Policy Advice

Occasional forays into advising policymakers, not all of which have left a trace in my academic publications, have made me skeptical on the capacity of both the adviser to be useful and the advisee to use the advice that can be offered. The pieces collected here explain and elaborate on that skepticism. Underlying them is the recognition that the social world is not just an objective but also a subjective object. It often resents being subjected to objective observation, let alone explanation; it insists on its own will—its agency—and may choose to dissent from a theory by falsifying it in practice. Recipients of advice know this and insist on “doing it their way”, following the logic of practical experience and social intuition rather than of theoretical cause and effect.