4

The Policy Orientation

Harold D. Lasswell
1951

The continuing crisis of national security in which we live calls for the
most efficient use of the manpower, facilities, and resources of the
American people. Highly trained talent is always scarce and costly. Hence
the crisis poses the problem of utilizing our intellectual resources with
the wisest economy. If our policy needs are to be served, what topics of
research are most worthy of pursuit? What manpower and facilities
should be allocated to official agencies and to private institutions for the
prosecution of research? What are the most promising methods of gath-
ering facts and interpreting their significance for policy? How can facts
and interpretations be made effective in the decision-making process
itself?
Although the importance of these questions is emphasized by the
urgency of national defense, they are in no sense new. For years there
has been a lively concern in intellectual circles for the problem of over-
coming the divisive tendencies of modern life and of bringing into exis-
tence a more thorough integration of the goals and methods of public
and private action. The pace of specialization in philosophy, natural
science, biology, and the social sciences has been so rapid that colleagues
on the faculty of a single university, or even members of a single depart-
ment, often complain that they cannot understand one another. The unity
of the intellectual life and the harmonizing of science and practice have
been undermined by these “centrifugal” forces.
For several years new trends toward integration have been gaining
strength in America. In liberal arts colleges the elective system has been
giving way to a more rigid curriculum, and survey courses have been
devised to introduce the student to broad fields of knowledge and to
86 Harold Lasswell

prepare the way for a vision of the whole. At the level of research, mixed
teams of specialists have been assembled to work on common problems
in the hope of counteracting the deleterious effects of an excessive atom-
ization of knowledge. In the realm of policy, more attention has been
given to planning, and to improving the information on which staff and
operational decisions are based. We have become more aware of the
policy process as a suitable object of study in its own right, primarily in
the hope of improving the rationality of the flow of decision.
A policy orientation has been developing that cuts across the existing
specializations. The orientation is twofold. In part it is directed toward
the policy process, and in part toward the intelligence needs of policy.
The first task, which is the development of a science of policy forming
and execution, uses the methods of social and psychological inquiry. The
second task, which is the improving of the concrete content of the infor-
mation and the interpretations available to policy-makers, typically goes
outside the boundaries of social science and psychology.
In so far, therefore, as the policy orientation is focused upon the sci-
entific study of policy, it is narrower than the psychological and social
sciences, which have many other objects of investigation. However,
where the needs of policy intelligence are uppermost, any item of knowl-
edge, within or without the limits of the social disciplines, may be rele-
vant. We may need to know the harbor installations at Casablanca, or
the attitudes of a population of Pacific islanders to the Japanese, or the
maximum range of a fixed artillery piece.
We may use the term “policy sciences” for the purpose of designating
the content of the policy orientation during any given period. The policy
sciences includes (1) the methods by which the policy process is investi-
gated, (2) the results of the study of policy, and (3) the findings of the
disciplines making the most important contributions to the intelligence
needs of the time. If we are to advance in our scientific grasp of the policy
formation and execution process as a whole, it is obviously essential to
apply and improve the methods by which psychological and social-
scientific investigations are made. [It is useful, therefore, to emphasize]
developments in research which are of unusual importance for the under-
standing of human choice. If the rationality of the policy process is to
be improved, we must single out the intelligence function for special
 The Policy Orientation 87

study. To some extent the task of improving the intelligence function

depends upon more effective techniques of communication, among
research workers, policy advisers, and the makers of final decisions.
Therefore the policy sciences are advanced whenever the methods are
sharpened by which authentic information and responsible interpreta-
tions can be integrated with judgment. To some extent the quality of the
intelligence function at any given time depends upon the successful antic-
ipation of policy needs before they have been generally recognized. Suc-
cessful prediction depends upon the cultivation of certain patterns of
thinking. For instance, it is important to consider the entire context of
events which may have an impact upon the future problems of policy.
Hence the world as a whole needs to be kept at the focus of attention.
It is also essential to cultivate the practice of thinking of the past and the
future as parts of one context, and to make use of “developmental con-
structs” as tools for exploring the flow of events in time. An example of
developmental thinking on a global scale is exemplified [by work which
deals] with the potentialities of the “garrison state.”
The expression “policy sciences” is not in general use in the United
States, although it is occurring more frequently now than before. Perhaps
it should be pointed out that the term is not to be taken as a synonym
for any expression now in current use among scholars. It is not another
way of talking about the “social sciences” as a whole, nor of the “social
and psychological sciences.” Nor are the “policy sciences” identical with
“applied social science” or “applied social and psychological science.”
As explained before, the policy orientation stresses but one of the many
problems which come within the proper scope of the social sciences, and
includes the results of the social, psychological, and natural sciences
insofar as they have a bearing on the policy needs of a given period for
adequate intelligence.
Nor are the “policy sciences” to be thought of as largely identical with
what is studied by the “political scientists”—the term in common use
for academic teachers and writers about government. It is true that one
group of academic political scientists would identify the field with the
study of power (in the sense of decision-making). But at present this is
a minority viewpoint. Many of the most valuable contributions to a
general theory of choice (including “decisions,” defined as sanctioned
88 Harold Lasswell

choices) have been made by persons who are not political scientists (in
the academic division of labor). Examples are abundant, and include the
“rational theory of choice” (called the “theory of games”) developed by
the mathematician von Neumann and the economist Morgenstern. . . .
[E]conomists Arrow and Katona are particularly concerned with the
theory of choice. And it would not be difficult to name psychologists,
anthropologists, and others who have specialized to a fruitful degree
upon the understanding of choice.
The word “policy” is commonly used to designate the most important
choices made either in organized or in private life. We speak of “gov-
ernment policy,” “business policy,” or “my own policy” regarding
investments and other matters. Hence “policy” is free of many of the
undesirable connotations clustered about the word political, which is
often believed to imply “partisanship” or “corruption.”
When I speak of the “policy orientation” in the United States I am
emphasizing what appears to be a dominant current among many schol-
ars and scientists, notably in the social sciences. The conception of the
policy sciences is arising to give insight into these recent trends and to
aid in clarifying their full possibilities. The movement is not only toward
a policy orientation, with a resulting growth in the policy sciences, but
more specifically toward the policy sciences of democracy.

The Emphasis on Method

The meaning of current developments will be more apparent if we review

the trends between World War I and World War II. The first of these
wars was a turning point in the history of the social and psychological
sciences in the United States. Some of these disciplines made conspicu-
ous contributions to the prosecution of the war. Others did not. The
problem immediately arose of accounting for the difference. The inter-
war evolution of the social sciences in the United States is largely to be
explained in terms of the answers to this question.
The most influential answer was this: the disciplines which possessed
quantitative methods were the ones that rose most rapidly in influence.
Consider from this point of view the case of economics. Economists were
extensively utilized to estimate the facilities, manpower, and resources
 The Policy Orientation 89

necessary to produce the munitions required by the armed forces and to

supply men and matériel where needed. The economic scientists who
made the greatest direct contribution employed mathematics and statis-
tics. They had method. And they were quantitative. They could manip-
ulate data in the light of a system of general postulates, laws, and
hypotheses.
Consider the psychologists. The most successful group used “intelli-
gence tests” as a quick means of selecting personnel for various
operations. Immediately after World War I, the results gained enormous
publicity when articles appeared in which the remarkable assertion
was made that most of the American army was “below average intelli-
gence.” It took many years to straighten out the misconceptions in
the sensational reports originally made. Obviously the word “average”
had entirely different meanings for the reading public and for the
psychometricians who created and applied the tests. However, the
publicity given to testing and psychology greatly increased scientific
and lay interest in the subject. Once again the success of the dis-
cipline appeared to depend upon the use of quantitative methods.
Intelligence tests were evolved and applied with the aid of statistical
procedures.
The rise of economists and psychometricians seemed to indicate that
the closer the social scientist came to the methods of physical science the
more certain his methods could be of acceptance. This point of view was
emphasized by the scholar who took the most important part in remold-
ing the social disciplines, Charles E. Merriam, professor of political
science at the University of Chicago. Professor Merriam took the initia-
tive in organizing the Social Science Research Council, which is a dele-
gate body of scholarly associations in political science, economics,
sociology, psychology, and other social sciences. Merriam stressed the
importance of breaking down the barriers that separate scholars from
one another, and of leveling-up methodological competence everywhere.
In a typical statement, made in 1925, he wrote in the preface to his New
Aspects of Politics: “It is . . . the purpose of this study . . . to suggest
certain possibilities of approach to a method, in the hope that others may
take up the task and through reflection and experiment eventually intro-
duce more intelligent and scientific technique into the study and practice
90 Harold Lasswell

of government, and into popular attitudes toward the governing

process.”1
At the same time that steps were being taken at the national level to
organize the Social Science Research Council, leading universities were
working out agencies for interdisciplinary research. At the University of
Chicago, for example, field studies of the city of Chicago were made by
the Local Community Research Committee (later called the Social
Science Research Committee). Joint programs were developed at
Columbia University and Harvard University. An Institute of Human
Relations was established at Yale.
The programs just referred to were financed in large part by the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial
Fund, another Rockefeller benefaction. One of the most imaginative and
aggressive factors in the program was Beardsley Ruml, who at various
times was administratively active on both foundations. Ruml, it is worth
noting, was a Ph.D. in psychology, well-versed in statistics, who had a
share during World War I in the testing program of the Army.
The outlook of Merriam and his fellow leaders of the postwar gener-
ation is made explicit in many publications which appeared during the
1920s. The interdisciplinary theme is prominent in A History of Politi-
cal Theories: Recent Times, a volume edited by Merriam and Professor
Harry Elmer Barnes, published in New York in 1924. In addition to the
political scientists who contributed to the symposium there were lawyers
(E. M. Borchard and Caleb Perry Patterson), an economist (Paul H.
Douglas), a historian (Carlton J. H. Hayes), a philosopher (Herbert W.
Schneider), sociologists (Barnes, and Frank H. Hankins), a social psy-
chologist (Charles Elmer Gehlke), an anthropologist (Alexander A.
Goldenweiser), and a social geographer (Franklin Thomas).
An evidence of the stress on method was the Committee on Scientific
Method which was appointed by the Social Science Research Council
and in 1931 brought out Methods in Social Science: A Casebook, edited
by Stuart A. Rice. The book was composed of fifty-two methodological
analyses of contributions to the social sciences. The analysts included
such authorities from many fields as Robert E. Park and William F.
Ogburn (sociology); A. L. Kroeber and Edward Sapir (anthropology);
John Maurice Clark and Frank H. Knight (economics); W. Y. Elliott and
 The Policy Orientation 91

George E. G. Gatlin (political science); Heinrich Klüver and Robert S.

Woodworth (psychology); Floyd Allport and Kimball Young (social
psychology); Philip Klein (social work); Raoul Blanchard and K. C.
McMurry (social geography); and Henri Pirenne and Sidney B. Fay
(history).
Another means of stimulating interest in method was the post-doctoral
fellowship program of the Social Science Research Council. The program
was designed to encourage young scholars to improve their scientific
equipment by adding a new technique to their primary specialization.

The Consequences of Depression and War

It is against the background of stress on improving the sciences of man

by sharpening the tools of research that subsequent developments need
to be set. No one seriously doubts that the level of technical excellence
of American social science rose between World War I and World War II
despite the Depression. When the second of the wars came, new disci-
plines were well enough evolved to join the older specialties in making
themselves felt.
Economics continued to make great contributions in the mobilization
of the American economy for World War II. It is generally agreed that
the courageous forecasts and plans of a key group of economists on the
War Production Board had a decisive impact on the tempo of effective
participation by this country. I refer particularly to the work of Stacy
May, Simon Kuznets, Robert Nathan, and their associates. (Kuznets was
one of Professor Wesley C. Mitchell’s most productive associates in the
study of business cycles at the National Bureau of Economic Research.)
Psychologists were far more numerous and effective in World War II
than in the previous one. Besides developments in intelligence testing,
there had been between the wars great advances in measuring aptitudes
and personality structure. Sociologists and social psychologists came
more prominently into the picture than in the first war. Professor Samuel
A. Stouffer and his associates made continuous and systematic studies
of the attitudes prevailing among military personnel, utilizing and
developing the quantitative procedures evolved between the wars by
Professor L. L. Thurstone and others.
92 Harold Lasswell

In the light of the successes achieved, there is no reason to doubt that

the stress put upon quantitative method is amply vindicated. It will con-
tinue to inspire ambitious young scholars in the field of human relations.
There are, however, grounds for forecasting a somewhat different
emphasis among social scientists in the coming years. The battle for
method is won. It is likely that social and psychological scientists will be
sufficiently sure of themselves to take method for granted and to put the
emphasis on the choice of significant problems on which to apply and
evolve method. This is the point at which considerations of policy come
into the picture.

Knowledge for What?

Although the importance of quantitative method was the dominant

theme in interwar social science, there were many indications of rising
preoccupation with policy. A vigorous and early exponent of the policy
approach was Professor Robert S. Lynd of Columbia University, joint
author of certain classical community studies and long the secretary of
the Social Science Research Council. Professor Lynd gave a series of lec-
tures at Princeton University in 1939 under the title “Knowledge for
What?” in which he insisted upon the importance of utilizing all avail-
able means of acquiring knowledge in order to cope with the gigantic
crises of our time.
The policy approach is not to be confounded with the superficial idea
that social scientists ought to desert science and engage full time in prac-
tical politics. Nor should it be confused with the suggestion that social
scientists ought to spend most of their time advising policy-makers on
immediate questions. Although it may be wise for scholars to devote
more time to active affairs, the most fruitful policy science idea is dif-
ferent. The point is that all the resources of our expanding social science
need to be directed toward the basic conflicts in our civilization which
are so vividly disclosed by the application of scientific method to the
study of personality and culture. A fundamental picture of American
culture and personality has been drawn by the accumulating results of
modern research—by sociologists, anthropologists, psychiatrists, and
psychologists.
 The Policy Orientation 93

Choosing Fundamental Problems

The basic emphasis of the policy approach, therefore, is upon the

fundamental problems of man in society, rather than upon the topical
issues of the moment. The combined efforts of modern research workers
have disclosed roots of tension within our civilization of which we
were previously unaware. The difficulties which we face in operating
economic and political institutions are obvious to all. What has
eluded scientific and policy attention is a large number of the human
factors which prevent the resolution of these difficulties by rational
means. Building on the work of Freud and other psychopathologists,
Harry Stack Sullivan and other psychiatrists traced in detail the
fundamental importance of self-esteem for the healthy evolution of
human personality. Unless the infant and the child are able to love
themselves, they are incapable of loving others. Interferences with the
growth of a healthy conception of the self lead to the warping of per-
sonality into destructiveness. Sullivan and his associates discovered that
the true field of the psychiatrist is not the isolated individual organism
but the context of interpersonal relations in which the individual lives.
By studying the psychotic, neurotic, and psychopathic manifestations
of distorted development, these psychiatrists discovered the way in which
specific patterns of culture warp the growth of congenial and productive
interpersonal relations. Once discovered and exposed, these sources of
human destructiveness can be changed. The basis is laid for a profound
reconstruction of culture by continual study and emendation, and
not by (or certainly not alone by) the traditional methods of political
agitaton.
At an early date in his work, Dr. Sullivan and certain colleagues
reached out for cooperation with social scientists. The interplay of psy-
chiatrists, child psychologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists
has cast a brilliant light on the impact of culture on personality forma-
tion. Among anthropologists, for example, the contributions of Ruth
Benedict, Margaret Mead, Ralph Linton, and Clyde Kluckhohn are rep-
resentative of the best.2
94 Harold Lasswell

The Use of Models

There is scarcely a corner of human society that has not been seen in
new perspective as a result of modern psychiatry. One significant feature
of this development is that while use is made of careful observation, mea-
surement, and record making, quantification is relegated to a relatively
secondary position. The richness of the context in the study of interper-
sonal relations is such that it can be expressed only in part in quantita-
tive terms. Convincing results can be obtained by studies which are but
partially summarized in numbers. An excellent example of this type of
contribution to science and policy is the report by Alexander Leighton
on human relations in a relocation camp for “Japanese” operated by the
United States government during the last war.3
The problem of dealing with complex relationships has given to many
social scientists more insight into the creative use of models in scientific
work. The models may be in prose, and they can be long or short. The
models may be in mathematical notation and, if so, they may be related
to magnitudes which can or cannot be measured. (Professor Arrow deals
with the function of scientific models in his chapter in the present book.)
Social scientists and psychiatrists have always derived their most fruitful
hypotheses from rather complicated models. Good examples are the con-
ceptions put forward by Freud of the oral, anal, and genital types of per-
sonality; or the types of leaders and power relations described by Max
Weber, who wrote at some length on the methodological role of “ideal
types.” When one thinks in basic policy terms, it is essential to operate
with models whose elaboration is sufficient to enable the investigator to
deal with complex institutional situations.
The significance that revised models have for science and policy was
strikingly exemplified in the 1930s. The New Deal of Franklin D.
Roosevelt was a brilliant success in the sense that a far-reaching economic
crisis was met by policies which were far short of the authoritarian mea-
sures of a Fascist or Communist state. This result was achieved, in part,
because of the aid which the government received from economists, many
of whom had been liberated from the cramping doctrines of classical eco-
nomic analysis by the ideas of Alvin Hansen in the United States and of
John Maynard Keynes in England. There was nothing new about the
 The Policy Orientation 95

general idea that the government ought to do something if a mass unem-

ployment crisis developed. But the idea had no rational roots in the pre-
vailing conception among economists of how the free market system
operated. Recurring depressions were thought of simply as “frictions”
within the system, and government action was grudgingly justified—
when it was accepted at all—as a means of dealing with miscellaneous
“frictions.” The Keynes-Hansen approach was very different. Instead of
dismissing prolonged mass unemployment as a result of frictions, Keynes
and Hansen showed that unemployment could result from the structure
of the free economy itself. If left to themselves, private economic choices
might perpetuate the underuse of labor instead of initiating new enter-
prises to absorb labor. The implications for public policy were obvious:
Government intervention is essential in order to eliminate unemployment
and to set in motion once more the forces of the free market.
This was a remarkable example of the creative results which may
follow, not when new quantifications are made, but when new models
of institutional processes are devised, models which can unify quantita-
tive and nonquantitative observations and point the way to new empir-
ical, theoretical, and policy activities.4

The Clarification of Goals

The policy-science approach not only puts the emphasis upon basic prob-
lems and complex models, but also calls forth a very considerable clar-
ification of the value goals involved in policy. After all, in what sense
is a problem “basic”? Evaluations depend upon postulates about the
human relations to be called desirable. For purposes of analysis the term
“value” is taken to mean “a category of preferred events,” such as peace
rather than war, high levels of productive employment rather than mass
unemployment, democracy rather than despotism, and congenial and
productive personalities rather than destructive ones.
When the scientist is reminded to take note of value objectives, he
quickly discovers conflicts within culture and within his own personal-
ity. His personality has been shaped in a culture of sharp contradictions
at the levels of theory and fact. On the doctrinal level, there is the
demand to achieve a world community in which the dignity of man is
96 Harold Lasswell

realized in theory and fact. There is also the contradictory demand to

make the world safe for “Aryan” or white supremacy. In a word, there
are legacies from the world of caste which prevailed before the French
and American revolutions gave impetus to the idea of social mobility on
the basis of individual merit.

The Policy Sciences of Democracy

It is, I think, safe to forecast that the policy-science approach will bring
about a series of “special” sciences within the general field of the social
sciences, much as the desire to cure has developed a science of medicine
which is distinct from, though connected with, the general science of
biology. In the United States the nature of such special sciences can
already be discerned. The dominant American tradition affirms the
dignity of man, not the superiority of one set of men. Hence it is to be
foreseen that the emphasis will be upon the development of knowledge
pertinent to the fuller realization of human dignity. Let us for conve-
nience call this the evolution of the “policy sciences of democracy.”
Abundant indications are at hand to lend weight to this suggestion.
A glaring discrepancy between doctrine and practice in the United
States is the mistreatment of Negroes and other colored peoples. The
Carnegie Foundation supported a comprehensive survey of trends in
ethnic relations in the United States. The purpose was to disclose the true
state of affairs, to discover the conditioning factors, and to stimulate
policies against discrimination. An American Dilemma: The Negro
Problem and Modern Democracy, edited by Gunnar Myrdal in 1944,
was the outcome.
The initiative for problem-oriented inquiries has been taken not only
by private foundations but also by private associations of businessmen.
Perhaps the most successful example is the Committee for Economic
Development which was organized early in World War II in order to
develop policies which would avoid or mitigate a postwar depression in
the United States. The research program was carried out by a staff of
eminent economists headed by Professor Theodore O. Yntema of the
University of Chicago. On the basis of staff studies which were
 The Policy Orientation 97

published, the businessmen made policy suggestions to the government

and to private organizations and individuals. Since the war the Com-
mittee for Economic Development has been continued for the purpose
of developing long-range researches and recommendations for the main-
tenance of a free-market economy. (The figure most prominently associ-
ated with the Committee is its initiator and first head, Paul G. Hoffman.)

The Awareness of Time

The policy orientation carries with it a sharpened sense of time. An

American Dilemma is a good illustration. The project resulting in that
book was chosen because ethnic relations in the United States were rec-
ognized to be of great importance to the future security of the country,
as well as to the realization of democratic aspirations. As a scientist
becomes value-orientated, he accepts or rejects opportunities for research
according to their relevance to all of his goal values, or he initiates
research which contributes to these goals.
It is not necessary for the scientist to sacrifice objectivity in the exe-
cution of a project. The place for nonobjectivity is in deciding what
ultimate goals are to be implemented. Once this choice is made, the
scholar proceeds with maximum objectivity and uses all available
methods. Further, it is unnecessary to give up the idea of improving
method. All of the foregoing points are exemplified in the Myrdal
inquiry, since the data were gathered and interpreted in a critical spirit,
and methods were improved during the investigation. For example, the
methodological appendix which was prepared by Myrdal has been useful
in spreading certain important patterns of thinking among American
social scientists.
Emphasis on time is not exhausted in the selection of a policy-oriented
project. No sooner do you become interested in future goals than you
look sharply into the present and the past in order to discover the degree
in which trends approximate values. Trends are extrapolated into the
future, and the plausibility of the extrapolation is estimated in the light
of all available knowledge of trends and factors. Alternative lines of
policy are estimated in the same way.
98 Harold Lasswell

Space Includes the Globe

The perspective of a policy-oriented science is world-wide, since the

peoples of the world constitute a community. They affect one another’s
destiny. Hence the future of basic objectives depends upon world devel-
opments as a whole.
It is possible to examine world affairs from the point of view of the
invention, diffusion, and restriction of social institutions. In this per-
spective, Moscow is the eruptive center of the world revolutionary
pattern of our time, and one of the tasks of political analysis and man-
agement is to assist or to restrict the diffusion of this pattern. More
specifically, a major problem of our epoch is to bring to completion the
revolutionary processes of our historical period with the smallest human
cost. At least this is a problem of all who believe in the dignity of man
and therefore hope to keep coercion at a minimum.

Developmental Constructs: The World Revolution of Our Time

The policy sciences of democracy, concerned as they are with events on

a global scale in our historical period, must proceed by creating world-
encompassing hypotheses. Speculative models of the principal social
changes in our epoch can be called “developmental constructs.” They
specify the institutional pattern from which we are moving and the
pattern toward which we are going.
Strictly speaking, developmental constructs are not scientific hypothe-
ses, since they do not formulate propositions about interdependence of
factors. A developmental construct refers only to the succession of
events, future as well as past. It should be noted that many hypotheses
about the future purport to have scientific validity, such as the Marxist
conception that the classless society is emerging. But no claim of
“inevitability” can be accepted. Events in the future are not knowable
with absolute certainty in advance: they are partly probable and partly
chance. Developmental constructs are aids in the total task of clarifying
goals, noting trends, and estimating future possibilities.
It is not within the scope of this chapter to present in detail develop-
mental hypotheses about the world revolution of our time. In passing,
 The Policy Orientation 99

however, it is tempting to remark that a distinction needs to be drawn

between the pattern of the eruptive center of a world revolutionary
movement and the pattern of the world revolution of an epoch. Those
who seized power in Paris in 1789 (and immediately thereafter) were
unmistakably the elite of the eruptive center of that period. But the
pattern which prevailed at that time and place was not identical with
the revolutionary pattern of the historical epoch as a whole, although
common elements were present. It is apparent that the elite of 1917 in
Moscow can be called the elite of the eruptive center of our time, but it
is very doubtful whether the pattern then prevailing in Moscow has many
elements identical with the world revolutionary pattern of our epoch.
Indeed, one of the major tasks of the policy sciences today is to follow
in detail the processes of social invention, diffusion, and restriction
throughout the globe for the sake of estimating the significance of spe-
cific events.5

The Problem Attitude

An additional feature of the policy orientation is the importance attached

to the act of creative imagination that introduces into the historical
process a new and successful policy. Successful ideas cannot be guaran-
teed in advance. But the problem attitude can be cultivated, which
increases the probability that the thinker will act as a maternity hospi-
tal for the delivery of a historically viable policy proposal. Today the per-
petual crisis stemming from the expectation of violence (whether war or
revolution) calls for the greatest ingenuity in devising policies capable of
reducing the cost of bringing to fruition the aims of a democratically ori-
ented policy science. This is not only a matter of improving the organi-
zation of the United Nations and other official agencies. It is also a
question of introducing a current of salutary transformations wherever
policy is made.

The Building of Institutions

The policy scientist is far more interested in evaluating and reconstruct-

ing the practices of society than in his private ratiocination about the
100 Harold Lasswell

higher abstractions from which his values are derived. This choice carries
with it the de-emphasizing of much of the traditional baggage of meta-
physics and theology. An example of what may be expected is the work
of John Dewey and other American philosophers of pragmatism who
quickly moved to the consideration of social institutions. (Dewey, for
instance, launched an experimental school movement.) This inclination
of the policy scientist has been expedited by the logical positivism of
Rudolf Carnap and his associates, although Carnap has not personally
drawn the implications. However, some implications are reasonably
evident. If terms are intended to designate events, they do not have stable
reference until “operational indexes” are specified. Indexes are opera-
tional when they can be applied by an observer with descriptive inten-
tions, competence, and equipment, who occupies an observational
standpoint in relation to a field of events to be described. The observa-
tional standpoint is the procedure used in entering the situation for data-
gathering (“protocol-making”) purposes.6
The key terms which are used in the policy sciences refer to meanings,
and contexts of meaning are changeable. The significance of this is that
operational indexes chosen for key words in the social sciences are less
stable than the indexes usually employed by physical scientists to
describe the events with which they are concerned. Hence we speak of
the “index instability” of terms in the policy sciences.
Since operational indexes are unstable, it is necessary to provide for
continuous surveys in order to keep operational indexes properly cali-
brated. The observable characteristics of certain class groups shift
through time, for example, and it is therefore necessary to respecify the
characteristics which are essential to the identification for descriptive
purposes of a given class member.
The technical considerations which have just been outlined reinforce
other incentives which induce social and psychological scientists to
improve institutions for the self-observation of man in society. One of
the most creative suggestions which has been made by and to UNESCO,
for instance, is the setting up of a continuing survey of international
tension. Activities of this kind are essential if we are to clarify the goals,
trends, factors, and alternatives appropriate to the policy sciences of
democracy.
 The Policy Orientation 101

The international polling operations which are now in existence are

important steps toward providing more significant information than we
have had in the past about the thoughts and feelings of mankind.
Closely connected with the setting-up of comprehensive institutions of
self-observation is the use of pretesting procedures to assist in the eval-
uation of policy alternatives. In the world of business, pretesting has been
carried to a high level of technical perfection. Minor variations in the
ingredients of new products or changes in packaging are tested in a few
places which provide samples (in the statistical sense) of potential con-
sumer reactions. Personnel policies are sometimes pretested in a few
plants before they are extended to all the plants controlled by a corpo-
ration. Systematic pretesting can be extended from the market to many
other situations in society.

Social Scientists Are Not the Sole Contributors to the Policy Sciences

One outcome of the policy science conception which has begun to man-
ifest itself in the United States is a more explicit awareness of the fact
that social scientists are not the only contributors to the policy sciences.
It is true that specialists in social and psychological theory will improve
the basic analysis of the policy-forming process itself. But there is some
recognition of the fact that men of experience in active policy-making
can make greater contributions to basic analysis than the academic
experts have admitted. Men of affairs often watch themselves and others
in business, government, and similar institutions with great intellectual
curiosity and objectivity. Some of these active participants evolve theo-
ries of the process that deserve careful criticism in the light not only of
expert opinion but also of factual inquiry. Usually the men of action lack
the incentives to write technical books or articles in which their theories
are systematized and confronted by available data.7 But it is enormously
fruitful for the academic specialist to take some of these ideas and give
them the necessary systematization and evaluation.
In order to bring the academician and the active policy-maker into
fruitful association, new institutions are needed (or rather, modifications
are needed in existing institutions). The seminar is already utilized for
this purpose in many institutions of higher learning, as in the Graduate
102 Harold Lasswell

School of Business and the Littauer School (devoted to government) at

Harvard. Many national organizations of public administrators main-
tain headquarters close to the University of Chicago, an arrangement that
fosters contact between the faculty of the University and the staff
members of the organizations. Because of the rapid growth of public
administration as a learned profession in the United States, the interplay
of university-trained intellectuals and public officials (and leaders) is
made easy. Until recently the law schools of the United States were
wholly given over to the narrowest imaginable conception of profes-
sional training. The curriculum consisted in the memorizing and discus-
sion of the decisions (and supporting opinions) of the appellate courts.
In recent times there has been a broadening of the curriculum to include
factual information about the social consequences of legal doctrines and
procedures. The Yale Law School has been a pioneer in this change, even
to the extent of appointing social scientists to the faculty.
The policy-science approach has the further implication that is
includes, in addition to knowledge about the policy-making process
itself, the assembling and evaluating of knowledge—from whatever
source—which appears to have an important bearing upon the major
policy problems of the time. Today, for example, the knowledge of
atomic and other forms of energy which is in the possession of the physi-
cists and other natural scientists has great and obvious relevance to world
security. Creative interchange is needed between the physicists, the social
scientists, and the men of action.8 The cultivation of the technique of
bringing about easy co-operation among “interdisciplinary teams” is one
of the principal tasks of an evolving policy science.

Summary

Between the two world wars, American social and psychological sciences
emphasized the improvement of method, especially quantitative method.
There resulted a general raising of the level of competence in the making
of primary observations and in the processing of data. Recently there is
a tendency to take method more for granted and to put the accent upon
applying method to problems that promise to make a contribution to
policy. We can think of the policy sciences as the disciplines concerned
 The Policy Orientation 103

with explaining the policy-making and policy-executing process, and

with locating data and providing interpretations which are relevant to
the policy problems of a given period. The policy approach does not
imply that energy is to be dissipated on a miscellany of merely topical
issues, but rather that fundamental and often neglected problems which
arise in the adjustment of man in society are to be dealt with. The policy
approach does not mean that the scientist abandons objectivity in gath-
ering or interpreting data, or ceases to perfect his tools of inquiry. The
policy emphasis calls for the choice of problems which will contribute
to the goal values of the scientist, and the use of scrupulous objectivity
and maximum technical ingenuity in executing the projects undertaken.
The policy frame of reference makes it necessary to take into account
the entire context of significant events (past, present, and prospective) in
which the scientist is living. This calls for the use of speculative models
of the world revolutionary process of the epoch, and puts the techniques
of quantification in a respected though subordinate place. Because of the
instability of meaning of the indexes available to give operational defin-
ition to key terms, it is particularly important to develop specialized insti-
tutions to observe and report world developments. This permits the
pretesting of possible changes in social practice before they are intro-
duced on a vast scale. It is probable that the policy-science orientation
in the United States will be directed toward providing the knowledge
needed to improve the practice of democracy. In a word, the special
emphasis is upon the policy sciences of democracy, in which the ultimate
goal is the realization of human dignity in theory and fact.

Notes

1. Charles E. Merriam, New Aspects of Politics (1925), p. xiii.

2. Dr. Sullivan’s work is best read in the pages of Psychiatry, the journal pub-
lished by the William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation, Washington, D.C.,
with which Sullivan was connected before his death in 1949. Ruth Benedict was
professor of anthropology at Columbia at the time of her death in 1948. Her
most influential book was Patterns of Culture (1934). Margaret Mead and Clyde
Kluckhohn are contributors to [The Policy Sciences]. For an introduction to
Linton, see Linton (ed.), The Science of Man in the World Crisis (1945).
3. The Governing of Men (1945).
104 Harold Lasswell

4. Note the following title: E. Ronald Walker, From Economic Theory to Policy
(1943).
5. I may be permitted to refer to my own writings in which certain of these dis-
tinctions have been developed. The earliest exposition is in World Politics and
Personal Insecurity (1935). More accessible is The Analysis of Political Behav-
iour: An Empirical Approach, published in 1948 in the “International Library
of Sociology and Social Reconstruction” edited by Karl Mannheim. See partic-
ularly Part II. My 1941 developmental construct of “the garrison state” is
reprinted in The Analysis of Political Behaviour.
6. Besides Carnap and his school, Alfred Korzybski has been widely read. See
his Science and Sanity (1933).
7. Chester Barnard is an exception to this statement. While an active business
executive he published the well-received The Functions of the Executive (1938).
Barnard is now president of the Rockefeller Foundation. The Committee of
Public Administration Cases (Social Science Research Council) has built up case
studies of policy formation by examining written records, and also by inter-
viewing the participants.
8. Successes and failures along this line are often noted in The Bulletin of Atomic
Scientists, published in Chicago.