© Columbia University Press
Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power: Social Science and Public Policy in the Twenty-First Century
August, 2003
Paper, 176 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-12607-6
$27.00
/ £18.50
"This book offers a unique perspective on the interplay of the social sciences and public policy and discusses the emerging challenges with the privatization of the public sector and globalization of social sciences." — Public Administration Review
"Pursuing Truth, Exercising Power is an important, argumentative, and highly accessible book that should interest social scientists and public policy practitioners alike...It should be required reading for students of social science in general, and students of public policy in particular." — Johan Eriksson, International Studies Review
"An important dean of an important public-policy school deals here with a vitally important subject." — Leslie Gelb, president of the Council on Foreign Relations
President of the Council on Foreign Relations
"Lisa Anderson does an enormous service by tracing the ambivalence of social science toward public policy over the last century-the frequent occasions when social science played crucial roles, and the ways in which it sometimes cut itself off. She also analyzes the rise of policy research cut off from independent social science inquiry, the implications of reduced centrality of states amid globalization, and the challenges to universities as they seek to adapt to changes in both the demand for knowledge and the ways in which it is produced. If you think policy should be based on scientific knowledge, you should read this book--and think hard about the questions it raises." — Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council
"A remarkable book that every practitioner practicing and every teacher teaching public policy should read. It shows the uneasy relation between truth and power that has shaped evolution of public policy. It documents the close links among social science, policymaking and conceptions of the common good. It demonstrates the tensions that have and do underlie the craft ? whether to study the particular area or the universal process, abstractly or engaged--and it relates how those tensions have been resolved, only to emerge again. This volume is an indispensable guide to the debates that have shaped what schools of public policy try to teach." — Michael W. Doyle, Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University