Cult of the Irrelevant: The Waning Influence of Social Science on National Security. Michael C. Desch. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019.
The Beltway and the Ivory Tower—these two colloquialisms evoke images of secluded elites, cut off from reality, focused on their own narrow interests. In the first case, policymakers and politicians in Washington, D.C. are portrayed as suits interested only in what happens within the confines of the highway circling the city. In the latter, we envision elbow-patched professors on secluded college campuses pondering theory for the sake of theory, unconcerned with real-world applications. As a result, since at least the turn of the new millennium there has been a growing movement to bridge the gap between these two communities, particularly concerning security studies and foreign policy. Both policymakers and academics have tended to place the burden of doing so on the academic side, with an emphasis on training scholars to produce more relevant and accessible work.[1] Most often, the call is coming from inside the house, disciplinarily speaking.
In Cult of the Irrelevant, political scientist Michael C. Desch, makes two important contributions to this bridging-the-gap discussion. He provides a fascinating, well-researched account of the relationship between university academics and national security policymakers in 20th and 21st century America, and argues for the importance of the security environment as a key determinant of this relationship. Deschs’s second argument, that professionalization has made the social sciences increasingly irrelevant to policymakers since the end of World War II, with academics emphasizing rigor over relevance, is less novel and less convincing.
War and Peace
Cult of the Irrelevant is structured chronologically with an emphasis on war, peace, and the gray areas in between. Those familiar with Desch’s first book, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment, may find this emphasis on the security environment familiar.[2] In Cult, Desch argues war increases academic-policymaker collaboration by creating a need for expertise in the government and a rally-around-the-flag effect that pushes academics to abandon narrow, basic research in favor of applied projects.[3] Desch’s narrative focuses on how several well-known academics navigated the relevance question, including Ithiel de Sola Pool, Thomas Schelling, Walter Rostow, and Henry Kissinger.
Desch begins by exploring the role of academics in waging World Wars I and II, arguing that while physical scientists—primarily chemists and physicists—have received most of the attention, social scientists also made important contributions, particularly in the Office of War Information and the Office of Strategic Services. The bulk of the book discusses the Cold War years, with special emphasis on nuclear strategy and Vietnam. Desch argues a mixed security environment that was neither total war nor truly peace complicated the academic-policymaker relationship. He contends the rise of nuclear weapons—which military personnel had no more experience using than did civilian academics—created room in the discussion for civilian expertise. Similarly, the wars being fought were asymmetric, rather than traditional confrontations between large state militaries, which he argues also created room for civilian input. At the same time, however, there was less sustained pressure for academic contribution than during the World Wars. Desch notes that the unpopularity of Vietnam on liberal campuses is often blamed for driving academics away from policymaking, but he argues this cannot be the cause of the gap as professors had “long been to the left of the public politically.”[4]
Desch argues that the resurgence of interest in policy-relevant security studies research after 9/11 is likely to founder because of a complex, mixed security environment. Of course, this prediction could change if there were a return to great power conflict, but Desch does not advocate starting wars as a means of bridging the gap.
Putting the Science in Social Science
This brings us to the other primary strand of Desch’s argument, which focuses on a factor that academics can control: disciplinary incentives to be more scientific. Desch also calls this professionalization, viewing it as a long-term trend that harms policymaker-academic entanglement. He argues academics are incentivized to pose and answer narrow questions that are not always relevant to policymakers. Questions relevant to policymakers, moreover, are rarely amenable to the preferred analytical tools of academics. As professional scientists, academics often refrain from making policy recommendations that could be seen as political, and thus detract from their perceived objectivity. Finally, academic work is heavy in statistics and jargon, making it inaccessible to the lay reader. Desch anticipates that this argument will be controversial within academia, but his responses to anticipated objections are less than convincing.
A major challenge for Desch is defining his key terms—rigor and relevance. Desch argues academics “increasingly equate rigor with the use of particular techniques (mathematics and universal models) and ignore broader criteria of relevance.”[5] This speaks to a decades-long power struggle within security studies, and political science more broadly, between qualitative and quantitative methods.[6] Desch is critical of quantitative methods such as experiments, large-n statistical analyses, and formal theory, and demonstrates a clear preference for qualitative approaches, praising area studies and process tracing.[7] Throughout the book, however, Desch cedes the definition, equating rigor with these quantitative techniques. Based on this definition, Desch claims: “Rigor and relevance are not necessarily incompatible but they are often in tension, which is why social science’s relevance question endures.”[8] Of course, if Desch argues the tradeoff between relevance and rigor is too often resolved in favor of rigor, the alternative is not particularly satisfying, either. Who wants relevant research that’s wrong?
In operationalizing relevance, Desch uses the proportion of journal articles offering policy prescriptions as his key metric, and in doing so he falls victim to one of the key issues he warns of: the most interesting questions do not always lend themselves to easy data collection and analysis.[9] Desch anticipates this criticism, but only retorts that affecting government policy is the ultimate goal of policy-relevant work, and that this is “the clearest and most demanding standard of relevance available.”[10] At the same time, Desch argues the “best metaphor for describing policy-relevant scholarship is that it provides policymakers (or journalists or citizens) with a mental map to help them navigate the real world.”[11] These are fundamentally different definitions, asking very different things of scholars. A mental map does not require policy recommendations as the map is what allows policymakers to reach their own solutions. And as Desch notes in his latter definition, policymakers may not be the only relevant audience. An informed citizenry is generally believed to be valuable in a democracy, and non-governmental organizations and individuals are increasingly able to reach beyond state borders in a globalized world.
Desch also sometimes seems to move the goal posts between relevance, influence, and good policy outcomes. In his historical examples, Desch often faults academics for their lack of influence, or for attempting to influence policy and producing poor outcomes. For example, he argues Thomas Schelling overreached in trying to apply nuclear deterrence theory to conventional coercive bombing in Vietnam, leading policymakers to distrust academics when the strategy failed.[12] At times, Desch seems to be asking academics to do the impossible, as in his discussion of the failure of events data to predict when and where instability will occur in the world. Exact predictions are hard, and even subject area experts are not particularly adept at forecasting.[13]
…policymakers tend to pick up academic theories or research when it supports what they already want to do.
Desch himself writes, “Relevance, of course, is not identical with influence. A scholar can offer concrete policy recommendations but policymakers may not adopt them.”[14] This point highlights an important alternative argument Desch acknowledges but does not adequately address: that policymakers tend to pick up academic theories or research when it supports what they already want to do. He quotes Alexander Leighton, suggesting “the administrator uses social science the way the drunk uses a lamppost, for support rather than illumination.”[15]
A drunk and his lamppost (Financial Epiphany)
One of Desch’s central claims is that the professionalization of academia has decreased researchers’ willingness to also be activists, fearing that doing so would reduce their expert credibility. Desch invokes Max Weber to acknowledge “the methods of science cannot adjudicate among competing ethical claims,” but he does not see this as a reason to abandon policy relevance.[16] This may resonate with professions that struggle to maintain a perception of objective expertise. Those who teach in professional military education, for example, think hard about how to teach military officers about politics and the policymaking process without encouraging them to step outside their role as professionals and advisers.[17] It would be helpful to understand more specifically what type of policy recommendations Desch advocates. Should academics be telling policymakers what they should be attempting to achieve, or merely how best to achieve their stated goals?
A strength of Desch’s critique of social science is that he makes concrete recommendations for improvement. He argues that academics should combine methodological pluralism with problem-driven research agendas, and communicate their findings in an accessible way.[18] They should not trust that their basic research will trickle-down, or bubble-up to policymakers, as relevance requires a proactive effort. He also suggests more significant changes in academic culture and career incentives, including involving non-academics in peer-review and tenure evaluations. But some of Desch’s recommendations risk over-bridging the academic-policymaker gap, diluting each party’s comparative advantage. Desch argues scholars should “focus less on criticism of politics than on offering a positive policy agenda that provides a better solution within the general political and bureaucratic parameters in Washington and our political system.[19] At some point, however, if academics are focused on formulating politically-feasible policy, what do they offer that policymakers and their staffers don’t?
Conclusion
Cult is well-organized, clearly written, and well-researched. Desch relies heavily on secondary sources—journal articles, biographies, and histories of academic disciplines—as well as some primary sources—mainly government memos and think tank records. He also cites recent surveys of both academics and policymakers on their perspective on the gap between them.[20] Desch makes a convincing argument that wartime brings the Ivory Tower and the Beltway together, but he is less convincing in his argument that there has been a trend toward decreased relevance over time. It is not evident, for example, that political scientists today are less engaged with policy than they were during the interwar years of the 1920s.
Desch sums up his argument in the book’s dedication to Samuel Huntington, whom he views as a model of academic relevancy: “Pick substantively important questions of broad concern and answer them in the most rigorous way you can.”[21] Of course, “as rigorously as you can” does a lot of work in this equation. Elsewhere he quotes Huntington’s admonition that “works in the social sciences should be judged not only on their intellectual merit but also by the contributions they make to achieving moral purposes.”[22] That one of Huntington’s best-known works, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, is itself quite controversial—criticized as both lacking in rigor and having ultimately furthered immoral purposes—highlights the difficulty of striking the balance Desch advocates.[23]
In the end, Cult of the Irrelevant leaves the reader with several overarching questions. First, would it be profitable to lean in to the division Desch sees between basic and applied research in the social sciences, with different career tracks incentivizing different types of work? Service academies, war colleges, and think tanks already provide the resources to incentivize policy-relevant work—building a hose to transmit basic research to the policy world, rather than relying on the spontaneous trickle-down effect Desch argues does not work. And, second, to what extent is the burden on policymakers, both senior appointees and more junior staff, to learn to engage with academic work, even when it is outside their comfort zone? While Desch doubts the utility of training staffers in academic methods and theories, as some classes and texts attempt to do, this seems to let the Beltway side of the equation off too easy.[24] If policymakers want more out of academic work, perhaps they can cross the bridge as well.
Overall, Cult of the Irrelevant is a timely, well-researched, and thought-provoking book that is a worthy read for anyone interested in how to reform academia, improve policymaking, or both. Readers may not agree with all of Desch’s arguments, but they will be inspired to think more deeply about these issues.
Jessica D. Blankshain is an Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed are the author’s own and do not represent the views of the Naval War College, the Department of the Navy, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: A Marine Corps War College student takes notes during a lecture. (Kathy Reesey/U.S. Marine Corps Photo)
Notes:
[1] See, for example: James Goldgeier and Bruce Jentleson, “How to Bridge the Gap Between Policy and Scholarship,” War on the Rocks, June 29, 2015, https://warontherocks.com/2015/06/how-to-bridge-the-gap-between-policy-and-scholarship/; Daniel Byman and Matthew Kroenig “Reaching beyond the Ivory Tower: A How to Manual.” Security Studies 25, no. 2 (2016): 289–319; Stephen M. Walt, “Breaking Ranks in Academia.” Foreign Policy (blog), September 18, 2013. https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/18/breaking-ranks-in-academia/. Earlier in the decade, a movement within political science known as “Perestroika” pushed for a more methodologically diverse, accessible, and relevant discipline. See, for example: Kristen Renwick Monroe, ed., Perestroika! The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005); Sanford Schram, “Return to Politics: Perestroika and Postparadigmatic Political Science,” Political Theory 31, no. 6 (2003): 835–851; Stephen Earl Bennett, “‘Perestroika’ Lost: Why the Latest ‘Reform’ Movement in Political Science Should Fail,” PS: Political Science & Politics 35, no. 2 (2002): 177–179.
[2] Michael Charles Desch, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
[3] Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant, 11.
[4] Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant, 206.
[5] Desch, 2.
[6] See, for example, Gary King, Robert O Keohane, and Sidney Verba, Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), http://www5.unitn.it/Biblioteca/it/Web/LibriElettroniciDettaglio/49057; Sidney Tarrow, “Bridging the Quantitative-Qualitative Divide in Political Science,” American Political Science Review 89, no. 2 (1995): 471–474; Henry E. Brady and David Collier, eds., Rethinking Social Inquiry: Diverse Tools, Shared Standards, 2nd ed (Lanham, Md: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010).
[7] Desch, 240.
[8] Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant, 3.
[9] Desch, 3.
[10] Desch, 242.
[11] Desch, 5.
[12] Desch, 147.
[13] Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?, New edition (Princeton Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2017).
[14] Desch, 5.
[15] Desch, 6.
[16] Desch, 254.
[17] Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Should Military Officers Study Policy Analysis?,” Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 76 (Quarter 2015): 30–34.
[18] Desch, 239.
[19] Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant, 252.
[20] Desch, 2.
[21] Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant, vii.
[22] Desch, Cult of the Irrelevant, 255.
[23] See, for example, this collection of essays in Foreign Affairs debating Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations https://www.foreignaffairs.com/anthologies/2015-04-09/clash-civilizations-debate
[24] Nikolas K. Gvosdev, Jessica D. Blankshain, and David A. Cooper, Decision-Making in American Foreign Policy (Cambridge University Press, 2019).