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American Political Science and Congressional Reform: The American Political Science Association’s Committee on Congress (1941-1945) and Study of Congress (1965-1973)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
In recent years the social sciences have been asked to demonstrate that they are of some practical use. Knowledge for its own sake is a difficult policy to defend in a time of many crises, escalating costs, and shrinking resources for research. The result has been a tilt by the social sciences toward “relevance” and a growing emphasis on “applied” or “policy-oriented” or “action” research. Increasingly, the search for general, theoretical knowledge has become secondary to (or a fortuitous by-product of) more immediately “practical” endeavors.
- Type
- Retrospective Review
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Social Science History Association 1981
Footnotes
A first draft of this article was written while I was on the staff of the Brookings Institution and presented at the 1970 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association on “Seminal Research Projects Revisited: The APSA Committee on Congress and the APSA Study on Congress.” A number of participants in these two endeavors were good enougn to comment upon this initial draft: Ernest S. Griffith, E. Pendleton Herring, Ralph K. Huitt, Evron Kirkpatrick, Robert Peabody, John Saloma, Donald Tacheron, and Raymond E. Wolfinger. They have saved me from a number of errors of fact and interpretation. Other colleagues have made comments on this article over the years–Jack Walker’s and Angie Clausen’s were especially helpful.
References
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