Tuesday, October 4, 2011

IRCPPS in the Links: Political Science Journals as Indirect Lobbying

In the Monkey Cage, Henry Farrell discusses the motivations US military branches have to fund academic journals:
[Replying to a Foreign Policy article by Thomas Ricks on the cancellation of the Strategic Studies Review]...The very strong implication here is that if you are running a military service, and you are not able to shape the conventional wisdom, your interests (for which, read: budget) will suffer. Therefore, you need to shape the conventional wisdom. One good way to do this is to have your own, well-respected academic journal. While this journal will not overtly campaign for your causes (it does not advocate a ‘particular line’), it will nonetheless shape debate in ways that are congenial to your long term interests. Otherwise, after all, there would be no point in paying for it. In the absence of such a journal, you are forced to rely on the generosity of other journals which may instead, to your horror, publish articles suggesting that your service’s contribution is somewhere between secondary and negligible.