Several simple theories of government coalition formation are described and tested. A statistical method is presented for comparing the theories and evaluating each of them relative to a certain null hypothesis. The statistical tests are based upon the formation of 132 government coalitions in twelve countries of Western Europe during 1945–71.

Four theories for explaining public policy decisions are briefly presented. The theories are applied to the question of the location of Norwegian district colleges and universities (location by county, scope and timing). Eleven operational models provide the link between theory and data. The conclusion is that the legal-bureaucratic theory best explains the location decisions. This structural theory works better than the three behavioral ones. It is argued that this shows how norms of equity and justice constitute the main constraints on these decision processes.

This article is a taxonomy of a new field of interest to political scientists, namely the study of multinational corporations as political actors on the local, national and international level. It describes the interests and activities of the four major actors involved: parent companies, subsidiaries, investor countries, and host countries. The article bases itself in part on seven books which represent these various actors'perspectives, and suggests what kind of further research is needed to describe the cooperative and conflictual relations among them. The theoretical challenges presented by the multinationals are related in part to their dual character as economic and political actors, and in part to the fact that they integrate activities among various levels of political organization, thus cutting across traditional divisions of scholarly disciplines such as local, comparative and international politics, as well as economics, international business, and industrial relations.