November 7, 2018
Michael Desch (Univ. of Notre Dame)
In 2014, Avey and Desch reported the results of a unique survey of current and former policymakers intended to gauge when and how they use academic social science to inform national security decision making. They found that policymakers do regularly follow academic social science research and scholarship on national security affairs, hoping to draw upon its substantive expertise. But their results also called into question the direct relevance to policymakers of the most scientific approaches to international relations. Their piece has subsequently generated much discussion and in an effort to further explore what policymakers want from academic social science Avey and Desch teamed up with the TRIP project at the College of William and Mary to survey a broader spectrum of U.S. foreign policy policymakers and endeavored to deepen the pool of respondents to include a younger and otherwise more diverse set of views on what policymakers want from academics. This talk will report some initial top-line results from this follow-up survey.