The Changing Politics of Science Policy

What accounts for changes in public policies affecting science, technology, and the environment? This should be a central question for political observers and policy analysts. Policies, after all, are the main outcomes of political systems. Scholars study political institutions and behavior because they relate to the decisions made by government on policy. Scientists study public policy because they believe that scientific evidence, research reports, or communities of scientists can influence policy outcomes. Yet we rarely consider all of the potential determinants of science policy change in one setting because the policymaking process potentially involves all branches of government, an array of outside actors, and many circumstantial factors. Ideally, science would have a large role in the creation of scientific and environmental policy. Any effort to assess the influence of scientific evidence, scientists, or research reports on policy, however, should begin with the acknowledgement that dozens of other factors influence public policy. We cannot understand the influence of science on science policy in isolation from the wider political process that produces policy change. We may have good reason to hope that policymakers use science to develop and modify public policy, rather than interest group pronouncements, media reports, or partisan principles. Given scholarship on the U.S. federal government’s policy process, however, we have no reason to assume that science is the most influential of these factors.