Forty Years of Social Policy and Policy Research

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Abstract

Nobel Laureate Robert M. Solow, vice chairman of the Urban Institute Board of Trustees, sums up the Institute's 40 years of achievements by exploring the interaction between policy research and policy action. While social policy is sold as "leaps and bounds" research uncovers the true slow and incremental steps toward success. Yet research is indispensible for action because it weeds out bad ideas and gives policymakers objective evaluations. Solow concludes that it is in this complex but crucial interaction where the Institute's real work is done, citing several of the Institute's key accomplishments.

Introduction

Shortly after his narrow victory over Richard Nixon in 1960, president-elect John Kennedy telephoned Professor James Tobin of Yale University and invited him to become a member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the new administration. Tobin had some doubts: "I'm an ivory-tower economist," he said. Kennedy topped him: "That's all right; I'm an ivory-tower president." The point of the story is that neither man was quite telling the truth.

There was never any ambiguity about where the Urban Institute stood. Lyndon Johnson was practically allergic to ivory. From its very birth, in fact even during pregnancy, the Institute's focus was on knowledge for policy. The incorporators, who were themselves experienced men of the world, had to sweet-talk President Johnson into accepting that the Institute could aim to bring anything useful that might come out of the ivory tower into the gritty world of live social policy. That is not always as simple as it sounds. My goal today is of course to heap well-deserved praise on the Urban Institute, but also to remind you of the complex interaction between policy research and policy action; that is the minefield where the Institute works.

The relation between economic and social policy and economic and social research is both indispensable and uneasy. (From now on, whenever I say "social policy" I mean social and economic policy.) It is an indispensable relation because most ideas proposing a new social policy are not very good ideas. You can think of this as just a universally observed fact of political life, but there may be fundamental reasons for it. One important reason is that modern social life is highly complicated. Side effects and the side-effects of side-effects can be a very important part of anything that happens, but  most of the policy ideas that turn up in the marketplace are fairly superficial: here is one obvious problem and there is one direct, obvious solution. The incidental implications are forgotten. Unless policy wheels are to spin forever, there has to be some way of weeding out the bad ideas fairly inexpensively. That is where research comes in.

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