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THIS ARTICLE IS A SYMPOSIUM ORIGINATING FROM A CONFERENCE AT THE LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS. THE ISSUE ADDRESSED IS THE ADEQUACY, OR LACK THEREOF, OF THE SCIENCES IN PROVIDING THE INFORMATION REQUIRED BY PEOPLE IN THEIR VARIOUS CAPACITIES. THE SYMPOSIASTS AGREE THAT THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT WE KNOW AND NEED TO KNOW IS HISTORICALLY UNIQUE IN SCALE, AND THEY DISCUSS WAYS TO RECTIFY THE PROBLEM.

In his stimulating book CONFLICT OF INTEREST (Chicago, 1970), Robert Axelrod considers the case of a parlimentary system in which any cabinet requires majority support in the legislature. He states that, if the parties in the legislature can be arrayed on a one-dimensional ideological continuum, conflict of interest will be minimized if the cabinet is formed or supported by parties constituting a minimal connected winning coalition. It can be shown, though, that Axelrod's criterion for conflict of interest in a coalition should be amended to state that conflict of interest in a winning coalition is minimized provided that the coalition would not remain winning if it dropped a party from either end, even if it added any parties lying between those ends. Such a coalition might be called a minimal-span winning coalition. This proposed amendment has a direct bearing on Axelrod's application of his criterion to post-war Italian pol. IPSA.

Reexamines the global human development project as defined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to argue that forecasting needs to be made explicit in the predictive model. Analysis of the MDGs goals to eradicate extreme poverty & hunger identifies the vagueness of the World Bank poverty measurements. Explicit factors for an improved forecasting model must address the uncertainties of international futures formulations & the future of economic drivers. Previous forecasting models are concluded to be brutal oversimplifications of reality that can be mitigated with a two track approach. This forecasting model combines individual intervention into clusters of domestic self-help, outward open orientation, & foreign assistance to augment the existing MDG goals of poverty eradication. Tables, Figures, References. J. Harwell