What Do We Do With Applied Research?

Abstract

One of the most persistent criticisms of the behavioral sciences is that academics are only interested in developing theory for its own sake (e.g., see Ricci 1984). According to this argument, the development of social science theory provides society with few practical benefits. It survives only because it serves the needs of the academic community, providing fertile publishing ground for scholars to formulate, criticize, revise, reformulate, and debunk various theories. Critics view theory building as comparable to a dog chasing its tail. One can identify a great deal of activity, but there is little practical pay off. We believe that this pernicious view of theory building has evolved because applied proposals for policy change that would demonstrate the value of social science theory are not generally published in mainstream journals. Mainstream journals identify theories about the nature of important governmental and societal problems. Often these theories provide the basis for remedial solutions that can be formulated as policy proposals. However, once theory is framed in an applied form, scholars generally consider it as inappropriate for publication in mainstream social science journals. Social scientists themselves have created the impression that theory is only formulated for its own sake. In this article we ask what we believe is a fundamental question for the political science discipline: What does one do with applied research? A satisfactory answer to this question would demonstrate the practical utility of social science theory-or what Lindblom and Cohen (1979) have called usable knowledge. We illustrate our argument by presenting an example of an applied policy proposal that flows naturally from the last 40 years of the development of bureaucratic theory. The Accountability Problem and Bureaucratic Theory