I have to say, I was both shocked and disappointed the other day. Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) has proposed an Amendment to prevent the National Science Foundation (NSF) from funding political science projects. (Coburn’s argument for the amendment can be read here.) Coburn makes some decent points, but he also makes a few that show that he doesn’t really know what political science is or what its practitioners do. To quote the amendment author of the amendment:

The largest award over the last 10 years under the political science program has been $5.4 million for the University of Michigan for the “American National Election Studies” grant. The grant is to “inform explanations of election outcomes.” The University of Michigan may have some interesting theories about recent elections, but Americans who have an interest in electoral politics can turn to CNN, FOX News, MSNBC, the print media, and a seemingly endless number of political commentators on the internet who pour over this data and provide a myriad of viewpoints to answer the same questions. There is no shortage of data or analysis in this field that would require the government to provide funding for additional analysis.

In some internet circles, this could be answered by simply captioning the above quote with the words, “epic fail.” Since this is a political science blog, however, I’ll go the other, more dignified route. The ANES is the most thoroughly controlled, carefully sampled, and most thorough battery of questions in existence. Even the most thorough things I see on Rasmussen (a good resource, by the way) are child’s play compared to the stuff in the ANES. One can’t take a Fox News poll and test theories about the effects of education on political orientation across incomes, for example. Or, at the very least, a poll testing these theories won’t also have information on voter turnout, racial attitudes, and the dozens of other variables captured in the instrument. It would be impossible (or at least woefully impractical) to administer such an instrument in the short time span that the current news cycle dictates. Furthermore, some ANES items have been asked in exactly the same way since the 1960’s. Even if an item is being asked in the popular media today, chances are slim that plentiful data exists from 1978 that is in exactly the same format with exactly the same control variables worded the exact same way, which is what political scientists require for time-series analysis (which is exactly what it sounds like). The ANES is likely the most-cited and most-useful tool available to public opinion scholars. It fuels a great many research programs, and is responsible for a great deal of the research being done today, even outside of the University of Michigan.

At this point, I’ve said a great deal about the importance of a specific survey, but I haven’t really said much about what we do as political scientists or why the discipline itself important. At the risk of oversimplifying, we use empirical scientific methods to study political phenomena. Sometimes, this means running laboratory experiments, usually involving human subjects answering a survey or playing a carefully structured “game” under controlled conditions. Other times, it means using sophisticated statistical techniques to parse out the effects of various causal processes. Regardless of the specific method, we begin by developing (or building upon established) theories, then turn those into testable hypotheses, then proceed to perform those tests. The results are then written up for a journal article, book, or (if you’re really lucky/famous) both.

OK, so I’ve answered the first question. I’d dare say the previous paragraph is inclusive enough that most political scientists would be willing to accept it as a definition of our discipline. Now a word on the importance of political science is in order. Political scientists study causal processes. If you want to know the causes of terrorism, a political scientist is your best bet. Do you want to know why some black candidates do better in polls than elections? Again, a political scientist is working on the answer. Are you curious as to the reasons some policy options, though seemingly ideal, are never really on the table in public discourse? Not only will you find the answer in political science, but you’ll find that it’s much more interesting than the simple notion that “they” won’t allow it. In fact, one could argue that some political scientists have successfully figured out who “they” is. Also, a political scientist just managed to write a sentence using the phrase, “who ‘they’ is” correctly. OK, that’s not exactly a lasting contribution, but hey, it’s proper grammar on the internet, so I feel it should be observed.

So to sum up, political science is, as the name implies, a science. There are some implications in the statement accompanying the amendment that hint at an ideological motivation for Coburn’s move. That, however, is for another time. If you want a political scientist’s take on it, I guess you’ll just have to keep reading.