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The Southern Policy Papers are issued by the Southern Policy Committee for the purpose of stimulating interest in questions of public importance in the South. In the announcement concerning the series, the Committee states that it "does not necessarily approve of or agree with opinions expressed in the papers.' For those who perhaps do not know of the Southern Policy Committee, it should be noted that it is a comparatively recent organization, with a General Committee and local Committees in several of the Southern states. It seems to be designed essentially as an action group, principally "to encourage the formulation and recommendation of desirable public policies whether by groups or individuals, and as a means to this end to encourage persons who possess the proper qualifications to undertake political activity ; and, to extend the discussions begun in local committees to the surrounding communities for the purpose of preparing the general body of citizens for more intelligent and socially-minded political action, and for the purpose of forcing political leaders to face the real issues involved.

This article focuses on the interaction between planning-programming-budgeting (PPB) and public policy-making system. PPB is closely related to politics, being strictly constrained by politics, trying a little to change politics, and serving as one of the symptoms of the state of politics. But, after all, not every symptom is a useful starting point for analyzing a complex series of developments and the author, for one, doubt whether PPB is a necessary or useful jumping board into the faster-moving streams of politics. As public policy is a product of complex interactions between a large number of components, similar changes in the output can be achieved through many alternative variations in the components. This means that different combinations of a variety of improvements may be equally useful in achieving equivalent changes in the quality of policy making. This is a very helpful conclusion, because it permits us to pick out of a large repertoire of potentially effective improvements those which are more feasible under changing political and social conditions.

Suggestions are presented for research on the impact of governmental policies, programs, and regulations upon the functioning of the market system as a whole, and upon specific subsystems. The authors point out that intervention by government at all levels is one of the two most significant environmental forces affecting marketing. This paper is the first of four reports developed by the AMA Task Force on Research on Basic Problems in Marketing, chaired by Donald R. Longman. The other papers will be presented in subsequent issues of the JOURNAL OF MARKETING. Each paper will be accompanied by a review by Seymour Banks, in which the issues involved in each paper will be highlighted and the various papers related to one another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts of some of the studies that were presented during "The Institute of Management Sciences" XIX International Meeting. Economic theory approaches resource allocation via a production function and information on input and output prices. The production function looks at inputs of different types of factors such as labor inputs as being continuously variable. The theory imputes value to the various factors based on the value of their marginal product. In this paper we view the various inputs in terms of a partial order on the set of subsets of the inputs. Pollution of the environment recently has evoked a great deal of concern in society. Ecology-minded policymakers are searching for ways of initiating the deleterious impact of pollution. A social policy is always imbedded in a feedback structure and associated with the management of one or more social conditions. A central problem for society in the management of factors interacting with the environment is the generation of new knowledge and its effective employment in the management of institutions impinging on the environment.

This article reports that "Policy Analysis, Systems Approaches, and Decision Making," a new quarterly journal, will appear in 1970 under the editorship of E.S. Quade. According to its prospectus, it will provide a forum for the developing interest in the application of structured rationality, systematic analysis, and interdisciplinary knowledge to problems of public policy. It will include applied studies analyzing specific problem areas, theoretic studies on the methods, content, and problems of the policy sciences, and papers dealing with the policy sciences as a subject for research and teaching and as a new profession. It will pay close attention to the application of policy science to real decisions, aiming to improve the outcome as well as the state-of-the-art and to attract the participation and respect of practitioners. Case histories and experiences will be among the subjects of the journal's scrutiny. Another important service the proposed journal will provide through its book review department is an annotated bibliography and comprehensive review of new literature in the policy sciences.

This paper begins with a simple normative model of the policy process in terms of the information and authority relationships and flows required lo meet two assumed criteria: those of democracy (informed citizen participation) and intelligence (anticipation and learning). The model contains four actors: elite, public, anticipatory unit, and monitoring unit. The paper continues with a descriptive summary of the major characteristics of the four actors which work against the realization of the information and authority connections which our criteria require. The final section suggests general ways in which computers, especially interactive computing using graphics, can lessen the force of the inhibiting characteristics The general suggestions are supplemented by three illustrative applications: inductive data analysis (IDEA), mapping the urban system (the Kankakee project), and eliciting and enriching citizen preferences (the Smithsonian and the PLATO projects). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports a laboratory experiment in which a business game was played by groups of volunteer participants. The game was subject to two treatments, one altering the degree of interdependence between game participants, the other altering how it was played. The game was designed to simulate a decision-making organization, consisting of subunits with minimal or extensive interdependence, with or without defined criteria to achieve organizational control. The hypothesis that the approach to organizational control was dependent upon the degree of subunit interdependence was supported. More specifically, defined criteria were found to be appropriate only when there was minimal interdependence but inappropriate when there was extensive interdependence. Further, the evidence suggested that the view points and orientations of the participants were consistent with those required by the state of organizational interdependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents some notes related to the publication of a journal "Policy Sciences." The objectives of this journal are threefold. First to provide a forum for papers in the various policy science disciplines--political science, sociology, operations research, statistical decision theory, and so on--dealing with the making, choice, critique, evaluation, and implementation of policy, including how-to-do-it papers on these aspects. Second, to promote the policy sciences, to actively encourage the mingling of the decision with the behavioral sciences and the development of a new interdisciplinary activity. Third to aid in the improvement of policymaking systems and capacities.

This article focuses on dual labor market theory. Over the past several years, a number of economists have developed what is called the "dual labor market" theory. Much of this work has been empirical or descriptive in nature and has been heavily oriented towards the specific policy problem of poverty and unemployment. The popularity of this theory has been fed by claims that it is non-neoclassical if not anti-neoclassical in substance, and that it could solve certain empirical puzzles in the poverty and unemployment data that purportedly could not be explained by the neoclassical literature. Although research on the dual labor market has attracted considerable attention, from both economists and policymakers, it has not been subjected to a detailed critique by economists who have not themselves taken the approach. Since the model has been developed by a number of authors, each of whom has presented a unique view of the dual framework, its interpretation subject to some confusion. In addition, the dualists have concentrated on policy issues and have made little attempt to develop an overall framework for their analysis. The purpose of this paper is to attempt to integrate the disparate strands in this literature and to provide a critique of the dualist model. Following the dualists' interests, I have concentrated on policy-related problems rather than on methodological concerns.

The PRINCE Project is a multidimensional approach to understanding politics and putting that understanding to work in order to accomplish political goals. It relies heavily on a systematic approach to the study of politics. At the same time, it consists partly of devices which can be used by even the most inexperienced student so he can move to his own desired level of skilled political analysis. The approach is flexible enough to allow it to focus on politics at the international, national and local levels and can serve educational, research and policy-analysis functions. This article briefly describes the educational, research and policy-making activities that have been undertaken by the project in recent years.

Nco evolutionary theories of functional thinking presume a naturalistic conception of history while this paper takes as its domain assumption an activistic humanistic point of view. If the functionalistic evolutionary theories of social growth, of social differentiation and integration and of developmental viability are given futuristic interpretations for advanced societies, there seems to be lacking evidence for their validity and they seem to be partly detrimental to the realization of welfare goals on a global level. Other functionalistic theories are implicitly based on evaluative criteria in an ambiguous way e.g. in terms of freedom, democracy, equality or rationality. Developmental analyses of advanced countries would profit from an integration with welfare theory and policy science where developmental direction is more clearly related to welfare goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on transactions of the fifth world congress of sociology held during September 2-8, 1962, in Washington D.C. Volume one contains main contributions to the plenary sessions on "The Sociologists, the Policy-Makers and the Public" and "The Nature and Problems of Sociological Theory." The first theme is treated from the point of view of communication between sociologists and policy-makers, and between sociologists and the general public. Papers dealing with the second theme attempt to define the character of sociological explication, to make a historical survey of sociological theories, and estimate their value. The contributors to this volume are, A. Sauvy, D. Chosh, R. Treves, A. Vratusa, R. Weitz, E.C. Hughes, T. Agersnap, F. Fernandes, S. Groenman, J. Hochfeld, R. KOnig, E. Geilner, H. Lefebvre, A.K. Saran and P.A. Sorokin. Volume two, entitled "The Sociology of Development," deals firstly with early stages of growth and contains papers on following topics; new groups, entrepreneurship, the development of a labour market, economic requirements of modem industrialization, urbanization and the traditional work ethos.

This paper assesses the role program evaluation can play in assisting decisions on public programs. The author looks at evaluation from the standpoint of decisionmakers interested m finding out the "right" answers about their programs. The discussion focuses on the assistance that various types of evaluation can give to program managers and to policymakers concerned with legislative changes and budget levels. The paper includes recent examples of relevant evaluation work. The concluding section analyzes some of the problems decisionmakers face in trying to get reliable, useful evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conscious pursuit of public goals is the essence of public policymaking. Policy process involves among other things activating and mobilizing various administrative elements such as authority, structure, resources, procedures, and relations. Rationality requires that these elements become continuously restructured, revamped, and realigned in order to maximize the goal effectiveness of policy. The effort to gear administrative elements to the achievement of deliberate policy goals is administrative reform. This is a continuous and prevasive process. Now the crux of administrative reform is innovation, that is, injection of new ideas and new people in new combinations of tasks and relationships into the policy and administration process. This is, however, not an automatic process. It requires strategy in order to facilitate its adoption and diffusion throughout the public organization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relevance of innovation theory to administration in developing countries in general and administrative reform in particular and then to devise a heuristic matrix of administrative reform strategy that brings to the fore innovational leadership and environmental factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The principal theme of this paper is that the analytical tart of the Coleman Report (Cole- man, et al., 1966) has such serious methodological shortcomings that it offers little policy guidance: (1) the specification of the theoretical model is inadequate and thus there is no way to interpret Coleman's statistical results; (2) when the Coleman Report does make clear the justification for the use of a variable in the regression model, the criterion used to assess the statistical performance of the variable (namely, its effect on R') is inappropriate. This paper further shows (1) how the role of a variable in affecting objectives can be interpretable in the context of a carefully specified, theoretically justified model; and (2) that when such a model is in the form of a regression equation, an appropriately scaled regression coefficient is the most useful single statistic to measure the importance of the variable for policy action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior to the early 1960s recognition of the political nature of educational policy-making was virtually absent from the political science literature. The landmark article on the political bases for educational policy-making was Thomas Eliot's "Toward an Understanding of Public School Politics.' As the title would indicate, it dealt with policy related to elementary and secondary schools but not with policy related to higher education. The construction of theories on educational politics has been slow, and the work which has been done consists of the description and testing of relatively inexact hypotheses.

The article discusses the study on the decision-making in the firm. The study focuses on the freight yards which includes the yard's physical characteristics, functions and importance, the output and employment decisions, the switching output, the delivery output, the aversion functions, the costs and the complete model, the tests and prediction, and the study's summary and conclusions. The paper attempts to explain some decisions of a manager at an intermediate level in a railroad and to link these decisions to the short-run fluctuations in output and cost of individual freight yards.

A survey of the social landscape of any large metropolitan area will reveal a wide variety of groups commonly known as community organizations. These associations function as para-potitical organizations in the sense that they seek to initiate, influence, or control public policy. This para-political style of involvement has been part of our American pattern of government. Churches, along with many other institutions, have participated in this process, supporting various kinds of organized efforts to influence public policy. Attention has been directed to community organization in recent years for a number of reasons, two of which are readily identifiable: the black community is becoming organized; the style of many organizations discloses a crisis in the city. This research is concerned with black neighborhood organizations. The central point of this paper is that the general theory of public authority provides a helpful framework for research on community organization, for an evaluation of community organization, and for policy recommendations regarding involvement in community organization. The attainment of a more adequate expression of public authority is the imperative, which can guide policy in a general way.

The article discusses about the official reports of the American Sociological Association. The Committee on Nominations in full conformance with the procedures set forth wishes to present its slate of nominees for the American Sociological Association, 1970- 1971. The Councilmen at-Large in full conformance with the procedures set forth wish to present their slate of nominees for the 1971 Committee on Nominations of the American Sociological Association. Four major issues already under consideration by committees of the Association were named, as follows: Creation and implementation of a code of ethics; Relations with the federal government in connection with research support; The nature and functions of Sections in the ASA; and Relations with international sociological associations. Systematic exploration of student and junior faculty participation in the Association's affairs and reconsideration of all aspects of annual meeting format are projected. Several ASA committees are now concerned with problems of teaching sociology. But the principal attention of the Council was devoted to the issue of ASA and public policy. On February 2, 1969, Council devoted the entire day to a wide-ranging discussion of the question, starting from a background paper prepared by Daniel Bell.

The article presents the author's remarks on the university programs and teaching of policy sciences. Universities clearly must undertake, and in fact, do begin to undertake, new functions. These functions involve closer integration with reality, with social needs, and with new patterns of living. The inherent problems of teaching and research in policy sciences are far from being resolved. All existing policy sciences programs should be regarded as experimental set-ups, from which solutions to these problems hopefully will emerge.

American political science recently has been concerned with the construction of general theories of the political system. The intent of this paper is to analyze a basic assumption of these recent theoretical efforts. These efforts are dominated by a particular idea of politics which may be called "the politics of interest." It is the vision of politics as an arena into which individual or group interests enter in some fashion to be dealt with by certain processes and transformed into outcomes, policies, or outputs. The paper examines this idea and its premises, describes the contribution which the idea of a "science of politics" makes to maintaining its dominance and indicates the limitations which it imposes on political science in general and on political theory in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the quality assessment literature, presents a study which compares five different methods of assessing quality of care, and proposes policy recommendations. Results are: (1) Most quality assessment issues are a century old. (2) The results of assessment of quality of care are dependent on the method used; therefore, more methodologic research is needed. (3) The use of lists of criteria, concerning what a physician does, to assess quality of care could result in decreased efficiency in the health system by requiring the performance of' ineffective procedures. (4) it is not certain that examination of the level of care rendered will increase the health Level of the population; therefore, any national program which assesses quality of care must be prospectively evaluated. (5) A quality assessment system must be concerned with both the population who received services at the institution, and the population who did not but for whom the institution is responsible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One means by which planning agencies may "hear" the constructive views of the public is the questionnaire technique. "A questionnaire is not just a list of questions. . .. It is essentially a scientific instrument for measurement and for correlation of particular kinds of data . . . it has to be specially designed." (Oppenheim). This paper considers the problems of questionnaire design, a number of examples of the use of the questionnaire in the United States and Britain, and attempts to draw lessons and profit from experience for those people committed to the use of the technique in exercises of public participation in the planning process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to present an analytical framework of analysis of problems relating to public systems. Current optimization models, which originated in the private sector, are not adequate to handle the complexity of the decision making processes in public policy analysis. The proposed model aims at lessening ideological debates over statements of goals, and it emphasizes policy selection through goal redefinitions where both goals and policies arc formulated simultaneously. The model is based on an iterative process where consensus over policies is arrived at between the policy maker and the Constituents of the public system. The principal feature of the model is that it incorporates political debates and bargains, and provides for the development of insight. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary societies policy decisions have been viewed as an output from a bargaining process between political groups representing conflicting social preferences. These conflicts arise for the most part in terms of the relative weights (i.e., intensity of preferences) that the groups attach to different dimensions of alternative policy decision outcomes. In this context it was argued that it is both unnecessary and unrealistic to specify a unique or single-valued preference function. Instead investigations ought to be based on an under- standing of the political process and the revealed preferences of important leverage points. With respect to deriving this information interviews are expensive and their ability to reveal preferences are questionable while indirect procedures rest on some doubtful assumptions. A less costly approach is, of course, to employ a range of plausible values for the parameters of a policy preference function chosen on basis of available information by the investigator. The framework employed in this paper provides a formal basis for specifying and evaluating the resulting set of policy preference functions. We have illustrated the application of our suggested framework in specifying a set of W's to be used in an economic analysis of United States beef trade policy. The principal arguments of the function were specified to be (i) the cost of a market basket of meat commodities to consumers disaggregated by household income level, (ii) the gross margin returns to beef breeding cow-calf producers, and (iii) the gross margin returns to cattle feeders. The assumed quadratic form of the function seems to provide a reasonable representation of policy preferences over the expected range of variation of the argument variables. A procedure for estimating a range of values for parameters reflecting different trade-off ratios between the argument variables was illustrated. Using a naive revealed preference model we found that a trade-off ratio of about a two-dollar decrease in producers' gross returns to a one-dollar increase in aggregate consumer meat costs was consistent with observed beef trade policy actions in the 1960's. In conclusion, the set of policy preference functions constructed using the suggested (or for that matter any other) framework might be best regarded as an imperfect, but nonetheless, plausible means for assisting in the analysis of public decision making rather than as an end in itself. In this context, certainty equivalent along with various stochastic and adaptive control policy strategies based upon the constructed set of preference functions reported in this paper have been derived and are available in Rausser and Free-bairn (1974). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a situation is examined where standard operating procedures in governmental organizations were challenged. On such occasions an organization is not simply a vehicle for solving well-defined problems as efficiently as possible. We see competing definitions of the problems, the best solutions, expertise and the rules of procedure. Outcomes are not limited to the immediate substantive outcomes. As important is the establishing of future social relationships and definitions of the situation. While classical administrative and democratic theory suggest that changes in standard operating procedures may be instantaneous, we believe this type of change to be the exception rather than the rule. In this article, it is suggested that the garbage can model at least under some conditions be an adequate description of the decision making in a polity experiencing challenges of established routines. This is illustrated by the decision making processes concerning the location of Norway's third medical school. In this case, new definitions of the problems involved were raised, new participants activated, and the outcome so clearly suggested by existing standard operating procedures not selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The utilization of quantitative methods in urban analysis is a complicated endeavor faced with many serious problems. The purpose of this paper is to inventory and explain the problems and pitfalls in their utilization. Three types of problems are catalogued: conceptual/technical, administrative and societal. Within the first two categories, the problems are further dimensioned as either analytical or decisional in nature. The place of quantitative methods in urban analysis is discussed first. Problems and pitfalls are then defined, catalogued and ordered sequentially as they confront the urban analyst and policymaker. An assessment of quantitative methods in urban policy-making is presented and the organizational factors necessary for implementing successful quantitative urban analysis programs indicated. Throughout a general perspective is maintained and specific examples are employed to punctuate general propositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Policy Sciences are making challenging "revolutionary" claims, and these are critically reviewed. Note is taken of the limited domain of the field, to public policy making, and the advisability for such a basis for differentiating this professional subgroup is questioned. There is an attempt to distinguish between the various schools and antecedents of Policy Sciences. In this paper a technological perspective is taken. What are the differentiating skills and technologies Policy Sciences promises to bring to its clients? Is intersector awareness, interdisciplinarity, and the application of the behavioral sciences a Policy Sciences monopoly or the natural development of systems technologies in a changing environment ? The negative mode of comparison of Policy Sciences with Systems Analysis and Systems Engineering as a basis for building this new profession is criticized as inadequate and misleading. An analogy is made, between the checkered history of Operations Research, and Policy Sciences, with the implication that many of the same mistakes are being made. Policy Science perspectives that exclusively emphasize public top level policy making are criticized as too limited. The lack of and need for Policy Science analysis of the strategies for attempting to introduce and integrate Policy Sciences into institutions is pointed . out. The potential contributions and role of Policy Sciences are analyzed and related to existing and developing Management Science perspectives. A plea is made for unity in place of competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increasing interest in policy sciences-the multidisciplinary activity concerned with decision- making for social problems-and the introduction of policy science programs in a number of leading universities has highlighted the need for teaching programs in the subject. Many graduate schools of business already apply the same blend of disciplines and techniques (Economics, Management, Behavioral Science, and Quantitative Methods) to resolve intra- and interorganizational choice dilemmas facing business. Schools of business, therefore, have the potential and capabilities to deal with the specific mission of policy sciences exemplified by such activities as policy analysis, policy strategies, policy systems design, and metapolicies. At the Graduate School of Business the authors have developed a descriptive-normative framework-situational normativism-which blends the component disciplines and methodologies of policy sciences towards solving real social and interorganizational decision problems. Situational normativism avoids the traditional sharp distinction between positive and normative theory by developing an adaptive methodology wherein the descriptive behavioral model serves as the input for normative analysis and the resulting prescriptive improved solution becomes the basis for predicting and evaluating future behavior of the system. The major part of this paper discusses a policy sciences core course, developed by the authors, in which the lecture material and a key learning aspect of the course-the self-organizing student team projects-have largely been developed in relation to the situational normativism framework. The course is described with references to team projects which serve to clarify the approach taken to teaching policy science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines some of the distinctive features of the educational policy formation system. First, the formal goals of education are discussed and their relation to the policy formation system is examined. The main characteristics reviewed are problems caused by the intangibility of many educational goals; means-ends relationships; the inconsistency of educational goals; priority ordering of goals and weighting of educational goals; and the cost of goals. The second section discusses environmental influences on policy formation, emphasizing the dominant role of the environment in policymaking and its influence on other characteristics of the education system. In the third section, the influences of internal actors on the education policy formation are analyzed, especially the influence of teachers and the managerial apparatus. The fourth section examines decisionmaking processes in education. They are characterized by a lack of feedback; limited use of analysis and limited search for alternatives; incremental change as the main pattern of decisionmaking; wide discretion and the need for heuristic methods. The last section is devoted to a normative review of analytical approaches to education policy formation and a critical examination of their potentialities and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using policy sciences in the federal government to create better public programs requires the right climate for analysis plus a good set of tactics for analysts to follow. The ideal climate includes close association between analysts and highest authorities, strong support from the top, the existence of expanding budgets and "promising discontinuities"-unusual events when the opportunity becomes ripe for dynamic change. Effective tactics for the policy science practitioner include staying in the "real conversations" where decisions are made, spreading the credit for findings, acquiring allies to support positions, winning early battles to prove their worth, and inviting intensive internal reviews. Suggestions on staffing and on choosing likely subjects so analysis can reap benefits, along with a list of dangers to avoid, conclude the paper. The points are illustrated with actual examples in the federal agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a list of books related to policy sciences. Some of them are "Stochastic Models for Social Processes," by David J. Bartholomew; "The Treaty Trap," by Lawrence W. Beilenson; "General and Social Systems," by Kenneth F. Berrien; "General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications," by Ludwig von Bertalanffy; "Computers and the Policy-Making Community: Applications to International Relations," by Davis B. Bobrow and Judah L. Schwartz; and "Social Research and the Desegregation of the U.S. Army," edited by Leo Bogart.

This paper compares three approaches to improving policymaking: systems analysis, disjointed incrementalism and the clinical approach (elsewhere referred to as the planned change or human relations approach or organization development). It pays particular attention to the way in which these three approaches view organizations and the role of the expert in reform-mongering. It is suggested that systems analysis and incrementalism arc quite compatible and that, in fact, systems analysis has, in large measure, accepted the incrementalists" view of the policymaking process. But this acceptance has served not so much to strengthen policy analysis as to increase awareness of its weaknesses. The clinical approach, on the other hand, holds out the promise of strengthening policy analysis, since it focuses on changing organizations, an area in which both systems analysis and incrementalism are weak and. as action-oriented approaches, hampered by their weaknesses. The potential contributions of the clinical approach are considered as well as the likelihood of an eventual synthesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to describe and evaluate the quarterly national income and product accounts of the United States (to be referred to henceforth as N.I.P.). The historical development of these accounts is reviewed first. Next, a summary of the statistical methodology underlying them is provided. An analysis of the errors to which they have been subject follows. An attempt is then made to define the area of their usefulness. Finally, suggestions for their improvement are formulated. The most general conclusions are as follows: 1. The quarterly N.I.P. estimates were developed in close response to an urgent need for them in economic analysis and policy formulation. Their development was a gradual process covering about two decades in which experience gained at one stage suggested improvements and extensions for the next. 2. The quarterly figures are based on abundant data sources. To be sure, the information is not as comprehensive as that available for the preparation of the annual estimates, but we are dealing only with differences in degree — there is no sharp contrast. 3. The series are subject to a considerable margin of error. There is bias in some of them — the initial estimates tend to be too low; and quite apart from bias they differ from the revised figures. 4. The margin of error attaching to the statistics disqualifies them from serving as precision instruments, but they are indispensable as a systematic framework for the order-of-magnitude analysis of the major forces determining the short-run movements of the economy. At present, the outstanding handicap in such analysis is not statistical error, but the inadequacy of economic theories and of our ability to test them. 5. The opportunities for mechanizing estimating techniques are assessed; the work on seasonals is discussed in this context; and a thorough investigation is proposed of the problems involved in the synchronization of the various components of the accounts. In... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper represents only a few general considerations based upon the set of replicated group-experiments conducted by Organization of Comparative Social Research (OCSR), that may be of some value for future undertakings of the same kind as our OCSR studies. Replication of an experiment in different cultural settings tends to accentuate some problems pertaining to empirical testing of social psychological theory in general.The crucial process of translating a single hypothesis into experimental terms is briefly considered. The difficulties involved depend upon the way we phrase our hypothesis; the more operational its language, the easier will be its translation into experimental manipulations and measurements. In extreme cases, when concepts are defined in terms of detailed operations such translation becomes superfluous. If our ultimate aim is to establish a body of general social psychological theory, however, strictly operational anchoring may be a very dubious procedure. A survey of current contributions toward empirically established social psychological theory therefore by and large seems to support a more daring and flexible approach.

The present paper discusses and illustrates some of the interpretative and methodological problems involved in replicated cross-national research by describing limited aspects of the set of replicated experiments conducted by the Organization for Comparative Social Research in Belgium, England, France, Germany, Holland, Norway and Sweden. Rather than repeating this material, we shall attempt to consider a single, key question of replicated research, if there are differences in the results of replicated experiments, how are such differences to be interpreted? Though systematic replications have been unfortunately rare in the social sciences, a sufficient number of such studies have accumulated to give us some experience with the interpretative problems involved in replication. When the results of replicated researches have been similar, the interpretation is usually clear and straightforward. Reproducibility has been demonstrated and, if the subject populations or the design of the experiment has been allowed to vary, there is evidence for the generalizability of the hypotheses involved. When the results of replicated researches have differed, however, interpretation has usually been exceedingly ambiguous.

This paper attempts to uncover what seem to be the principal problems pertaining to the choice of technology and technique which the Chinese planners have faced in each of several phases since the inception of the Chinese People's Republic, and examines the way in which the Chinese have apparently attempted to solve these problems. Although some attempt is made to evaluate the main findings, lack of information still prevents a detailed evaluation of the specifies of the Chinese choice of technology and technique, and of its relevance elsewhere, and attention is mainly concentrated here on the broad nature of the problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on institutional growth of policy sciences. Policy Sciences is quite a broad field. Systems analysis applications of operations research and management sciences to policy issues, planning, systems engineering, social indicators and social problem mapping, parts of public administration and organization theory, parts of political science, all these and other disciplines are closely related with policy sciences. This paper is regarded as a preliminary survey, which identifies only some of the relevant activities particularly in the United States.

The predominance of moral, legal, and strategic emphases in the literature on intervention is both understandable and desirable. Still largely absent, however, is a fourth emphasis upon scientific explanation. The factors that foster, precipitate, sustain, channel, constrain, and/or curb intervention have not been scientifically explored. The first part of this paper examines the problem of the “double standard,” disagreements on defining intervention, strategic analysis and the concept of the national interest, and the problem of measuring influence. The paper then offers a basis for an operational definition of intervention. It is suggested that the study of intervention is the study of the unconventional in international politics and, since unconventinality becomes conventional the longer it persists, it is also the study of finite and temporary phenomena. Furthermore, the definition of intervention can be limited to those convention‐breaking behaviors which are addressed to the authority structure of the target society. The advantages of using these two prime characteristics of interventions as a basis for operationalizing the concept are numerous: for instance, it distinguishes interventions from long‐term, conventionalized colonialism, and it avoids the difficulties of inferring motivations. The paper concludes with a discussion of the problems and prospects of building a theory of intervention. Journal Abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author reports the results of a carefully planned and extensive public opinion survey designed to ascertain probable reactions of Turkish couples to a government program of family planning. Also, the survey undertook to weigh the possible usefulness of the mass media and the political and spiritual leaders in the villages in winning support for the program, particularly among the villagers. The value of a public opinion survey in implementing public policy in this situation is clearly underscored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American sociologists have moved through the last quarter of a century largely as if Nazi concentration camps were never there. Aside from a few early papers about the camps, the major articles to appear in the journals have, in the main, been research promotion surveys. Little can be gained from epitomizing about these facts. Much more can be obtained from demonstrating that concentration camp materials can be used to open critical questions about contemporary issues. For example, prisoner-of-war detention policy. As this interest is approached in this paper, some guiding observations can be put down. Patent reporting errs and vulnerable theorising in early American discussion about the camps are conforming and tend to seal off major sociological interests. American policy for counteraction of terror and oppression among captive peoples, particularly prisoners-of-war, tends to follow the implications of these early papers. Failure to re-examine these early accounts and to test the implications of evident decisions in prisoner-of-war policy in light of concentration camp experiences may mean that American sociologists have let an opportunity for most significant and practical contributions to public policy pas by.

The article announces the international contest entitled "The Social and Political Thought of Luigi Sturzo" by the Luigi Sturzo Institute in Rome. A sum of four million Italian lire will be awarded to the best paper and it will be published in a journal. Interested students of any nationality may compete and submit their works written either in Italian, English, French or German. The submitted piece must bear the author's identification or pseudonym on the title page and must be sealed in an envelope containing its full name and address. All entries must reach the secretariat office in five typewritten copies not later than June 30, 1969.

Presents an introduction to the topics and articles published in the March 1970 issue of the journal "Policy Sciences."

The article discusses the possibilities and limitations of studying policy-making in the British National Health Service (NHS). It assumes that the power of pressure groups changes over time, based from the nature of the issue involved, the setting within which a particular issue is being discussed, the commitments of the actors and the presence or absence of other players. Reorganization of the NHS, which is associated to the policy-making issues, turned out to be caused by the reorganization of the local government.

Scaling analysis is based on a geometric metaphor. This workshop paper examines how our understanding of the metaphor affects our use of scaling. Instances which appear to be multidimensional are shown to be unidimensional under other scaling models. Conversely, some apparently unidimensional cases are found to be better described as multidimensional. Particular attention is given to the difference between multidimensional scaling and factor analysis. The philosophical implication of our dependence on the definition of unidimensionality is that scaling seeks only partial images of a real world that may be fundamentally unknowable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]