Historians As Policy Advisors? Here’s Why That Isn’t A Good Idea

“History reveals the enormous variety and variability of human institutions and behaviour, setting clear limits on the validity and plausibility of any universalising generalisations. The problem for any would-be applied historian lies in converting this necessary corrective of over-confident social-scientific assertions or politicians’ simplistic assumptions – the historian’s reflex ‘actually, it’s rather more complicated than that’ – into anything resembling the sort of practical policy advice that politicians or civil servants will ever take seriously.”