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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2014
DISSATISFACTION WITH ESTABLISHED MODES OF SCHOLARSHIP IS A contemporary manifestation common to all the social sciences in varying degrees. In the terminology of Thomas Kuhn, which in its widespread adoption seems in no small measure to have contribted to the new waves of methodological consciousness, the prevailing ‘paradigms’, which were largely consolidated in the 1950s, are being explicitly and often vehemently challenged. A burgeoning critical literature is readily apparent throughout the social sciences and, for that matter, beyond.
1 Cf. Kuhn, Thomas, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University of Chicago, Chicago, second edition, 1970.Google Scholar
2 Wright Mills, C., The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, New York, 1959 Google Scholar, is usually credited with firing the first salvo. See also, for example: the works of Erving Goffman which run from Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, University of Edinburgh, Social Sciences Research Centre, Monographs, No. 2, 1956, to Relations in Public: Microstudies of Public Order, Harper and Row, New York, 1971; A. V. Cicourel, Methods and Measurement in Sociology, Free Press of Glencoe, New York, 1964; Berger, Peter L. and Luckman, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality: a Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, Allen Lane, London, 1967;Google Scholar Garfinkel, Harold, Studies in Ethnomethodology, Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1967;Google Scholar Gouldner, Alvin W., The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology, Heinemann, London, 1971;Google Scholar Friedrichs, Robert W., A Sociology of Sociology, Free Press, New York, 1970;Google Scholar and Murphy, Robert F., The Dialectics of Social Life: Alarms and Excursions in Anthropological Theory, Allen & Unwin, New York, 1971.Google Scholar
3 Hudson, Liam, The Cult of the Fact, Cape, London, 1972.Google Scholar
4 Cf. Laing, R. D., The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, Tavistock, London, 1960;Google Scholar The Politics of Experience and the Bird of Paradise, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1967; and with Easterson, A., Sanity, Madness and the Family: Families of Schizophrenics, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1970.Google Scholar
5 Andreski, Stanislav, Social Sciences as Sorcery, Deutch, London, 1972.Google Scholar
6 Cf. Kariel, Henry, The Decline of American Pluralism, University Press, Stanford, 1961,Google Scholar and The Promise of Politics, Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1966; Lowi, Theodore, The End of Liberalism, Norton, New York, 1969;Google Scholar Bachrach, Peter, The Theory of Democratic Elitism: a Critique, Little, Brown, Boston, 1967;Google Scholar and Surkin, Marvin and Wolfe, Alan (eds.), An End to Political Science: the Caucus Papers, Basic Books, New York, 1970.Google Scholar
7 See, for example, Filmer, Paul et al., New Directions in Sociological Theory, Collier‐Macmillan, London, 1972.Google Scholar
8 Cf. Coddington, Alan, ‘Positive Economics’, Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. V, No. I, 1972;Google Scholar and Knapp, John, ‘Economics or Political Economy’, Lloyds Bank Review, No. 107, 01 1973 Google Scholar
9 Greenleaf, W. H., The World of Politics, Inaugural Lecture, University College of Swansea, 5 03 1968, pp. 1–2.Google Scholar
10 Shonfieid, A., Modern Capitalism: the Changing Balance of Public and Private Power, Oxford University Press, London, 1965 Google Scholar; Brittan, S., The Treasury under the Tories, 1951–1964, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1964;Google Scholar and Steering the Economy: the Role of the Treasury, Secker & Warburg, London, 1969.
11 Recent examples are: Hutchinson, T. W., Economics and Economic Policy in Britain, 1946–1966: Some Aspects of their Inter‐relations, Allen & Unwin, London, 1968;Google Scholar Winch, Donald, Economics and Policy: a Historical Study, Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1969;Google Scholar and Cohen, C. D., British Economic Policy, 1960–1969, Butter‐worth, London, 1971.Google Scholar
12 Cf. Robertson, James H., Reform of British Central Government, Chatto & Windus, London, 1971;Google Scholar Garrett, John, The Management of Government, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1972.Google Scholar
13 Grove, J. W., Government and Industry in Britain, Longmans, London, 1962.Google Scholar
14 Harris, Nigel, Competition and the Corporate Society: British Conservatives, the State and Industry, 1941–1964, Methuen, London, 1972.Google Scholar
15 Rogow, A. A., The Labour Party and British Industry 1941–1911, Blackwell, Oxford, 1955.Google Scholar Aaron Wildavsky of Berkeley and Hugh Heclo of Yale have a forthcoming book on the British budgetary process.
16 See, for example, Smith, Brian C., Advising Ministers: a Case‐Study of the South rest Economic Planning Council, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969 Google Scholar, and Cross, J. A., ‘The Regional Decentralisation of British Government Departments’, Public Administration, Winter, 1970.Google Scholar The Regional Studies Association also sponsored a series of monographs on the regional machinery.
17 A brief analysis is attempted in Smith, Trevor, Anti‐Politics: Consensus, Reform and Protest in Britain, Charles Knight, London, 1972 Google Scholar, Chapter VII, ‘The Practice of Modern Government’, particularly pp. 36–44.
18 See Fels, Allan, The British Prices and Incomes Board, Cambridge, University Press, London, 1972 Google Scholar, which looks at some of these questions in the context of one agency.
19 But see Peter Self, “‘Nonsense on Stilts”: Cost‐Benefit Analysis and the Roskill Commission’, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 3, 1970; and for a contrasting view by an economist see Williams, Alan, ‘Cost‐Benefit Analysis: Bastard Science and/or Insidious Poison in the Body Politic?’, Journal of Public Economics, 1972.Google Scholar
20 Cf. Salter, Sir Arthur, Recovery: the Second Effort, Macmillan, London, 1932 Google Scholar; Macmillan, Harold, Reconstruction: A Plea for a National Policy, Macmillan, London, 1933 Google Scholar, and The Middle Way: A Study of the Problem of Economic and Social Progress in a Free and Democratic Society, Macmillan, London, 1938; Wootton, Barbara, Plan or No Plan, Gollancz, London, 1934 Google ScholarPubMed, and Freedom Under Planning, Allen and Unwin, London, 1945; Cole, G. D. H., Principles of Economic Planning, Macmillan, London, 1935 Google Scholar, The Machinery of Socialist Planning, Hogarth Press, London, 1938, and A Plan for Democratic Britain, Labour Book Service, London, 1939. I discuss these authors and others in detail in my Economic Planning and Democratic Government in Britain (forthcoming).
21 I am fully aware that in much of what follows my treatment may justly be seen as too sweeping and cavalier. This is mainly because of my own ignorance, but results partly from a firm conviction that the social sciences generally, and not least political science, require more rather than less rough, broad‐brush approaches; elegant nit‐picking can go too far.
22 Lindbeck, Assar, The Political Economy of the New Left: An Outsider's View, Harper & Row, New York, 1971.Google Scholar
23 Sweezy, Paul, ‘Comment’, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 11 1972, p. 659.Google Scholar
24 Lindbeck, Assar, Response, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 11 1972, p. 668.Google Scholar
25 Solow, Robert M., ‘Science and Ideology in Economics’ in Bell, D. and Kristol, I. (eds.), Capitalism Today, Random House, New York, 1971, pp. 95–6.Google Scholar
26 Cf. Winch, Donald, Economics and Policy, op. cit., pp. 233–39Google Scholar, for corroboration of this view.
27 According to A. W. Coats, Keynesianism is the only true ‘paradigm’ change to have occurred in economics. See his ‘Is There a “Structure of Scientific Revolutions” in Economics?’, Kyklos, No. 22, 1969.
28 John Knapp, for one. See his ‘Economics or Political Economy’, op. cit.
29 Cmnd. 1432 (1961).
30 Cmnd. 3638 (1968).
31 In the Pentagon the systems analysis experts were mainly micro‐economists according to Gross, Bertram M., ‘The New Systems Budgeting’, Public Administration Review, 1969, p. 114.Google Scholar
32 Foster, C. D., Politics, Finance and the Role of Economics; an Essay on the Control of Public Enterprise, Allen & Unwin, London, 1971, pp. 214–15.Google Scholar
33 For a full discussion of this controversy see Hoff, T. J. B., Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society, Hodge, London, 1949.Google Scholar
34 Cf. Foster, C. D., ibid., p. 209 Google Scholar, and especially Shick, Allen, ‘Systems Politics and Systems Budgeting’, Public Administration Review, 1969,Google Scholar passim.
35 Allen Schick, ibid., p. 138.
36 Allen Schick, ibid., p. 150.
37 Wildavsky, Aaron, ‘The Political Economy of Efficiency’, Public Administration Review, 1966, p. 308.Google Scholar He is quoting Anshen, M. in Novick, D. (ed.), Program Budgeting: Program Analysis and the Federal Budget, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1965, p. 370.Google Scholar
38 A recent example is Foster, C. D., op. cit., Chapter II, ‘The Politicisation of Administration’.Google Scholar
39 See Dror, Yehezkel, ‘Policy Analysts: A New Professional Role in Government Service’, Public Administration Review, 1967,Google Scholar who sketches out a new policy science ‘interdiscipline’ to replace the old‐style study of public administration. See also Aaron Wildavsky, ‘Rescuing Policy Analysis from PPBS’, Public Administration Review, 1969, in which he calls for the creation of a corps of creative, free‐floating policy analysts of a kind not dissimilar to the Central Policy Review Staff set up by Edward Heath in 1970.
40 Ellul, Jacques, The Technological Society, Knopf, 1965.Google Scholar
41 Boguslaw, Robert, The New Utopians: A Study of System Design and Social Change, Prentice‐Hall, Englewood Cliffs, 1965.Google Scholar
42 Williams, Alan, ‘Cost‐Benefit Analysis: Bastard Science and/or Insidious Poison in the Body Politic?’, op. cit.Google Scholar For a critical view of cost‐benefit analysis by an economist see Alan Coddington, ‘The New Utopians’, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 42, No. 3.
43 Cf. Output Budgeting for the Department of Education and Science, HMSO, 1970.
44 Cf. Stewart, J. D., Management in Local Government: a Viewpoint, Charles Knight, London, 1971.Google Scholar
45 C. D. Foster, op. cit., pp. 209–13.
46 For a discussion of managerialism see my Anti‐Politics, op. cit., passim.
47 Knapp, John, op. cit.Google Scholar, thinks, perhaps too optimistically, that an ‘ultra‐Keynesian breakthrough’ is imminent.
48 Cornford, James, ‘The Political Theory of Scarcity’, in Laslett, P. et al. (eds.), Philosophy, Politics and Society, Fourth Series, Blackwell, Oxford, 1972, P. 35.Google Scholar
49 James Cornford, ibid., makes some telling criticisms of this approach.
50 Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy, Little, Brown, Boston, 1967, p. 2.Google Scholar
51 Anthony Downs, ibid., Chapter II.
52 Anthony Downs, ibid., p. 9.
53 Anthony Downs, ibid., pp. 88–9.
54 See Employment and Training: Government Proposals, Cmnd. 5250, 1973.
55 Down, Anthony, op. cit., pp. 148–53.Google Scholar
56 Williamson, Oliver E., ‘Hierarchical Control and Optimum Firm Size’, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 75, No. 2, 04 1967.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
57 Olsen, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1968.Google Scholar See also Barry's, Brian critical exegesis of Olsen in his Sociologists, Economists and Democracy, Collier‐Macmillan, London, 1970, pp. 23–40.Google Scholar
58 Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Industrial and Commercial Representation ABCC/CBI, 1972.
59 Mitchell, William C., ‘The Shape of Political Theory to Come: From Political Sociology to Political Theory’, in Lipset, S. M. (ed.), Politics and the Social Sciences, Oxford University Press, New York, 1969, p. 106.Google Scholar
60 Olsen, Mancur, ‘The Relationship Between Economics and the Other Social Sciences: the Province of a “Social Report”’, in Lipset, ibid., pp. 160–1.Google Scholar
61 The best example I know of discriminate borrowing (in this case from psychoanalysis) but not assimilating is Stanley Hoffman's masterly ‘Heroic Leadership: the Case of Modern France’, in L. J. Edinger (ed.), Political Leadership in Industrial Societies: Studies in Comparative Analysis, Wiley, New York, 1967.