Research and Policy: An Afterword for the Symposium on the Family Support Act of 1988

Abstract

In the theater of politics, research often plays the roles of Scuds and Patriots. Like Scud missiles in the Gulf War, research findings launched from a variety of sites fall from the sky in the heat of debate and offer, at least in the eyes of the media, serious threat to the ambitions of advocates. Such ballistic conclusions are generally terrorist weapons: they create sound, fury, and overtime, but in the end they have little consequence as long as, once publicized, they are ignored. For reasons of morale and politics, it is useful to have Patriot research ready in reserve for dramatic interception. On occasion, research does seem to affect more substantively the outcomes of the policy-making process. While this occurs in all of the variety of ways differentiated by the taxonomy developed in Whiteman [1985] and Greenberg and Mandell [1991], arguably the most difficult accomplishment is to affect the basic orientations of the major players. Such effects change the shape of the terrain on which the struggle over policy is carried out. This is a different game from Scuds and Patriots, for altering the lay of the land is much more time-consuming, and far more difficult to counteract, than is the launching of medium-ambition research reports. Judged from the accounts presented in this symposium,' the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation (MDRC) achieved the substantive-conceptual in dissemination of the results of its evaluations of the welfare-towork demonstrations initiated by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 (hereafter OBRA). Once the demonstration reports were assimilated, the debate over the provisions of what was to become the Family Support Act