Abstract
My first encounter with the question of Information and policy in the “real world” took place in 1979, when as a fresh policy analyst for Israel’s Deputy Prime-Minister I presented data and interpretations to a high level interministerial decision-making body. The question on the agenda had to do with youth who neither studied nor worked. My attempt at that meeting was to show that the policy instruments then in use (e.g. street-corner work, truant officers vocational training, etc.) did not seem to make much of a difference. My presentation was based on two tables which graphically illustrated my contention. One table showed a rather impressive growth during 1969–1978 in investment for problem youth, as well as in the number of youth who were presumably treated. The second table showed that during the same years the rate of youth who neither studied nor worked remained roughly the same (about 8% of the 14–17 age group).
“None of us has ever killed a dragon” 1
“Completed work is the aim of the analyst. The implementation of analysis... is the success the analyst seeks” (Wildavsky, 1986, p. 410)
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Notes
So said Arnos Oz to a rather pretentious International PEN Congress which sought to explore “the Writer’s Imagination and the Imagination of the State”, The New Republic, February 24, 1986.
The story has been widely covered in the daily press. See, for example, Ma’ ariv, June 28, and 29, 1981; Ha’ aretz, June 28, 29, and 30, 1981; July 20, 1981.
This is not the end of the story. In the Fall of 1986 sources on behalf of Mr. Maridor claimed that the energy project made significant progress, that a new patent was registered in the U.S., and that eventually the project will come up with a new technology to produce cheap energy.
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, A collection of Zen and pre-Zen writings, compiled by Paul Reps, Doubleday, N.Y. (undated)
For a general overview see Beyer and Trice (1982); Bulmer (1982), Chapter 2; Deshpande (1979); Goldstein et al. (1978); Knott and Wildavsky (1980); Larsen (1980); Leviton and Hughes (1981) Glaser et al (1983). One is also advised to consult Caplan et al. (1975); Lindblom and Cohen (1979); Weiss (1977); Weiss and Bucuvalas (1980). Selected bibliography on “knowledge utilization”, “knowledge creation”, and “knowledge diffusion” is included in Rich (1980). Lerner (1959), and Lazarsfeld et al (1967) provide an early examination of the question.
The Advisory Committee on Government Programs in the Behavioral Sciences suggested: “The decisions and actions taken by the President, the Congress, and the executive departments and agencies must be based on valid social and economic information and involve a high degree of judgement about human behavior. The knowledge and methods of the behavioral sciences, devoted as they are to an understanding of human behavior and social institutions, should be applied as effectively as possible to the programs and policy processes of the federal government” (National Academy of Sciences, 1968, p. 17; added emphasis).
The “limestone model” (Robin Guthrie, in Thomas, 1985, p. 99) likewise suggests that “You may know where the water falls on the limestone, but there is no means of knowing what route it will take down the various levels or where it will emerge...”
CBS Reports, “The Vanishing Family — Crisis in Black America”, CBS Television Network, Saturday, January 25, 1986.
Kafka, Franz, “Couriers”, in Kaufmann, W. (ed.), Existentialism Front Dostoyevsky to Sartre, Meridian Books, N.Y. 1968, p. 130.
The title of one editorial (Ha’ aretz, May 14, 1985) reads: “Teeth to the Comptroller General”.In the same issue one reads that a distinguished Knesset Member called for firing the Comptroller General (presumably because his report did not seem to make a difference). Another member of the Israeli parliament -a law professor — offered to bring civil servants before a new court of law if they failed to take the corrective action suggested by the Comptroller General.
See an old fashioned though commendable defense of “knowledge for its own sake” in Cardinal Newman’s The Idea of a University, 1852, Newman, 1948).
“There are great seasons when persons with limited powers are justified in exceeding them, and a person would be contemptible not to risk it” said Attorney General Edmund J. Randolph (1753–1813).
Social policy research is often viewed not with a stress on policy, as an organizing coneept, but as the use of general social research methods, “in the development and carrying out of communal efforts to improve the social and physical environments of the members of the Community...” (Freeman and Sherwood, 1970, p. 2).
Romain Gary, “A Humanist”, in Best Modern Short Stories, selected from The Saturday Evening Post, Curtis Books, 1965, pp. 47–51.
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Dery, D. (1990). Introduction. In: Data and Policy Change. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-2187-0_1
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