Polarization and Science in Policymaking: An Analysis of U.S. Policy Documents

• In Event: Competition among Political Elites from a Network Perspective

Abstract

Think tanks are a critical and influential component of the policymaking process. We examine policy knowledge production in these organizations by leveraging a novel, large-scale dataset of approximately 2M policy documents and 150K policy citations produced by more than 100 government organizations and more than 200 think tanks from the past two decades. This dataset, which also incorporates approximately 1M citations in the policy documents to scientific publications, allows us to explore political polarization in policy knowledge production and the impact of the use of science. We first document a striking uptrend in the ideological polarization of policy knowledge production over the last two decades, uncovering growing ideological echo chambers in policy perspectives. We also demonstrate that think tanks play a crucial role in integrating science into policy by creating science-based policy knowledge and channeling it to government. Moreover, our analysis reveals that science is highly influential as a source of information in generating policy knowledge, irrespective of the ideology of the think tank. Finally, we find that policy knowledge production is less ideologically polarized when it is grounded in science - a pattern that is pronounced for the most impactful science. Amid the increasing political polarization of the policy process, then, science serves as an influential epistemic force that can bridge the ideological divide in the U.S.

Authors

• Taegyoon Kim, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

• Alexander Charles Furnas, University of Michigan

• Dashun Wang, northwestern university/Kellogg School of Management