The two beneficiaries of the appropriation were Catholic University and Columbia University, both members of the prestigious Association of American Universities. Their presence at the “academic pork barrel,” especially Columbia’s, helped turn what had previously been a marginal activity, engaged in by more or less marginal institutions, into an acceptable strategy for obtaining federal money for science without the inconvenience and uncertainty of submitting one’s proposals to scientifically competent judgment.

James Savage, now a professor of political science at the University of Virginia, was himself involved in the fray for a time as a staff member in the Office of the President of the University of California. He has written what is surely the definitive book on the subject. In doing so, he has performed a valuable service to the cause of understanding Congress, universities, and the way science policy is made—and not made—in America. It is, like so many examinations of the legislative process, not a pretty story.

Savage examines in some detail the incentives to earmark on the part of university and congressional actors, the new and key role of paid lobbyists who correctly saw a major source of new business in the ambitions of universities, the opposition to earmarking within the Congress and within the educational associations, and the future of earmarking.

As President of the Association of American Universities from 1983 until 1993, I was deeply involved in this issue, and I can confirm that Savage has pretty much got it right. More than simply recounting a series of events, however, Savage places the events in their proper context. The outbreak of academic earmarking that followed the 1983 events, as Savage shows, grew out of the way university research has been funded since the end of World War II, and it took place in a setting that is familiar to students of Congress and of interest group politics. It is a setting in which authorizing and appropriating committees fight for influence over resource allocation—a battle the appropriators almost always win—in which those seeking money and their hired guides look for the niches in which their projects fit best with the interests of members of Congress, in which members show their muscle in order to bring benefits to their constituents, in which self-interest flies under the banner of principle, and in which occasional flashes of genuine principle and concern for less parochial interests illuminate the landscape: in short, an old story, in this case well told.

One would have expected that the part of the university community that had prospered under the reigning system would oppose earmarks, and the so-called “have-not” institutions would dive eagerly into the pork barrel. It was not nearly so simple. The main association representing the major research universities, the Association of American Universities, went on record opposing earmarks in 1983, even though two of its members had “seen their chances, and took ’em,” to quote George Washington Plunkitt. But as Savage demonstrates, what had begun as a reasonably united front eroded as time passed. More and more members broke ranks, and it became impossible for AAU to present a coherent view of the issues that was not contradicted by the actions of its own members. Other educational associations initially offered rhetorical support to the AAU position, but their support was never more than pro forma since all of the other associations, with their more varied membership, were even more conflicted than AAU eventually became.

That is one answer to Savage’s inquiry into why the associations were not more effective in their opposition to earmarking. It was a genuinely difficult internal conflict, and for most, withdrawal seemed the better part of wisdom. AAU was the only presidential group whose focus was largely on science and research policy, and it engaged in the battle longer than any of the others. But there were serious costs to AAU’s agenda. Earmarking was only one of many issues on which research universities had to engage the Congress, and opposition to the political interests of members is not a good strategy for gaining support on, say, indirect cost policy.

History does not have to be read as the inevitable march of events, but to at least one combatant it seemed after a short time, and it seems even more so today, that the earmarking fight, once it was publicly joined, was doomed to be lost. Savage shows in just which ways the stars were out of alignment, but that same combatant comes away from the book convinced that even battles that are fated to be lost can be well worth fighting.