Science, Government, and the Case of RAND: A Singular Pluralism

Abstract

At one level, The RAND Corporation is simply an intensive treatment of a new American form of enterprise, academia, and government action: the nonprofit research or advisory corporation. At this level, Smith’s work is of particular interest, both to the student of public administration and to the public administrator. The broad question Smith asks is why RAND has been so successful—that is, why it has prospered according to its own outlook and has satisfied its sponsors according to theirs—in contrast to comparable but different types of research or advisory organizations. The answer appears to be that RAND has succeeded so well because, both in its foundation and in its continuing operations, it “has been able to avoid a completely dependent status vis-à-vis the Air Force,” its original and still-primary sponsor. How RAND has managed this and what the most noteworthy particular aspects of its independence have been are the subsidiary questions to which Smith devotes the bulk of his study. 1 .