Building the Problem-Solving State: Bridging Networks and Experiments in the US Advisory Specialist Group in World War II

• Published date: 01 June 2018
• Author: Gerald Berk
• DOI: 10.1177/0032329218773711
• Date: 01 June 2018
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0032329218773711

Politics & Society

2018, Vol. 46(2) 265 –294

© The Author(s) 2018

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DOI: 10.1177/0032329218773711

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Article

Building the Problem-Solving

State: Bridging Networks

and Experiments in the US

Advisory Specialist Group

in World War II

Gerald Berk

University of Oregon

Abstract

Hidden within the office of the Secretary of War during World War II was a little-

known agency called the Advisory Specialist Group (ASG). Strategically located

between the laboratory, the factory, the battlefield, and civilian bureaucracy, the

ASG solved the complex problem of reconciling new technologies and new military

operations. In doing so, it combined incongruous domains of activity, contributed

to Allied victory, and opened a channel to the problem-solving state. It is easy to

overlook or misunderstand the ASG, because it was born in processes, addressed

problems, and took a form unfamiliar to historical institutionalists. Drawing on

Padgett and Powell’s networked theory of organizational genesis and pragmatist

theories of experimentalist governance, this article explains the ASG’s emergence,

networked form, and experimentalist procedures. A founding moment for the

problem-solving state, this case provides empirical and theoretical guidance to study

its historical and ongoing evolution.

Keywords

state building, experimentalist governance, networked governance, organizational

emergence, technological innovation, World War II

Corresponding Author:

Gerald Berk, 1284 Department of Political Science, University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403-1284, USA.

Email: gberk@uoregon.edu

773711PASXXX10.1177/0032329218773711Politics & SocietyBerk

research-article2018

266 Politics & Society 46(2)

Long before the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) orga-

nized a network of laboratories to foster technological innovation and the US Fish and

Wildlife Service devised an experimentalist architecture for habitat conservation plan-

ning, 1 an agency hidden within the office of the Secretary of War in World War II built

an experimentalist network to reconcile the coevolution of technologies and military

operations. Strategically located between the laboratory, the factory, the battlefield,

and civilian bureaucracy, the US Advisory Specialist Group (ASG) assembled scien-

tists and soldiers to solve complex, uncertain, and urgent problems. Among its many

accomplishments, the ASG integrated microwave radar and strategic bombing,

LORAN radio navigation and air-to-ground communications, and the B-29’s configu-

ration with heavy bombing. In doing so, it combined incongruous activities, contrib-

uted to Allied victory, and opened a channel to durable networks with problem-solving

capacities. At war’s end, scientists and soldiers redeployed the ASG’s experimentalist

network into Project RAND. Looking back, the ASG’s experience marks a founding

moment in the development of the problem-solving state. By analyzing its origins,

form, and experimentalist capacities, this article provides empirical and theoretical

guidance to bring the problem-solving state out of the shadows and understand its

evolution.

It is easy to overlook or misunderstand the ASG, because it was born in processes,

addressed problems, and took a form unfamiliar to students of state building in war.2

World War II was a multifaceted enterprise, which took a variety of forms within a

single national order. It is well known that the United States mobilized advantages in

mass production for massive force in war. But Americans also learned to solve com-

plex technical problems associated with reconciling new technologies and new mili-

tary operations amid the urgency of war. State building for massive force reproduced

skills, practices, and protocols associated with the modern corporation: the capacity,

that is, to mobilize, plan, and control the flow of resources from factory to theater

operations through organizational hierarchy.3 The reconciliation of new technologies

and new military operations, by contrast, was unprecedented. As the military historian

Paul Kennedy writes, unlike mobilization for mass production, there were no relevant

experiences, theories, or protocols for reconciling radar and antisubmarine warfare or

strategic bombing. Moreover, the “proper application” of massive force, as Churchill

called it, depended on technical problem solving. And in 1943, massive force was

failing.4

The ASG’s problem-solving accomplishments were no small feat. It came to life in

a dysfunctional situation familiar in institutionalist accounts of American political

development. A crisis in antisubmarine warfare ignited a bitter conflict between scien-

tists in a new executive branch agency, the Office of Scientific Research and

Development, and officers in an older naval bureaucracy. A legacy of late state build-

ing, this sort of conflict between old and new institutions is a durable feature of

American political development, where organizational innovation never fully dis-

places older forms. Orren and Skowronek call it “intercurrence.”5 Moreover, the ASG

was born a paradigm “adhocracy,” a reactive organization without legal warrant, plan,

or explicit governing principles. That too was typical. As Finegold and Skocpol write