Suchergebnisse

The significance of Frisch's notion of decision models is, in the first place, that they draw full attention upon "inverted problems" which economic policy puts before us. In these problems the data are no longer those in the traditional economic problems, but partly the political goals of economic policy such as a certain volume of employment, equilibrium in the balance of payments, a certain standard of life, etc. Unknowns, on the other hand, are a number of political parameters such as tax tariffs of different types or the exchange rate.

A post-mortem on the large-scale effort to use soc sci in the reform of the metropolitan gov of St. Louis, Mo, re the campaign for the District Plan of the Metropolitan St Louis Survey in 1959. Based on a model assuming the rationality of the voters, the Survey, taken in 1957, consisted of interviews with metropolitan area residents (N= 2,000), taken as the potential voice of the voters. Based on these responses, the recommendations of admin'ive analysts, & an extensive examination of the formal gov'al structure, the survey directors chose a middle path, a `federal system' leaving all municipalities in existence but creating a multipurpose metropolitan district gov, thus giving a solution which deprived no existing gov or official of much power or perquisite. The campaign for the plan was carried through the MM, with relatively little opposition expressed. The plan was overwhelmingly defeated 2 to 1 in the city & 3 to 1 in the county, the most overwhelming defeat ever suffered by the proponents of change in the St Louis area. Immediately after the election a sample survey showed that 66% of the suburbanites who had just defeated the plan thought that some kind of metropolitan reorg was needed in the future. This was about the same % as in the 1957 Survey. The voters did not understand the Plan, but nevertheless voted it down. An attempt is made to relate the results to a Sociol'al Model which provides 3 classes of roles: Community Actor, the Neighbor, & the Isolate. The hyp was: key actors in local pol'al activity will be preponderantly Community Actors - they will be best informed & most active. This was partially confirmed: 'pol'ly active' broke down into Community Actors 53%, Neighbors 17%, and Isolates 30%. There was also indication that for most suburbanites, conversations among relatives, friends, & kin were very important in transmitting influences, whereas little information was carried from other data. It is concluded that avoidance of the direct democracy of the referendum is the most likely method through which reforms in metropolitan gov can be achieved. Modified AA.