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"Lewis Anthony Dexter may well have been one of the better known and least appreciated political scientists of the last century. This outstanding collection of Dexter's writings, demonstrates why Dexter remains important. The volume off ers solid reasons for researching the topics Dexter pioneered, and is a masterful guide to his thought and analyses. Dexter's writings derive from a multifaceted career. The Management of Purpose is organized into three broad subject areas: sociology, political science, and practicing social science. Dexter's notions of what constituted sociology and anthropology and his understandings of these areas and how to use them to illumine political matters are unusual. His use of multiple types of evidence, including history and logic, enables him to make significant contributions to the study of society's response to social problems. His work on labeling theory shows that social labels have a power that both transcends and distorts reality. Dexter was also a pioneer in the interactionist perspective, linking the labeled and those doing the labeling, and in demonstrating how organizations tend to compartmentalize and specialize. Dexter's work provides the analytic tools to enable readers to better understand many of the issues that remain a part of the American political landscape."--Provided by publisher.

This paper develops the notion of political process within administrative entities; it rests particularly upon the work of Arthur F. Bentley but is also much influenced by the political concerns of the early Herbert Simon; it extends, also, Francis Rourke's consideration of bureaucratic politics. It is analogous to the application of Bentley's approach to legislative processes by Bertram Gross, David Truman, and naturally especially Lewis A. Dexter. More generally, it is guided by the theory of social description, implicit in Bentley's work to be sure, but more explicitly stated by Simmel, Wiese-Becker, and Park and Burgess. Further extended, the approach here might contribute to the theory of factionalism on the one hand, and to a wider use of the theory of encapsulation as suggested by F. G. Bailey.

ABSTRACTThis paper is an attempt to make more specific the familiar sociological notion of the 'unanticipated consequences of social action'. Reasons for the relative neglect by practitioners and analysts of the side-effects of legislative action are suggested. The discussion of unintended and unanticipated social action is related to the work of classic sociologists, to theorists of diffusion, and to the study of innovations and inventions. Previous studies of Congress (including those by the author) are shown to have focussed on process and representation at the expense of the legislation itself and its consequences, examples of which are considered in this paper. An economic law about the creation of demands by legislation, explaining the development of many side-effects, is proposed. The relationship between rules expressed in enactments and the whole system of formal and informal rules in the life of a society is explored. A number of considerations for future work are outlined, and the paper concludes by arguing that greater awareness of the problem of side-effects will have two valuable consequences: (1) the identification of general tendencies may help to avoid gross perversion of purposes; (2) even where there are no clear regularities of response, the observation of patterns of side-effects and their correlation with other factors may enable analysts to anticipate likely side-effects and suggest readjustments.

Proposals to end "boondoggling" in social science research are presented by the author, co-winner of the Woodrow Wilson Award for the best book in Political Science in 1963, American Business and Public Policy, and a lecturer in social science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Dexter asserts that practitioners must learn to overcome the tendency to make only those observations and draw only those con clusions that can be pressed into simplistic and fashionable theoretical frames. He shows that the sociology of occupations is a perspective that is especially useful to practitioners, though largely ignored, and he urges that practitioners take up an interest in the now unfashionable but relevant area of political philosophy. Lewis A. Dexter, presently of the University of Maryland faculty, is co-author with R. Bauer and I. Pool of American Business and Public Policy which won the Woodrow Wilson Prize in 1963 for the best book in Political Science.