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Ideologies and policies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

David Donnison
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Extract

Should social scientists, in their professional capacity, help to formulate political ideologies, policies and programmes? Or should they – and can they – preserve a professional neutrality? I begin by exploring these familiar questions and conclude that social scientists are as entitled as the next man to debate social problems, but should bear in mind that there is no authoritative solution to most of them.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 1 , Issue 2 , April 1972 , pp. 97 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1972

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References

1 For a discussion of these problems see Myrdal, Gunnar, Value in Social Theory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958Google Scholar, and Paul Streeten's introduction to these essays.

2 Op. cit. p. 1.

3 Op. cit. p. 256; originally written in a Swedish book on the monetary crisis of 1931.

4 Op. cit. p. 53.

5 The phrase is K. R. Popper's. His discussion of Marxism goes on to point out that ‘in their theoretical structure there is no difference between moral conservatism, moral modernism, and moral futurism’. The Open Society and its Enemies, vol. 2, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 5th edition, 1966, p. 206.Google Scholar

6 Contributions to this line of argument can be culled from Sir Karl Popper, H. A. Simon, Martin Meyerson, Aaron Wildavsky and others. They are fairly summarized by an opponent, Schultze, Charles L., in The Politics and Economics of Public Spending (Brookings Institution, 1968)Google Scholar; but their fullest expression is in Braybrooke, David and Lindblom, Charles E., A Strategy of Decision (Illinois: Free Press of Glencoe, 1963)Google Scholar, and their most condensed in Lindblom, Charles E., ‘The Science of Muddling Through’, Public Administration Review, vol. 19, 1959, pp. 79–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I am grateful to Aaron Wildavsky for his thoughtful criticisms of this and other sections of this paper.

7 ‘The Science of Muddling Through’, p. 85.

8 Some evidence for these assertions can be found in a set of studies of innovations in social policy at the local or urban scale: Donnison, D. V., Chapman, Valerie et al. , Social Policy and Administration, London: Allen and Unwin, 1965.Google Scholar

9 The Plan for Milton Keynes, vol. I, pp. 13 and 15.Google Scholar Milton Keynes Development Corporation, 1970.

10 See Delafons, John, Land-Use Controls in the United States, Boston, Mass.: MIT Press, 1969Google Scholar, particularly chapter v; and Siegan, Bernard H., ‘The Houston Solution: The Case for Removing Public Land-Use Controls’, Land-Use Controls Quarterly, 4, no. 3, Summer 1970.Google Scholar

11 Much of this section has already been printed in The Three Banks Review (no. 88, 12 1970, pp. 3–23)Google Scholar, where some further discussion of its themes may be found. It is repeated here at the invitation of the editor of this journal and with the kind permission of the editors of The Three Banks Review.

12 Secondary Education with Special Reference to Grammar Schools and Technical High Schools (the Spens Report), London: HMSO, 1938, p. 185.Google Scholar

13 15 to 18 (the Crowther Report), London: HMSO, 1959, p. 206.Google Scholar

14 Half our Future (the Newsom Report), London: HMSO, 1963, p. 6.Google Scholar

15 Second Report of the Public Schools Commission, London: HMSO, 1970, p. 109.

16 First Report of the Working Party on ‘Homelessness in London’, Department of Health and Social Security, 05 1971, p. 10.Google Scholar

17 Second Report of the Public Schools Commission, Points of Disagreement, vol. 1, p. 120. London: HMSO, 1970.Google Scholar

18 See ‘The Incidence of Taxes and Social Service Benefits in 1969’, Economic Trends, no. 208, 02 1971, London: HMSO.Google ScholarPeacock, Alan and Shannon, Robin (‘The Welfare State and the Redistribution of Income’, Westminster Bank Review, 08 1968)Google Scholar argue that the evidence does not justify so simple a conclusion, but give no support to the conventional assumptions outlined in my text.

19 See Lydall, Harold, The Structure of Earnings, Oxford, 1968.Google Scholar

20 See Dewhurst, J. Frederic et al. , Europe's Needs and Resources, London: Macmillan, 1961.Google Scholar

21 SirLewis, Arthur, Socialism and Economic Growth, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 1971, p. 15.Google Scholar

22 Miller, S. M. and Roby, Pamela, The Future of Inequality, New York: Basic Books, 1970, p. vii.Google Scholar

23 Equality, London: Allen and Unwin, 1931, p. 41.Google Scholar

24 The Future of Socialism, London: Cape, 1956, p. 190.Google Scholar

25 Balogh, Thomas, Labour and Inflation, Fabian Tract no. 403, p. 61.Google Scholar

26 Garden Cities of Tomorrow, London: Faber, 1965, pp. 146 and 150.Google Scholar

27 See Abel-Smith, Brian, ‘Whose Welfare State?’ in Conviction, MacKenzie, Norman (ed.), London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1958, p. 68.Google Scholar

28 The Future of Socialism, p. 205.

29 Runciman, W. G., in Relative Deprivation and Social Justice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966)Google Scholar, suggests some of the reasons why this may occur.

30 The Levellers' claim to this distinction is discussed in The Three Banks Review, op. cit.

31 On Liberty (Everyman edition), p. 133.

32 On Liberty, p. 68.

33 Utilitarianism (Everyman edition), p. 58; my italics.

34 Bentham, , ‘Principles of the Civil Code’, Works, 1843, vol. 1. chapter xiiGoogle Scholar; quoted in Equality, p. 133.

35 Prometheus Unbound, Act III, lines 131 and 193.

36 Parts of the story were briefly outlined in The Three Banks Review, op. cit.

37 UN Economic Commission for Europe, Incomes in Postwar Europe. A Study of Policies, Growth and Distribution, Geneva, 1967, chapter 1, p. 1.Google Scholar

38 The proportions of British seventeen-year-olds still in school are roughly one third of those for Belgium, one quarter of those for Japan, and one fifth of those for the USA. Second Report of the Public Schools Commission, London: HMSO, 1970, p. 23.