ABSTRACT
A policy generated by commissions will become more important, Bell avers, due to the slippage of initiative legislation away from the legislative branch and over to the executive branch. The events related to federal commissions in the seven years since Bell’s assessment indicate that he was overly optimistic and benign. When politicians choose to create federal commissions as a response to pressing social issues, perhaps of “crisis” proportions, those social scientists who choose to participate in the commission create for themselves an acute dilemma. The policy research conducted under the auspices of a federal commission presents social scientists with a distinct set of conditions. The means by which federal commissions make known their findings provides a third distinct aspect of this kind of research. Commissions ordinarily present their findings in a single document made visible through legislative or executive sponsorship.
