Having been a political scientist since the mid-1960s, I have seen calls for disciplinary change come and go. The latest “revolution” is particularly disappointing. Dubbed the “Perestroika movement,” after the nom de plume of the “revolt's” conjurer, supporters of this latest “protest” often make sweeping claims, couched in apocalyptic imagery. Ultimately, Perestroikans alienate some who favor disciplinary changes. Those who rail against the profession's political irrelevance are themselves bad politicians.

I was very much impressed by Andrew Stark's profound structural interpretation of the question of “Why Political Scientists aren't Public Intellectuals” (PS&P, September 2002). I do not want to rehearse or respond to his particular argument which I find quite persuasive. But, it seems to me, there is more to the story, and Stark himself provides the clue in a single sentence: “Yet if the problem is structural, the solution must be the individual.” It is this thought I want to address.

As a former President of the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA), I am very pleased to be a featured speaker on the contributions of social and behavioral research to public policy and to help celebrate the Consortium's twentieth anniversary. In my talk this afternoon, I want to address the important issue of expanding the domain of policy-relevant scholarship in the social sciences.

American foreign policy decision makers altered their understanding of the sovereign territorial state on September 11, 2001. The loss of lives and property in New York City, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania reversed America's general belief that the oceans and superpower status guaranteed “home security.” That dramatic act of violence against civilians and symbols of U.S. culture crystallized the distinction between the ideologies of democracy and terrorism, which in turn forced geopolitical horizons to expand beyond traditional thinking.

The interesting symposium, “Shaking Things Up? Thoughts about the Future of Political Science,” that appeared in the June 2002 issue shows a division among political scientists regarding the extent to which political science should be considered a “hard” or “soft” science. Those who believe that political science can and/or must become a hard science insist that we attempt to quantify political words, separate independent from dependent variables, isolate variables, develop testable hypotheses, and make predictions that can be verified. In dismissing the possibility of political science ever being a hard science, Welden (l953) long ago showed that political words are by their nature imprecise, subjective, and appraisive (ascriptive as well as descriptive). For example, we can describe President Clinton as being “tall” and “liberal.” While his tallness can be easily quantified, his liberalness, much less so. Therefore, as we attempt to quantify how liberal he was as president, we inevitable end up trivializing the subject (see Werlin 2001).

This symposium presents the remarks from a roundtable at the 2001 APSA Annual meeting. Originally conceptualized as a discussion in which political theorists would speak with political scientists of a more empirical orientation, the roundtable broadened its purview to tap into the richness of the debate engendered by the Perestroika communications that spread hroughout the discipline of political science throughout 2000–2001. The panelists hoped to encourage public discussion about the future of political science.

The White House 2001 Project includes two programs designed to ease the entry into office of new administration members. The two are the White House Interview Program (WHIP) and Nomination Forms Online (NFO).

On the afternoon of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, a group of social scientists at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) gathered to consider how they might employ their talents to help the country after the shocking events of that morning. The group included economists, political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, demographers, and survey methodologists. Based upon their previous research experience, each of them proposed hypotheses on aspects of American life and individuals' morale and behavior that were most likely to be affected. While they were relatively confident about expected relationships in the short term, we were uncertain about how temporary or permanent these changes might be or how intertwined and mutually reinforcing they could become.

In an article otherwise lamenting political scientists' inability to influence public policy (“Politics, Political Science, and Specialization,” June 2002, pp. 187–190), Robert Jervis takes issue with recent research on school vouchers, to which we have contributed (2002). Jervis argues that voucher experiments “are largely irrelevant, or at best a first step.” Comparisons of students in private and public schools are of little value as long as most students remain in public school. Jervis therefore directs analysts to look for “large-scale improvements [that] can only come through the impact of the possibilities of choice on the bulk of the public school system.”

This article looks at changes in the size of American news audiences during the 1990–91 Persian Gulf Crisis and the more recent period surrounding the 9/11 attacks. Like the current situation, the Persian Gulf crisis started suddenly, when Iraq launched a surprise invasion of Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Since there are clear starting points for both national crises, comparing the percentage of adults watching television news broadcasts before and after each precipitating event should show whether the respective crises prompted changes in levels of popular attention to the news.

The current debate in political science over methods and fundamental theoretical stances recalls similar debates in other fields. Part of the debate focuses on the merits of the use of statistical methods or the use of mathematics and quasi-mathematical reasoning, as in game theory and much of rational choice. Among the critics of those who use these approaches are many who focus more on interpretive approaches to understanding social institutions and behavior. In some ways, the debate seems dated in that the largest and most compelling body of quasi-economic work is broad studies of the relationships between political and economic development. Such work, often with relatively sharply defined statistical models, spans more than two generations of scholars in political science. Such work has given compelling answers to many questions about the workings and workability of democracy. It typically abstracts from culture and it fits congenially with rational choice theory in its focus on microfoundations for various claims.

White House transitions and operations are the focus of our transition preparation program because of the central position of staff in governing. A year prior to coming onto the presidential ticket with Governor Bush, Richard Cheney spoke of the critical importance of the White House staff to whatever it is a president does: “It's crucial in terms of how he's going to function as president, whether or not he's effective. His reach, his ability to sort of guide and direct the government, to interact with the cabinet, to deal effectively with the Congress, to manage his relationship with the press, all of those are key ingredients to his success.” It is the White House staff that on a daily basis manages those crucial relationships.

Contemporary political science is specialized, deeply concerned with its methods, and politicized. It also remains peripheral to most public debates. But the relationships among these characteristics are ambiguous and each yields advantages as well as costs.

I was distressed by the factual distortion and ad hominem attacks by Stephen Bennett on my scholarship and the professional competence of David Brunori and Gregory Kasza in the June 2002 issue of PS. In Bennett's eagerness to discredit the “Perestroika movement” he made inaccurate and personally disparaging comments about particular scholars and writers. There are several examples of this. The first is his remark that “(Ronald) Libby and “many midcareer political scientists have given up on research and writing” (204)”

In this article, I examine how 9/11 and the subsequent efforts to combat terrorism have affected what people know about politics. My analysis suggests three main differences between knowledge before and after 9/11. First, knowledge of 9/11 and the “war on terrorism” shot up to uncommonly high levels, just as common sense and our theories would predict. The second point is less intuitive: Heightened interest spread to issues not directly related to the terrorist attacks and appears to have increased knowledge of politics more broadly. Finally, a comparison between knowledge related to 9/11 and general political knowledge reveals that some of the usual obstacles to learning did not matter in the aftermath of 9/11. A low sense of civic duty, lack of faith in government responsiveness, and a full-time job all kept people from getting informed about politics in general, but not from learning about the terrorist attacks and the war on terrorism.

My assertion that the “Perestroikans” offend some who might favor disciplinary change has upset some folks.

The recent discussion about the current and future state of the discipline is a welcome and healthy development. While some of the discussion has generated unnecessary acrimony, my general impression is that this is an excellent time to engage seriously in a critique as well as an effort to reconstruct and move in a more positive direction.

There has been much debate over whether the United States has changed in any lasting and fundamental manners since September 11, 2001. Immediately following the carnage, editorialists and pundits proclaimed a national loss of innocence, the end of American exceptionalism, the new globalization of terror, and other cataclysmic shifts. One year later, it is still too early to be certain which claims will stand the test of time, and which will eventually come to seem overblown or simply off the mark. Our concern in this symposium is limited to civic engagement in the aftermath of the assaults, and this note will be narrower still in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in, government and political figures.

That the White House had no institutional memory—the problem prompting the White House Interview Program (WHIP)—represents just one area in which the White House 2001 Project affected the presidential transition. In appointments, the Pew Charitable Trusts identified a second transition problem. In 1996, the Twentieth Century Fund produced a blue-ribbon study outlining several issues undermining the appeal of government appointment. The study, entitled Obstacle Course: The Report of the Twentieth Century Task Force on Presidential Appointment Process, convinced Pew to focus on the recruitment of presidential nominees. As part of that initiative, they contemplated a computer program that would reduce the burden placed on nominees by filing numerous, intrusive, and repetitive questionnaires.