0.3 Knowledge for governance: social science perspectives on science  (Page 5/10)

In 1923, Merriam took the lead in establishing the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), modeling it explicitly on the National Research Council (NRC). The NRC, based on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), was created in 1916 as a means for applying the expertise of the nation’s natural scientists to problems that would be encountered in World War I. Following the war, the NRC became involved across the spectrum of the sciences, raising funds for research and for fellowships. In cooperation with its parent NAS, the NRC also undertook specific studies at the request of federal bureaus and the U.S. Congress. Merriam had similar ambitions for the nascent SSRC.

Consistent with his conviction that academic social science should be closely linked with governance, Merriam engaged throughout the 1920s in building associations of local government officials. “The purpose of such an organization was to be the same as that for social science: exchanges of information, the creation of machinery for research, interchange and identification of personnel.” Ibid., 226. In 1930, Merriam was also instrumental in establishing Louis Brownlow’s Public Administration Clearing House, conceived as an umbrella organization for maintaining communication among professional organizations of public administrators, and for encouraging the broader development of the public administration field. Although Merriam and Brownlow first met in 1931 when Brownlow came to Chicago to set up his Public Administration Clearing House, the two men had known of each other’s work for several years, and were to become close colleagues and friends.

The national planning board

During the 1920s and early 1930s, Roosevelt was one of several governors who appreciated Merriam’s and Brownlow’s efforts to professionalize public administration. During his 1932 campaign for the presidency and his first weeks in office, Roosevelt sought the advice of a number of academic social scientists. Known as his “brain trust,” the group included Rexford Tugwell, Raymond Moley, and Adolph Berle. “Roosevelt,” as Merriam’s biographer notes, “could scarcely have avoided turning up Merriam.” Ibid. From the earliest days of the New Deal, Merriam had reasonable inside knowledge of the trends in the young administration through his Chicago friend and political ally, Harold Ickes, an old line Progressive who had managed Merriam’s unsuccessful mayoral campaign.

The New Deal’s early years were memorable for the large number of new federal bureaus created to deal with the multiple crises of the Great Depression and to establish mechanisms to mitigate future crises. The federal government assumed unprecedented responsibility for dealing with a far greater range of social and economic matters than anyone—even Roosevelt himself during the 1932 campaign—had envisioned.

A second, less widely appreciated Roosevelt innovation was his development of planning as a tool for governance. It was a revolutionary idea; his predecessor, Hoover, was convinced that elevating government planning to the level of the presidency would cause too much centralization, leading to quasi-socialism or quasi-fascism. Ibid., 244.