What happens when the allegedly value-free social sciences enter the national political arena? In The Social Sciences Go to Washington, scholars examine the effects of the massive influx of sociologists, demographers, economists, educators, and others to the federal advisory process in the postwar period. Essays look at how these social scientists sought to change existing policies in welfare, public health, urban policy, national defense, environmental policy, and science and technology policy, and the ways they tried to influence future policies. Policymakers have been troubled that followers of postmodernism have questioned the legitimacy of scientific and political authority to speak for the desires of social groups. As the social sciences increasingly become expressions of individual preferences, the contributors ask, how can they continue to be used to set public policy for us all? This collection is a useful resource for anyone studying the relationship between science and the government in the postwar years.

Introduction: The social sciences, the federal government, and the age of postmodernism / Hamilton Cravens
pt. I. The social sciences come to Washington. American social science and the invention of affirmative action, 1920s-1970s / Hamilton Cravens ; Statecraft and its retainers : American economics and public purpose after depression and war / Michael A. Bernstein
pt. II. The social sciences as process and procedure.
The science and politics of defense analysis / Harvey L. Sapolsky
A risk perceived is a risk indeed : assessing risk in biomedical research and health policy / Philip L. Frana
Progress and its discontents : postwar science and technology policy / Howard P. Segal
pt. III. Have the social sciences mattered in Washington? Environment, government, and academe : the road to NEPA, EPA, and Earth Day / Hal Rothman
Social science research and early childhood education : a historical analysis of developments in Head Start, kindergartens, and day care / Kirsten D. Nawrotski, Anna Mills Smith, Maris Vinovskis
The death of the city : cultural individualism, hyperdiversity, and the devolution of national urban policy / Zane L. Miller
The end of liberalism : narrating welfare's decline, from the Moynihan Report (1965) to the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act (1996) / William Graebner