Changing Research
For research to matter more in the future of welfare policy, major changes would be needed.
As to the political division between government and the university, one can only hope that the recent
success of welfare reform will make academics more supportive of social policies aimed at changing
lifestyle. The realization should eventually dawn that these measures not only have good effects,
they actually expand the role of government. Public programs have assumed rising responsibility for
the functioning of dependents, not only for their income. University leaders may also be more
willing to appoint academics likely to challenge the liberal consensus within the university. Then
academic debate will bear more resemblance to differences in the public arena, and the university
will be more relevant to policy however the political winds blow.
The methodological problems require sensitive changes in how academia operates. At the
federal level, political research already uses defensible methods—a combination of interviewing and
documentary research. At the state level, scholars need to avoid statistical modeling divorced from
field inquiry. At both levels, political scientists need to take a more hopeful view of the political
process. Above all political research needs to make more connections between politics and
government performance. Political reasoning must support policy conclusions. That entails finding
a way to cross the dividing line between government and society.
Evaluations can connect policy to results rigorously through experimentation, but at the cost
of turning the tested program into a “black box” whose exact nature is unclear. Most likely, political
research tied to policy will have to use statistical inference to connect modes of government or
administration with outcomes as measured by program performance measures. That is, one studies
the way a number of states or localities run a particular program, as well as their performance as