7 - Political culture and the policy orientation in Dutch social science

Summary

The emergence and development of policy-oriented social science depends upon a number of attributes and influences. As deLeon (chapter 3) and Jann (chapter 4) have suggested, one crucial external factor is the manner in which government deals with issues confronting it – a matter of political style, of political culture. At the very least there must be public acknowledgement of the value attached to the rational analysis of problems. Beyond this, there must be a sense that analysis is a specialized activity and not, as Smith (chapter 5) finds the case in the United Kingdom, well within the competence of the universally talented general administrator (see Heclo and Wildavsky, 1975). Government must be prepared to pay for its analyses. People who choose to call themselves policy analysts might at least hope to live from their new vocation.

Among internal factors, there must not only be some acceptance of the value of ‘relevant’ research among economists, sociologists, and political scientists, there must also be a preparedness on the part of some scientists to abandon disciplinary styles of work and past explanatory models in favour of the dictates of true multidisciplinarity. However, even this intellectual and professional receptivity is not enough. At the institutional level, as Wittrock et al. suggest in chapter 2, there must be the possibility for creating appropriate institutional structures.