History and Policy Studies

ABSTRACT This article deals with actual and potential contributions of history to policy studies. Some historians have attempted to influence specific policies through their writings, others have held policy‐relevant positions in government agencies, while others have functioned in roles that have made them official preservers of our past. The authors discuss a number of ways in which history is relevant to policy studies‐among them, the conception of history as a policy laboratory, as a source for perspective about the development of current policies, as a source of theoretically interesting rare or unique occurrences, and as a repository of values to which appeals can be made to justify current and proposed policies. Historians are becoming aware of the need for alternative careers to teaching in universities and this has led them to seek an increase in the number of policy‐relevant positions for historians in government.