The British Journal of Sociology 2004 Volume 55 Issue 1

Debate
Sociology and political arithmetic: some principles
of a new policy science1

Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

Abstract
This paper advances the position that sociology needs to develop an approach to
research which focuses on fundamental social problems. In doing so it shares many
of the intellectual values and goals of political arithmetic while seeking to move
methodologically beyond it. Since such problems are complex they will require,
typically, interdisciplinary input and a concomitant approach to the development
and appraisal of theories. We are not, therefore, advocating the primacy of soci-
ology but arguing that it has a distinctive part to play in addressing the funda-
mental problems of the twenty-first century. However, a policy-oriented sociology
has also to take up the task, so clearly defined by the tradition of political arith-
metic, which is to hold governments to account. Consequently a central principle
of a new policy science is that it should contribute to democratic debate about
policy.
Keywords: Sociology; political arithmetic; theory; interdisciplinarity; policy and
democracy

It is essential for an understanding of accountability to recognize that its

characteristic modern problems are bound up with entitlements as well
as provisions, with the redistribution of the wealth and power of the
nation through the political process. We are therefore forced to under-
take an entire reappraisal, not only of the ends and the means with which
accountability is concerned but also of the context in which these evalu-
ations and actions take place. We seek, in short, a more sophisticated
measure of the quality of life.
A.H. Halsey, No Discouragement (1996: 224)

Lauder (Education Department, Bath); Brown (Cardiff School of Social Science, Cardiff); Halsey (Nuffield College, Oxford)
(Corresponding author email: edshl@bath.ac.uk)
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004 ISSN 0007-1315 print/1468-4446 online.
Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden,
MA 02148, USA. DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-4446.2004.00002.x
4 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

Introduction

This paper advances the position that sociology needs to develop an approach
to research which focuses on fundamental social problems. In doing so it
shares many of the intellectual values and goals of political arithmetic as
expounded by A.H. Halsey (1994) and others while seeking to move method-
ologically beyond it.
There are several motives for writing the paper at this time. Paramount
amongst these is the emergence of a renewed belief in the power of the social
sciences to inform policy after a period in which faith in social development
was placed in the hands of the ‘free’ market and its theorists. However,
the splintering of academic disciplines concerned with fundamental social
problems into economics, social policy, social research and sociology raises
questions about sociology’s place amongst these cognate disciplines and
whether it can deliver on the opportunity now open to it. But there are also
new competitor disciplines on the block, based on extrapolating principles of
human behaviour from genetic information that need to be taken into account
(Malik 2000). Consequently, the role of sociology in informing policy needs
to be placed in the broader context of interdisciplinary competition and
synthesis.
The argument of this paper is that a theoretically informed empirically
driven sociology focused on fundamental social problems has an important
role to play. Since such problems are complex they will require, typically,
interdisciplinary input and a concomitant approach to the development and
appraisal of theories. We are not, therefore, advocating the primacy of sociol-
ogy but rather that it has a distinctive part to play in addressing the human
condition in the twenty-first century.
However, a policy-oriented sociology has also to take up the task so clearly
defined by the tradition of political arithmetic which is to hold governments
to account for their policies and the theoretical assumptions that they pre-
suppose (Halsey 1994). At a time of increasing social inequalities; when the
self-regulating market has weakened the foundations of social solidarity; when
the advances of postwar welfare reforms have been reversed; the idea of polit-
ical arithmetic as social accountability remains powerful. Political arithmetic,
as part of recent British sociology has had considerable influence on the policy
process (Coleman 1991); it seems important, therefore, to sustain its ethos and
some of its key principles while reconsidering the methodological foundations
for a new policy science.
Perhaps the key insight of post-positivist epistemology is that it is through
theories that, provisionally, we come to know the world (Haig 1987) so the
focus of any methodology concerned with solving fundamental social prob-
lems has to involve theory development and appraisal. However, how we
judge theories especially against empirical data will be determined by the
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 5

methodological rules and values that we espouse. Hence, this paper offers an
initial exploration of some of the key issues that sociology and political arith-
metic have to address: objectivity and judgment between theories and the
place of social scientists, in particular sociologists, as expert witnesses within
the democratic conversation about policy formation and accountability. In
developing these arguments we seek to steer a course between two positions.
The first concerns an extreme kind of liberal humanism that emphasizes rel-
ativism and eschews quantitative research; we have in mind here the type of
approach to social sciences research advocated by, amongst others, Lather
(1991). The second is related to the problem of the development of the generic
social researcher. Increasingly emphasis is being given to social research train-
ing that is not anchored in any specific discipline far less a rigorous interdis-
ciplinary context. As Williams (2000) notes
What is odd about considering social research as a discipline, is that it’s
raison d’etre is as a set of tools for investigation. It doesn’t have a body of
theory that says the social world is like this, or that. Its disciplinary foun-
dations are epistemological justifications for the methods used. (Williams
2000: 163)
He concludes by pointing out that such a training, ‘runs the risk of producing
technologists who are equipped only with investigative skills’ (Williams 2000:
163) suggesting that social research training may be no more than a ‘prag-
matically driven conceptual empiricism’ (Williams 2000: 164). The conse-
quence is that explanatory theory is divorced from the systematic collection
of data leaving policy makers without guidance as to how best to explain the
data patterns they are confronted with, while at the same time reducing the
critical mass of social scientists able to challenge official explanations for social
problems and policies designed to address them. However, it may be that
policy makers prefer research that is free of theoretical baggage precisely
because it enables them to model policies according to their own ideological
and political constraints. Since this is an issue that needs to be considered, the
paper concludes by looking at an a-symmetry between sociological theory and
policy. But it will also be shown how this a-symmetry can be turned to advan-
tage within the social democratic political tradition.
We begin by looking at the distinctive contribution that empirically driven
sociological theory can make to policy. We then turn to a discussion of inter-
disciplinarity in order to identify the place of sociology within the wider
context of social and biologically based theories of human thought and action
that have the potential to influence policy.

© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004

6 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

The contribution of sociology to policy based theory and empirical research

Sociology has at least five sets of theoretical and methodological resources

that it can marshal in order to inform the policy process. These are: the ability
to link private troubles to public issues (Mills 1959) through the concepts of
agency and structures of power; the related role of quantitative studies and
especially the legacy of political arithmetic in illuminating the consequences
of these power structures on life chances; the role of qualitative empirical
research in illuminating the connections between structure and agency; the
more recently developed concept of self-reflexivity (Giddens 1994) and its role
in linking the identification of power structures to a social democratic politics
(Brown and Lauder 2001) and finally, the disciplinary openness of sociology
when contrasted with, for example, neo-classical economics. Whereas, in the
latter case the fundamental postulates and methodology have remained
largely unchanged for over a century the basic tenets of sociology remain in
question and fundamental methodological issues, such as those addressed in
this paper, require re-statement and defence in the light of the emergence of
new theories and perspectives.

Structure and agency

The idea that there is an essential duality in society between structures and
agents was accepted as a key element of sociological theory in the 1970s. Of
course, the concept was well understood in the previous century by Marx who
noted that human beings make their own history but not always as they intend
and not in circumstances of their own choosing.
While there are several competing accounts as to how structure and agency
relate to one another (Bhaskar 1979; Bourdieu 1992; Giddens 1984) the basic
insight is clear: there are power structures which influence the way individu-
als behave and think, without them necessarily being conscious of that influ-
ence. As Bhaskar has put it, people go to work without intending to reproduce
capitalist relations of production and they marry without intending to repro-
duce the nuclear family, yet in the very act of paid work or marital relations
the power structures inherent in capitalist work or the family are reproduced
or modified in ways which act back on individuals and groups.
What this theoretical insight contributes to a broader understanding of fun-
damental social problems is that there is an irreducible social element to
human behaviour and it is related to the way societal power structures are
constructed and sustained. Of course, this is not and cannot be an a priori claim
but must be seen as a strong inference from data that correlates systematic
inequalities and unequal power relations or structures. It is the structures that
are then held to generate unequal life chances even when, for example, factors
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 7

like IQ, which may be taken to reflect a genetic element to intelligence, are
taken into account.
It is in this context that political arithmetic has, over the past forty years,
had such a significant role to play. Its primary concern has been with the macro
issues of poverty, social mobility, equality of opportunity, health inequalities,
and social stratification. Such an approach lends itself to giving priority to
structure over agency since, for example, in the Nuffield studies of social mobil-
ity that gave political arithmetic such prominence (Halsey, Heath and Ridge
1980; Goldthorpe, Llewellyn and Payne 1987) it is the calculation of system-
atic differences in life chances that suggests the presence of underlying power
structures. The idea of linking political arithmetic to a theoretical construction
like that of the structure/agency dualism may seem surprising when the former
has often been understood as a form of empiricism, yet, as we shall subse-
quently show, these studies have always been situated within theoretical
contexts.
However, qualitative research is also of importance in illuminating the struc-
ture/agency dualism. In particular it helps to develop plausible explanations
for the way power structures influence agents’ thinking and decision-making.
To give a brief example: in a study of origins and destinations in New Zealand,
the researchers sought to explain a data pattern which showed that there was
a strong chance that working-class students that had gained the qualifications
for university entrance would not go to university. The accounts given by these
students had to do with the unacceptable risk of participating in institutions
of which they and their family had little or no knowledge (Lauder et al. 1999).
If the theoretical constructs of structure and agency have a key explanatory
role to play, the concept of self reflexivity has a rather different role. It can be
best understood as informing the way policies concerning fundamental social
problems can be related to a wider democratic discussion.

Self-reflexivity

There has been a change in our understanding of society and hence how a
policy informed social science should relate to citizens in a democracy. A key
change in society involves what Giddens calls reflexivity. He suggests that
Social reflexivity is both condition and outcome of a post-traditional society.
Decisions have to be taken on the basis of a more or less continuous reflec-
tion on the conditions of one’s action. ‘Reflexivity’ here refers to the use of
information about the conditions of activity as a means of regularly reorder-
ing and redefining what that activity is. It concerns a universe of action
where social observers are themselves socially observed; and it is today truly
global in scope. (Giddens 1994: 86)
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
8 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

Although a degree of scepticism is in order when contemplating such ideas,

there is no doubt that societies are changing in fundamental ways, that create
opportunities to articulate new forms of life-styles, work practices, political
participation and social solidarity.
For much of the twentieth century policy social sciences, including the tra-
dition of political arithmetic, were mainly geared to addressing fellow acade-
mics, government advisors and policy makers. It was a model of history ‘from
above’. These target groups obviously remain important, but history is also
made ‘from below’. The concept of self-reflexivity suggests that agents can now
be more knowledgeable about themselves and their place in the world and
should be included in any debate about policies concerning fundamental
social problems. In particular, about how their relationship to society
may be part of the social problems identified. For example, a key argument
in Capitalism and Social Progress (Brown and Lauder 2001) sought to estab-
lish the way individual modes of intelligence are socially constructed. In
part, the purpose of this argument was to counter the individualist assumption
that intelligent action is entirely explicable in individual terms. It attempted
to show that we owe much to society for our individual achievements. The
concept coined of reflexive solidarity, therefore, referred to the process of
reflection by which individuals could understand how they are linked to
society, and why widening inequalities based on the rationalization of merit
need to be re-considered in the light of what we owe to society for our ‘intel-
ligence’. In this respect self-reflexivity provides the basis for sociology as
having an educative role, ‘about the connections between individual choice
and social welfare’ (Halsey 1994: 433).

The theoretical openness of sociology

One of the great advantages of sociology in the context of a democratic con-

versation is precisely its openness. The self-reflexivity of individuals is also
reflected in that of the discipline itself. While we have argued for the distinc-
tive contribution of key theoretical constructs these may be challenged. The
crucial point about sociology is that by challenging such constructs it is not
only alternative theories that may be advanced but other ways of seeing the
world which in turn might lead to different policy prescriptions. This enables
sociology to be part of a democratic conversation that is not dominated by
one particular model of how we think and act, thereby confining debate within
set parameters. That said, we should emphasize that the postulating of alter-
natives is not part of a relativist free-for-all, in which one alternative is as good
as another, rather the nature and quality of the empirical evidence, theory and
reasoning are the basis on which judgments between competing theoretical
perspectives are made.
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 9

This then brings us to the rules by which theories are to be judged and the
intellectual values that frame them. It is to the latter that we first turn and in
particular to the values that lay behind postwar political arithmetic because
they remain a touchstone for a new policy science.

The intellectual values underlying political arithmetic

There are two preliminary points to make about the tradition of political arith-
metic. The first is that its ‘home’ in sociology is largely a postwar phenomena.
One of the consequences of the separation of political arithmetic from acad-
emic sociology is that the former has always had a wider brief, being interdis-
ciplinary in its orientation and interests if at the same time emphasizing the
social as central to solving society’s problems. The second is that it has always
been concerned to change the world rather than merely to understand it.
Halsey, Heath and Ridge (1980) note that early proponents of political arith-
metic were
concerned to describe accurately and in detail the social conditions of their
society, particularly of the more disadvantaged sections, but their interest in
these matters was never a disinterested academic one. Description of social
contributions was a preliminary to political reform. They exposed the
inequalities of society in order to change them. The tradition thus has a
double intent; on the one hand it engages in the primary sociological task
of describing and documenting the ‘state of society’; on the other hand it
addresses itself to central social and political issues. It has never, therefore,
been a ‘value free’ academic discipline, if such were in any event possible.
Instead, it has been an attempt to marry a value-laden choice of issues with
objective methods of data collection. (Halsey, Heath and Ridge 1980: 1)
In the 1950s the political arithmetic tradition was most strongly reinforced by
the arrival of Karl Popper. We would particularly stress four of his proposi-
tions. First, we can learn from our mistakes by following the spirit of falsifica-
tion advocated and illustrated by Popper in his major works, especially his
Open Society and its Enemies (1966). Second we must always guard against
being captured by any form of historicism of which Marxism was prominent
from 1850–1989. It is not the business of social science to deal in historical
prophesies (Popper 1963). Third, Popper has taught us to restrain our revolu-
tionary or youthful enthusiasms and to practice what he called ‘piecemeal
social engineering’, another description of political arithmetic.
Popper was an epistemological optimist, whose main previous spokesmen
had been Bacon and Descartes both of whom taught disrespect for authority,
and believed that truth was manifest – an open book available to human
beings with the will to see. But, as Popper (1963) argues, Bacon and Descartes
never escaped authority: for Aristotle and the Bible they substituted other
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
10 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

gods, in the one case by ridding the mind of prejudice so as to spell out the
book of nature, and in the other case to follow reason. In other words they
replaced the old authorities of tradition and the deity by the new authorities
of observation and reason. They failed to recognize that human knowledge is
very hard to come by and is always threatened by human fallibility. They failed
to draw the inference that tolerance, not fanaticism and dogma, is the only
condition for scientific advance and political progress.
Fourth, Popper stood firmly against relativism. Here is his argument.
The situation is really very simple. The belief of a liberal – the belief in the
possibility of a rule of law, of equal justice, of fundamental rights, and a free
society – can easily survive the recognition that judges are not omniscient
and may make mistakes about facts and that, in practice, absolute justice is
hardly ever realized in any particular legal case. But this belief in the pos-
sibility of a rule of law, of justice, and of freedom, can hardly survive the
acceptance of an epistemology which teaches that there are no objective
facts; not merely in this particular case; and that the judge cannot have made
a factual mistake because he can no more be wrong about the facts than he
can be right. (Popper 1963: 5)
This argument has been elaborated by Ernest Gellner (1992) in his critical
account of the postmodern turn.
Further insight into Popper’s approach is captured in his rejection of
Bertrand Russell’s assertion that we are clever, too clever, but our technology
has outdistanced our moral and political growth and maturity. Popper writes
‘We are good, perhaps a little too good but we are also a little stupid; and it
is this mixture of goodness and stupidity which lies at the root of our trou-
bles’. Our moral enthusiasms rather than our wickedness are what lead us
astray. This reads like pessimism but Popper goes on, in a lecture delivered in
October 1956, to insist that he is an optimist in the sense that he believes that
the free societies of the West were the greatest ever achieved in the whole
history of the species.
He then lists eight traditional ills that have marred society. They are
1. Unemployment and some similar forms of social insecurity
2. Sickness and pain
3. Penal cruelty
4. Slavery and other forms of serfdom
5. Religious and racial discrimination
6. Lack of educational opportunities
7. Rigid class differences
8. War
These are perhaps the greatest social evils that have beset the life of human
societies, though now, fifty years later, we would hasten to add gender
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 11

inequality and environmental degradation. He assesses them in order, perhaps

more optimistically (reflecting the confidence of the postwar period in the
power of the Welfare State to relieve human suffering) than we would now.
But the differences in outlook of rational empiricists or political arithmeti-
cians between the mid-twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first
only serve to underline Popper’s thesis that the main aim of the social sciences
is to discover the unintended consequences of purposive political action. Thus,
though we might celebrate research on poverty, which in the early 1950s
showed considerable amelioration compared with the slump years of the
1930s, our record of anticipating the return of unemployment, inequality
and social exclusion in the 1980s is one that scarcely encourages confidence in
the development of the social sciences. Our own cheerfulness concerning a
revived policy sociology with some of the key values of postwar political arith-
metic is accordingly tentative. Nevertheless our position, like that of Popper,
remains sharply distinguished from that of those who believe that there are
no good epistemological grounds on which our hitherto limited and incom-
plete assault on the traditional evils of society, local national or global, may
be pursued.

Between methodology and politics

Methodologically there are two areas in which a new policy science differs
from the past: these concern the concept of objectivity and the ‘positioning’
of researchers in politics.

Objectivity and judgments between theories

The identification and description of social problems are often widely accepted
as suggested by the list of problems identified by Popper. However, the rise of
Thatcherism and neo-liberal economic, social and political theories has rein-
forced the need to go beyond description to explanation. The neo-liberal
thinking embraced by Thatcherism generated explanations for human behav-
iour that explicitly ruled out any form of societal influence. Clearly such expla-
nations were controversial. Debate often arises when explanations, rather than
descriptions for the problem are sought.2 The social sciences are characterized
by a variety of theories and methods. In general terms, this pluralism can be
considered healthy because it provides a range of insights and understandings
into the human condition that can only enrich debate in a democratic society.
However, when it comes to influencing policy not all theories can be taken
into account. For a start, they may make competing assumptions about human
nature and society as well as the methods they advocate for addressing a
problem. In other words, we need to be able to distinguish between
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
12 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

competing theories and make judgments as to which are likely to provide the
best explanation on the available evidence. One of the major tasks for social
scientists is, therefore, to be able to make sound judgments as to which theo-
ries comprise the best explanations for a given social problem. To put the issue
in this way is to assume that the judgments are not arbitrary but based on
sound reasons and principles: it is, in other words to reject the relativism that
Popper rightly regarded as a scourge. To see how important, yet demanding
such a task is we can take an example from economics.
In a recent paper, Richard Lipsey (2000) considers three theories of eco-
nomic growth, their methods and policy consequences. Two of these theories,
neo-classical and endogenous growth may be considered part of mainstream
economics. Theoretically the debate between them concerns the role of human
capital and technology and how they can best be mathematically modelled;
whether these variables should be seen as external to growth or integral to it.
As Lipsey puts it, these theories are at a high level of generality and offer
policy prescriptions which follow general rules such as, ‘make labour markets
as perfectly competitive as possible’, or governments should invest in R&D
for generic technologies (e.g., IT) because of market failure rather than exer-
cising judgment in, say, picking winners.
In contrast to these two mainstream approaches Lipsey argues for a third
approach – structuralist evolutionary theory. In this latter theory it is assumed
that economic growth is determined by a range of historical and institutional
factors.
Lipsey’s paper provides an example of the complex types of judgment as
regards theory choice, methodology and policy prescriptions which flow from
the respective theories. Each of the three theories has a different approach to
what counts as valid knowledge. Neo-classical and endogenous growth theo-
rists assume that only valid scientific knowledge can be generated through the
application of mathematics to the economic world. Structuralist evolutionary
theorists embrace quantitative data but use contextualized forms of historical
and institutional enquiry that they regard as valid. Underlying these differ-
ences in epistemology are different assumptions about human nature and
motivation. The first two theories assuming that it is relatively unchanging and
based on homo economicus, while the latter assumes that it is historically vari-
able, influenced in particular by the structure of institutions.
Given these radical differences in the architecture of theories that seek to
explain the same phenomena, in what sense can we defend judgments made
about their competing claims as rational and hence objective? One approach
to this question is to argue that objectivity inheres in the transparency of the
way data is collected, analysed, inferences drawn and conclusions deduced
(Fay 1996). In other words, just as in Popper’s refutation of relativism, the judg-
ments we make are objective in the sense that they are open to challenge, in
the way evidence in a court of law is open to challenge. This does not make
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 13

our judgments epistemologically secure but nor does it mean that they are
arbitrary. In an important sense, as Fay (1996) observes, the data gathered by
social scientists should be seen as part of the democratic conversation. What
is required, though, is an open and critical community of social scientists that
can challenge orthodoxy.

Expert witness

This answer, however, raises a further issue. To what extent and on what basis
can social scientists and in particular, sociologists claim expert status? This
question relates to the idea of a democratic conversation. We live typically in
multicultural societies so the question that arises is to what extent researchers
from one community can fairly and accurately characterize the beliefs, behav-
iour and practice of another?
One of the consequences of the ‘post-modern turn’ in the social sciences has
been the rejection, by some prominent researchers, of quantitative research.
In a sense these researchers represent the polar opposite of neo-classical econ-
omists’ commitment to empiricism on the grounds that the mathematical
expression of behaviour provides the only route to epistemological probity. In
order to examine the claims against quantitative research we look at the argu-
ments of one prominent post-modern researcher Patti Lather (1991) because
her account links together issues of methodology, and the position of
researchers in a democratic society.
As to quantitative methods, a reconstruction of her position would suggest
that statistical analyses commits two sins.3 The first is that they treat human
beings as averages where as they are not only unique but have multiple and
changing selves. Therefore, any attempt to refer to individuals as ‘averages’
will misrepresent them in crucial ways. It could be argued that when roles
were more fixed the idea of representing individuals as, say, members of
groups/classes etc., rather than just individuals with complex identities made
political arithmetic more credible.
The second is that the process of gathering data through questionnaires, etc.,
represents a hierarchical view of knowledge in that experts impose their mean-
ings on others. Moreover, various sub-cultures have their own systems of
meanings and symbols that quantitative methods will fail to detect. Given that
some of these sub-cultures are at the margins of society, in the case of indige-
nous peoples and ethnic minorities, the imposition of meaning through quan-
titative approaches represents another form of colonial dominance.
Underlying these points is an agenda about the role of researchers and the
nature of democracy. Given the position sketched above the only role for the
researcher is to serve as a facilitator in a democratic discussion that allows
marginalized voices to be heard.
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
14 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

We have sympathy for the intentions behind Lather’s argument since social
science has manifestly been used as an instrument of dominance in the past,
in relation to indigenous peoples (Smith 1999). However, we believe that
quantitative methods and questions of voice are not mutually exclusive.
Indeed they can be complementary.4 Let us take the example of child poverty.
The quantitative data have shown how widespread this phenomena has
become in countries with a history of neo-liberal governments (Brown and
Lauder 2000). The extensive nature of child poverty within and between coun-
tries not only points up its urgency, but also demonstrates that it is not con-
fined to one specific sub-group in society. In this sense these data refute any
victim blaming argument about the causes lying within the characteristics of
a specific sub group. If we add to this, the observation that after-tax-transfers
40 per cent of Britons experienced an episode of poverty in the years between
1991–1997 (OECD 2000), then we can infer that the general causes of child
poverty may have to do with the nature of the neo-liberal welfare regime on
the one hand, and the nature of the labour market, on the other (Bradbury,
Jenkins and Micklewright 2001).
It may well be that these general factors impinge on different sub-cultures
in different ways and it is here that qualitative research clearly has a role to
play. This, however, raises the problem of communication across sub-cultures
identified by Lather. In our view the solution to this problem lies in Fay’s
(1996) use of the Feminist concept of positionality. The concept of position-
ing raises the issues of
who gets to speak, who is acknowledged as an authority and why, whose
concerns are responded to, who has access to the material and how these
authorizations both constrain and enable various forms of social relations
and behaviour. (Fay 1996: 218)
It follows that researchers taking a particular theoretical perspective will
view specific situations from a particular point of view with certain kinds of
effects. As such they may grasp important dimensions of a society or culture
. . . But in operating this way they invite at least implicit responses from
others with different perspectives, including those being reported about.
(Fay 1996: 218)
In this sense theories locate or position individuals or groups because theo-
ries are always partial in their perspective. Consequently, it is integral to good
scientific practice that the subjects of research are allowed to comment on the
way they have been positioned by the research.
So far we have concentrated on the development of theories and data about
complex social problems but we need to consider the further role of theory
appraisal. Here we should note that positionality should become one criterion
in the appraisal of theories. However, judging the merits of theories and data
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 15

to make best sense of the light they can throw on social problems clearly
requires extensive expertise, often in interdisciplinary teams. If we return to
Popper’s case for the rejection of relativism, in a court of law a variety of evi-
dence will be presented which will require interpretation by expert witnesses.
They may often disagree and ultimately their views will be weighed by wider
democratic debate. However, if we are to avoid judgmental relativism it
follows that judgments have to be made and since they are likely to be
complex, entertaining the appropriateness of different theoretical architec-
tures and different orders of evidence in relation to them, then the role of the
expert remains crucial.

Interdisciplinary approach

As we seek to solve fundamental social problems it is also becoming clear that

in some areas interdisciplinary work must also cross the boundaries between
natural and social sciences. An interesting example that fits squarely into the
tradition of political arithmetic is Richard Wilkinson’s (1996) research into the
impact of relative inequalities of income and wealth in society on health.
In the 1990s a breakthrough was made in the understanding of the rela-
tionship between health and society. This has taken the well established ob-
servation that there are links between health and poverty a step further by
showing that there is a clear relationship between income differentials and
health: the more polarized the distribution of income is the higher the inci-
dence of mortality. As Wilkinson (2000) has put it, ‘every £1000 redistributed
from rich to poor tends to improve the health of the poor by more than its
loss harms the health of the rich, hence average standards of health would rise’
(2000: 11). Whereas previously the links between poverty and health could
be seen in purely material terms (e.g. bad diet) these new findings suggest a
much stronger association between health and social being. ‘With hindsight’,
Wilkinson says, ‘it looks as if we were suffering from a remarkably
de-socialised view of human beings’ (2000: 7).
Not surprisingly this view has been seen as controversial and there has been
a major debate over it since the publication of Wilkinson’s (1996) book,
Unhealthy Societies. At first the debate centred on the finding that relative
inequalities had an impact on health, now however the debate has moved on
to an explanation for this phenomena. Recently, Marmot and Wilkinson (2001)
have responded to American criticisms of their view that psycho-social expla-
nations are required to understand the links between health and inequality in
the British Medical Journal. What is interesting about this paper is the range
of explanatory considerations Marmot and Wilkinson draw upon to make their
case. These include: the correlation between psycho-social variables such as
‘control’, anxiety’ and ‘insecurity’ and ill health; studies of the effects of low
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
16 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

social status on non-human primates and increasing knowledge of the neu-

roendocrine pathways through which psycho–social factors ‘get under the skin’
(Marmot and Wilkinson 2001: 1233).
Apart from the substantive relationship between health and society, the
crucial point about the evidence cited by Marmot and Wilkinson is that it is
drawn from such a wide range of disciplines. Perhaps the major question con-
cerns the degree of ‘warrant’ each of these types of explanation holds. For
example, does the analogy between human and primate society hold? In policy
terms much turns on how convincing the explanations given by Wilkinson and
his co-workers are. In this respect, there is relevant work being undertaken at
Harvard using the notion of social capital (Kawachi, Kennedy and Wilkinson
1999). If Wilkinson is correct then his prescription for the redistribution of
income is central in reducing the incidence of morbidity.
However, this example points up the general issues concerning the prob-
lems of judging between theories from different disciplines, especially when
they seek to generate exclusive explanations for human behaviour in terms of
their own discipline. It is here that empirical research that enables us to help
judge between theories becomes crucial and where the central sociological
concepts identified above have a potentially important part to play. Return-
ing to our example of the determinants of IQ, studies clearly show that even
when IQ scores are taken into account there are significant differences in life
chances according to social origins (Bowles and Gintis 1976; Lauder and
Hughes 1990) opening the way for sociological explanations that incorporate
the concept of power structures. But we can take this a step further. One of
the key robust findings in this area is that know as the Flynn effect. Over
twenty years of research Flynn (see e.g., 1987, 1999) has demonstrated that
there are significant generational gains in IQ scores that can only be under-
stood by some reference to social effects. Flynn and colleagues are develop-
ing sophisticated theoretical models to show how genetic and environmental
factors may interact to explain this phenomenon (Dickens and Flynn 2001).
In doing so they are moving beyond a confrontation between competing expla-
nations to a potential theoretical synthesis.5 Not all fundamental social prob-
lems will be amenable to such synthesis in which case the need to adjudicate
between competing explanatory frameworks will remain.
What the discussion of the issues relating to interdisciplinarity show is that
we will need to be increasingly sophisticated in developing, synthesizing and
judging between theories from different disciplinary frameworks.6

Theory, policy trade-offs and democratic debate

Earlier it was suggested that policy makers may not welcome explanatory
theories since they might prefer or be constrained by specific ideological and
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 17

political commitments. In essence the suggestion is that there is an asymme-

try between the interests of policy makers and those of social scientists. There
is some evidence for this, not only in the contemporary use of social re-
searchers as suggested by Williams (2000) but in the way that political arith-
metic was employed in the postwar era. On the one hand, there are those such
as Williamson (1974) who see the tradition as essentially pragmatic because
leaders in the field, such as Halsey and Douglas, had to formulate their writing
in such a way that political and policy action could flow from it. On the other
hand, in looking at Halsey’s work in this tradition it is clear that it has been
reported within the context of the theories of social stratification current at
the time (Halsey 1977; Halsey, Heath and Ridge 1980). In this respect the data
were used to adjudicate or comment upon competing theories. Williamson’s
interpretation carries the clear implication that policy makers are not inter-
ested in explanatory theories. Yet even if this was true, that is no reason why
explanatory theories should be eschewed when dealing with social problems.
Indeed, if anything, in the present climate they are even more important. As
explanations for human behaviour become increasingly sophisticated so it is
important that sound advice is available as to the best available reasoning from
data to explanation. However, we should not see this advice as exclusively for
policy makers but for an informed citizenship. Much has changed since the
influential period of political arithmetic in the postwar period. Governments
seek advice from think tanks as much as from universities and the media has
changed the nature of public debate. In this new context contributing to the
democratic conversation by advancing what provisionally constitute the best
explanations for fundamental social problems is an essential part of the work
of those seeking to influence policy.
In a democracy, in which politicians need to cater to the majority, there is a
tendency for them to claim that all will be winners from their policies.
However, the reality is that ‘win–win’ policies are rare and that for most poli-
cies there are trade-offs with winners and losers. These may be apparent at
the time but played down or they may emerge as unforeseen or unintended
consequences. Moreover, as the notion of joined-up government suggests, a
policy implemented in one area may have an impact in another. In these cases,
democratic debate has the benefit of exposing political rhetoric to critical
scrutiny. And here the adjudication between competing theories will be
central.
To take an example: New Labour is committed both to numerically flexible
labour markets and to parental choice in education. At the same time it seeks
to raise the achievement levels and opportunities of the least advantaged to
improve economic performance and equity. From a neo-classical economic
perspective both policies and aims are compatible. A labour market with few
‘impediments’ either through the power of trade unions or other forms of
social protection can clear efficiently and skills can be effectively priced
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
18 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey

according to demand and supply. The key, then, is to raise skill levels on the
assumption that the more skilled are more productive and this will be reflected
in increased income. In this theory education becomes central to economic
performance and parental choice has an important part to play. This is because
it is assumed, in line with the tenets of homo economicus, that parents will
seek the best education for their children and this can be achieved by allow-
ing them to choose between schools. In turn, choice engenders competition
between schools that will raise their performance. As in the labour market,
the key is to remove impediments to choice, in this case for disadvantaged
groups so that all have a fair opportunity to succeed.
Some sociological critics of these policies and the theories that license them
start from a different position. They will begin by invoking a concept of struc-
ture as determining the limits and possibilities of workers and parents’ think-
ing and/or practice. Here, the structures invoked will centre on the nature of
paid and unpaid work, its status and rewards and how it influences individu-
als. Applied to flexible labour markets, there is now a well developed theory,
dual equilibrium theory (Finegold and Soskice 1988), that suggests that the
structural conditions created by low paid, low skill work will be mirrored by
the significant percentage of workers who are trapped in a cycle of low pay,
and unemployment (Stewart 1999). At the same time, we know that the kind
of work people undertake is likely to have an impact on their children’s edu-
cational achievement and choice of schools (Bourdieu and Passeron 1978; Ball
2003; Lauder, Hughes and Watson 1999).7 The policy consequences predicted
by these structural theories are that the gap in achievement between the
advantaged and disadvantaged will remain and that the aim of raising eco-
nomic performance by increasing skills will be compromised.8
It is not the case that politicians or their policy advisors will necessarily be
versed in these different theories when they argue for or against flexible labour
markets or parental choice. However, what empirical research and public
debate about such policies and their social and economic consequences can
bring to light are the assumptions on which they rest. These policies may have
been undertaken for reasons of political expedience as much as for reasons of
ideological commitment but their success or failure will rest on the coherence
and warrant of the assumptions on which they have been founded. In this
sense policy makers cannot escape the theories, intended or unintended on
which their policies are built.
Given this argument the asymmetry thesis can only hold at the cost of
eschewing an examination of the assumptions on which policies are built.9
Social scientists may act as consultants to policy makers by laying bare com-
peting theories, their predicted consequences and the trade-offs that result.
But it is less likely that politicians will make clear this kind of thinking for the
reasons given above. It is precisely for this reason that democratic debate is
so important. As A.H. Halsey has put it
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
 Sociology and political arithmetic 19

Democracy, after all, depends on citizens having ‘access to collective self-

knowledge independent of government’. (Halsey 1994: 440)

Conclusion: sociology and some principles for a new policy science

While the political arithmetic tradition has enjoyed an historically contingent

relationship with sociology, it is clear that the continuation of this relationship
is important to future policy informing social science. Sociology has a number
of key theoretical constructs that are a necessary part of the critical resources
needed to address fundamental social problems. Notions of agency and struc-
ture are potentially important in drawing attention to power relationships that
can lead to inequalities in life chances; equally explanations of how the indi-
vidual relates to society are central to citizens’ social and democratic under-
standing of their place in the world; what has been called reflexive solidarity
(Brown and Lauder 2001). Openness to new ways of explaining the world
is also central to a social democratic policy science. But it is also part of our
argument that sociology needs to more fully orient itself to addressing funda-
mental problems. In this endeavour the tradition of political arithmetic pro-
vides some important guides. Its ethos has always been one of focusing on
social problems, it has emphasized interdisciplinarity and it brings an appro-
priate Popperian scepticism to knowledge claims while seeking to reject
relativism.
We would argue that while these key principles should underpin a new
policy science, we need to move beyond these foundations, especially in rela-
tion to theory development and appraisal while emphasizing the importance
of quantitative and qualitative data analysis. It will be clear that a new policy
science along these lines will be demanding, requiring theoretical as well as
methodological sophistication. This suggests the need for a reassessment of
the training that social researchers now undertake.
Such a policy science, also, will be demanding because it challenges the way
we disseminate our ideas and research findings. There are journalists, media
pundits and burgeoning ‘think tanks’ ready to ‘interpret’ the latest research
findings for their own purposes. Unless social researchers take an active role
in the dissemination of findings, their work will be ‘reinterpreted’ or ignored
especially if it is ‘off message’. However, in the current academic climate there
is little kudos to the production of executive summaries, short reports pre-
pared for non-academic audiences, or the writing of newspaper articles. Yet
such activities are vital to a new policy science because they are part of what
it means to be an expert witness. The democratization of knowledge is
more than an issue of extending access to existing knowledge, it is also about
making our ideas and theories more accessible to the public both at home and
beyond.
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
20 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey
Finally, we should not forget that one of the key roles of postwar political
arithmetic was to hold governments to account. A policy science that can chal-
lenge the assumptions and explanations on which governments make policy
remains central.
(Date accepted: October 2003)
Notes
1. We would like to thank Rajani Naidoo,
Ian Jamieson, Phillip Milner, Amanda
Coffey, Stephen Gorrard and Trevor
Welland for their comments on an earlier
draft of this paper.
2. Strictly speaking the identification of
problems will often be theory related, i.e,
theories provide the resources for describing
the world as well as explaining it. Different
theories of social class, for example, will
lead to different definitions, measurements
and explanations. In the case of Thatcherite
views on poverty there was, little agreement
on the description of the phenomena, since
poverty as a widespread and increasing
phenomena was denied.
3. The concept of the rational reconstruc-
tion of theories is taken from Lakatos
(1970).
4. There is little to prohibit qualitative
research within the political arithmetic tra-
dition. It originally referred to the label
which people like Petty or Pepys or Graunt
put on the activities of the ‘invisible college’
in the seventeenth century as a prelude to
the foundation of the Royal Society. They
were interested in every thing from Navy
accounts through lenses to life tables and
would not have banished qualitative data
provided that it fitted meticulously into the
testing of hypotheses. What we want now
is to renew this tradition. For a view
that argues that there is a methodological
unity between qualitative and quantitative
methods see Haig (1996).
5. In turn there will be competing theo-
retical models of how the social and the
genetic interact.
6. This is made more complex because
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
theories often have a developmental life:
when challenged by anomalies in the data
they may develop to address the anomalies.
For policy advice the question is, at what
stage in a theory’s development is it appro-
priate to use it to inform policy?
7. Educational outcomes are not just a
matter of being determined by the structure
of work but by conflict for educational
advantage between and within the middle
class and the less advantaged. See the recent
books by Ball (2003) and Power et al. (2003).
For electoral reasons this is not a conflict
that policy makers would be keen to discuss
openly, far less address in seeking to neu-
tralize the advantage that middle-class
parents have in school choice and their chil-
dren’s achievement. Although, it is an issue
that has been taken on in the funding of
Higher Education.
8. It should be emphasized that this is an
example and these issues do not turn alone
on sociological and economic theories. As
suggested by the emphasis on interdiscipli-
narity in this paper, sociobiology and theo-
ries of social psychology will also have a
role to play in this debate. On the links
between neo-classical economics and socio-
biology see the discussion in Lauder (1987)
while a richer economic psychology than
that suggested by homo economicus has
been developed by Lewis, Webley and
Furnham (1995).
9. This may have been possible in the
postwar era when there was a high degree of
consensus about the social conditions deter-
mining, for example, educational success and
failure but less so now.

Bibliography
Ball, S. 2003 Class Strategies and the Educa-
tion Market: The Middle Class and Social
Advantage, London: RoutledgeFalmer.
Bhaskar, R. 1979 The Possibility of Natural-
ism, Brighton: Harvester Press.
Bourdieu, P. 1992 The Logic of Practice,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. and Passeron, J-C. 1978 Repro-
duction, London: Sage.
Bowles, S. and Gintis, H. 1976 Schooling in
Capitalist America, London: Routledge.
Bradbury, B., Jenkins, S. and Micklewright,
J. 2001 ‘Beyond the Snapshot: a Dynamic
View of Child Poverty’, in B. Bradbury,
S. Jenkins and J, Micklewright (eds) The
Dynamics of Child Poverty, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Brown, P. and Lauder, H. 2000 ‘Child
Poverty, Education and Collective Intelli-
gence’, in S. Ball (ed.) Key Papers in the Soci-
ology of Education, London: Routledge.
Brown, P. and Lauder, H. 2001 Capitalism
and Social Progress: The Future of Society
in a Global Economy, Basingstoke:
Palgrave.
Coleman, D. 1991 ‘Policy Research – Who
Needs it?’, Governance: An International
Journal of Polity and Administration 14(4):
420–55.
Dickens, W. and Flynn, J. 2001 ‘Heritability
Estimates Versus Large Environmental
effects: The IQ Paradox Resolved’, Psycho-
logical Review 108(2): 346–69.
Fay, B. 1996 Contemporary Philosophy of
Social Science, Oxford: Blackwell.
Finegold, D. and Soskice, S. 1988 ‘The
Failure of Training in Britain: Analysis and
Prescription’, Oxford Review of Economic
Policy 4(3): 21–53.
Flynn, J. 1987 ‘Massive IQ Gains in 14
nations: What IQ Tests Really Measure’,
Psychological Bulletin 101: 171–91.
Flynn, J. 1999 ‘Searching for Justice: The
Discovery of IQ Gains Over Time’, Ameri-
can Psychologist 54(1): 5–20.
Gellner, E. 1992 Postmodernism, Reason
and Religion, London: Routledge.
Giddens, A. 1984 The Constitution of
Sociology and political arithmetic 21
Society: Outline of the Theory of Structura-
tion, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. 1994 Beyond Left and Right,
Cambridge: Polity.
Glass, D.V. 1954 (ed.) Social Mobility in
Britain, London: Routledge.
Goldthorpe, J., Llewellyn, C. and Payne,
C. 1987 Social Mobility and Class Structure
in Modern Britain (2nd edn), Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Haig, B. 1987 ‘Scientific Problems and the
Conduct of Research’, Educational Philoso-
phy and Theory 19(2): 22–32.
Haig, B. 1996 ‘Grounded Theory as Scien-
tific Method’, in A. Neiman (ed.) Philosophy
of Education, Chicago: University of Illinois
Press.
Halsey, A.H. 1977 ‘Towards Meritocracy?
“The Case of Britain” ’, in J. Karabel and
A.H. Halsey (eds) Power and Ideology in
Education, New York: Oxford University
Press.
Halsey, A.H. 1994 ‘Sociology as Political
Arithmetic’, British Journal of Sociology
45(3): 427–44.
Halsey, A.H. 1996 No Discouragement,
Baskingstoke: Macmillan.
Halsey, A.H., Heath, A.F. and Ridge, J.M.
1980 Origins and Destinations, Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Kawachi, I., Wilkinson, R. and Kennedy, B.
1999 ‘Introduction’, in I. Kawachi, B.
Kennedy and R. Wilkinson (eds) The
Society and Population Health Reader, New
York: The New Press.
Lakatos, I. 1970 ‘Falsification and the
Methodology of Scientific Research Pro-
grammes’, in I. Lakatos and A. Musgrave
(eds) Criticism and the Growth of Knowl-
edge, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Lather, P. 1991 Getting Smart: Feminist
Research and Pedagogy With/in the Post-
Modern, New York: Routledge.
Lauder, H. 1987 ‘The New Right and Edu-
cational Policy in New Zealand’, New
Zealand Journal of Educational Studies
22(1): 3–23.
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
22 Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and A.H. Halsey
Lauder, H. and Hughes, D. 1990 ‘Social
Origins, Destinations and Educational
Inequality, in J. Codd, R. Harker and R.
Nash (eds) Political Issues in New Zealand
Education, Palmerston North (NZ): The
Dunmore Press
Lauder, H., Hughes, D., Watson, S.,
Waslander, S., Thrupp, M., Strathdee, R.,
Simiyu, I., Dupuls, A., McGlinn, J. and
Hamlin, J. 1999 Trading in Futures:
Why Markets in Education Don’t Work,
Buckingham: Open University Press.
Lewis, A., Webley, P. and Furnham, A. 1995
The New Economic Mind: London: Pearson.
Lipsey, R. 2000 ‘New Growth Theories and
Economic Policy for the Knowledge
Economy’, in K. Rubenson and H. Scheutze
(eds) Transition to the Knowledge Economy,
Vancouver: UBC Press.
Malik, K. 2000 Man, Beast and Zombie:
What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us About
Human Nature, London: Weidenfeld &
Nicholson.
Marmot, M. and Wilkinson, R. 2001 ‘Psy-
chosocial and Material Pathways in the
Relation Between Income and Health: A
Response to Lynch’, British Medical Journal
322(May 19): 1233–6.
Mills, C. Wright. 1959 The Sociological
Imagination, New York: Oxford University
Press.
OECD 2000 Poverty Dynamics in Six
OECD Countries, OECD Economic
© London School of Economics and Political Science 2004
Studies, No. 30 2000/1 by H. Oxley, T. Than
Dang and P. Antolin, Paris: OECD.
Popper, K. 1963 Conjectures and Refuta-
tions: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge,
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Popper, K. 1966 The Open Society and Its
Enemies, Vols 1 & 2, London: Routledge and
Kegan Paul.
Power, S., Edwards, T., Whitty, G. and
Wigfall, V. 2003 Education and the Middle
Class, Buckingham: Open University
Press.
Smith, L. 1999 Decolonizing Methodologies:
Research and Indigenous Peoples, London:
Zed Books.
Stewart, M. 1999 ‘Low Pay in Britain’, in P.
Gregg and J. Wadsworth (eds) The State of
Working Britain, Manchester: Manchester
University Press.
Wilkinson, R. 1996 Unhealthy Societies: The
Afflictions of Inequality, London: Routledge.
Wilkinson, R. 2000 Mind the Gap: Hierar-
chies, Health and Human Evolution,
London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Williams, M. 2000 ‘Social Research – The
Emergence of a Discipline?’, International
Journal of Social Research Methodology
3(2): 157–66.
Williamson, B. 1974 ‘Continuities and Dis-
continuities in Sociology of Education’, in
M. Flude and J. Ahier (eds) Educability,
Schools and Ideology, London: Croom
Helm.