Roger A. Pielke, Jr., The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics: Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007, 188 pp

Policy Sci (2010) 43:9598DOI 10.1007/s11077-009-9096-0

Roger A. Pielke, Jr., The honest broker: making sense of science in policy and politics

Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007, 188 pp

Kevin Currey Susan G. Clark

Published online: 5 June 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2009

Decision processes in modern society are deeply permeated by scientists (Lasswell 1971, p. 125; Brunner and Ascher 1992). Scientists publish research, serve on panels, testify before legislatures and in courts, and carry out other activities with policy signicance. In all of these activities scientists are participating in policy processes, but they do so using different strategies, in pursuit of different goals, and with different degrees of self-awareness and effect. In The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics, Roger Pielke Jr. offers a way to sort through the complicated relationships between scientists and decision making. His perceptive, clearly worded, and engaging book offers both important academic insights and a model of professional practice for anyone wishing to engage effectively with politics and policy.

Pielke explicitly claries his goal at the outset of the book: he intends to help scientists understand the roles they can choose in a decision context, the conditions affecting these choices, and the consequences of the roles they choose, both for themselves and for society. In this sense, Pielkes book is largely an attempt to help scientists develop an explicit, self-conscious observational standpoint in reference to policy (cf. Lasswell and McDougal 1992, p. 40). Pielke admits that his arguments will be familiar to those well-versed in the literature on science, technology, and society; however, The Honest Broker is also of broad interest to scientists and other people interested in policy. His book is of special interest to the readers of this journal, in part because the ideas of the policy sciences (e.g., problem orientation, contextuality, and observational standpoint) are implicit throughout his argument.

In the opening chapters, Pielke contrasts science, politics, and policy. He denes science broadly, as the organized pursuit of knowledge. Pielke also distinguishes politics, the

K. Currey (&)

Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. G. Clark

Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA e-mail: [email protected]

S. G. Clark

School of Forestry...