Academic social science is a cottage industry compared with the large-scale social experiments conducted by big businesses, governments and election strategists. Titus Alexander argues that political scientists need to recognise the power of institutions as social models, and of real-time experiments to help people solve problems

If it works, copy it

Have you noticed how politicians often imitate successful campaign strategies? When Barack Obama won primary elections against Hilary Clinton – and then the Presidency – he rewrote the campaign playbook. Later, Donald Trump’s disruptive tactics inspired Nigel Farage’s Bad Boys of Brexit, providing Boris Johnson, Javier Bolsonaro and others with a new script.

Politicians also model policies on effective examples. In the 1940s, the UK's Former Minister of Health, Aneurin Bevan, famously modelled the National Health Service on his constituency's Tredegar Workmen's Medical Aid Society. Western welfare states emulated former Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto van Bismarck’s system of social insurance in Germany, launched in the 1880s. Bismark himself had modelled his reforms on mutual-aid societies run by craft guilds since the Middle Ages. And after 1978, the former leader of the People's Republic of China, Deng Xiaoping, adopted Singapore’s model of economic development, which went on to transform China: a case of political copying on a gargantuan scale.

Successful examples are proof that a particular form of organisation works. They embody the tacit knowledge, protocols and principles that bring about their results, which others can copy. Beliefs, ideology, theories and values play a part, but what matters is the integration of procedures, knowledge and ideas to create outcomes that are replicated over time and in different contexts.

Social models are the social science equivalent of theories in the natural sciences

I suggest that social models – patterns of behaviour and institutions that people copy or adapt – are the social science equivalent of theories in the natural sciences.

Institutions as theories of social science

Theories in the natural sciences are models of how nature works. The more accurate the model, the better people can make nature do what they want. Good models are so dependable that people on earth can drive a vehicle on Mars over thirty million miles away. They can configure electrons and radio waves to enable people anywhere in the world to talk together on handheld devices.

It is harder for social sciences to develop lasting theoretical models because people have agency and change their behaviour, sometimes influenced by theories about them. Conceptual theories can be insightful, but over time most cease to be relevant, like old organisational charts.

The nearest thing to a reliable model in society is an institution that we can replicate and adapt to achieve desired outcomes

The nearest thing to a reliable model in society is an institution that we can replicate and adapt to achieve desired outcomes. A government is a ‘theory’ of how to run a country. Structures of government have evolved since prehistoric states, adapted to meet new challenges. Modern Chinese rulers celebrate their state’s deep roots in history and 'practices of having a central authority lead all areas of endeavour'. Imperial Britain once provided a model of parliamentary democracy for many former colonies. It now collaborates in new models of cooperation through the Commonwealth and United Nations. Once-warring states experiment with another model of transnational governance, the EU, building on older models of law, states, diplomacy, currency, and representative assemblies. The EU, in turn, is a model for the African Union.

Business models

Businesses are more explicit about working on their models. Fast food outlets have existed since Neolithic times, at Godin Tepe, and in Pompeii, long before a hotdog stand inspired the McDonald’s brothers to go into business. They streamlined the model to produce reliable outcomes across the world. Aspiring entrepreneurs study business models because they provide templates of how to achieve their objectives. Businesses are dynamic models that analyse data in real time, so McDonald’s today is vastly different from how it was in 1952. Just as space travel depends on the laws of physics being the same everywhere, firms rely on consistency across many regimes. According to Charles Edward Lindblom and David K. Cohen, policy frameworks which make this stability possible are equivalent to Thomas Kuhn’s paradigms in natural science.

Social models are replicated, copied, refined or scaled up to provide similar functions in different societies. They are, in other words, like proto-scientific theories. They are also living experiments.

The world as a social science laboratory

Every institution is also a rough and ready experiment in how to achieve a range of objectives, adapting to shifting power relations, social conditions, ideas, and aspirations. Rulers developed accounting, writing and record-keeping over millennia, mainly for tax and military purposes. Over time, people created forms of detachment, verification, and scrutiny to improve institutional performance, through assemblies, courts, elections, juries, inspectors, due diligence, data protection, and other measures. Indeed, the social researcher Donald Campbell envisaged The Social Scientist as Servant of the Experimenting Society in 1978. Since 2018, the US Foundations for Evidence-Based Policymaking and Evaluation.gov dashboard has aimed to help policy-makers and citizens use evidence to solve social problems.

Every institution is an experiment in how to achieve a range of objectives, adapting to shifting power relations, social conditions, ideas, and aspirations

Government research is dwarfed by businesses that use research from psychology, social science, data mining and randomised experiments to increase their influence. Data about people in a massive system of social research is what drives today's economy.

Election strategists and political parties adapt this system to target messages to gain power, not necessarily to govern better. In his book Lie Machines, Philip Howard describes how 'ruling elites, lobbyists, and shady politicians… use new information technology' and 'produce, distribute, and market untruths'.

These massive social experiments are not designed to discover truths or improve the human condition, but to manipulate people to achieve commercial or political ends.

So, what can political science do?

The discipline of political science is dwarfed by the sweeping social experiments carried out by business and government. Its research has relatively little influence. But we need political and institutional imagination to develop institutions capable of addressing current problems. The power of example is a tried and tested way for ideas to take off. When people see something working that solves a problem or meets a need, it cuts through faster than any published research. By working with citizens, practitioners and policy-makers to identify and improve institutions that bring about better outcomes, political scientists can enable people to improve the human condition.

💊 No.12 in a Loop series examining how political scientists, and citizens, can take practical steps to strengthen democracy