Inside the Making of Security Policy

There has been particularly, high incidences of insecurity with the growth of terrorist groups. The turning point in policy making in the United States and in the world states took a turn with the attack on U. S. soil on September 11, 2001. The susceptibility of attacks on a powerful nation such as the United States drew questions of the strength of the security policies and the sheer possibility that this could have been prevented. The academics portend their work in journals, book publishing, dissertations, and conference reports and papers (Jentleson, 2002). First, this article looks at the reasons why academician information has often been disregarded in the practitioner's job. The main constraints that have been considered in use of accurate analysis by scholars have been the structural characteristics such as centralization, hierarchy, and specialization.

However, it is this same characteristic that defines what the government is. Probably without such placements the existence and essence of the government would be null and void. There are other fundamental factors that are a hindrance to the application of academic research in policymaking. A façade that still covers academic research from being used in policy making is the ambiguity of evidence. Research deals with sometimes abstract subjects that do not have concrete evidence. As a rule of thumb in research, what is not is guessed for the purpose of research. This, however, does not suffice as a sure accurate finding of the research. Policymaking in a country is influenced by the politics of the nation. Politics is a definitive aspect of the making of policies.

The people who are responsible for the making of policies of a nation have usually being elected by constituents. Apart from considering the most sustainable options in making decisions, they would much prefer options that augur well with their constituents if they are to seek for any elective position in subsequent elections. Politics is intertwined with power and is a main driving force among the elite charged with policy making (Williams, 2004). This is the same predicament that faces the relationship between the scholars and the practitioners that make policies that are implemented. Even though scholars have information that is useful in making of decisions, these research recommendations never get the chance to be considered in making of decisions. The policymakers should have a deliberate action so as to check on the research that has been done on the subject matter and use the information that is gotten from these researches to make actionable decisions.

The proximity to intelligence analysis and policy-making has a great effect on the ability of a country to integrate the intelligence into the policy-making process. Countries should have structures that pull these two together to have a more effective policy-making process. The sifted knowledge that is accurate and is considered by policy-makers and politicians (Haas, 2004). Such information is multidisciplinary and considers several views from different perspectives. The three characteristics that are considered for the identification of such usable knowledge is credibility, saliency, and legitimacy. Credibility is the property of the consumers believing in the product and information to be true. Legitimacy is the equitability of the process such that the process is likely to give an unbiased product. It is vital that the distance between these two is closed to increase the use of information from academic research in the making of policies.