¹ Kuhn, Thomas S., The Structure of Scientific Revolution (London: Phoenix Books, 1962) pp. 67–8.Google Scholar

² This essay was conceived after receiving my copy of the American Political Science Review, Vol. 63, No. 4, 1969Google Scholar, a number which included some six articles out of a total of 15 concerned with the ‘State of the Discipline’.

³ To knock down some straw men at the start of this essay, I do not have quantitative evidence to substantiate these introductory comments nor am I going to adopt an anti-behavioral stance in the pages that follow. Instead I wish merely to suggest some conclusions, on the basis of a line of reasoning that will hopefully not prove to be too attenuated.

⁴ Hempel, Carl G., ‘Explanation in Science and History’ in Colodny, Robert G., ed., Frontiers of Science and Philosophy (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962), pp. 7–33.Google Scholar

⁵ Of course, most political scientists have goals other than that of creating a perfectly predictive process theory of politics, but here I assume that such an intention lies near the core of their professional activities.

⁶ The phrase is Dahl's, , in Dahl, Robert A., ‘The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest’, American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), 763–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁷ I am using the word ‘experiment’ in the broad sense of a critical examination of a hypothetical generalization with the aid of empirical data. In the words of Campbell and Stanley, ‘by experiment we refer to that portion of research in which variables are manipulated and their effects upon other variables observed’; Campbell, Donald T. and Stanley, Julian C., Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research (New York: Rand McNally, 1963), p. 1.Google Scholar

⁸ I would hypothesize, although I have no evidence to substantiate it, that this micro-macro tension lies at the root of the traditionalist, behavioralist and post-behavioralist cycles in political science. Although the traditionalists include many phenomenologists, the remainder opt for macro scale analysis with a relatively small ceteris paribus caveat. The behavioralists prefer tight micro scale analyses, but with a relatively larger ceteris paribus caveat, while the post-behavioralists are arguing again for a macro strategy and an examination of any hypothesis in its broader context.

⁹ Reichenbach, Hans, Experience and Prediction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1938).Google Scholar

¹⁰ The terminology applied to the three schools is suggested, respectively, by Ostrom, Vincent in ‘Water Resource Development: Some Problems in Economic and Political Analysis of Public Policy’, in Ranney, Austin, ed., Political Science and Public Policy (Chicago: Markham, 1968), pp. 134–5Google Scholar; by Buchanan, James M. and Tullock, Gordon, The Calculus of Consent (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and by Ostrom, Vincent, Tiebout, Charles and Warren, Robert in ‘The Organization of Government in Metropolitan Areas: A Theoretical Inquiry’, American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), p. 831.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹¹ Besides I have already addressed myself at length to the validity of this assumption in my ‘A Theory of Public Employment’, delivered at the 65th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New York City, 1969.

¹² The objective being to take the necessary steps toward attaining the optimal or ideal output for the economy. Such a state is said to exist when it is no longer possible to make at least one individual better off without making any other individual worse off. This economic state is known in the literature of welfare economics as one of Pareto Optimality. It is attained, in technical terms, when equality exists between each person's marginal rate of substitution between alternative commodities (as measured by his indifference curves) and the economy's marginal rate of transformation (or the rate at which it is technically feasible to substitute the production of one good for another good). When such an equality is attained, each person will trade one good for another good at the most advantageous rate technically possible in the economy. A classic analysis of this theory will be found in Baumol, William J., Welfare Economics and the Theory of State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2nd edn., 1965), Chapter 3.Google Scholar

¹³ The term ‘collective goods’ (goods that cannot be consumed by one individual without others also enjoying to some degree the benefits of their provision) is employed rather than ‘public goods’, since the logic applies to any commonly produced goods, whether or not they are governmentally provided. See Samuelson, Paul A., ‘Indeterminacy of Governmental Role in Public-Good Theory’, Papers in Non-Market Decision Making, 3 (1967), p. 47.Google Scholar

¹⁴ A useful discussion of these attempts will be found in Mishan, Edward J., ‘A Survey of Welfare Economics 1939–1959’, in Welfare Economics (New York: Random House, 1966), pp. 3–97.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Bergson, Abram, ‘A Reformulation of Certain Aspects of Welfare Economics’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 52 (1938), 314–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁶ Kaldor, Nicholas, ‘Welfare Propositions in Economies’, Economic Journal, 49 (1939), 549–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hicks, John R., ‘The Valuation of Social Income’, Economica, 7 (1940), 105–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Scitovsky, Tibor, ‘Note on Welfare Propositions in Economies’, The Review of Economic Studies, 9 (1941). 77–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Little, Ian M. D., A Critique of Welfare Economics (London: Oxford University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

¹⁸ The debate was effectively over with the publication of Arrow's, KennethSocial Choice and Individual Values (New York: Wiley) in 1951.Google Scholar Arrow's work is discussed in the subsequent section on the Individual Calculus Solution.

¹⁹ Wellisz, Stanislaw, ‘On External Diseconomies and the Government — Assisted Invisible Hand’, Economica, 31 (1964), p. 362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁰ See Coase, Richard H., ‘The Problem of Social Cost’, Journal of Law and Economics, 3 (1960), 1–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buchanan, James M., ‘Public Policy and Pigouvian Margins’, Economica, 29 (1962), 17–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, Otto A. and Whinston, Andrew, ‘Externalities, Welfare and the Theory of Games’, Journal of Political Economy, 70 (1962), 241–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, Otto A. and Whinston, Andrew, ‘On Externalities, Information and the Government-Assisted Invisible Hand’, Economica, 33 (1966), 303–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²¹ Calabresi also points out that the school assumes that transaction costs (costs of the bargaining process), including the cost of excluding free riders who gain from the bargain but who will not pay the costs of bringing it about, are zero. This assumption is as untenable as the Pigouvian assumption of zero administrative costs. See Calabresi, Guido, ‘Transaction Costs, Resource Allocation and Liability Rules: A Comment’, Journal of Law and Economics, II (1968), 67–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²² See Commons, John R., The Legal Foundations of Capitalism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1959).Google Scholar

²³ This particular change was codified in the National Industrial Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935.

²⁴ The comments in this paragraph can be extended, as Wildavsky has brilliantly shown, to the sister techniques of cost-benefit analysis, namely systems analysis and program budgeting, both of which take value judgements as parameters in making their calculations. See Wildavsky, Aaron B., ‘The Political Economy of Efficiency: Cost-Benefit Analysis, Systems Analysis and Program Budgeting’, Public Administration Review, 26 (1966), 292–310CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Ranney, Political Science, pp. 55–82.

²⁵ See, for example, the sophisticated calculations employed in some of the better cost-benefit analyses, such as Krutilla, John V., The Columbia River Treaty — The Economics of an International River Basin Development (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967).Google Scholar

²⁶ Arrow, Kenneth J., Social Choices and Individual Values (NewYork: Wiley, 1951).Google Scholar

²⁷ The three conditions for collective choice to correspond with individual preferences are (1) a unique social ordering, (2) a social ordering corresponding (at least not negatively) to changes in the ordering of any one individual, and (3) the independence of irrelevant alternatives (the elimination of any one alternative will not affect the ranking of the other alternatives by the community).

²⁸ Only the key features of the more seminal works in the voluminous literature will be noted here. A useful survey article of the remainder will be found in Riker, William H., ‘Voting and the Summation of Preferences’, American Political Science Review, 55 (1961), 900–11.Google Scholar

²⁹ Dahl, Robert A., A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956).Google Scholar

³⁰ Black, Duncan, Committees and Elections (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).Google Scholar Black had, in fact, anticipated the Arrow theorem and published his solution prior to 1951. Tullock, Gordon, Toward the Mathematics of Politics (Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1967)Google Scholar, chapter 3, shows that Black's solution of single-peakedness can be generalized to multiple dimensions.

³¹ Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York: Harper and Row, 1957).Google Scholar Downs, in fact, modified a solution for ideological differentiation between parties first suggested by Harold Hotelling in 1929, and applied it to the Arrow Problem. (See Hotelling, Harold, ‘Stability in Competition’, Economic Journal, 39 (1929), 4–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) Downs was, however, one of the first theorists to suggest that Arrow's Theorem could be solved once conditions of perfect certainty were modified.

³² Buchanan and Tullock, The Calculus of Consent.

³³ Tiebout, Charles M., ‘ A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures’, Journal of Political Economy, 64 (1956), 416–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Oates, Wallace E., ‘The Effects of Property Taxes and Local Public Spending on Property Values: An Empirical Study of Tax Capitalization and the Tiebout Hypothesis’, Journal of Political Economy, 77 (1969), 957–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁴ Downs, An Economic Theory; Garvey, Gerald, ‘The Theory of Party Equilibrium’, American Political Science Review, 60 (1966), 27–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stone, Clarence N., ‘Local Referendums: An Alternative to the Alienated Voter Model’, Public Opinion Quarterly, 29 (1965), 213–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁵ Olson, Mancur Jr, The Logic of Collective Action (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Wagner, Richard, ‘Pressure Groups and Political Entrepreneurs’, Papers on Non-Market Decision Making, I (1966), 161–70Google Scholar; Breton, Albert, ‘ A Theory of the Demand for Public Goods’, The Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science, 32 (1966), 455–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Barnes, Samuel H., ‘Party Democracy and the Logic of Collective Action’, in Crotty, William J., ed., Approaches to the Study of Party Organization (New Jersey: Allyn and Bacon, 1968), pp. 105–38Google Scholar; Manzer, Ronald, ‘Selective Inducements and the Development of Pressure Groups: The Case of Canadian Teachers’ Associations’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 2 (1969), 103–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Salisbury, Robert H., ‘An Exchange Theory of Interest Groups’, Midwest Journal of Political Science, 13 (1969), 1–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁶ Ireland, Thomas, ‘The Rationale of Revolt’, Papers on Non-Market Decision Making, 3 (1967), 49–66Google Scholar; Lipsky, Michael, ‘Protest as a Political Resource’, American Political Science Review, 62 (1968), 1144–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luttwak, Edward, Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook (Harmonds-worth: Penguin, 1968)Google Scholar; Albert, and Breton, Raymond, ‘ An Economic Theory of Social Movements’, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 05 1969, American Economic Review, 59 (1969), 198–205Google Scholar; Scott, Anthony, ‘Investing and Protesting’, Journal of Political Economy, 77 (1969), 916–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

³⁷ The exceptions being Warren, Robert O., ‘Scale, Representation and Policy Making in Federal-Local Economic Development Planning’, unpublished manuscript, University of Washington, 1969Google Scholar; Kafoglis, Madelyn L., ‘Participatory Democracy in the Community Action Program’, Public Choice, 5 (1968), 73–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kafoglis, , ‘Equality of Opportunity in Decision Making: Its Scope in Economic, Social and Political Processes’, The American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 29 (1970), 1–16.Google ScholarReaders will note that, in this review of the literature, I have excluded the attempts to validate the assumption of or to infer about economic rationality with the aid of electoral data. The major writings here are Key, V. O. Jr, The Responsible Electorate (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1966)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldberg, Arthur S., ‘Social Determination and Rationality as Bases of Party Identification’, American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 5–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shapiro, Michael J. ‘Rational Political Man: A Synthesis of Economic and Social-Psychological Perspectives’, American Political Science Review, 63 (1969), 1106–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson, James Q. and Banfield, Edward C., ‘Public Regardingness as a Value Premise in Voting Behavior’, American Political Science Review, 58 (1964), 876–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Birdsall, William C., ‘A Study of the Demand for Public Goods’, in Musgrave, Richard A., ed., Essays in Fiscal Federalism, (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1965) pp. 235–94Google Scholar; Sproule-jones, Mark and Van Klaveren, Adrie, ‘Local Referenda and Size of Municipality in British Columbia’, British Columbia Studies, No. 8, (1970).Google Scholar

³⁸ But note certain exceptions, all concerned with the international level, namely Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Boulding, Kenneth E., Conflict and Defense (New York: Harper, 1962)Google Scholar; Olson, Mancur Jr, and Zeckhauser, Richard, ‘An Economic Theory of Alliances’, The Review of Economics and Statistics, 48 (1966), 266–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the applications made by Russett, Bruce M., ed., in Economic Theories of International Relations (Chicago: Markham, 1969).Google Scholar See also the heuristic anthropological essay by Bailey, F. G., Strategems andSpoils: A Social Anthropology of Politics (New York: Schocken, 1969).Google Scholar

³⁹ There is a small literature concerned with depicting bureaucracy costs, especially compliance costs. See Tullock, Gordon, The Politics of Bureaucracy (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Williamson, Oliver, ‘Hierarchical Control and Optimal Firm Size’, Journal of Political Economy, 75 (1966), 123–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Downs, Anthony, Inside Bureaucracy, (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1967)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Niskanen, William A., ‘The Peculiar Economics of Bureaucracy’, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, Dec. 1967, American Economic Review, 58 (1968), 293–305Google Scholar; and the older classic Dahl, Robert A. and Lindblom, Charles E., Politics, Economics and Welfare (New York: Harper, 1953)Google Scholar, and its progeny especially Lindblom, Charles E., ‘The Science of Muddling Through’, Public Administration Review, 29 (1959), 78–88.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ With the exception of the writings of Lindblom and students.

⁴¹ The explication is based on a number of published and unpublished works by Vincent Ostrom and students, in particular, Ostrom, Tiebout and Warren, ‘The Organization of Government’; with Ostrom, Elinor, ‘ A Behavioral Approach to the Study of Inter-governmental Relations’, The Annals, 359 (1965), 137–46Google Scholar; ‘The Political Feasibility of a Continental Water System for North America’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Feb. 1967; ‘Water Resource Development: Some Problems in Economic and Political Analysis of Public Policy’, in Ranney, Austin, ed., Political Science and Public Policy (Chicago: Markham, 1968), pp. 123–50Google Scholar; ‘Operational Federalism: Organization for the Provision of Public Services in the American Federal System’, Public Choice, 6 (1969), 1–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Political Theory of a Compound Republic’ (unpublished, Indiana University, 1969)Google Scholar; Warren, Robert O., Government in Metropolitan Regions (Institute of Governmental Affairs, University of California, Davis, 1966)Google Scholar;Cunningham, Luvern L. et al. , Report on the Merger Issue (unpublished, Louisville, 08 1966)Google Scholar; Ostrom, Elinor, ‘Constitutional Decision-Making: Logic for the Organization of Collective Enterprise’, presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Annual Conference, Chicago, 05 1968Google Scholar; Ostrom, Elinor, ‘Some Postulated Effects of Learning on Constitutional Behavior’, Public Choice, 5 (1968), 87–104.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴² See especially, Commons, The Legal Foundations.

⁴³ Such as negative externalities or the nonfulfilment of market bargains.

⁴⁴ Readers will recall Buchanan and Tullock's cost functions. They should also note that the status of the constitutional rights of any individual or group of individuals can be taken as a variable rather than as a constant. See Vincent Ostrom, ‘The Political Theory of a Compound Republic’.

⁴⁵ Readers will recall that we are using public in the governmental sense of the word. Collective goods that are produced at the private level can provide highly visible cases of the legal basis of market choice in view of the need for coercion to solve the strategic holdout problem. See, especially, Elinor Ostrom, ‘Constitutional Decision-Making’.

⁴⁶ With regard to budgeting, authorizations and legislation, for example.

⁴⁷ Dewey, John suggested the word ‘public’ some forty years ago in The Public and Its Problems (London: Allen and Unwin, 1926).Google Scholar

⁴⁸ On this point, see Holden, Matthew Jr, ‘ “Imperialism” in Bureaucracy’, American Political Science Review, 60 (1966), 943–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁹ See, for example, Wildavsky, Aaron B., The Politics of the Budgetary Process (Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown, 1964).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Existing analyses include the California Water Industry in Vincent Ostrom, ‘Water Resource Development’; Ostrom, Elinor, ‘Public Entrepreneurship: A Case Study in Ground Water Basin Management’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, UCLA, 1965Google Scholar; Weschler, Louis F., Water Resources Management: The Orange County Experience, Institute of Governmental Affairs, University of California, Davis, 1968Google Scholar; Natural Resource Management in Elinor Ostrom, ‘Collective Action and the Tragedy of the Commons’, unpublished, Indiana University, 1969Google Scholar; Crime in Elinor Ostrom, ‘Institutional Arrangements and the Measurement of Policy Consequences in Urban Areas’, presented at ‘The City and the State: Problems of the 70's’, Indiana University, 1970; Education and the Control of Air Pollution in Bish, Robert L., The Public Economy of Metropolitan Areas (Chicago: Markham Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and various labor markets in this author's ‘Toward a Theory of Public Employment’, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1970.Google Scholar

⁵¹ The term ‘environment’ is used to indicate the constraints and opportunities that can exist on both the input and output side in the provision of a public good by any single political institution.

⁵² For further details, see Bish, The Public Economy.

⁵³ The subset could be coterminous with the total universe, but this possibility will not destroy the logic of our argument.

⁵⁴ In other words, I am not addressing myself to the problem of whether higher level generalizations in a deductive theory are inherently more difficult to verify than lower level ones. Cf.Braithwaite, R. B., Scientific Explanation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953)Google Scholar; Greene, Thomas H., ‘Values and the Methodology of Political Science’, Canadian Journal of Political Science, 3 (1970), 275–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lapalombara, Joseph, ‘Macro theories and Microapplications in Comparative Polities’, Comparative Politics, I (1968), 52–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁵ Following the school of thinking first explicated by Bridgman, P. W. in The Logic of Modern Physics (New York: Macmillan, 1927).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Campbell, in particular, forcefully argues for multiple measures as a safeguard against treating any operationalization as perfectly and exhaustively relevant. See Campbell, and Stanley, , Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs; and Eugene Webb, J. et al. , Unobtrusive Measures (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ The object being to isolate the effects of intervening variables. The fullest argument for such techniques will still be found in Blalock's, Hubert M.seminal Causal Inferences in Nonexperimental Research (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1961).Google Scholar To be fair to Blalock, he does italicize the point stressed in our essay, namely that ‘ no matter how elaborate the design, certain simplifying assumptions must always be made. In particular, we must at some point assume that the effects of confounding factors are negligible. Randomization helps to rule out some of such variables, but the plausibility of this particular kind of simplifying assumption is always a question of degree’, p. 26.

⁵⁸ Both views are set out in Popper, Karl R., ‘Three views concerning Human Knowledge’, Contemporary British Philosophy (New York: Macmillan, 1956), pp. 350–88.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ At the outset of this essay, I stated that I would not address myself to the question of values in scientific research. Values can, of course, enter at this stage of analysis, in the decision to adopt a specific mix of the practical and logical. This point is returned to again in the essay, but it should be noted that this particular form of value intrusion into empirical analysis is ignored in the literature.

⁶⁰ Simon, Herbert A., Models of Man (New York: Wiley, 1957), Chap. 1Google Scholar; Simon, Herbert A. and Ando, Albert, ‘Aggregation of Variables in Dynamic Systems’, Econometrica, 29 (1961), 111–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶¹ Friedman, Milton, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economies’, in Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953)Google Scholar, reprinted in May Brodbeck, ed., Readings in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 508–28.

⁶² I am deliberately avoiding the phrase ‘causal relationship’, because I wish to avoid any debate over the difference, if any, between statements of cause and effect, and statements of association.

⁶³ In his ‘The Measurement Problem: A Gap Between the Languages of Theory and Research’ in Blalock, Hubert M. Jr, . and Blalock, Ann B., Methodology in Social Research (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), pp. 5–27.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Practical problems notwithstanding.