April 2026
It is with great concern that the GPSA learned of the Trump Administration’s proposal to eliminate the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and to impose a drastic overall budget cut on NSF. The President’s budget request for the federal year 2027 proposed a 54 percent cut of the NSF’s budget alongside a plan to dissolve the SBE Directorate and have its funding eliminated in the next fiscal year. The NSF leadership already announced that they would preemptively start making moves to dissolve the SBE Directorate in alignment with the proposed dissolution in the budget request.
The SBE Directorate is a cornerstone of the global social science research ecosystem. It funds most of the academic research in the social sciences in the United States and constitutes the primary source of basic research funding for political science. Crucial programs such as the Accountable Institutions and Behavior program and the Security and Preparedness Program, as well as core data infrastructures like the American National Election Studies and the General Social Survey, are indispensable for understanding democratic governance, political behavior, social inequalities, and institutional performance. Their weakening or elimination would set back scientific knowledge, evidence‑based policymaking, and democratic resilience for years to come.
As political scientists in Germany, we are acutely aware that the challenges facing contemporary democracies—from democratic backsliding and disinformation to global crises, war, and climate change—require robust, independent, and methodologically diverse social sciences. Research supported by NSF’s SBE Directorate does not benefit only U.S. scholars and students. It underpins collaborative projects with researchers worldwide, shapes comparative research agendas, and provides globally used data and methods. The loss of this infrastructure would be felt in universities, research institutes, and classrooms across Europe and beyond.
On behalf of the GPSA, we call on U.S. decision‑makers to maintain full and stable funding for the SBE Directorate and for NSF as a whole, and to recognize that investment in the social and behavioral sciences is an investment in democratic resilience, social cohesion, innovation, and peace. We also encourage our own government and European partners to voice their concern and to reaffirm their commitment to strong and independent social sciences funding at national and European levels.
The GPSA remains committed to close cooperation with APSA and with the broader international community of political scientists. In this spirit, we stand with you in defending the institutions and resources that make rigorous, critical, and publicly oriented political science possible.
Adopted by the GPSA Executive Committee on 17 April 2026
More information:
APSA Statement on the Proposed Elimination of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation, 10 April 2026 (PDF)