SOCIAL SCIENCE AND THE MODERN STATE:
KNOWLEDGE, INSTITUTIONS, AND SOCIETAL TRANSFORMATIONS by
Bjcjrn Wittrock , Peter Wagner , and Hellmut Wollmann
For publication in: Peter Wagner, Carol H. Weiss, Bjorn Wittrock, Hellmut Wollmann, eds., Social Science in Societal Contexts;
The Policy Orientation and Beyond (forthcoming).
University of Stockholm and Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung
***
Freie Universitat Berlin
the emergence and evolution of problem-oriented social science in its relation to societal institutions in Europe, the United States, and Japan, work that has been in progress at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung for some years. The authors outline a gene- ral conceptual framework--which is called discourse structuration--for an analysis of the evolution and transformations of the relationships between social science- and societal institutions. The relevance of political institutions and policy legacies as important elements of the political context are distinguished from the significance that
institutional structures as well as intellectual and scholarly tra- ditions in a national science system may have for social scientific developments. In order to understand the way such influences come to be felt and how they shape emerging and changing societal demands for knowledge, it is stressed that an analysis must be focused on the action of knowledgeable and capable human beings, be they researchers or politicians, in a given situation. The authors introduce the notion of "discourse coalitions" to describe particularly close forms of
interaction between policymakers and social scientists.
More generally, they propose an analytical framework for the analysis of relationships between social science and societal institutions which, they argue, is more encompassing--and thus powerful--in both historical and comparative terms than those which have been previously elaborated, e.g. in terms of intellectual institutionalization or functional-evolutionary determination or political institutions. They discern three major phases in the development of such relationships, namely an early phase of a transformation from ameliorative and associate onal social science to professional and disciplinary forms of scholarship with a pattern of ad hoc and intermittent linkages to policymaking, a second one of discourse institutionalization and, finally, a third one which in the European context has been character- ized by intensified interaction but also by tendencies towards discour- se regulation and asymmetric relationships between social science and the political-administrative sphere.
projektes uber die Entstehung und Entwicklung problemorientierter so- zialwi ssenschaf tlicher Forschung in ihrer Beziehung zu den jeweiligen gesel1schaftlichen Institutionen in Westeuropa, den USA und Japan zusam- men, das seit einigen Jahren am Wi ssenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozial- forschung durchgeflihrt wird. Die Autoren skizzieren unter der Bezeich- nung Dis;kursstrukturierxing einen allgemeinen konzeptionellen Rahmen flir die Analyse der AusbiIdling und Transformation der Beziehung zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und gesel1schaftlichen Institutionen. Die Bedeutung politischer Institutionen und Hand!ungstraditionen als wichtige Elemente des politischen Kontextes wird dabei von dem EinfluB unterschieden, den sowohl institutionelle Strukturen als auch intellektuelle und wissen- schaftlichs Traditionen in national en Vli ssenschaf tskontexten auf die Sozialwissenschaftsentwicklung nehmen. Es wird herausgestellt, daB eine solche Analyse die Mandlungen der wissenden und handlungsfahigen Akteure - seien sie Forscher oder Politiker - in der jeweiligen Situation zum Ausgangspunkt nehmen muB3 urn die tatsachliche Bedeutung der EinfluBfak- toren "auf entstehende und sich verandernde gesellschaftliche Nachfrage nach sozialem Wissen kennzeichnen zu konnen. Der Begriff Diskurskoali- tionen wird eingeflihrt, um besonders intensive Formen der Interaktion von politischen Akteuren und Sozialwissenschaftlern zu beschreiben.
Daruber hi nans wird ein allgemeiner analytischer Rahmen fur die Untersu- chung der Beziehung zwischen Sozialwissenschaften und gesel1schaftlichen Institutionen entwickelt, der in historisch-komparativer Perspektive umfassendor angelegt und damit erklarungsfahiger ist, als andere bislang vorgelegte Ansatze wie etwa diejenigen, die sich auf Aspekte der intel- lektuellen Institutionalisierung, der funktional-evolutionaren Determi- nierung oder der Bestimmung durch politische Institutionen konzentrie- ren. In der vorliegenden Untersuchung werden drei Phasen der Entwicklung dieser Beziehung unterschieden: eine Phase der Transformation von ame- liorate orientierter und "vereinsformig" organisierter Sozialforschung zur professionellen und disziplinar strukturierten Sozialwissenschaft, die durch diskontinuierliche und ad hoc-Verbindungen zur Politik ge- kennzeichnet ist,, eine zweite Phase der Diskursinstitutionalisierung und schlieBlich eine dritte, die im europaischen Kontext durch intensivierte Interaktion, aber auch durch Tendenzen zur Diskursregulierung und asym- metrischen Vernaltnissen zwischen den Sozialwissenschaften und der poli- ti sch-administrati von Sphare charakterisiert ist.
Part I: The Development of the Social Sciences:
Disarray and Discontinuities or Rise and Reassessment? 2
- The Contextuality of the Policy Orientation 3 - Putting the "Social Question" on the Political Agenda:
Social Science and the Late Liberal State 12 - Divergence: Consolidation in the United States
and Discontinuities in Continental Europe 19 - Reform Coalitions: Social Science and the
Interventionist Welfare State 26 - Reassessment: Social Science and the Crisis
of the Welfare State 36
Part II: Social Science and Societal Institutions:
Theoretical Perspectives 48
- Conceptualizing Social and Intellectual Transformations 48
- The Intellectual-Institutional Perspective 55 - The Functional-Evolutionary Perspective 61 - The Politicoinstitutional Perspective 67
- Discourse Structuration 74
The social sciences were constituted as part of the modernization and rationalization of Western societies in the course of nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They were preoccuppied with the far-reaching effects of the transformation of traditional societies into modern ones.
Their focus was on key features of that transformation; "the social question," the rationalization of the world--in German debate captured by the term "die Moderne"--and the rise of representative institutions were crucial concerns. But the social sciences were also part of that very process of transformation. They were to contribute to the amelio- ration of social evils and provide a basis for the rational and enlight- ened ordering of societal affairs. Such were the ambitions of the found- ing fathers of social science, and so have their emergence and evolution been perceived by later generations:
The historical transformation of social inquiry from rational specu- lation to empirical research occurred, as part of the general con- quest of philosophy by science, in nineteenth-century Europe. This decisive turn in intellectual history accompanied the institutional transformation which gave modern society its distinctive character.
. The great problems of the age issued from the newly uprooted and displaced class of industrial urban workers and their
families. . . . The roots of social science lie in its responsiveness to the needs of modern society for empirical, quantitative, policy-relevant information about itself." (Lerner, 1959, pp. 15 and 19)
When Daniel Lerner made this remark, the most successful version of empirical, quantitative, and policy-oriented social science to have evolved in the United States was not only about to effect fundamental changes in social science in the United States and elsewhere; it was also to have a profound impact on the organization of government
through a multiplicity of analytical techniques and a concomitant array of advisory bodies and programs designed to link social science even more firmly and effectively to policy processes in all areas of government. Thus, there is a triumphant tone in Lerner's assessment of the final coalescence of reason and virtue when he outlines "the steady diffusion of social science as a mode of self-observation under democratic government" (p. 29):
To perceive the integral connection between social science and social democracy is to see the historic relationship of knowledge to power in a new and encouraging light. . . . These examples indicate that the social sciences tend, not to restrict personal liberty, but rather to expand the domain of free choice by clarifying the rational alternatives." (Lerner, 1959, pp. 29, 31)
A quarter of a century later, the Times Higher Education Supplement (THES, 1985) carried an editorial, suggestively entitled "Social Science in Disarray," in which the authors analysis was analogous to Lerner's but fundamentally different in tone:
The key social science disciplines were conceived as intellectual response's to the "social question" of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; their particular forms, particularly in their more voca- tional aspects, were moulded by attempts to provide answers to that great question most notably through the creation of a welfare state.
Today most of these answers are out of fashion and some with great power are even disposed to deny the relevance of the question.
From this perspective, the emergence of modern social science is seen as almost a direct response to broad societal demands for knowledge that are closely linked to the characteristics and evolution of Western state structures faced with deep-seated transformations of their socie- ties. In this contribution we shall outline an analysis of this type and try to show that the nature of the relationship between the state and social science has always been close and that that relationship constitutes the ordering of social knowledge and reflects the basic
characteristics of modern Western states. Thus we concur with the argument of Lerner and others that there is a close link between social knowledge and societal institutions, but we fundamentally disagree with the sequential view that social science is a triumphantly advancing mode of social knowledge, a view implicit in the accounts by Lerner, by most modern advocates of a policy orientation, and by those supporting traditional disciplinary orientations. More often than not, such accounts are based on a narrow and partisan premise that, inadvertently or not, tends to extol! the virtues and achievements of some nationally and contextually bound specialism and perceive it as a moment in the march of reason through history. The professional grouping of "policy scientists" is but one instructive example of this tendency which is examined in the following section of this chapter.
The Contextuality of the Policy Orientation
The absence of such an institutional perspective on the social sciences may appear natural for accounts of basic theoretical development within particular disciplines. However, it is equally charecteristic of authors who focus on social science research dealing with problems and policy. As often argued (by Brewer and deLeon, 1983, for instance) an orientation to policy is thus seen as a recent phenomenon in social science. As a scholarly enterprise it is often presented as an approach closely associated with Harold Lasswell's efforts to establish an intellectual underpinning for the systematic application of social science to the long-range needs of policymaking (e.g., Lerner &
Lasswell, 1951; Lasswell, 1970, 1971, and 1974). True enough, so the argument goes, there were other early proponents of policy orientation
such as Yehezkel Dror or, more by way of research than of advocacy, Gunnar Myrdal. However, the fact remains that the concept of the social sciences as "policy sciences" was, indeed, the work of a group of scholars gathered around Lasswell himself. Although earlier traditions such as that of American philosophical pragmatism or the work of the Chicago school of sociology in the interwar years did much to promote the trend toward a programmatic policy orientation in social science, this orientation as a conscious research program is a phenomenon of the last three or four decades. It entailed "a fundamental change in outlook, orientation, methods, procedures, and attitude" (Brewer &
deLeon, 1983, p. 6).
This claim to originality, however, has been seriously challenged along two lines, the basic point being that these views held by contemporary American policy scientists are deeply ahistorical.
In one version the major thrust is to demonstrate that the conception of the social sciences as policy sciences is really nothing new, that it represents an instance in a long European tradition (e.g., von Beyme, 1985) It is pointed out that the policy orientation and the conception of policy sciences as a scholarly activity is a time-honored project and that it is neither an intellectual innovation nor a neo- logism. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries "policy sciences,"
Polizeywissenschaften, played a prominent role in a number of European countries (Maier, 1965). It actually took the combined onslaught of the three main ideological "isms" of the nineteenth century to finish it off. To the liberalism of the emerging bourgeoisie, a "police state"--wherein daily and economic life was insufferably regulated and ordered by a host of administrative decrees and policies issued by some
princely ruler and his administrators—was an affront to be done away with by a state governed by law duly promulgated by a parliamentary assembly, with policies being limited as far as possible to the internal and external security of the nation. To idealistic, conser- vative philosophers extolling the virtues of the state as an embodiment of some higher reason, the supreme expression of the will of the state could not. be allowed to be trifled away as just a conglomerate of minor administrative rules and decrees; there was an essence and a reason of state over and above mere "policies." To the socialism of Marx and Marxians, finally, the efforts to "scientifically" understand and im- prove the policies of the minor princely states of Germany were
"miserable" and little more than a caricature of serious scholarly work, reflecting the general backwardness of German society compared to the advanced economies of the West.
Because of this hiatus in the existence of policy science in the nineteenth century, the first version of the argument challenging the claims of modern policy scientists that they are doing something new is only partially justified. The notion that there has been a more or less continuous history of policy-oriented social knowledge is inaccurate.
Although it is easy to agree with von Beyme (1985) that the sweeping claims to novelty made by some contemporary policy researchers cannot be supported, it would be equally, if not more, misleading to suggest that the modern tendency to apply social science to the analysis and amelioration of social problems is but a brief episode in a long and unbroken scholarly tradition. In fact, the emergence and institutionalization of empirical social science is largely a phenomenon of the last one hundred years (see Soffer, 1978, for instance).
The second version of the argument refuting claims of novelty among modern policy scientists is even more far-reaching than the first. Its premise is that knowledge or advice needed by rulers and would-be-rulers to bolster arguments or enlighten the choice of fundamental courses of action has been in demand and, often enough, has been forthcoming, be it in a more or less scholarly form or in the form of suggestive metaphors ("story-telling" as Martin Rein (1976) calls it). However, it has been said (by deLeon, in this volume, for example) that such analysis still could not qualify as "political research" in any reasonable sense of the term even though it entailed a "growing involvement of political philosophy with political events" in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It "was exclusively tendered on a parochial, personalized, and circumstantial basis," and it lacked any
"consideration of intellectual underpinning, cumulative knowledge, or evaluation exercises as they might apply to policy issues."
Advisory activities in a more limited sense might well have exhibited these very characteristics. However, it may also be argued that much of the history of political and social thought is characterized by a pre- occupation with advice about courses of action and modes of training for rulers and would-be-rulers. Edward Shi Is (1961), among others, argues this point effectively when he claims that social thought and political philosophy have always been policy-oriented. Even in cases less obvious than, say, Aristotle, Plato, or Machiavelli, a main theme in social and political theory has been the policymaker's problems reduced to their essentials:
The great figures of classical philosophy considered the fundamental problems of policy from the point of view of men who had to exercise authority and to make practical decisions. Even where they themselves lived in remoteness from practical affairs, the
clarification of standards for the judgement of public policy was always close to the center of their attention (Shils 1961/1965, p.
1432K
In elaborating the whole project of the policy sciences, Harold Lasswell advanced a similar claim. He argued that the social sciences in the widest sense of the term could adopt, but also be analyzed from, two related, but distinct, points of view that he termed manipulative and contemplative, respectively. From the manipulative perspective, the social sciences could be termed the policy sciences. Lasswell's main concern was to propose a research program that, starting out from the experiences gained from the secular growth of policy involvement of the social sciences from the mid-twentieth century onwards, would maximize the chances for this growth to occur in ways that were fully
compatible with scholarly requirements for growth in theoretically significant research (Lasswell & Kaplan, 1950; Lerner & Lasswell, 1951;
Lasswell, 1971).
Social thought and analysis may then largely be encompassed within a policy perspective, provided the substance of such an orientation is broadly defined. Even so, the period from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries stands out as something of an exception certainly not unrelated to the ingrained ideological aversion that liberal states had to state intervention during this period of industrialization and gradually increasing, but often unwillingly and unsystematically undertaken, state intervention. The social scientists involvement with policy matters deepened during the twentieth century.
In the United States, for example, economists, psychologists, political scientists, historians, and geographers were among the social
scientists who interacted with government and the military, activity that can largely be seen as the social scientists' return to an earlier and more traditional role as a student of public affairs.
Kenneth Prewitt (1983) is one of the social scientists to have made a similar claim, arguing that social science has always been policy-oriented and that it has always had the character of applied research. Much like the early advocates of the policy sciences, however, Prewitt has also emphasized that the potential for truly significant contributions are greatest when research is not subjected to, but made to transcend and question politically established or defined frames of reference and relevance. An assessment of this poten- tial, though, requires that an analysis include the long- and short-term effects of various patterns of interaction between the realms of research and policymaking--a point repeatedly made by the early proponents of the policy sciences. This chapter is devoted to promoting just such a comparative inquiry, one that entails the examination of the intellectual and epistemic foundations of social science in the light of contextual developments in society. It is based on the findings of historical and comparative research on the development of policy-oriented social science. The major objective of this work was to analyze the societal, political, and intellectual backgrounds against which various understandings of societally relevant social science developed (for a full presentation, see Wagner, Wittrock, and Wollmann, forthcoming). From such a perspective the authors intended to overcome the limits and shortcomings perceived in various other interpretations of modern social science in its relation to society, be it in terms of the advancement of knowledge and reason in processes of intellectual institutionalization (see Shils, 1970), in
terms of the reflection of changing functional needs in the course of societal evolution (see Coleman, 1980 and 1986), or in terms of the determinations by the structure of political institutions (see Weir and Skocpol, 1985).
As important as they have been in stimulating the discussion on these topics, all these approaches suffer from two inadequacies. First, they tend to overemphasize the importance of one factor—the dynamics of intellectual progress, of overall societal changes, or of political structures — at the expense of others and tend to remain unable to account for the complexity of the processes under study. At best, they manage to regard the neglected factors as some sort of intervening element modifying the general developments to a limited extent, but they cannot account for the crucial aspect, the interwovenness of social science with politics and society. Second, they all rely on highly problematic basic conceptualizations. The view that the workings of scientific communities over the long run necessarily lead to the advancement of knowledge and reason contradicts virtually all debate in the field of science studies in recent years. But it is similarly untenable to maintain that the directions taken in social-science work depend on its relation to assumed, abstract, societal functions.
Moreover, the much more differentiated analyses that focus on the determining influences that political structures have on the social sciences largely fail to show how such influences came to be exerted in particular societal constellations of interaction between policymakers and scholars.
By contrast, our own analysis conceptually starts out from the knowledgeable and capable human beings who engage in interaction drawing on the rules and resources that are structurally provided for in the respective societal settings. To this extent, it is closely related to such foundations of social theory as have been elaborated by Anthony Giddens, for instance, and it is his approach on which we selectively draw when formulating our own understanding of the relationships between social science and society. The second part of this chapter presents a critical review of the three other major interpretations that have been advanced and sketches the foundations of an alternative theoretical perspective. In the remainder of this chapter's first part, an attempt is made to show what a description of the historical development of problem-oriented social science would be like if undertaken from the conceptual point of view we propose.
Whereas previous approaches tended to hold either that intellectual dynymics were strictly autonomous or that they were to be derived analytically from functional needs or politicoinstitutional imperatives, we can demonstrate that none of these concepts is adequate in understanding the evolution of modern social science. By focusing on the relationship between scholars and political actors and on the structures of this relationship as they change in the process of societal transformation, it can be shown instead, that it is necessary to see that, "the discourses of social science are recurrently absorbed into what it is that they are about, at the same time as they
(logically) draw upon concepts and theories already employed by lay actors" (Giddens, 1985, pp. 180-1). Historical and comparative analysis shows in particular how, and with what effect, social science "has from its early origins in the modern period been a constitutive aspect of
that vast monitoring of social reproduction that is an integral feature of the state"(Giddens, 1985, p. 181). In this chapter, it is argued that such a theoretical approach, which shall be labelled discourse structuration, can, indeed, advance the understanding of the relationship between social science and society. We shall, however, also argue that major features of the evolution of the modern state in the past century and a half have to be explicitly recognized. This is necessary if the long-term transformations in the relationships between social science and societal institutions are to be adequately accounted for.
Putting the "Social Question" on the Political Agenda Social Science and the Late Liberal State
Social science as an institutionalized scholarly activity performed within a series of disciplines is by and large a phenomenon of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a process that directly and indirectly reflects concerns about the wide-ranging effects of the new industrial and urban civilization that was rapidly changing living and working conditions for ever larger parts of the population in many European nations during the nineteenth century. These changes, which were often collectively referred to as "the social question" (die soziale Frage) were gradually forcing themselves upon the agendas of parliamentary bodies, governmental commissions, and private reform-minded and scholarly societies. Often the impetus for the search for new knowledge came from modernizing political and social groupings that favored industrialization but that advocated more or less far-reaching social reforms. These groupings gradually came to embrace the notion that political action to alleviate "the social question"
should be based on extensive, systematic, and empirical analysis of the underlying social problems. The main features of this stage in the emergence of social science in Europe and the United States are relatively well known, at least in their broad outlines.
For the following historical information, we make only cursory use of references and refer instead in general to the much more detailed presentation of our own argument in Wagner, Wittrock, and Wollmann
(forthcoming),
In Britain, reform-minded individuals, often belonging to the establishment of Victorian England, came together in a number of private reform societies, some of which had close links to the scholarly world (see, for example, Soffer, 1978; Rothblatt, 1968/1981, 1985). In a sense the whole Victorian era was characterized by an intense preoccupation with the social problems of industrial society, whether in the literary form of Dickens, the aesthetically and reform-oriented writings of Ruskin and Morris, the romantic historical work of Carlyle, the activities of the emerging labor movement, or in connection with government activities proper. Concern for health mounted, for example, when recruitment to the army during the Boer War revealed the appalling conditions under which large sections of the British population lived. Most famous among the reform-minded scholarly groups was perhaps the Fabian Society, which came to play a key role in the establishment of what is still one of the most distinguished institutions of social research, the London School of Economics and Political Science.
In Germany, the Verein fur Socialpolitik (sic) served as a focal point for an important grouping of bourgeois reformers (see also Weber,
1904). It was formed particularly by historically and empirically minded economists (like Gustav Schmoller). The Verein fur Socialpolitik became the main initiator and organizer of empirical research on the
"social question," and its work was clearly of an applied or policy-oriented nature. Except for the contributions of such highly prominent members as Max Weber, who tried to link the empirical orientation of the association with conceptually systematic work, the
empirical stance of the association left surprisingly little lasting imprint on German scholarly life (see also Jarausch, 1983; Ringer, 1969).
In French society, a strong etatist tradition in the administrative system and in professional education geared to the needs of that system was fundamentally at odds with a tradition of radicalism and criticism among some of its intellectuals who had no close links to the central governmental apparatus. The late nineteenth century in France witnessed a series of efforts centered on such prominent intellectuals as Gabriel Tarde, Rene Worms, and Emile Durkheim to establish sociology as a new science of society (see, for instance, Geiger, 1975; Lepenies, 1985).
In most cases, however, the new journals and societies failed to become firmly entrenched and institutionalized. The exception to the short-lived nature of these efforts was the work of Emile Durkheim, who became the first regular professor of sociology in France (1896).
However, the inroads of the emerging social science in France were largely limited to the university system and had little or no impact on the professional elite schools and the training of the technocratic and managerial cadres of the nation. Thus, French social science from the outset was inclined towards theoretical, some would say speculative, work as opposed to empirical and policy-oriented work, a tendency that was reinforced by close links between sociology and philosophy within the university system and by the absence of anything like increased demand for applied social knowledge from the politicoadministrative system.
In Italy and Spain, early social science grew out of formative events in the history of these nations. In Italy, it was national unification;
in Spain, the traumatic experience of losing imperial status in the wake of the Spanish-American War (1898) and having to redefine national identity within a purely European context. In both cases, several individuals and groupings advanced the idea that social research could serve as an underpinning for the modernization and the reforms that were deemed both desirable and necessary to resurrect the nation.
However, most of these efforts tended to be stifled by a lack of encouragement from the administrative and political system, by the ideological opposition or at best indifference of the Church and/or by the predominance of a strongly idealistic tradition in the intellectual world sceptical or even hostile to empirical social research (as epitomized by Benedetto Croce and Ortega y Gasset; see Bobbio, 1969, for example.)
By the mid-nineteenth century, the strong Austrian tradition of policy-oriented administrative research in the "cameral sciences" was decaying. Opposition from the rising liberal bourgeoisie and from the aristocratic elite of the empire as well as the strengthening of the legalistic tradition within academia made it increasingly superfluous and irrelevant. Initiatives to establish empirical social research in the late nineteenth century came from elsewhere--socially concerned and reform-minded, but by no means revolutionary, intellectuals such as Gustav Ratzenhofer, Ludwig Gumplowicz, and Eugen Ehrlich. They sought to introduce empirical social science based on social facts. They hoped thereby to provide a scientific basis for politics and pave the way for reforms that might preserve the multinational Austrian empire in a more pluralistic form. To the administrative and political elites and to the
traditional university elites, with their close links and loyalties to the state, these ideas sounded little better than disruptive and dangerous. The calls for problem-oriented social science did not give rise to any sustained research. Such research was not pursued within the Austrian university system until scholars with links to the worker's movement in Austria joined together and formed the Viennese Sociological Society (1907). The development thereby initiated did, however, not fully materialize until the drastic changes in the wake of the First World War turned Vienna into a unique ground for social and intellectual experiments (see Torrance, 1976; Janik & Toulmin, 1973;
Nowotny, 1983).
Sweden, like Germany, was a latecomer, rapidly catching up in the industrialization process. As in most continental European countries, the university system was quite closely linked to the leading social and administrative echelons of the country; it certainly was not a hotbed of critical and radical social thought. Like most of these nations throughout the mid- and late nineteenth century, Sweden also had a tradition of idealistic philosophy that permeated major parts of the university system. With a strongly conservative professor of philosophy at Uppsala as its founding father (Bostrb'm; see the analysis by Mordin, 1981), that tradition effectively squeezed out rival schools for a long time in Sweden and it provided a highly authoritarian legitimation for the Swedish version of a Beamtenstaat. However, this school was gradually losing ground by the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Furthermore, new university colleges in Stockholm and Gothenburg, founded through the initiative of the emerging liberal bourgeoisie, created an institutional basis for reform-minded thinking.
It also happened that the most brilliant Swedish economist at the turn
Wicksell is still a major figure in the history of economic thought.
In disciplinary terms, he is a first-rate theoretician who has an important influence on the contemporary school of public choice analysis and who is duly recognized for that by present day representatives of this theory.
of the century, Knut Wicksell, was personally and intensely engaged in the social and political issues of his time as an audacious advocate of social reform in predemocratic Sweden. Finally, Sweden, a nation with one of the longest unbroken histories in Europe, did not have to face the prospect or the consequences of a major national trauma; the peace- ful dissolution of the union with Norway (1905) served instead to underscore stability and continuity.
There was, however, a major and urgent issue on Sweden's national agenda, emigration. The persistence of emigration on a massive scale, even though industrialization was progressing rapidly in Sweden and was beginning to level off in several other European countries, caused great concern in Swedish political circles. It led to the creation of a government commission with Gustav Sundba'rg as its secretary. Between 1907 and 1913 this commission brought out volume after volume of detailed statistical and sociological analysis of the causes and consequences of emigration. In an interesting interplay between the needs for statistical competence highlighted by this commission and demands from within the university system, the first chair in statistics, held by Sundba'rg, was created at Uppsala University in 1910. This was a development that gave an academic, institutional foundation to the strong Swedish tradition in historical demography, with Sundbarg's Bevolkerungsstatistik Schwedens 1750 - 1900 as an early classic in demographic research.
In the United States, social science research originally had the same characteristics of associational organization and ameliorative orientation as it did in European countries. For example, a pioneering role was played by the American Social Science Association (created in 1865). This organization explicitly embraced the notion that the social scientist was a model citizen helping to improve the life of the community, not a professional, disinterested, disciplinary researcher.
However, during the final decades of the nineteenth century, this model of ameliorative, nonprofessional social science was gradually overwhelmed by the force of the emerging disciplinary associations such as the American Economic Association (1885), the American Political Science Association (1903) and the American Sociological Society (1905) (see, for example, Furner, 1975; Haskell, 1977; Manicas, 1987). These efforts did not have to face the kind of entrenched opposition or ideologically motivated hostility that many similar efforts in Europe were met with. Subsequently, economists and psychologists were able to play a role in government service as early as the First World War, just as demographers were able to do through the Bureau of the Census (which was set up as a permanent institution in 1902).
Divergence: Consolidation in the United States and Discontinuities in Continental Europe
In the United States the emergence and establishment of empirical social science disciplines may be described as a particular constellation of institutional consolidation, intellectual autonomy (as a consequence of the traditional features of Anglo-Saxon university life) and interaction with, but no far-reaching subjection to, the demands of the politico-administrative system. Developments during the interwar period tended to enhance the advantageous position of American social science further. In the 1920s, a "golden age" for American research universities (Geiger, 1985, 1986), there were sustained efforts from within the academic community to give the social sciences firm scholarly and methodological underpinning. Charles Merriam at Chicago was a main spokesman for these moves, and during the 1920s the so-called Chicago school became something of a model for modern social science, characterized by its high standards in conducting research and its major role in enlightening the general public about key problems inherent in modern urban and industrial civilization (see Bulmer, 1981, 1984; Coleman, 1980, 1986).
The 1920s also saw the establishment of the Brookings Institution (1927) as a leading policy-oriented research institute as well as the creation of the Social Science Research Council (1923) as a voluntary association for the strengthening of the social sciences. These developments were greatly stimulated by support from large private foundations (in particular Rockefeller and Carnegie). In the late 1920s, however, the federal government, too, showed increasing interest
in seeking the advice of social scientists, with a high point being the presidency of Herbert Hoover ("the engineer") and his "President's Research Committee on Social Trends" which was created in 1929 with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation and which issued a series of reports in 1933. (see Smelser, 1986). The subsequent Roosevelt administration brought social scientists into government on an unprecedented scale and gave large numbers of social scientists first-hand experience in the interaction between research and policymaking (see Louchheim, 1983). The years of the Second World War were formative for a generation of social scientists who were to play a leading role in the full-blown expansion of policy-oriented social science during the postwar period. (Among these scholars was Harold Lasswell, who came to draw heavily on his wartime experiences when he outlined the project of the policy sciences.)
In comparison with the development of the social sciences in the United States, that in most European countries during and between the two world wars was belated or truncated. In many ways the British setting was similar to the American one, not least in terms of the fairly early academic consolidation of important fields of social science. Britain also witnessed the early creation of research councils and the like, as exemplified by the establishment of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research during the First World War (see Rothblatt, 1985).
The contributions of Keynes and his colleagues also stand out as the perfect example of scientific work that meets the highest standards of both theoretically innovative scholarship and orientation to societally relevant problems. However, the contributions on policy-formation were far from having any immediate impact in Britain, and it was not really until Cambridge economists were brought into government offices during
the Second World War that a direct link was established between social science and policy processes (see Weir & Skocpol, 1985). One highly important outgrowth of these experiences was the creation of a system for national income accounting, an intellectual achievement that, incidentally, was duly honored by the 1984 Nobel Prize in economics.
Sweden, like England, had a strong tradition in economics. The generation of Swedish economists who succeeded that of Wicksell, Cassel, and Heckscher rose to prominence in the 1920s and 1930s and in- cluded scholars such as the later Nobel laureates Gunnar Myrdal and Bertil Ohlin, who were in close contact with their British and American colleagues throughout the 1920s and 1930s. This generation of Swedish economists—collectively often labelled the Stockholm School—very early laid the foundations for the type of macrodemand policy that was to become most closely identified with the name of Keynes. These economists were able to combine a strong domestic tradition in economic theory with more or less immediate attention to policy concerns (see Hansson, 1982; Siven, 1985). There was also a fairly elaborate network of state institutions that were able to serve as vehicles for the dissemination of research findings and for the encouragement of a dialogue between policymakers and researchers, a frequently cited example being the government commission on unemployment in the late
1920s and early 1930s. Not only were a number of important scholarly contributions published as background reports by this commission; a more or less direct outgrowth of its work was an Institute for Economic Forecasts, which was founded in the mid-1930s. Several of the leading economists of that period also came to be directly involved in policy processes in a political capacity. However, despite these achievements and despite considerable research in other fields, including political
science, there can be little doubt that the Swedish social science com- munity was not large enough to permit a general consolidation of social science disciplines during the interwar period.
In the Continental European countries, developments in the social sciences during the 1920s and 1930s had far less continuity than in Sweden. Violent regime shifts, war, and exile were decisive in bringing about strong discontinuities. That was not all, however. Other conditions in the political system and intellectual life also contributed to a rather adverse environment for a problem-oriented
social science.
In Germany, sociological thinking was mostly concerned with elaborating a coherent theoretical framework for societal analysis based on philosophical foundations. Efforts at empirical research were very fragmented and rather detached from academic work (see Gorges, 1986;
Kasler, 1984). By contrast, economists in Austria and Germany engaged actively in political debates—to such an extent that their debates and the conflicts between "interventionists" and "liberals" were dominated by political reasoning instead of analytical clarification and progress
(see Krohn, 1981). Political analysis could hardly develop in the shadow of formal legal theorizing, which precluded an empirical analysis of state activities (see von Oertzen, 1974). One striking exception to this sketchy description is Vienna, where the politicosociological approach called Austromarxism had been flourishing since the turn of the century. Major theoretical, though policy-oriented, works appeared before World War I, and under more favorable conditions in the early interwar years Vienna became a center not only for political and cultural initiatives but also for empirical
social research. The study entitled "The Unemployed of Marienthal"
(Jahoda, Lazarsfeld, & Zeisel, 1933) is only the most famous example from that period.
In France, Durkheimian sociology was well institutionalized but remained subordinated to the predominance of philosophical reasoning in its faculty. Similarly, economic theorizing only gradually emancipated from the legal approach within the faculties of law. The economists' concern for scientific legitimacy meant that analysis of the changes that had taken place in economic reality was neglected to a certain degree. Significantly, innovative approaches to economic policy emerged from among the bureaucrats, not from among scholars, as they had under different circumstances in England and Sweden (see Kuisel, 1981).
In Italy, the cultural predominance of idealism in the first half of the twentieth century is generally seen as decisive in destroying the foundations for theoretically oriented and empirically based social sciences, foundations that had been laid during the latter decades of the nineteenth century. While this observation is true, it is also necessary to stress that idealism and positivism can coexist to a certain extent. Especially under fascism, the idealist intellectual hegemony that allowed for a voluntarist interpretation of history was complemented by low-level empirical social research efforts in such fields as statistics and industrial sociology (see Lentini, 1974).
Furthermore, several faculties of political science were founded at Italian universities in the 1920s with the objective of training diplomats and high-level bureaucrats.
In recent years, historians of social science have confirmed that such observations apply to Germany as well. Whereas it remains true that large groups within the intellectual communities were forced into exile or silenced, it has also been shown that the remaining active sociolo- gists not only provided ideological legitimation for the fascist regime but also pursued empirical research projects to an increasing extent
(see Rammstedt, 1985, for example). In effect, an overarching philosophical and ideological discourse based on various elements of idealism, romanticism, and racism/social Darwinism was accompanied by a subordinate, theoretically unrelated, empirical orientation in strategic realms of society. It is this dualism, or division of labor, rather than hostility as such, that characterizes the fascist/nazist attitude to the social sciences.
The years immediately after World War II, which were marked by the reestablishment of democratically based political institutions, were in part also experienced as the "mythical promise of societal renewal through the social sciences" (Lentini, 1974, p. 21). The need for a reconstruction of societal organization seemed to offer a perfect opportunity for the social sciences, which were also seen as having markedly progressed and as having proved their societal relevance, especially in the U.S. context. Ambitious efforts were undertaken in a number of countries to promote radically innovative, yet policy-relevant, research. This was equally true of France and of Sweden. The budget of the Swedish government in 1947 was unique in that all requests by university representatives for increased social science funding were actually granted, and new disciplines were institution- alized in the higher education system.
In Norway, pioneering research in econometrics conducted before and during the Second World War by a group of scholars around Ragnar Frisch, later a Nobel Laureate, resulted in the introduction of a national budget and a national accounting system by 1945-46.
Collaboration between scholars and Labor politicians set the scene for direct impact on policy in a variety of ways, one of them being the creation of a new national budget office independent of the traditional bureaucracy in the ministry of finance (see Skoie and Steine, 1975;
Bergh, 1981).
In most west European countries, however, efforts to promote wide-scale transformation in the interaction between social science and societal institutions were soon being stifled. In the late 1940s and 1950s reconstruction primarily meant restoration of the prewar political order. A rethinking of economic reorganization seemed less required than expected, given the continent's rapid economic growth in the context of a liberalized world economy and largely noninterventionist domestic economic policies. It was not until the late 1950s and 1960s that the social sciences were mobilized for policymaking purposes, for the redesign of societal institutions in need of modernization. This was, then, not only a period of generally increasing expenditures on social science. These changes also entailed conceptual as well as the- matic reorientations in social research itself, new attitudes among social scientists towards their role in policy processes, and the establishment of new institutional mechanisms to secure appropriate linkages between social science research and policymaking.
Reform Coalitions: Social Science and the Interventionist Welfare State
In the mid-1960s and onwards, there occurred something of a secular growth in the demand for policy-relevant social knowledge in Western Europe and North America. First, government intervention in the field of economic policy became generally accepted and was expanded along the lines of Keynesian-type demand management. Second, an interventionist model of policymaking was being extended to all types of policy fields.
This change was manifested in new government programs to compensate for undesired societal developments such as urban agglomerations, environmental pollution, and poverty. These programs often entailed a direct demand for problem-oriented social research to serve the needs of efficient planning, implementation and delivery of policies. The state in capitalist-industrialist societies during that period may be called a full-blown Keynesian welfare state (Offe, 1983) or—not to exaggerate the notion of Keynesianism—an interventionist welfare state. Political interventionism, though of course not new, then expanded dramatically, bringing about growth of the public sector as well as an overhaul of operating principles in public administration in a number of countries.
In that age of growing public programs and attempts at rationalistic planning, close links were being forged between policy-oriented social science and policy intervention. By the mid- and late 1960s, the latent and intermittent interventionism reaching back to the 1930s had developed into a model for government action.These transformations are most visible in those countries in which social science developments as well as political developments have been most discontinuous. In these countries, "reform coalitions" betweeen social scientists and policymakers were established with the dual aim of renewing both political institutions and social science.
In West Germany, the Targe-scale development of policy research in the early 1970s can be related to the reformist policies of the coalition between the Social Democrats and the Liberals who took office in 1969.
True enough, there were earlier examples of such policy research during the reform debates of the 1960s, in particular on the issues of education and governmental reforms. However, after the "Great Coalition"
(1966-1969), in which the Social Democrats became part of the government majority for the first time, had made a clear turn toward neo-Keynesian economic policies, the reform drive blossomed in full when the new coalition declared the "Policies of Domestic Reforms" to be their key program. New types of federal intervention in areas where the implementation processes and policy effects were uncertain (urban mass transit, housing and urban renewal, and environmental policy for example) were accompanied by extensive research efforts. Funds earmarked in federal ministries' budgets for policy-oriented research expanded throughout the early 1970s, reflecting an increasing "curiosity" on the part of federal agencies to find out about the effectiveness of reform programs (see Hellstern & Wollmann, 1981; Wollmann, 1984).
In France, the Gaul 1ist reformism of the 1960s aimed at a profound technological, economic, and social modernization of the country. It also meant the country's very first attempt to draw systematically on sociological knowledge for designing, implementing, and evaluating reform policies. Social scientists experienced drastic increases in government funds in the form of research contracts, particularly in the fields of urban and educational reforms. Another focus of government-funded research was on administrative behavior, work that promoted the emergence of a French school in the sociology of organiz- ations (see Friedberg & Gremion, 1974).
In Italy, the "opening to the left" in the early 1960s was the first time that the Socialists supported the Christian Democrat-led go- vernment, which they later joined. This political change occurred under conditions analogous to those that prevailed in Germany later in the 1960s, when fears that the "economic miracle" might fade away. In Italy, this shift in political majorities clearly brought about an increased demand for social science information, for a number of policy-oriented research institutions tied to ministerial administrations were founded in the mid-1960s. The reform drive of the early Center-Left government, however, quickly lost momentum, and these institutions were never able to acquire important functions in policy research and evaluation.
A close relation between a reformist political orientation and the demand for policy research could also be observed in Austria during the early 1970s, when the Socialist government tried to introduce an active social science policy. As in other countries and as in the general science policy debate within the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) during that period, the main objective was to increase the orientation of research work to policy needs.
In Italy, France, Austria, and Western Germany, a strikingly similar pattern of interaction between social science and politics emerged.
After rapid postwar reconstruction with high rates of economic growth as well as the establishment of a basic societal consensus, needs for reform were perceived by an increasing number of political and economic elites at the end of the 1950s and beginning of the 1960s. In Italy, these tendencies were strongest among the Northern groups of reform-oriented Catholics and socialists, who joined forces in the modernization-oriented Center-Left coalitions around the turn of the
decade. These coalitions were trying to establish a new mode of
"science-based" politics, and they were strongly supported by most Italian sociologists. In France, the new Gaullist regime made the major political decisions to end the colonial wars and turn towards Europe and the European Economic Community. A variety of elite groups that were organizing in circles around newly created popular social science journals saw social science knowledge as an essential part of this political enterprise. In West Germany reforms of the politico-ad- ministrative apparatus to allow for the integration ofeconomic and, later, other social science findings into policymaking were intensely debated from the mid-1960s onwards. Major institutional innovations and reform policies were undertaken under the Great Coalition and, in particular, under the Social-Liberal Coalition. These reforms were largely based on social scientists' recommendations (for a more detailed analysis of these "reform coalitions" between social scientists and policymakers see Wollmann, 1984; Wagner, 1987),
In other countries, the development of problem-oriented social science was more continuous and less obviously related to emerging "reform coa-
litions" of this type. Swedish policymakers, for instance, had long experience in interaction with social scientists. Even in Sweden, though, the 1960s were an important period for social science policy and for political reform. Sweden, like many other Western nations, went through a kind of "rationalistic revolution" that went as far, or even further, than it did in most comparable countries. New techniques for systems analysis, program budgeting, social indicators, commissioned sectoral research, and even futures studies were applied to policy prob- lems in all areas of government activity. On an institutional level, new bodies for policy analysis, research, evaluation, and assessment were
created in the central ministries, in a large number of government agencies, and in the form of government commissions. Whereas economics and political science have time-honored traditions, the very emergence of a discipline such as sociology in Sweden has been pictured as an outgrowth of the development of the welfare state after the Second World War (see Fridjonsdottir, 1987).
Similarly, politics in the Netherlands is characterized by social planning with a consistent pattern of close interaction between planning efforts and social science analyses dating back to at least the 1930s.
The heavily applied orientation current in Dutch sociology—as well as its characteristically policy-oriented path of professionalization--can only be understood against the background of its early sociographic phase as it related to Dutch regional pianning (see Gastelaars, 1985;
Blume et al., in this volume). But in the Netherlands, too, the 1960s constituted a period during which the use of planning and analysis techniques and research was increased in policymaking; the entry of the Labor Party into government coalitions in the early 1970s marked the start of an intensified political debate about the past and future role of social science in policymaking.
In the U.K., social research and social policy have long been linked (see Bulmer, in this volume). These linkages had traditionally been characterized by an "arms length" relationship between academic social science and immediate policy concerns. In the 1960s, British political elites, including both major parties, shared a fundamental consensus regarding Keynesian economic policies and the expansion of the welfare state. They also agreed that policymaking, and political innovations in particular, should be rooted in detailed analyses of a social science
nature (see Smith, in this volume). The creation of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), is but one example of this recognition of the relevance of social science research. In the early 1970s the wholesale introduction of the so-called Rothschild principle aimed at strengthening the role of research in policymaking but also at providing ministries with efficient mechanisms for commissioning research that would be truly relevant to their concerns. In Whitehall, the establishment of the Central Policy Review Staff (CPRS) was yet another indication that policy-oriented analysis was being given more prominence than ever before even in the time-honored British central administration (see Plowden, 1981).
In the United States, policy-oriented social science research no doubt surged enormously during the 1960s, when Lyndon Johnson's administration rapidly expanded Democratic federal reform programs (such as the War on Poverty and the Great Society Program), particularly in the field of social, educational, and urban policies. In pursuing its right to oversight of the executive branch and the federal bureaucracy, Congress simultaneously proceeded to make evaluation research mandatory in more and more enabling legislation. Thus, both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government started to improve their own analytical capacities. The political and ideological underpinning of this development, too, can be found in a "reform coalition" that brought politicians and bureaucrats together with social researchers in the mid-1960s. Perhaps the most striking example of this reform coalition is the Office of Economic Opportunity (0E0). This office operated as a federal "reform bureaucracy" par excellence, also playing a key role in initiating and monitoring analyses of antipoverty policies. Unlike
reform coalitions in the continental European countries, however, those in the United States could draw on a range of previous experiences with intense interaction between social scientists and policymakers. Hence, it may be more appropriate to state that the U.S. social sciences reemerged from an "unusually barren period" in policy studies (Heclo, 1972, p. 86) when the scale of policy activity at the federal level increased rapidly in the 1960s.
In all countries, the unprecedented increase in the demand for policy-oriented social science entailed organizational and institutional strains and needs for adaptation. In most cases the university was considered the traditional locus of science and research. The question of whether these new functions could be integrated into the academic system, however, depended 1argely on the state of the university institutions in the various countries during this period of transformation.
In Sweden, for instance, where the universities have traditionally been practice-oriented, it was only natural to appoint academic scholars to a large number of government and parliamentary commissions that provided policy advice and conducted research (Foyer, 1969; Premfors, 1983). It was equally natural to have the university system be the setting for most of the growth of so-called sectoral research in the 1970s, that is policy-oriented research commissioned by various government agencies
(see Wittrock, 1980; Elzinga, 1985). In France, however, the university system had developed separately from the administration-minded Grandes Ecoles. Consequently, French policy research is carried out mostly within the framework of newly created governmental research institu-
tions. In Italy, despite general interest on the part of academic researchers in meeting research demands, the fact that the universities are severely underequipped has made this a nearly impossible task.
Currently, most Italian policy researchers tend to be affi1iated with a university as well as with one or more specialized policy research institutions.
Irrespective of the standing of the traditional university system, hov/ever, the creation of new institutions, organizational forms, and science policy instruments has been considered a necessity in all national contexts. Three types of innovation can be distinguished.
First, one important innovation in this development was the founding of specialized research institutions. By the end of the Second World War, there were very few social science institutions outside the universities and most of them were economic survey institutes established during the interwar period. From the 1960s on, however, a great variety of new research centers was established, many of them focusing on specific policy fields or policy problems. Some of the new institutions maintain regular contact with the academic system; others are completely subordinated to ministries or policy agencies. Some of the new research centers are allowed to retain institutional autonomy, whereas others are quite tightly controlled.
Second, another Innovation during this period was the introduction of special mechanisms to link research to politics. In the United States, for example, the policy of "request for proposals" was introduced in connection with the War on Poverty and the Great Society Programs. In France the so-called contract policy was established during the 1960s.
In England, as already mentioned, the RothschiId principle of
customer-contractor relationships was formulated, as was the so-called sectoral science policy in Sweden. In the United States, West Germany, and to a somewhat lesser extent in other countries, public administration commissioned research and created a "market" for policy research in which specialized commercial institutes competed with each other and with the universities and other institutions. This market obtained a limited stability by the provision of regularly budgeted research funds in a range of ministries.
Third, the diversity of both the spectrum of research settings and the sources of research demand and funding led to a number of attempts to create special coordinating bodies linking the "demand" and the "supply"
side. In the U.K., this task was to be assumed by the SSRC. The SSRC was a government agency but enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy, at least initially. It was established in 1965 by the Labor government upon recommendation of a committee appointed by the previous conservative cabinet. In France, the Committee for the Organization of Applied Research on Economic and Social Development (CORDES), founded in 1969, was intended to arrest the fragmentation of the uncoordinated policy on commissioned research. CORDES was staffed with equal numbers of administrators and researchers, and it issued a framework for medium-term perspectives for policy research into which proposals were expected to fit. Though situated in a different institutional context, the Commission for Economic and Social Change in West Germany eventually fulfilled a rather similar task. In Italy, the regional research institutes—most of which were modelled after the the Piemontese IRES and the Lombardi an ILSES--were expected to develop and implement regional applied social science policy besides doing research themselves.
Through this diversity of institutions and instruments, the increasing demand for policy-relevant social knowledge influenced the development of the social sciences in all the countries mentioned thus far. It did so most, of course, in the directly controlled parts of the research system and least within the universities and the independent academic research centers such as the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France. But in general, the entire scientific field was changed when social scientists were able to gain recognition, reputation, and resources from influential sources outside, and in some sense opposed to, traditional academia.
Originally, such a situation was rarely considered problematic. Constel- lations of "reform coalitions" appeared to lead to both increased funding and greater societal relevance for social sciences. Support for the policy program of reformist policymakers did not appear to hamper the pursuit of academically defined research programs. In recent years, however, the concept of a "common social project" (Blume, 1987, p. 34) between social scientists and policymakers has been increasingly questioned. It appears increasingly doubtful now that the increase in funds and social recognition that social scientists initially experienced from political integration more than compensates for adverse consequences for cognitive development. In some analyses a Baconian-like vision of dedicated scholars intensely engaged in the pursuit of knowledge that is as equally true as it is useful has been replaced by that of a near-Faustian pact by which scholars realize that initial yields are diminishing and that they now are finding themselves faced with the stark prospect of having mortgaged their true task and heritage (see Gibbons & Wittrock, 1985, for a range of analyses of contemporary dilemmas in science policy).
Reassessment: Social Science and the Crisis of the Welfare State
Set in--and contributing to--a context of political reform in the 1960s and early 1970s, social science researchers in general supported more and more detailed public intervention accompanied by increasingly detailed analysis and monitoring of societal developments through social indicators and other instruments. During periods of social reform, "the main aim of policy analysis has been to develop and refine the tools of government intervention in the economy and to produce master plans for new fields of public services" (Tarschys, 1983, p. 382). In a period of relative fiscal abundance and—perhaps more important—the expectation that it would be possible to initiate social reforms continually by using the wealth acquired through steady economic growth, these basic intentions were shared by researchers and policymakers alike. Most policy-oriented social science research during that phase can thus be described as "output-optimising," directed toward the improvement of policy delivery and advocating the expansion of policy measures over time. Implementation and evaluation studies, the second generation of policy research in most countries, were conducted with the intent of improving the effectiveness of those reform policies.
The "reform coalitions" of policymakers and researchers greatly benefited both partners. Reform-minded political majorities were able to draw on the analyses of committed social scientists who devoted most of their efforts to policy problems. Conversely, these social scientists were able to use political demand for their expertise to advance their scientific standing, help to achieve recognition for their disciplines, and strengthen their competitive position in the scientific field, not least by gaining exclusive access to new terrains of research. But in
the late 1970s and 1980s this consensual relation between research and politics began to loosen as the high expectations on both sides proved to be unrealistic. The attitude towards the social sciences during the early phase often reflected an overly optimistic belief that investments in "good" research could easily and conveniently translate into applied research and development and, ultimately, into ever greater welfare.
This view was complemented by what might be termed "epistemological optimism" on the part of many social scientists who assumed that methodological advances in the recent past now allowed for decisive breakthroughs in explaining and predicting social developments and, thus, in achieving that "cognitive mastery of society" for which the political elites seemed to be waiting (Fraisse, 1981, p. 372).
With a growing number of less-than-successful experiences in scientific policymaking, these hopes were, if not dashed, certainly scaled down.
Consequently, social science policy tended to shift more and more to- wards the idea that research tasks had to be defined more exactly and tailored to policy needs. The new instruments like the
"customer-contractor principle" and "sectoralization" in science policy could be used in attempts to direct developments in social science.
The phase of "common social projects" ended when etatist interventionism came under increasing scrutiny and the expansion of welfare state policies ceased. The nature of the "crisis of the welfare state" (OFCD, 1981; see the discussion on this concept by Rein and Schon, in this volume) is far from clear, and it is uncertain how deeply rooted it is in present structures of advanced capitalist societies and what consequences may be legitimately drawn from this diagnosis.
