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This paper directs itself to the impact of American social science on the writings of Alva and Gunnar Myrdal on the role of education and social science in "modern" industrial democracy. After a brief sketch of the Myrdals' role in the development of Swedish welfare reforms and of their intellectual contacts in the United States during the 1930's, the paper outlines four theoretical "dilemmas" of "modernity" to the solution of which education and social research was seen to contribute: the relationships between facts and values, the individual and the collective, child rearing and social change, and theory and practice. The paper concludes by tracing the articulation of these themes in the Social Democratic Party school reform proposals of 1948. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues related to subjective powerlessness in the U.S. The paper focuses on changes since 1952 in citizen efficacy or feelings of control over government for various sub-groups in the U.S. population such as blacks, blue collar workers, Southerners, Jews, young and old people. As with most issues in the study of social change, there is widespread disagreement on trends in citizen efficacy for industrial societies such as the U.S. Most theory predicts trends in objective powerlessness, rather than subjective powerlessness, although it is possible that trends in objective powerlessness do not match trends in subjective powerlessness. Within the U.S. at each point of observation, powerlessness does not vary much by stratum, except when education and race are used as indicators. And within the white population, some of the differences are heavily explained by educational differentials. It therefore seems fair to conclude that white subordinate interest groups are not oriented toward government as a result of what would seem to be objective powerlessness but more on the basis of their educational achievement.