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The idea of "policy science" is not a new one. In fact, it is organic to the Western tradition. Its first, incomparable formulation is found in Plato's Republic; policy, the Platonic Socrates says, can be reasonable and sound only if it is based upon the fullness of scientific insight and knowledge. According to the Platonic conception, it is not even enough to apply scientific knowledge, gathered by specialists, to practical policy problems which the rulers are to decide. Rather, the rulers themselves must acquire all the scientific knowledge needed to frame reasonable policy. The duality of the "expert adviser" and of the "decision-maker" who merely listens to him is implicitly rejected in the Republic. The ruler himself must be the knower. For the decisive thing is not knowledge in the abstract, knowledge as something impersonally available and ready to be picked up; it is knowledge conceived as the quality of a soul. According to the Platonic (and Aristotelian) view, knowledge is not an alien material "contained" in the mind, but the "form," the ideal essence of the mind itself, so that a mind that knows belongs to a different species than the mind that lacks knowledge. In acquiring knowledge, the mind becomes essentially transformed, it acquires a new form; this is the original meaning of the term "information." In its Platonic sense, then, the idea of "policy science" refers to the soul of the ruler, which must be the highest species of soul.

A review of R. A. Dahl's WHO GOVERNS? DEMOCRACY AND POWER IN AN AMERICAN CITY & E. C. Banfield's POLITICAL INFLUENCE: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE THEO- RETICAL UNDERSTANDING OF PATTERNS OF POLITICAL PRESSURE IN VARIOUS SETTINGS. The following themes are seen as summarizing Dahl's study of New Haven: (1) 'the history of pol'al power in New Haven has been one of the shift from oligarchy based on wealth & soc position to a pluralism based on a series of dispersed inequalities;' (2) 'because of the soc, econ, & ethnic basis of pol'al power, pol'al leadership consists in the building of coalitions that reward subleaders;' (3) there is only a minimum of overlap of individuals in the diff areas of decision making; & (4) 'actual & potential influence is related to the interaction between leaders & followers, which emerges in a variety of forms of mass pol'al participation & is conditioned by the values of the democratic creed.' Neither of the books is seen as influencing community pol'al studies in any signif direction. While Dahl's book is an outstanding scholarly case study, Banfield's is 'a one-sided treatise with some disjointed theoretical elements.' It is suggested that the following operations are required to lift the study of community power structures out of its present casestudy mold: (1) comparative res & (2) the development of an 'exp'al stance' which would include 'group discussions with community leaders, systematic observation of soc exp's, & evaluation of new org'al formats.' For purposes of comparative res it is necessary 'to trace out the instit'al arrangements by which competing interest are or are not adjudicated.' I. Taviss.

Professor Ostrom of the University of California at Los Angeles suggests answers to the questions: Why law, why decisions? To introduce order and predictability into groups, to pursue goals. Expanding social science enhances the range of instrumental choices for the decision-maker but naturally introduces an ever-greater dependence upon administrative science. Science and "politics" thus tend to grow closer together.