Conducting Policy Relevant Research

General

Dr Sumit Ganguly, the respected political scientist and commentator on South Asia delivered a lecture on ‘Conducting Policy Relevant Research’ at the Centre for Land Warfare Studies on 28 October 2010. Dr Ganguly, who holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilisations and is a Professor of Political Science at Indiana University in Bloomingtonand is currently Visiting Fellow, IDSA. Expert analysts from the strategic community and many young scholars attended the talk.

Opening Remarks: Brig Gurmeet Kanwal (Retd), Director CLAWS

The job of a think tank is to undertake research. However, research that aims to develop policy-applicable knowledge is the pressing need of the day. We have with us Dr Sumit Ganguly from Indiana University, who is also a Visiting Fellow at IDSA. He is here with us to give a talk on how to conduct policy relevant research.

Dr Sumit Ganguly

My talk is divided into 3 parts. Primarily, I will give examples from the American experience that will reflect the importance of policy relevant research. Additionally, I will focus on the misunderstanding among the academicians, analysts about what constitutes a theory. Finally, the talk will emphasise on ways in which theory can lead to policy-relevant research.

Let me now begin by giving out the four examples:

• George Frost Kennan was an American advisor, diplomat and political scientist who served in the American embassy in Moscow. In 1947, he wrote an article titled The Sources of Soviet Conduct in Foreign Affairs and the article became the foundation of the USA’s policy of containment. He argued that the USSR was innately expansionist and that it was important to ‘contain’ the areas of strategic importance to the US. However, Kennan believed that the way to contain for through diplomacy and not through military solution that was construed by the US government.

• Secondly, the case of Paul Henry Nitze is equally important. Paul Nitze was a high-ranking US government official who helped carve out the Cold War defence policy and ‘militarised’ the Cold War. He contributed maximum to the National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68).

• Professor Albert Wohlstetter in 1950 wrote an article for RAND in which he made landmark observations about the vulnerability of the US bomber to Soviet aggression. The article became the basis of the way the US Air Force viewed its bombers and resulted in an entire strategy that was practiced by the Air Force till the end of the Cold War.

• Bernard Brodie was one of the architects and champions of the theory of nuclear deterrence and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). In 1973, he published a book titled, War and Politics in which he stated that the practice till the time was to win wars however the changing practice would be to avoid wars.

• Post Cold War, the writing of Lieutenant Colonel (Retd) John A. Nagl was another landmark piece that helped shape policy. He published his observations about counter-insurgency in a book titled Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, in which he amplified on the difficulties of fighting guerrillas. His work is considered a pivotal contribution to the study of counter-insurgency and helped shape the Marine Corps Manual. However, it would be important to state that while the manual is remarkable, the implementation has had a lot of gaps rendering it relatively incredible.

Apart from this, it is true that there remains a high degree of misunderstanding among the analysts, authors and academicians about what constitutes a theory. It is important to understand that a theory is a statement of ‘causal relationship.’ This can best be described by the case of the apple and gravitational force. Newton described the reasons that resulted in the apple falling on the ground rather than going up in the air or remaining stagnant. There is a great degree of indeterminacy in events and it is the role of theory to give a base to the causal relationship of the events.

To illustrate this in terms of social sciences, I would like to mention Cane Brinton's book titled Anatomy of a Revolution. It was almost universally believed that a rebellion takes place when the people are suppressed to the maximum level and are suffering in the worse of situations/circumstances. Conversely, Cane through his incisive observation proved that a rebellion takes place when the conditions of the people are improving but rather slowly as compared to their expectations. He stated that a rebellion required physical and organisational ability to revolt and therefore it is inevitably important for the condition of the people to be conducive enough to organise a rebellion against the authorities. The best example in this case would be Tibet. The Chinese government is finding it difficult to control the rising Tibet not because the people are in the worse condition rather their circumstances have reached a level of normalcy where they can act together as one force.

Another example is the case of counter-insurgency. Through research work, analysts have discerned that democratic countries have a tough time dealing with counter-insurgency. The other aspect of relationship is termed as ‘spurious relationship.’ At times there is no connection between two events occurring simultaneously but there seems to be a perceived relation which can be harmful in order to reflect the true essence of the study. For example, it has been observed in the past that every time the level of juvenile delinquency rises in Chicago, the water level of river Ganges goes down. This observation has been made statistically and the observation continues to remain the same. While there seems to be a strange connection between the two, there is no causal relationship. Interestingly, the connection here is that every time the level of juvenile delinquency in Chicago rises during the summer, the water level of the Ganges goes down too because it is summer in India. Therefore, one can now understand that while some cases may have perfect co-variants, the events may not have any link.

Lastly, I would deal with the question of how theory can lead to policy relevant research. In order to explain this, I would use the case of Left Wing Extremism in India, which is a growing worry for the country in terms of an internal security threat. Most Indian analysts have attributed the root of the problem to reasons like poverty, exploitation, economic liberalisation, and misgovernance. While it is true that the components of these may play a role, these are not the only reasons. In order to come up with policy relevant research, a researcher should isolate the key factors and observe the statistics of the poverty levels in different states in the Red Corridor and the statistics of the towns within those states. Other areas to be observed are the quality of governance, resources given out, parliamentary representation of different areas, individuals who mobilize the grievances of the local populace. Without a thorough analysis of these areas, the research produced cannot have any policy relevance.

Another aspect of research is the perception of the analyst and the way he/she analyses data. Even if the data presented to two different scholars is the same, the conclusion drawn out may not be in consonance with each other. Such is the case of one of my books on nuclear stability, which is written along with another scholar, Dr Paul Kapur. The data we refereed was almost same but my conclusion was no matter how risky the leader of Pakistan wishes to be, there would never be a full scale war due to the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) and a sense of nuclear stability would prevail. However, Dr Paul emphasised on different issues and focused more on the process, coming up with the conclusion that due to timely US intervention and luck factor, a war did not take place in the past but such a situation may not prevail in the future and there is a possibility of a war. Clearly, the results are different because our areas of emphasis were different.

Discussion

• There are times when information related to the topic may not be widely available but even if it is, once cannot ensure that the work produced is quality work. If a scholar is hell-bent on a particular ideology or conclusion, he is bound to change the facts to suit his analysis, therefore leading to a work that is provincial and not policy relevant.

• Most of the contemporary students have a habit of drenching their work with numerous quotes and observations of scholars. It is important to mention some, but do not summarise their work because it leaves little scope for the author’s analysis. It is also important to give out scenarios to reinforce your analysis.

• It is true that the scope for researchers in the USA is relatively more because of the concept of a revolving door, where researchers assist in policy decisions. Such a case is not present in India but with organisational change, which is bound to come with time, such a scenario is likely to help the Indian scholarship.

• While most people believe that the way Sri Lankan government dealt with the LTTE was justified, it may not be the truth. If the government does not come up with political initiatives, then the problem is bound to haunt them in the coming decade. One cannot expect a country to marginalise a complete community in their country and continue to thrive.

(Report Compiled by Aditi Malhotra, Research Assistant, CLAWS)