Assignment #6: Applying Cohen’s five frameworks to congressional efforts toward “sound science” in the American context

My research topic deals with congressional efforts toward sound science in an American context. Historically, many scientific results or information regarding environmental policy, like global warming or air pollution, have been manipulated by the White House, political parties, and public agencies, and the serious problem is that we don’t know in how many cases this has been done and how we can control this intentional manipulation of scientific results in the future. In this assignment, I will apply my research topic to Cohen’s five frameworks on environmental policy respectively through using several sources of articles and books.

1. Values framework

According to Cohen (2006), valuing a certain ideologies, perspectives, or policy contexts is the most fundamentally important step regarding forming a direction of environmental policy-making process. Everybody has different thoughts and perspectives on the rightness and wrongness of a certain policy issue because public policy per se and its related process is inherently value-laden. Therefore, there are several different values priorities held by policy stakeholders and actors regarding environmental policy issue and the policy-making process. Some people orient toward religious values more than any other values; others orient toward economic values (like efficiency and effectiveness); still others pay attention to social equity or fairness. Environmental issues include all these value concurrently, so which values are considered more than others depends on various situational and contextual factors. Regarding my research topic, congressional efforts toward “sound science,” controlling intentional manipulation of scientific results by strong policy actors in the process of environmental policy, like the White House, political parties, and public agencies, values framework plays an important role in shaping national science and technology policy and politics-science interaction in the process of environmental policy-making.

Environmental policy, which is closely connected with science and technology policy in the United States, has faced a dilemma over which value(s) are considered. For example, in the case of global warming, while most members of the public want to avoid future harm from climate change, they have conflicting values about which sacrifices are worthwhile today (Tierney, 2009). As Cohen mentioned in his book, environmentalism as a value is frequently in conflict with the logic of economic development (like development logic for national economic development). The president, as one of the main policy actors, has his own value priorities and tries to reflect this value into the policy-making process under his incumbency. According to Vaughn and Villalobos (2009), most of former president Bush’s policy orientation was based on “religious conservatives” and “pro-corporate interests” and therefore he pursued policy initiatives that were consistent with the faith and profit-based preferences of his supporters during his presidency. This approach made environmentalism underestimated and ignored under his administration as a relatively unimportant value.

2. Political framework

Every policy issue consists of several policy actors having different perspectives and ideas, and therefore their interactions and interrelationships bring about cooperation and conflicts in the policy-making process. A power game among policy actors happens regarding “resource deployment, consumption, degradation,” and its related “learning” process (Cohen, 2006), and political winners and losers are made as the result of this game. We should understand and review science-politics interaction regarding “sound science” efforts. All policy matters and realities based on the current complex interactions and dynamics are inevitably “political,” considering the real interaction between science and politics. Happer (2003, p. 27) considers that politicization of science is inevitable “when governments provide funding for science.” Many scholars consider the politicization of science with different angles and issues (Vaughn & Villalobos, 2009; Happer, 2003; Gough, 2003). Although it cannot be generalized, they commonly argue that “the more that political considerations dominate scientific considerations, the greater the potential for policy driven by ideology and less based on strong scientific underpinnings” (Gough, 2003, p. 3).

There are several policy actors and stakeholders on the politics-science interaction on environmental policy. I think there were two main actors under the Bush administration in the manipulation of scientific results as the politicization of science: the president (or political parties) and the scientists. The president can control other policy actors’ voices through strategically deploying trusted allies and moving or mobilizing bureaucratic activity (Vaughn & Villalobos, 2009). Politicization has become a core governing strategy of the administrative presidency, according to Vaughn and Villalobos (2009). There are two types of politicization that the chief executive can implement: “active” (strategic placement of key political allies into personnel positions of managerial importance) and “passive” (presidential staffing strategies designed rather to slow, blunt, or negate bureaucratic involvement in key policy areas) politicization. Based on President Bush’s predisposition toward religious conservatism and corporate backers, he tried to reflect these predispositions under his administration, like reduced regulation of corporations. Scientists as “impartial experts” are used to a means by politicians to legitimate government policies: regarding policies advantageous to politicians, they’re prone to exaggerate their expertise to bolster their case (like enumerating the catastrophes that would occur if their policies aren’t adopted), while denigrating their political opponents as “unqualified” or “unscientific” (Tierney, 2009). In extreme politicization, governments or powerful advocacy groups consider science and scientists as those who “share or benefit from the politicization to drive science out of technical decisions and to promote a nonscientific agenda” (Happer, 2003).

3. Science and technology framework

Ideally, the role of scientists regarding environmental issues (like global warming) can be considered as an “impartial arbitrator” offering expert answers to politicians’ questions or a pure researcher who is separated from messy politics. However, most scientific issues are not so simple. While most scientists agree that anthropogenic global warming is a threat, they’re not certain about its scale or its timing or its precise consequences. There are too many technological, economic, and political uncertainties to count on it making a significant global difference. If people around the world can’t be cajoled — or frightened by apocalyptic scenarios — into cutting carbon emissions, then politicians need backup strategies (Tierney, 2009). Besides, citizens’ “scientific illiteracy” (Mooney & Kirshenbaum, 2009) and the resulting disinterest in scientific information help politicians or the White House manipulate scientific results to reflect their supporter’s interests. According to Mooney and Kirshenbaum (2009, p. 13), “80 percent of Americans can’t read the New York Times science section” and they are not interested in science. This situation in the United States gives rise to the cultural decline of American science.

4. Policy design framework

Policy per se becomes complex, according to Schneider and Ingram (1997), in order to “hide the actual allocation pattern for groups such as contenders” who are powerful but negatively socially constructed in society. Moreover, policy also becomes complex “when policy makers delegate responsibility to the scientific and professional networks who design policies and programs that draw from the specialized language and knowledge of scientific disciplines.” Under this circumstance, the citizens without special information or knowledge in a certain policy issue are likely to be alienated from policy-making processes and these processes are monopolized by powerful groups like elites, politicians, or the scientific and professional.

The intentional manipulation of scientific results regarding environmental policy process has historically been made with various strategies and symbolic action of policy stakeholders. Scholars mention some extreme cases, such as the censoring of Dr. Hansen (Bowen, 2008), the deliberate misrepresentation and occasional suppression of scientific evidence not consistent with administrative goals (Clayton, 2007; Waxman, 2003), and the dismissal of allegedly intransigent members of the Council on Bioethics. Of these strategies, strategic personnel management was frequently far more commonplace, according to Vaughn and Villalobos (2009). The Bush administration took advantage of two tracks of scientific manipulation strategies: “active politicization,” which takes the form of hiring former industry and interest group lobbyists to manage the official national effort; and “passive politicization,” in which those aspects of the federal bureaucracy not under the thumb of like-minded presidential appointees would remain understaffed to the point of dysfunction.

5. Management framework

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists (2004), the Bush administration (1) appointed underqualified individuals to important advisory posts, (2) used political litmus tests in questionnaires for seeking nominees, (3) appointed nonscientists to senior positions normally reserved for highly qualified scientific experts, and (4) censored and distorted scientific reports that contradicted administration policy goals. Moreover, the Bush administration took advantage of strategic vacancies by (1) allowing political appointee positions to convert to civil servant positions, (2) the general overpoliticization at the top levels of department management, and (3) an overreliance on outside contractors to conduct a “war on science” (Vaughn and Villalobos, p. 810). Having too many (a rising number) of political appointees makes it increasingly difficult for incoming presidents to carry out their transitions into office and fill the posts necessary for them to be able to govern effectively. Too much politicization and staffing woes can erode the quality of information, including that which relies on scientific information, as well as other sources of agency expertise covering diverse policy spheres.

Reference
Cohen, Steven. 2006. Understanding environmental policy, New York: Columbia University Press.
Gough. Michael. 2003. Science, Risks, and Politics. In edited by Michael Gough, Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking, Standford. CA: Hoover Institution Press, Washington D.C: George C. Marshall Institute. pp. 1 – 25.
Happer, William. 2003. Harmful Politicization of Science. In edited by Michael Gough, Politicizing Science: The Alchemy of Policymaking, Standford. CA: Hoover Institution Press, Washington D.C: George C. Marshall Institute. pp. 27 – 48.
Mooney, C., & Kirshenbaum, S. (2009). Unscientific American: How scientific illiteracy threatens our future, New York: Basic Books.
Schneider, Anne L., and Helen Ingram. 1997. “Good” Public Policy: A Policy Design and Social Construction Perspective. Current Public Policy and Management Issues, edited by Rosalyn Y. Carter and Khi V. Thai, Boca Raton, FL, Academics Press.
Tierney, J. (2009, February 23). Politics in the guise of pure science, The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/science/24tier.html?ref=science [accessed April 5, 2010].
Vaughn, J. S., & Villalobos, J. D. (2009). The Obama administration’s challenges after the War on Science: Reforming staffing practices and protecting scientific integrity in the Executive Branch. Review of Policy Research, Vol. 26, No. 6, pp. 803-819.