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394 Annals Am. Acad. Pol. & Soc. Sci. 1 (1971)

handle is hein.cow/anamacp0394 and id is 1 raw text is: Social Science and the Federal Government: An Introductory Note By GENE M. LYONS IN the opening essay in this special issue of THE ANNALS, Sanford Lak- off suggests that the philosopher's dream of a merger of knowledge and political power may now be on its way to becom- ing a reality. If this is truly so, ques- tions about this merger are no longer simply matters for philosophical specu- lation; they now become matters for political and professional debate. And so they have-in the classroom, on pro- fessional panels, in the suspicion of au- thority among young people, in the fear of a value-free technocracy. It thus seems an important and more than ap- propriate time to publish this special issue on the social sciences and the federal government. Lakoff himself raises questions about the capacity of democratic theory to deal with the new range of problems raised by the merger of knowledge and power. At least two major requirements would seem to flow from his discussion. On the one hand it might be argued that there is a need for a more rational proc- ess of planning in the federal govern- ment in order to apply knowledge to public policy-making. At the same time there would also seem to be a need for a greater diffusion of knowledge throughout the society if we are to avoid a virtual monopoly of expertise by cen- tral authorities. Philip Green, in his essay, goes farther than Lakoff when he expresses a real fear that the Executive branch of the federal government can dominate the growth and use of expert knowledge to the deterioration of fundamental lib- erties and the perpetuation of the exist- ing power structure. Indeed, Green calls upon social scientists to refuse to make their expertise available to the federal agencies. Instead, he urges them, as a matter of professional and moral obliga- tion, to use their knowledge in support of groups and movements that serve as countervailing forces to the growth of central authority and the elites it keeps on top. The articles by Lakoff and Green pose the deepest kinds of questions raised by the new relation of social science to the federal government. Moreover, because they take two quite different approaches to the issues they raise, they tend to join in battle the contending solutions to the problem of knowledge and power. Harold Orlans adds to the mosaic when he takes a sociological cut into the gov- ernment research process. His article seeks to show that most social scientists are neither mandarins nor ideologues, but very human human beings whose work, in government or out, is certain to be influenced by a mix of personal, po- litical, and professional likes and dis- likes, loyalties and biases. Orlans' real- istic look at the social science enterprise, moreover, is a bridge between the par- ticular concerns of Lakoff and Green and the articles that follow, which examine the organization and, to some extent, behavior of social scientists at several levels, and in several kinds, of federal operations. In my own article on the President and his experts, I discuss the develop- ment of a kind of planning process within the Presidency that serves, in turn, to bring knowledge within that 1

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