Why are so few political scientists involved in public debates?
I clearly do have distinctive view, and I think academics shouldn’t have to drop their views at the door. Instead, academics have a responsibility to back up those views with facts and evidence. I’m not the only academic to have views and play a role in political debate. It’s just rare in political science. The distinctive scope of political science is what government does and how it matters for the lives of citizens, but we, as political scientists, pay little attention to the actual exercise of governmental authority. We pay much more attention to the input of the politics process, elections, opinion polls, and legislative procedure. Once Congress passes a law, political science heads to lunch. The effects of policy and how it affects future policy is mostly left to economists and experts in public policy schools who are usually economists. This can and should be fixed. One of the most promising areas of research is research on the policy effects of public policy. The way that they a
