My work
I am a D.Phil. student (and a part-time research assistant) in the University of Oxford’s Modern History Department, supervised by Dr. Gareth Davies and Professor Avner Offer.
My research looks at an attempt by a coalition of American academics, politicians and businessmen to re-define the national purpose through the use of social science knowledge, between 1965-81. They sought the annual publication of a Federal ‘social report’ which would have informed discussion of the nation’s priorities and future direction by showcasing trends in educational attainment, environmental pollution, crime levels and other social statistics, and relating the figures to government policies. It was a reaction to the influence of economists in setting public policy circa 1965; indeed the proposal sought to emulate the Economic Report of the President. For its liberal proponents the social report would have broadened the vocabulary used to discuss the national purpose, going beyond economic indicators – particularly the ubiquitous figure of the gross national product – towards a more comprehensive and humanistic set of measures of progress. But this was not just an idea of the Left, it enjoyed wide support for a time. The breadth of this ‘social indicators movement’ was illustrated by the fact that, in the early 1970s, even the traditionally-conservative National Association of Manufacturers lobbied the Nixon Administration to establish a planning capacity to use data on social trends to aid business and government planning.
I intend my thesis to be the first study to trace the roots of the social indicators movement which emerged in the mid-1960s, and to contextualise it within the broad changes in America’s political economy over the course of the twentieth century. In order to do this adequately the thesis is both a history of public policy and a study in the sociology of knowledge. The policy history aspects are informed by archival materials, chiefly from Presidential libraries, and interviews with key participants, up to Vice Presidential level. In particular I investigate the politics of projects to develop a social report undertaken by the Johnson, Nixon and Carter Administrations. However in order to fully account for the provenance, extent and limits of the social reporting idea in American government, I examine related events and the changing institutional and ideational environment from the progressive era until the early years of the Reagan Administration. This study will be situated within, and is informed by, a growing literature on the historical impact of social science on public policy. It also fits into a broader historiography on America’s changing political economy through the twentieth century, for the social indicators movement was an attempt to alter the modus operandi and power structure of politics.
The first part of the thesis examines the roots of the social indicators movement, which extend back to progressive era drives to reform a political system widely seen as corrupt and unable to cope with rapid economic and social change. The Progressives’ solution was to institutionalise dispassionate expertise in the political process – social scientists would recommend policies based upon the systematic analysis of social and economic trends. Engineers were the heroes of this increasingly mechanised and prosperous age, and formed a vanguard with social scientists and philanthropic foundation trustees, pushing for technocratic governance. As President, the ‘Great Engineer’ Herbert Hoover quickly established a nationwide study on social trends to inform a program of rational reform. The economic collapse of the 1930s eclipsed the drive for social reform and New Deal forays into economic and social planning fomented a resurgent antistatism and antipathy to planning in Congress. However, World War II demonstrated anew the potential of expert-led governance and the harnessing of technology. The techniques of rational management honed in wartime would be further developed in the institutions of the national security state and in the nation’s large corporations, catalysed by optimism over the possibilities for harnessing the power of computers. Social planning for the purpose of social reform had given way to technical management to achieve efficiency. Amid the prosperity of the postwar years economists displaced engineers as the profession best embodying technocratic competence; the Council of Economic Advisers appeared to have honed the management of the economy to a fine art.
Once the political environment became more conducive to social reform in the early 1960s, faith in the principles and methods of rational management would underpin the drive to measure the state of society. In the late 1950s the domestic consensus which had marked the Cold War years first began to show signs of cracking. Two newly-salient political issues would lead to the Johnson Administration undertaking a project to publish a social report. Firstly a ‘postmaterialist’ literature and environmentalist movement began to critique the widespread assumption that economic growth was an accurate measure of social well-being. Secondly the emergent civil rights movement highlighted societal inequities. Liberal politicians would see a social report as a tool to measure inequality of opportunity across society, as a means to monitor progress to achieving the preconditions for full social inclusivity. I cover the projects to develop a social report in the Johnson and Nixon Administrations in detail in the second part of my thesis. The coalition which supported the development of a social report during the Johnson Administration was soon exposed as being partly held together by early optimism over the prospects for societal improvement through government social programs, and semantic confusion over the meaning, and utility, of ‘social indicators’. The development of a prototype Social Report of the President, published in 1969, revealed that social science knowledge lagged some way behind its proponents’ ambitions.
Faith in technocratic governance largely persisted through the 1970s in Congress. New surveys and refined social science theory raised the technical standards and coverage of American social reporting. All Administrations up to the Reagan Administration supported forays into social reporting, but in the austerity of the 1970s the political winds blew rightwards. The idea of a social report had become associated with building support for Federal government social programs, and faced numerous obstacles to its institutionalisation within the Federal government. The third part of the thesis examines the persistence of the social indicators movement through this inauspicious political climate, and its legacy today.
Shown are several of the key players in the early ’social indicators movement’: Bertram Gross (draftsman of the Full Employment Act of 1946 and the Council of Economic Advisers’ first executive secretary, a key lobbyist for social reporting in the Johnson Administration); Walter Mondale (as Senator, Mondale’s Full Opportunity and Social Accounting Act passed the Senate twice and created considerable impetus for social reporting. However as Vice President during a period of economic austerity his interest in the subject declined); Wilbur Cohen (HEW Secretary under LBJ and a key advocate for the institutionalisation of a social reporting capacity in the Federal government); Alice Rivlin (Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at HEW under Cohen and manager of Mancur Olson at this time, later the first director of the Congressional Budget Office); Mancur Olson (chief author of the LBJ Administration’s attempt at a social report and later a highly influential economist); and the initial product of their labours – Toward a social report.
Below are some of the many important public figures who supported the social reporting idea in the 1970s: Ex-domestic aide to LBJ Joseph Califano’s testimony on behalf of Senator Mondale’s Full Opportunity Act (to institutionalise a social reporting capacity in the Federal government) caused the White House to take the legislation seriously; Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as domestic counsellor to Nixon, persuaded the President to establish the National Goals Research Staff; Leonard Garment served as chairman of this White House staff unit until its dissolution in mid-1970; Vice President Nelson Rockefeller attempted to introduce elements of governance-by-social-indicators into the Ford Administration, with limited success; Finally two unlikely allies from their time as junior congressmen in the late 1970s – Newt Gingrich and Albert Gore Jr. – were united in their support for the use of social indicators to aid policy making and anticipate future national problems.
