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The task of reviewing general texts is especially difficult. Many different objectives may legitimately be attempted, and it is easy to allow one's personal interests to enter into the appraisal of objectives. It has long been my conviction that every author should be allowed to choose his objectives and to adopt such means as may be suitable in their fulfillment. Once these choices have been made, the author imposes a task upon himself which may legitimately be examined, both in respect of its intrinsic merit and in respect of the execution of the plan. Mr. Hacker's book presents a number of especially interesting problems in these regards.

The author presents the conception of using foreign trade turnovers as well as the main elements and principles of the system of foreign trade in conditions of Poland's economy. At the beginning the author is analizing means of using foreign trade in a planning economy in short and long terms. Then he passes over to the basic problem: to the concept of a construction of the mechanism of foreign trade in the system of our economy. The essential elements of actual mechanism of foreign trade are as follows: 1) concentration of almost all decisions concerning the economic foreign transaction on the central level, 2) choice of the commodity structure of foreign trade on the basic calculation of the central plan, 3) institutional and economic separation of the foreign trade from production, 4) autonomous character of the system of home market prices in regard to the world market prices, 5) sovereign of a monetary system and the passive function of the rate of exchange. The last part of this article consists of analyzing directions of the evolution of the mechanism of foreign trade. The author presents here these reforms mainly, which in result of the sharp criticism of the previous system consist of a certain degree of decentralization of management of foreign trade. The deviations from the assumptions of this model concerning here are: activity of the calculation enterprises and incentives at the level of the enterprise, decentralization of certain decisions in foreign trade, and incentival action of prices system in the sphere of the plan fulfillment. ; Digitalizacja i deponowanie archiwalnych zeszytów RPEiS sfinansowane przez MNiSW w ramach realizacji umowy nr 541/P-DUN/2016

In this paper problems of social choice in general, and political choice in particular, are considered in light of uncertainty. The space of social alternatives in this formulation includes not only pure social states, but lotteries or probability distributions over those states as well. In the context of candidate strategy selection in a spatial model of political choice, candidate strategy sets are represented by pure strategies—points in the space of alternatives—and ambiguous strategies—lotteries over those points. Questions about optimal strategy choice and the equilibrium properties of these choices are then entertained. Duncan Black's theorem about the dominance of the median preference is generalized, and further contingencies in which the theorem is false are specified. The substantive foci of these results are: (1) the conditions in which seekers of political office will rationally choose to appear equivocal in their policy intentions; and (2) the role of institutional structure in defining equilibrium.

Technology for Underdeveloped Areas: An Annotated Bibliography focuses on the functional aspects of technology, including the economic criteria of choice, the institutional requisite for transmittal, and the cultural constraints upon proficiency. This book discusses the relevant concepts, provides specific examples of products and systems required by developing economies, and indicates organizational approaches to adapting advantageous technology

The Soviet Manager and Innovation : A Behavioral Model.
The objective of this paper is to employ the utility approach and formulate an optimization model that is capable of explaining the observed behavior of the Soviet firm. The analysis concentrates on some utility maximizing policy adjustments consistent with the special set of institutional constraints under which the Soviet manager is forced to operate. It points the way to better understanding of the possible patterns of managerial behavior, permits greater insight into the operation of business firms in the Soviet Union and yields some original results.
The model developed in this paper shows that, despite the constraints established by the central production plan, the Soviet manager is able to secure a set of opportunity choices with respect to the firm's output — inventory policy. In fact, the manager's ability to create and then preserve that range of opportunity choices turns out to be his major survival requirement in the Soviet system.
The analysis shows that, under static conditions where the set of institutional and technical parameters is fixed, the range of the Soviet manager's policy options necessarily diminishes over time and choice must ultimately disappear. The utility-maximizing manager has, therefore, strong incentive to change his economic environment and, in the process, renew his set of opportunity choices. A way to achieve such renewal is via cost-saving innovations. 'The paper argues that, contrary to the conclusions of most authors, the Soviet system has a built-in incentive for the manager to search for cost-saving improvements, provided the manager can choose the rate which the effects of these improvements are made known to the state. It is the Soviet manager's ability to innovate and conceal the full effects of the innovations from the state that determines his capacity to survive. The existence of this innovative potential is important, of course, because it helps to explain how the Soviet economy can experience some economic advances in an environment which is ridden with waste and inefficiencies.

A cursory glance at a map, a university curriculum, or a government organization chart will confirm that man has a remarkable capacity for establishing arbitrary boundaries. Moreover, he has usually claimed a degree of sovereignty within those boundaries which he would energetically defend and, if possible, extend. We would continue to believe that we could reasonably afford our independent behavior except for the recent "discovery" that the human environment is not only a complex but also a finite system. Environmental problems, or, more particularly, the harmful effects of man's activities on his environment, challenge our exclusiveness and affect our existing territorial, disciplinary, and institutional boundaries simply because they transcend them. Of the many factors to be taken into account in dealing with environmental problems two have particular importance: the identification of the geographical level at which action can effectively be taken and the choice of the appropriate legal and institutional instruments to be employed.

Instead of profit maximization as a single goal of big business, organization-theory, game-theory, and behavioral- science views indicate that the objectives of modern enterprise are plural and complex. Organization theory emphasizes the coalition character of big business, suggesting that with many participants comes variety in goals. Games in theory and in experiment reveal that players often carry to circumstances of rivalry and bargaining ideas of fairness and mutual restraint. The normative aspects of business affairs and changing role expectations concerning big business make available a be havioral basis for discussion of nonprofit goals. These views of business goals offer analytical frameworks by which social responsibility and ethics can be studied. Such behavior thus is not an odd mutation in a world of profit maximization. It reflects the coalition dimension of big business and the social environment in which decisions are made. To complicate things, these models also indicate the importance of profit, efficiency, and innovation goals in business, confronting par ticipants in big business and the people of the United States with dilemmas of choice. These choices are serious, for with them comes simultaneous impact upon the institutional ar rangements of the American economy.

The recruitment of political candidates is a basic function of political parties: a party that cannot attract and then nominate candidates surrenders its elemental opportunity for power. Two stages may conveniently be distinguished in the process of recruitment. Certification includes the social screening and political channeling that results in eligibility for candidacy, while selection includes the actual choice of candidates to represent parties in the general election. Selection is at the focus of the contest for power within parties, and is my focus here.Considering its importance we know too little about the dynamics of the nominating process. Most of what we do know derives from the analysis of two modal institutional types of political selection: the convention system and the primary system. Experience indicates that despite their manifest purposes, these contrasting institutional types have not necessarily resulted in widely different internal party structures. A variety of party patterns in one-party states—from the tightly controlled machines in Virginia to the transient and multiple factionalism of Florida—flourish in the framework of the direct primary system. Patterns of diffusing factionalism on the one hand, and of disciplined party organizations on the other are also found in states without primaries. Perhaps a closer look at the active participants in the processes of selection, and their interrelationships, may shed some further light on significant factorsin party structure. By interviewing candidates in party primaries we hoped to disclose the steps in nomination and the precise political relationships involved.

INTER-PARTY RIVALRY BASED LARGELY ON SOCIO-ECONOMIC LINES took institutional shape in Ceylon, for the first time, with the approach of general elections in August–September 1947, under the newly inaugurated Soulbury Constitution. The issues at the general election of 1947 were simple and straightforward. It was accepted that the United National Party (UNP) would form the government with its leader, D. S. Senanayake, as the man who would lead the country to independence. The party had the backing of almost the entire press. It enjoyed ample financial resources and commanded the support of the 'big families', the landed interests, the mudalalis (shop-owners), and government officials, particularly the village headmean. The choice posed to the electors was between a policy of progressive social reforms and stable government advocated by the UNP as against the revolutionary changes that the three left wing parties envisaged – the Trotskyist Lank Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) and its splinter, the Bolshevik Leninist Party which later changed its name to the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party (BSP), and the Moscoworiented Communist Party (CP). These left-wing groups were ideologically in conflict with each other.

The act of voting in legislative and judicial bodies is one of the most widespread and valuable sources of information available to political analysts. When individuals make structured choices within some known institutional constraints, there is opportunity for the generation of data concerning how issues are collectively defined within an institution, the relative position of each actor with regard to every other actor, and the identification of blocs of actors which are more or less persistent from one issue to another over time. With proper techniques of analysis, we should be able not only to generalize about behavior within a given voting body but also to make general statements about the voting process.Cumulative studies of voting can be undertaken, however, only on the basis of some paradigm of the voting process—that is, some consensus on how voting as an act of political commitment is to be viewed. Such a paradigm not only should provide a viewpoint for the study of voting but should also suggest an orientation to the more general political phenomenon of which voting is an example—that is, actors making mutually exclusive choices in response to a series of questions, issues, candidates, etc. That such an agreed-upon viewpoint—not to mention a model that gives the viewpoint a precise focus—does not exist is obvious from the uses which have been made of voting data. Despite the ubiquity of such data and the many different kinds of analyses that have been performed on them, there is no model available that logically interrelates (1) systemic characteristics of voting bodies, (2) individual characteristics of their members, and (3) relational characteristics between pairs of members in such a way as to yield operational measures of voting behavior that are comparative in nature.

The merger of two distinctive sociological movements in penology, the prediction of personal adjustment and the study of informal inmate relations, promises theoretical and practical advances. More work is needed, however, in the study of informal inmate relations. The prisoner status system and interaction and socialization in inmate society are related to 4 value patterns: (1) conventionalized modes of adjustment; (2) conventionalized personal tfait assessments; (3) assessments of institutional offices; and (4) immediate interpersonal amity-aversion judgments. The guide theory proposed suggests that interpersonal choice among inmates (and employees) is defined in terms of these 4 types of value, but is also controlled in part by arbitrary institutional placements. In-groups are far from stable. Crisis experience is a major determinant of value reorientation and group realignments. Although there are many parallels in employee and inmate social systems there are also fundamental contrasts, particularly differences in characteristic tensions and anxieties. The initial obligation is to identify the common value criteria of the two systems. Similar status-types in the two systems are discussed. Although similar in many respects, the inmate and employee social systems tend to assume polar positions in the prison social structure where conflict is general and acute. Where this condition does not prevail, discriminations are made in differentiating among members of the out-group. Sociogroup identification tends to be more characteristic of employees and psychegroup identifications tends to be more characteristic of inmates. A distinction between traditional custodial and more comprehensive correctional systems may be that the latter tend to institutionalize sociogroups embracing both inmates and employees. If status types and relationships can be reliably identified, a juncture with the prediction movement may be affected through contributions -- ,o predictive devices, particularly the inclusion of 'social type' as an attribute to these scales. E. Scott.