Abstract
The development of theory about international relations by academic scholars and the use of this knowledge by practitioners in the conduct of foreign policy have been handicapped by the different cultures in which they have traditionally resided. Members of these two communities have been socialized in quite different professional and intellectual worlds. They generally define their interest in the subject of international relations differently. The policymaker is typically preoccupied with how best to promote the national interest of the United States. However, many scholars believe this to be too narrow an approach to international relations and choose to work with a set of values broader than those encompassed by conventional notions of the national interest. An additional obstacle to bridging the two cultures is the reluctance of some scholars, particularly when they disagree with the government’s foreign policies, to serve as ‘technicians’ for the state by providing specialized knowledge that may be ‘misused.’ Such scholars prefer the roles of critic and “unattached intellectual.”
The policymaker, unlike an academic analyst, can rarely wait until all the facts are in… He is very often under strong pressure to do something, to take some action…. The capacity of human beings to deal with situations of vast complexity is very limited. The human mind needs a highly simplified ‘map’ of a situation if it is going to be capable of taking any action or making a decision.
—Robert Bowie, as quoted in Ernest R. May (ed.), Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World, Wars (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), pp. 3–4.
This text was first published as: “The Two Cultures of Academia and Policymaking.” Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice in Foreign Policy. Washington, DC: U.S. Institute of Peace, 1993, pp. 3–18. The permission was granted on 12 September 2017 by Ms. Cecilia Stoute, Sales, Rights, and Marketing Specialist of the United States Institute of Peace.
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Notes
- 1.
I use the term practitioners broadly to include specialists who make different kinds of contributions to the policymaking process.
In addition to top policymakers, they include advisers, policy analysts, intelligence specialists, and functional and area experts. There are important differences in perspective toward scholarly research and its relevance to policymaking between political-level officials (elected or appointed) and career professionals who serve at lower levels in the government. The former are more action- oriented, the latter more likely to give attention to the analysis of policy issues and to be more receptive to the work and views of academic scholars.
- 2.
Carol H. Weiss with Michael J. Bucuvalas, Social Science Research and Decision-making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1980), p. 2.
- 3.
For an analysis along similar lines see Robert L. Rothstein, Planning, Prediction, and Policymaking in Foreign Affairs: Theory and Practice (Boston: Little, Brown, 1972). Observations similar to some of those in this chapter regarding the “two cultures” are also presented in Daniel Druckman and P. Terrence Hopmann, “Behavioral Aspects of Negotiations on Mutual Security,” in P. E. Tetlock et. al. (eds.), Behavior, Society, and Nuclear War, Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 85–173; Nathan Caplan, Andrea Morrison, and Russell J. Stambaugh, The Use of Social Science Knowledge in Policy Decisions at the National Level (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1975); and Weiss with Bucuvalas, Social Science Research and Decision-making (see n. 2). See also Harold Guetzkow’s report on twenty interviews he conducted with policy specialists in various parts of the government during the summer of 1980 to identify their perceived need for knowledge about alliance behavior. (“Survey of Policy Community” in Michael Don Ward, Research Gaps in Alliance Dynamics, Denver: Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver Monograph Series in World Affairs, 1982, Vol. 19, Book 1, pp. 71–83.).
- 4.
George Ball, “Lawyers and Diplomats,” address before the New York Lawyers’ Association, New York City, December 13, 1962; Department of State Bulletin, December 31, 1962, pp. 987–991.
- 5.
Jerrold M. Post and Raphael Ezekial, “Worlds in Collision: The Uneasy Relationship between the Counter-terroristic Policy Community and the Academic Community, Terrorism, Vol. 11.
- 6.
Schelling’s book was published by Yale University Press in 1966. Goodwin’s review appeared in the New Yorker, February 17, 1968.
- 7.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, for example, states in his memoir that during his four years as President Carter’s national security adviser, he was “very conscious of the degree to which my intellectual arsenal was becoming depleted in the course of a continuous race against time. There was hardly ever any time to think systematically, to reexamine views, or simply to reflect. A broader historical perspective and a sense of direction are the prerequisites for sound policymaking, and both tend gradually to become victims of in-house official doctrine and outlook and of the pressure toward compromise” (Power and Principle [New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1983], p. 514).
- 8.
The generic problem, as Ernest May notes (personal communication), is the one that Michael Polanyi diagnosed in his book, Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). People have “tacit knowledge” that they have difficulty turning into transferable, explicit knowledge.
- 9.
For a detailed analysis of the pitfalls in policymaking from reliance on a single historical analogy and various safeguards see Richard E. Neustaclt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-makers (New York: Free Press, 1986). See also Yaacov Y. I. Vertzberger, “Decisionmakers as Practical-Intuitive Historians: The Use and Abuse of History,” in his The World in Their Minds (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990); Robert Jervis, “How Decisionmakers Learn from History,” in his Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976); and, on the role that the Korean analogy played in President Johnson’s Vietnam decision making, Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
- 10.
Louis Halle, American Foreign Policy (London: G. Allen, 1960), pp. 316, 318. By “philosophically false,” Halle probably had in mind the conceptual inadequacy of theories of international relations that ignore or minimize the importance of actors’ cognitive beliefs and mind-sets.
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George, A.L. (2019). The Two Cultures of Academia and Policymaking. In: Caldwell, D. (eds) Alexander L. George: A Pioneer in Political and Social Sciences. Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90772-7_14
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