The standing of the public choice approach to politics is ambiguous. Most people now accept that there is something in it, even if the ‘something’ is restricted to Arrow's Social Choice and Individual Values, Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy, Olson's The Logic of Collective Action, and (perhaps) Riker's The Theory of Political Coalitions. The Logic, for instance, is a cult abbreviation propagated by Olson himself but accepted by others. Three new adjectives (Downsian, Arrovian and Olsonian) are now established, although I have not yet found ‘Rikerian’. By analogy (Keynesian, The General Theory), the language seems to denote acceptance. But the seminal works (they are always seminal, as dawn in the Odyssey is always rosy-fingered) came out between 1951 and 1965; so where are their successors? Why have they had relatively little impact on student texts and informed public opinion? In short, what has been going on?

A very great deal, in fact. The first generation proposed bold hypotheses; their successors have put enormous efforts into refining them and proposing new ones, and (unfortunately) rather limited efforts into testing them. There have been four main lines of development. It would be impossible to review all four critically in a single article; therefore I make only fairly brief comments on the first three and devote most of this article to the fourth, which I think is one of the most promising and of the greatest interest to political scientists.

In recent years the chief emphasis of Soviet legislation on urban administration has been to expand the rights and responsibilities of city governments in planning and co-ordinating economic activities within their territory. Very little has been done, however, to enhance the power of city Soviets so that they might actually carry out these new responsibilities. The same problems that historically have plagued local Soviets continue to undermine their capabilities. Chief among these problems are the following:

1. Insufficient power vis-à-vis the ministries; in most decisions concerning enterprises subordinate to all-union (Moscow-based) or republic-level ministries, the local soviet has little influence. With the exception of Khrushchev's short-lived sovnarkhoz reform, which dismantled most of the central ministries and attempted to expand the power of regional authorities over economic decision-making, the branch principle of management has been dominant ever since the beginning of Stalin's industrialization drive. The most powerful actors are the ministries located in Moscow or in the republic capitals. A large percentage of the money invested in the construction of housing, cultural facilities and the urban infrastructure is not part of the budget of the local soviet. Instead, such facilities are financed out of funds that the ministries allocate to enterprises for these purposes. In the mid-1970s, ministries paid for and supervised the construction of 70 per cent of housing and 65 per cent of new kindergartens and nurseries. The result is that facilities are built according to the interests of the ministries rather than in response to more general, local needs.

Historically, the drive toward European integration has been in the domain of political elites. The Community was conceived and implemented by Europeanists such as Monnet and Schuman, and shaped by national leaders such as de Gaulle and Adenauer. After the Treaty of Rome established the basic framework of the Community, the details and implementation of policy were largely decided by negotiationş among officials in Brussels or between Community officials and political elites of the member nations.

This Note will discuss the impact of random sampling at elections conducted under the single transferable vote (STV) electoral system in multi-member constituencies in the Republic of Ireland. STV, partly because of its popularity among electoral reformers, has received considerable theoretical scrutiny. It has been given an ‘intermediate’ rating in recent assessment of a number of electoral systems, and dismissed as a ‘perverse social choice function’ because it is subject to non-monotonicity. This shortcoming is also mainly responsible for the low degree of acceptance accorded to it by Brams and Fishburn. Nurmi concludes that STV (like other multi-stage systems) performs poorly, with regard to a number of criteria, in comparison with one-stage systems like approval voting. Black complains that STV ‘is a compound of minor complexities and is difficult to remember’. Others have discussed shortcomings in STV and suggested remedies which can be implemented where the counting of votes is entirely computerized.

The aim of this Note is to examine recent local authority expenditure cuts in relation to Saunders's dual-state thesis. Saunders's model has important implications for the long-standing debates on local autonomy from central government and on the party effect in expenditure patterns. The extent to which local political control is a mediating factor in the nature and severity of spending cuts is analysed with reference to a case study of two districts in the Greater Manchester area.

‘Tactical voting’ refers to voting contrary to one's nominal preferences. The usual form of tactical voting described in the literature consists of ‘third’ party supporters in plurality electoral settings voting for one of the two major parties in their constituency. This Note aims to demonstrate both theoretically and empirically the existence of the converse phenomenon, i.e. followers of one of the two big parties voting for a small one. We shall call this phenomenon ‘inverse tactical voting’ (ITV).

The ‘environment’ as a political issue has had a mixed history. Its sudden upsurge in the late 1960s was followed by many ups and downs. It has, however, continued to press itself on to the political agenda in various forms. Most recently, the rise of green parties in Western Europe has demonstrated that the environment is not one of many issues which come and go but has led to more fundamental political change.