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Is Political Science Alive and Well and Living at NSF: Reflections of a Program Director at Midstream

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2022

David Calhoun Leege
David Calhoun Leege*
Affiliation:
National Science Foundation
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Extract

The Political Science Program of the National Science Foundation is the primary source of support for basic research conducted by university-based political scientists. While the scientific progress of the discipline depends on what happens in the minds, the fields, the laboratories, the libraries, and the typewriters of scholars across the country, there is little question that the size of the Program budget and its usage affects the type and quality of research done by political scientists.

This article offers a public accounting to an interested clientele. In no way is it an officially sanctioned statement from NSF. It is a set of personal reflections with some analysis, parts of which my superiors at the Foundation find objectionable. Some of the arguments will not please important sectors of the discipline's intellectual and political leadership as well. I offer it in hopes of stimulating reaction and change. It is limited to basic research support, primarily through the Political Science Program, and does not extend to support for applied research funded typically through RANN-NSF. Finally, the Foundation is effecting a major reorganization which may have far-reaching consequences for the Division of Social Science of which the Program is a part; thus what is said here is subject to change over the next few years.

Type
Research Article
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Winter 1976 , pp. 8 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © The American Political Science Association 1976

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References

Notes

* An earlier version of this article was presented to the 1975 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association in San Francisco. The author appreciates the comments of two National Science Foundation officials on the earlier paper.

1. For an extended description of this period see Carroll, James D., “Notes on the Support of Political Science Research Projects by the Division of Social Sciences of the National Science Foundation, Fiscal Year 1958–65,” in The Use of Social Research in Federal Domestic Programs, Part IV (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967), pp. 81–105.Google Scholar This is one section of a staff study for the Research and Technical Operations Subcommittee of the House Committee on Governmental Operations. Officials of the Foundation took exception to several arguments and uses of data in the Carroll Report and their responses are included.

2. Haworth, Leland J., “Support of Political Science by the National Science Foundation,” American Political Science Review, LVIII (December 1964), pp. 1086–1088.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3. Compiled and extrapolated from successive annual reports of the National Academy of Sciences bearing the titles Doctoral Scientists and Engineers in the United States and Summary Report: Doctorate Recipients from United States Universities (Washington: National Academy of Sciences).

4. National Science Foundation, Federal Funds for Research, Development and Other Scientific Activities, Vols. XIX, XX, XXII, XXIII (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office).Google Scholar

5. Loc. Cit.

6. U.S. Congress, House, Subcommittee of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, Hearings on a Bill to Promote the Progress of Science …, 79th Congress, 2nd Session, 1946, p. 13.

7. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Appropriations, Hearings on Independent Offices Appropriations for 1967, 89th Congress, 2nd Session, 1966, pp. 144–45.Google Scholar

8. “Science Aide Stever Replies to NSF Critics,” Washington Star, August 20, 1975.