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1 Pol'y Stud. J. 4 (1972-1973)

handle is hein.journals/plyssjnl1 and id is 1 raw text is: 11. THE SYMPOSIUM ON BASIC ISSUES AND REFERENCES A. General Approaches THE CHALLENGE OF POLICY SCIENCES Yehezkel Dror The Hebrew University of Jerusalem The present politics of political science being as they are, the idea of promoting the application of political science to important policy problems seems to need little justification. Who today dares to oppose relevance and who would disagree with the statement that scientists must contribute to the reduction of human suffering and the resolution of social problems? But matters are more complex than that. There is a big difference be- tween political scientists, even prominent ones, making statements about important policy problems and application of political science to policy issues. Application of science requires more than advocacy of predeter- mined positions with the help of scientific terminology. Even a majority vote by political scientists in respect to a concrete policy issue - however perhaps important as an exercise of the democratic rights and duties of political scientists in their capacity as (hopefully) enlightened citizen - cannot be regarded as application of political science to important policy problems. The least that is required for application of political science to policy problems is an explicit methodology for identifying preferable policies on the basis of scientific knowledge, that is: a prescriptive methodology. Additional requisites for applying political science to policy problems in- clude, among others, the following: 1. Capacity to handle value issues in a way which distinguished be- tween fundamental value choice and instrumental consideration of inter- mediate goals. In respect to fundamental value choice, clarification of the choice dimensions is needed, such as: consistency, trade-offs, time- evaluation, and risk propensities (lottery values). More important and nearer to the core of political science, social mechanism for determining choice between irreduceable fundamental value mixes must be redesigned and even nova-designed (i.e., designed anew), for instance in respect to citizen participation, and in respect to presentation and explanation of alternatives in the mass-media of communication. 2. Adjustment of paradigms, methods, methodologies and techniques to the needs of policy-improvement. This involves, for instance, changes in the standards of validity and reliability: in respect to policy, preferization in the sense of arriving at solutions better than would otherwise be the case is the main goal. Usually, because of lack of time and complexity of issues, preferable solutions will fall short from the requirements of sci- entific truth, even when constituting significant improvements in social reality. Another illustration of needed new methodologies is social experi- mentation. Identification of better policies often requires pilot-testing, that is: social experimentation in real settings. Developing of suitable methodologies, which also make social experimentation politically feasable and morally acceptable is something quite new for political science (and all other social sciences). -4-