem to be the exception that proves the rule, but I'll here note the description Richard Posner offers of Putnam, in his recent book Public Intellectuals, as "a political scientist writing as a sociologist" (Posner 2001, 13).

More exactly-in order to even the playing field with the other social sciences-I say that economists, psychologists, and sociologists are more in evidence in public pages than are the social scientists in political science departments. Unlike the psychology, sociology or economics professoriat, political science faculty members-and this is a point to which I will return- include not only mainline social scientists, but also scholars oriented either toward the humanities (historians of political ideas, political philosophers) or toward a practising profession (scholars of public policy/administration). And, as

it happens, historians of political thought and political philosophers, many with joint appointments in history, philosophy, theology, or law departments- such as Michael Sandel, Jean Bethke Elshtain, Harvey Mansfield, Benjamin Barber, and Alan Ryan-certainly intervene in public debate. So do public-policy scholars in political science departments, many of whom hold joint appointments at public-policy schools or think-tanks, such as John DiIulio, Theodore Marmor, Andrew Hacker and Paul Peterson. Their bylines are indeed found in journals such as the New Republic and the New York Review of Books, or the American Prospect and the Public Interest, or on the op-ed page of the New York Times. But apart from them, mainline social scientists in political science departments-scholars who have one foot out the door neither in history/philosophy departments nor in public policy/administration schools and institutes-make virtually no appearance in public pages.

The problem, then, isn't that today's political scientists have strayed from the path of their predecessors, forsaking the tradition of James Q. Wilson, Stanley Hoffmann, and Samuel Huntington, who formed a small and unique group even in their own generation. It's that so many of today's most prominent social scientists in political science departments have parted ways with today's social scientists in other fields, such as Sen and Solow, or Starr and Patterson. And so the question remains: Why is it that the mainline social scientists in political science departments don't write for larger public audiences-unlike the social scientists in economics, sociology, or psychology departments?

I suspect that the answer is deep and structural. To see it, begin by consider- ing two kinds of cross-cutting distinctions among the four major social sciences-political science, economics, psychology, and sociology. If I say that someone is an economist or a psychol- ogist, you wouldn't know whether that person works inside or outside of the

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academy; the same term applies in both cases. But if I say that someone is a political scientist-or, for that matter, a sociologist-you would naturally assume that I was talking about a professor. Po- litical scientists outside of the academy might be civil servants or public-affairs special- l i ists, and sociologists might be IVI social workers or marketers, - but by and large they are no In p longer called "political scien- part tists" or "sociologists." p

This terminological differ- less ence between political scientists and sociologists on the scie one hand, and psychologists and economists on the other, tUrn signifies something important. Relationships between academ- m at ics and practitioners are closer in psychology and economics OUts than in political science (that is, as far as its mainline social StrUi scientists are concerned) or sociology. University psychologists and economists are much more tightly linked to outsiders-who may do much the same kind of work as they do-which is why the same term applies to each. Indeed, while a majority of members of the American Psychologi- cal Association and fully half of the membership of the American Economic Association are nonacademics, many of them practitioners, only 25% of the American Political Science Association (and 20% of the American Sociological Association) hail from outside the academy. Accordingly, even in their scholarly output, academic psychologists and economists write as much for audiences of practitioners as for other academics; there is thus a ready-to-hand external audience for their writing, and this naturally draws their intellectual conscious- ness out of the academy. The same is less true of "mainline social-science" political scientists and sociologists.

Now hold that thought while consid- ering one further distinction dividing the four social sciences, this time into a different set of pairs. The practitioners to whom psychology and sociology are linked, whether more or less closely-as with clinical psychologists for psychology, or social workers for sociology-belong to the so-called "helping professions." They are meant to benefit identifiable clients: troubled adolescents or addicts, families or immigrants, the poor or victims of dis- crimination. In effect, academic psychologists and sociologists-through their links to the helping professions- can directly aid those whose behavior they study, at least more than is the

case for political scientists or economists.

Along these lines, while there is no such thing as "psychological behavior" or "sociological behavior"-all behavior

nline social scientists political science de- tments are simply

likely than social ntists elsewhere to

their voices, as

ter of course, to the side world. It's a

ctural matter.

is psychological or sociological, or at least falls within the province of psychology or sociology-there are such things as "political behavior" and "economic behavior." Those terms make sense-even though many economists like to think that all behavior is economic-because political scientists focus mainly on certain (often abstracted) as- pects of human behavior, our behavior as citizens, interest-group members, or politicians, just as economists focus largely on our behavior as consumers, workers, or investors. Because psychology and sociology are linked more closely to the entire range of human behavior-and to the whole human being-they more frequently (if certainly not always) lend themselves to clienteles in the "real world" who can readily identify with, or vividly see themselves in, the academic work being produced.

I recognize that these are broad-brush distinctions and that some qualifications and quibbles may be admissible. But they state a core twofold truth. First, the mainline social scientists in political science departments, along with sociologists, are less closely linked to practitioners outside the academy than are either economists or psychologists. Second, the mainline social scientists in political science departments, along with economists, are less closely linked to clients outside the academy than are sociologists or psychologists. Of the four social sciences, then, political science is the only one that operates at a relatively greater remove from both identifiable practitioners and identifiable clients-in

other words, from the world outside of the academy. Mainline social scientists in political science departments are simply less likely than social scientists elsewhere to turn their voices, as matter of course, to the outside world. It's a structural matter.

Let me reinforce this point by return- ing to an issue I mentioned earlier: the unique presence in political science departments-as distinct from economics, sociology, or psychology departments- of scholars who are allied with either a profession (public policy/administration) or the humanities (historians of political thought, political philosophers). While professional schools might hire social scientists-law and business schools have sociologists and economists on faculty, social-work schools have sociologists and psychologists, and, yes, public-policy schools have political scientists-only political science re- verses the arrow. It's a social-science department that routinely places "professional" scholars-public-administration/ policy scholars-on faculty. Put another way, a political science department is the only social-science department that offers the same kind of degree as does a professional school: a master's of public administration, which about 40 political science departments in the U.S. confer (as, of course, do scores of freestanding public-policy or public- management graduate schools). You can't get a graduate degree in law in a sociology department, or a graduate degree in business in an economics department. The professional presence in political science departments is unique.

And so is the humanities presence. Political science is the only social-science discipline that embraces humanities scholars: political philosophers and historians of political thought. Philosophers or historians of ideas make for a far less robust presence in psychology, sociology, or even economics departments. Consider that while only five economists, four sociologists and no psychologists have been fellows at the National Humanities Center over the past 20 years, 19 political scientists-all political philosophers or historians of political thought-have enjoyed the same status.

So political science departments, alone among their social-science coun- terparts, harbor cadres of scholars who specialize in professional or humanities education. Thus, mainline social scientists in political science departments are simply more buffered from the outside world than are social scientists elsewhere, because they alone have available in-house specialists-public- policy/administration scholars-to talk

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to the nearest professionals or practitioners, the politicians and the civil servants, in the pages of the Public Interest or the American Prospect. And they have other in-house specialists- humanists, who speak with words, not symbols-to talk to ordinary human beings, citizens, in the pages of the New Republic or the New York Review of Books. By contrast, the social scientists who fill economics, psychology, or sociology departments don't have such in-house external relations officers. They have no buffer insulating them from the worlds of practitioners and professionals, or of clients and ordinary human beings. It is they who must communicate with the outside world.

And, as I noted, economists and psychologists are in any case more directly connected to the external world of practitioners, and sociologists and psychologists to the external realm of clients, than are mainline social scientists in political science departments. There simply isn't a ready-made practitioner or client audience for such political scientists as there is for other social scientists.

It's hard to believe that public dis- course isn't poorer for the nonpartici- pation of mainline social scientists from political science departments. Yet if the problem is structural, the solu- tion must be individual, for the struc- ture of the discipline isn't going to

change. Nor, after all these years, are the editors of the New Republic or the New York Times likely to call. It will be up to individual social scientists in political science departments-first having become aware that they inhabit a structural oddity, and of the reasons for it-to break the mold. It may be time for them to do with the New Republic and the New York Review of Books what they are so justifiably proud of doing with the American Po- litical Science Review and other peer- reviewed journals: write something on spec, with no assurance that it will be published, and submit it over the tran- som. Someone's got to make the first move.

References Cohn, Jonathan. 1999. "Irrational Exuberance:

When Did Political Science Forget about Politics?" The New Republic, Oct. 25, 25-32.

Posner, Richard. 2001. Public Intellectuals: A Study of Decline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Why Political Scientists Aren't Public Intellectuals