Northwestern study finds Republicans fund science more than Democrats

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Northwestern study finds Republicans fund science more than Democrats

Republican presidents and House majorities between 1980-2020 spent more on science, according to an analysis of grants, contracts and internal funding

Evanston, Ill. --- A new Northwestern University study analyzing public records maintained by the U.S. Government Publishing Office and Congressional Budget Office over a 40-year period showed that federal science and research accounts received more funding when Republicans controlled the U.S. House of Representatives and the presidency, as opposed to their Democratic counterparts.

The research team, led by the Kellogg School of Management's Dashun Wangand Alexander Furnas, looked at the full scope of federal money contained in appropriations bills - the bills which fund the regular recurring expenses of the government - for science from 1980 to 2020. This includes not only grantmaking through entities like the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF), but also the scientific work federal agencies conduct in-house and through government contracts.

Wang is the Kellogg Chair of Technology and a professor of management and organizations at Kellogg and of industrial engineering and management sciences at McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science, director of Kellogg's Center for Science of Science and Innovation(CSSI), Northwestern Innovation (NI) Institute and co-director of Kellogg's Ryan Institute on Complexity. Furnas is a research assistant professor at Kellogg's CSSI and faculty associate at the NI Institute, Ryan Institute on Complexity, and the Institute for Policy Research.

The study, "Partisan disparities in the funding of science in the United States," was published today (Sept. 18) in the journal Science.

"The current administration's posture towards science and science funding is a pretty stark departure from prior funding commitments by Republicans to science, according to our research," Furnas said. "By illuminating these dynamics, this paper offers a foundation for more effective science advocacy and policy design. It underscores the importance of framing science funding as a bipartisan priority that advances shared societal goals, while also calling for vigilance to protect science from political interference."

Analyzing the budgets

After World War II, the U.S. federal government began to invest heavily in scientific research, with an emphasis on national security and economic growth.

Since then, the U.S. government has become the largest research funder in the world. Grantmaking, which is highly institutionalized within executive agency bureaucracies like the NIH and NSF, is only one part of the funding landscape.

"Our study found that the vast majority of federal funding for science comes in the form of government contracts rather than competitive grants, which previous research often focused on," Furnas said. "If we only looked at outgoing grantmaking, then we'd mostly be capturing university science, but not a whole suite of other things that generate systematic generalizable knowledge that everybody benefits from."

Researchers manually identified 171 specific federal appropriations accounts across 27 federal agencies associated with science or research activity, defining science and research broadly by focusing not only on research and development (R&D) funding but also on social science and policy research - such as NASA, the Institute for Education Sciences in the United States Department of Education, the Census Bureau and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the Department of Commerce, and Research, Development, Test and Evaluation programs in the Department of Defense.

In addition to analyzing the numbers, researchers looked at which party controlled the presidency, and both houses of the U.S. Congress at the time - primarly focusing on the presidency and House of Representatives.

"Congress controls the purse strings. The president can suggest priorities, but it's lawmakers who decide what gets funded," Furnas said. "In the House, a simple majority rules - so party control really matters. But even then, spending still has to get through the Senate and past the president."

Researchers found that when the House of Representatives was controlled by Republicans, Congress appropriated more funding for science and research than when it was controlled by Democrats. The science- or research-related appropriations accounts received, on average, roughly $150 million more in years when Republicans controlled appropriations in the House, and $100 million more when there was a Republican president.

"This discrepancy was not only driven by science appropriations to the Department of Defense either, as one may assume," Furnas said. "Rather, Republicans have appropriated more yearly funding to science at the NIH, NSF and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)."

He pointed out that when Democrats controlled the House, only the Departments of Energy and Transportation received higher average yearly appropriations.

Previous researchby Wang and Furnas showed that policy citations of science have increased steadily over the last 25 years, with Democrats having the propensity to cite impactful science more often than their Republican counterparts in policymaking.

Researchers can only speculate on why these new study findings go against the common narrative that Republicans aren't as interested in funding science. Furnas said it may be because Democrats simply have more things they want to fund in addition to science projects.

"I think it's uncontroversial to say that the Democrats tend to be the party of more social spending, of a more generous social safety net, of a more active federal government. Because of that, there tends to be more institutions in their very fixed budgets that need funding," Furnas said. "Another story could simply be that they don't care about science. Our previous research shows that Democrats tend to cite science more and have high trust in science, so it's probably not that, but I think these kinds of data do a better job of speaking to relative priorities rather than absolute priorities."

Researchers are hoping these results foster more bipartisanship when it comes to political conversations around science and scientific funding.

"If science is a thing that Democrats care about, then our research suggests that the historical Republican party was a strong ally, a participant and robust funder of science," Furnas said. "And hopefully, there are still options to find bipartisanship there. During the Biden administration, we saw the CHIPS and Science Act, which had bipartisanship support. We currently are seeing some pushback on the Trump administration by Republicans in Congress when it comes to cuts to NIH funding, so I think there are still opportunities for that kind of bipartisanship."

In addition to Wang and Furnas, co-authors of the study include Nic Fisherman of Harvard University and Leah Rosenstiel of Vanderbilt University.