What Do Policymakers Want From Us? Results of a Survey of Current and Former Senior National Security Decision Makers

What do the most senior national security policymakers want from international relations scholars? To answer that question, we administered a unique survey to current and former policymakers to gauge when and how they use academic social science to inform national security decision making. We find that policymakers do regularly follow academic social science research and scholarship on national security affairs, hoping to draw upon its substantive expertise. But our results call into question the direct relevance to policymakers of the most scientific approaches to international relations. And they at best seriously qualify the “trickle down” theory that basic social science research eventually influences policymakers. To be clear, we are not arguing that policymakers never find scholarship based upon the cutting-edge research techniques of social science useful. But policymakers often find contemporary scholarship less-than-helpful when it employs such methods across the board, for their own sake, and without a clear sense of how such scholarship will contribute to policymaking.

最高层级的国家安全政策制定者，希冀从国际关系学者处获取何种助力？为解答这一问题，我们面向现任及卸任的政策制定者开展了一项独特调研，以探究他们何时、以何种方式借助学术社会科学研究为国家安全决策提供支撑。研究发现，政策制定者确实会持续关注国家安全事务领域的学术社会科学研究与学术成果，以期从中汲取实质专业学识。但本研究结果对"国际关系领域最具科学性的研究路径能够直接服务于政策制定者"这一认知提出了质疑，同时也对"基础社会科学研究终将对政策制定者产生影响"的涓流理论（trickle down theory）作出了极为严苛的限定。需要明确的是，我们并非主张政策制定者从未发现基于前沿社会科学研究方法的学术成果具有价值。但当当代学术研究全面采用此类方法、仅以方法本身为导向，且未清晰阐明其研究成果将如何服务于政策制定时，政策制定者往往会认为这类学术成果实用性不足。