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Is There Really a Scholar-Practitioner Gap? An Institutional Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 January 2007

Ernest J. Wilson
Affiliation:
University of Maryland

Extract

The relationship between scholars and practitioners is a continuing source of concern to both communities. Each side complains about the insularity of the other and routinely points to gaps that separate them. Alexander George and other scholars found weak interest and lackluster capacity on the part of academy-based social scientists to contribute knowledge deemed useful to the policy community (George 1993; Nincic and Lepgold 2000). For their part, leading policy practitioners have bitterly complained about what they see as the growing irrelevance of scholarly work to the design and conduct of statecraft (Newsom 1995–1996).

Type
THE PROFESSION
Copyright
© 2007 The American Political Science Association

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