Alix R. Green: History, Policy and Public Purpose: Historians and Historical Thinking in Government

Abstract

Ever since the first historian realized that the study of the past helps us understand what is happening in the present (and quickly followed up with the additional realization that decision makers seemed to have a knack for ignoring the historical viewpoint), the argument has been made that “history” is a vital part of the decisions of those who lead government. In the early years of the Public History movement, considerable attention was paid to the issue of “history and policy,” some even calling for a separate subfield, called “applied history.” In the first decades of its publication, The Public Historian, the first journal dedicated to the field, ran several articles about what historians could contribute to the policy making process.1 More often than not, the arguments focused on the historical knowledge that we as historians could bring to the process of policy development in helping them make more informed (and therefore better) decisions. Alix Green, in History, Policy and Public Purpose: Historians and Historical Thinking in Government, picks up the challenge of making history relevant to policy makers by turning the historian vs. policy maker dynamic on its head. In a concise and accessible work, Green aims to challenge the view that historians should be considered outside experts who, as she says, translate “academic research for policy makers.” Rather she argues that historians need to be “insiders” who are actively involved in the process of policy making. From this perspective, it is not the historical knowledge that has been accumulated by historians that is of the utmost relevance – although it can play a significant role – but rather, it is the way in which historians have been trained to build arguments, conduct research and present findings that should matter most to policy makers. She describes this as the “historian’s toolbox” – the various “tools” with which historical thinking (our process) can be put to use in a completely different field. For Green, whose background in policy development has clearly had an influence on her approach, there are many similarities between history and policy. Most notably, history and policy are “messy.” Just as historians are never privy to all possible information, policy analysts can never have a complete picture of the policy issue and “must operate within constraints that are necessarily imperfectly understood.”2 Historical thinking assumes from the start that not all information will be completely uncovered; and therefore, the goal of the historical method is concerned with discerning ways that best address the information gaps and to build bridges between them. Just as the policy maker draws upon political statements, policy imperatives, and research findings and trends to provide the rational for a policy proposal, the historian must sift through hundreds, if not thousands, of seemingly disconnected items to form common threads that allow for the construction of the narrative. Both are trying to create the “storyline” through an analysis of the limited available data to coherently link the different elements. For Green, “the ‘organising mind’ of the historian is a valuable asset in the policymaking context, able to integrate ambiguous, eclectic and incomplete evidence into an informed understanding of a topic.”3 In addition, both the historian and the policy maker must place their work within the wider world. Just as policy makers have to be able to position their initiatives within the broader context of the “whole of government,” historical research method directs the researcher towards identifying the trends and patterns of relations in an effort to better understand society as a whole. The core argument of Green’s work is that for historians to use their historical thinking to influence policy making, they must be embedded within the policy making unit, and not strictly as “historians” but as members of the interdisciplinary policy making team. She argues that these policy units need to blend expertise from