Over the last twenty or so years, it has become standard to require policy makers to base their recommendations on evidence. That is now uncontroversial to the point of triviality – of course, policy should be based on the facts. But are the methods that policy makers rely on to gather and analyse evidence the right ones? Evidence-Based Policy contends that the dominant methods which are in use now – methods that imitate standard practices in medicine like randomised control trials – do not work. Michael Bassey believes policymakers should engage in the kind of critical and analytical processes advocated by this book before rolling out social changes.

Evidence-Based Policy: A Practical Guide to Doing it Better. Nancy Cartwright and Jeremy Hardie.  Oxford University Press. 2012.

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In March this year the UK government announced the launch of a network of six “What Works” centres aimed at providing robust evidence to inform policy making. The rationale was given as “It is a fundamental principle of good public services that decisions are made on the basis of strong evidence and what we know works. Yet all too often evidence is not presented in a simple, relevant format that enables it to be used to its maximum potential by service providers, commissioners and policymakers.” 

This fascinating book was published a few months earlier, although it was unmentioned in the government announcement. It is a tough read, but it should be the standard text for these centres and on the reading list of all nineteen British university courses in PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) – i.e. the breeding ground of politicians: but too late for David Cameron and Ed Miliband who both read PPE at Oxford. In the authors’ own words this is why it deserves attention:

“You are told: use policies that work. And you are told: RCTs – randomized controlled trials – will show you what these are. That’s not so. RCTs are great, but they do not do that for you. They cannot alone support the expectation that a policy will work for you. What they tell you is true – that this policy produced that result there. But they do not tell you why that is relevant to what you need to bet on getting the result you want here. For that, you will need to know a lot more. That’s what this book is about. We are going to show what else you have to have and how you set about finding it.”

In essence, Nancy Cartwright and Jeremy Hardie discuss how to get from “it worked there” to “it will work here”. This they describe as the “effectiveness” of a policy and is the sole focus of the book. They recognise that it is just one of the many factors, albeit a vital one, that determine policy decisions. Others include costs and benefits, available resources, alternative choices, ideology, and political expediency.

In examining whether it will work “here”, Cartwright and Hardie argue that one needs first to find the causal principles that link “there” with “here”. Then search for the support factors that played a positive causal role in making “it” happen “there”. The authors call this the “horizontal search”, which leads to asking whether these factors are present “here”. Next is the “vertical search” for the level of abstraction that will link “there” and “here” and so identify what will genuinely play a positive causal role “here”. Yes, as stated earlier, this book is a tough read and while I fear that my précis does thin justice to the process described in the book, my judgement is that it is exactly the kind of critical and analytical process that policymakers should engage in before rolling out social changes.

To help their argument Cartwright and Hardie use some powerful examples. Starting in 1985 the STAR project in Tennessee showed, as demonstrated by a randomized controlled trial, that students in the experiment’s smaller classes performed better at K-3 grade levels than did students in the larger classes. It also showed that minority and inner-city children gained two or three times as much from reduced class sizes as did their white and non-urban peers. Ten years later the state of California had problems with its early school grades finding itself at the bottom of the 39 states in the 1994 National Assessment of Education Progress. Reducing class sizes fitted with popular opinion, with common sense and the Tennessee RCT gave crucial evidence that it worked. In hindsight, of course, it worked “there”. California spent $1 billion, rising to $1.6 billion, on establishing half-size classes throughout the state within a year. But the positive results that were expected did not follow. Rigorous evaluation by 2002 found no conclusive link between reducing class size and the achievement of students. Moreover there was no improvement for disadvantaged children.

The Californian policymakers had not done an effective horizontal search. In Tennessee only schools that had available space to increase the number of classes were involved. In California, with so many schools involved, there was often insufficient spare space and so it was taken from other school activities – special needs, music and arts, athletics and child care programs. In Tennessee there was no shortage of qualified teachers to staff the reduced size classes, but in California an additional 12,000 teachers were hired quickly and many of these were unqualified. Moreover by limiting other school activities the policy had some negative effects on the school population.

Here is another example of unintended consequences. It may seem obvious that an isolated study space at home will improve a young person’s homework. But this presumes high motivation for homework. As Cartwright and Hardie point out, it may also be just what is needed to enable a badly motivated child to spend time texting her friends which she could not do if she were working in the same room as her family.

The UK Coalition government is introducing changes in the NHS, probation service, school education and elsewhere at breakneck speed and with little sign of evidence-based policy. Its “What Works” centres are being established too late. It’s a tragedy that this book wasn’t available when our current ministers were undergraduates. I recommend it to all who want to see policy improve social practice.

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Michael Bassey is an emeritus professor of Nottingham Trent University and an academician of the Academy of Social Sciences.  His methodological text Case Study Research in Educational Settings has sold over 5000 copies. Read more reviews by Michael.

The Population of the UK explains the geographical differences in key socio-economic variables – like education, health, and work – that illustrate the UK’s stark social inequalities and how these affect everyone’s lives. Ludi Simpson thinks this book is commendably rich in quantitative evidence, although it has a subjective approach which emphasises human responsibility for maintaining or changing patterns of inequality.

The Population of the UK. Daniel Dorling. Sage. November 2012.

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Here is a tussle with social policy that will engage general readers, despite the exercises, key points and other aids characteristic of an undergraduate textbook. The Population of the UK is not a book of theory or methods, but an examination of spatial social patterns, that rails against inequality as much as it portrays it. In each chapter the reader is asked to consider maps and charts that show how people are socially sorted, with text that builds up a picture of unequal decisions and outcomes from cradle to grave. Our moves around the UK, as well as into and out of it, are shaped by our place and our jostling in this sorting, creating the human geography of Britain. This prolific author is a relatively young veteran of Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds, Sheffield and now Oxford Universities.

As one might expect from Danny Dorling’s track record, the chapter on inequality draws many of the strands together. “Literacy, numeracy and mortality distributions all closely follow these same geographical patterns” of high incomes and of poverty. Through bank records that include unearned incomes as well as wages, he charts patterns of wealth, finding that only in Central London does extreme poverty and wealth coincide in the same area.

While many authors would see public education as a great leveller, this book claims that examinations function to sort people in ways that last for the rest of their lives. Already by age 11 the Key Stage 2 tests sort children into sets, and more than half do not reach the grade 4 labelled as ‘doing well’. The examination system is organised to fail many and to pass some with flying colours that allow them to proceed to higher things, including higher incomes. Affluence is passed on from parent to child through educational support and through moving to areas with schools whose children are more likely to pass examinations. Nonetheless, the book provides a nuanced commentary, inviting us not only to recognise the stable geography of inequality that can be predicted from an early age, but also the deviations from it. Why does Merseyside West (and other mainly northern ex-industrial areas) do worse at GCSE than predicted at age 11, and why did children in Cornwall and coastal East Anglia do better? In this and sufficient other cases, the book does not provide answers, but leaves questions to consider.

Dorling demonstrates maps of teenage pregnancies that are the inverse of University entrants, and gives the education system in Britain a large responsibility for maintaining social sorting. “Current educational expectations and norms that are influencing so much else can be claimed to hold for many of the women who only have children later in life (or never at all). This is a group who are portrayed as having the most choices in life, but they often look, in aggregate, to have the least” (p. 27). For Dorling, social sorting determines the outcomes of the well-off just as much as the less well-off. Being ‘successful’ carries a lot of baggage too, and isn’t necessarily advantageous: “Poor education for the worst-off may breed complacency amongst the best-off. It is not hard to appear clever in countries where so many do so badly in education” (p. 95).

The lack of attention to academically popular debates may put off some seasoned academics. Where does the author stand on neighbourhood effects: is the persistent poverty of some places partly a result of their environment and aggregate social poverty, or simply the location of individuals who have been failed by the system? Perhaps it does not really matter to this book’s story; neighbourhood and individual effects are both consequences of systems that socially sort, resulting in the stark local inequalities described here. Systemic solutions involve social policies and moral aims that transcend the detail of their implementation through a balance of individual or neighbourhood investments.

Dorling asks his reader to consider how education would be different if it focused on teaching rather than sorting, with fewer graded examinations as he would clearly prefer. How does this affect the book itself? Each chapter has a conclusion, further reading, a key point summary. All its maps and charts are held as slides and data sheets at the book’s website. The chapters’ exercises are mostly group activities. Some require a large space (not a room with fixed seats); others demand role play in small groups, interaction between students or the creation of social policies (such as non-examined education). There are certainly no prescriptions for individual markable scripts, though no doubt someone practised at these could invent them as extensions to the exercises.

This is a book demanding action in a number of ways. It is commendably rich in quantitative evidence, but the author claims that it is not purely objective: he sets out his interpretation of the data in the context of his own railing against inequalities. The evidence is a call to arms against inequality’s human origins. We can do better, he says: just look at the abstentions in voting patterns. We can do better: which social policies would you pursue as an MP (or next time you vote for one)? We can do better: how will you use geographical data to help change people’s minds?

The 2011 census results were being released as the book was being published. They provide plenty of scope for students to check out and update Dorling’s social patterns of the UK. This is a book that encourages by example a do-it-yourself approach to data analysis in human geography, emphasising the analyst’s own responsibility to display evidence clearly, to openly construct interpretations of data, and to focus on human responsibility for maintaining or changing those patterns.

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Ludi Simpson’s demographic research has influenced understanding of race and migration and the use of demographic data in planning. He has been the president of the British Society of Population Studies for 2011-2013. Read more reviews by Ludi.

Justifying New Labour Policy presents a detailed empirical analysis of the ideas, language and policy of New Labour. Politicians often appeal to moral principles and arguments in their efforts to win support for new policy programmes. Yet the question of how politicians use moral language has so far been neglected by scholars, and Judi Atkins aims to fill this gap, with chapters on welfare reform, the Iraq war, and ASBOs. Reviewed by Andrew Crines.

Justifying New Labour Policy. Judi Atkins. Palgrave Macmillan. April 2011.

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Under Ed Miliband’s leadership the Labour Party has begun to question its raison d’etre. Whether it even knows it is another matter. Today’s Labour Party is highly divided yet it is striving hard to appear united in the post-New Labour world. The divisions are highlighted with various colours and shades being co-opted to represent various ideological splinters. Black, Blue, Red, and Purple are just a few. Moreover, Next Labour, Reassurance Labour, New Generation Labour, Blue Labour, and now One Nation Labour have been thrown about as possible new directions for a party which increasingly looks uncertain about its identify.

New Labour provided something of an enforced stable environment for electoral gain at the expense of debates and divisions. Under such conditions, Labour members built up frustrations which have now begun to spill over, with only Socialist Labour appearing absent from the debate. Such was the victory of the Third Way that the Left are the Croslandite social democrats of old, and the Right now comfortable confirming a Disraelite tradition as Labour’s future.

In this environment it is unclear how the Labour Party will be able to present itself with a clear vision in 2015. With such an uncertain future this important and timely book looks again at domestic New Labour policy to see if it can lend the current generation ideological wisdom. Judi Atkins’ thematic approach and theoretical framework provide a thorough interrogation of various policies; these being welfare, the human rights act, anti-social behaviour, and the defining impact of the Iraq War upon the New Labour project. Texturing these is a repositioning of Labour as a force for moral individualism vis-à-vis “New Labour’s core concept of equal worth was decontested as the moral equality of all individuals, regardless of such contingent factors as their gender, age, ethnicity, or sexuality” (p.84).

The author rightly goes on to argue that such intellectual weight draws more from liberal than socialist traditions because of a clear rejection of equality of outcome in favour of equality of opportunity. This is hardly surprising given the declining influence of traditional socialism in the Labour Party, both at constituency and Parliamentary levels since 1982.

By applying such a philosophical perspective upon the four areas under review, the author argues that New Labour essentially ‘made work pay’ by providing social welfare for the price of genuine participation on the part of the individual. The perception of endless universalism would be replaced by a commitment from both sides (individual and state) that a role had to be played for social welfare to actually prove beneficial.

In terms of the human rights act, the author argues this was an attempt by New Labour to ensure the British citizenry benefitted from rights under the ECHR. To do this, incorporation into the UK’s legal system was seen as a fundamental part of ensuring British individual rights were in line with the European social democratic model.

Again with anti-social behaviour, individual responsibility was key. This negated more structural factors which may contribute, for which New Labour can be critiqued. Yet across these three domestic spheres the author emphasises the importance of the individual over the state, which to some extent became relegated.

The Iraq War stands apart in the book for its more distinctive character. This is because it was justified using a different part of New Labour ideology connected to the Blair Doctrine and the changing circumstances in international relations compelled by 9/11. The author argues that the Iraq War was for Blair justifiable and compatible with the Doctrine because it “echoed the enlightened notion of self-interest that underpinned New Labour’s conception of community” (p.163). Put simply, the individualism that underscored New Labour’s approach to domestic policy can legitimately be extended to the international community in a way that implies intervention. As a result, Britain was compelled to remove Saddam because he was a retardant element in ensuring those interests on the international stage. This is, of course, a matter of substantial debate yet the author argues this is how the Third Way interpreted international relations.

The book concludes that success in these arenas should be measured asymmetrically. Although many of the liberal undercurrents informed these areas, their success rates were by no means universal. Of those, the author argues that “perhaps the most successful of New Labour’s argumentative strategies was its case for the New Deals”, which aimed to alleviate social concerns in the UK. This suggests the New Deal may still have relevance for One Nation Labour. In the other areas the author suggests New Labour may have been less successful; however, given the defining nature of the Iraq War, it is singled out for its controversial impact. Indeed, the drive to war may have been informed more by ideology and less about military intelligence, which for the author undermined Blair’s credibility and with it the entire New Labour project. This makes any wholesale return to New Labour highly problematic in the current Labour Party, even if some of the ideas remain of value.

The strength of this book is certainly that it provides the current Labour Party with a clear moral argument for and against New Labour policy. The book also provides an appropriately objective assessment, even when discussing topics which politicians and commentators may themselves be passionate about. Such a disconnect is necessary for any academic book, and this certainly is neither sympathetic nor condemning of the material. Indeed, the book is thoroughly intellectually located and uses a valid research approach. However, a caveat must be the inclusion of the Iraq War. Whilst the author clearly makes a strong case for inclusion, it cannot be denied that the main focus of the book is on domestic policy. This presents the reader with a slightly left field step, justified only by the author connecting them ideologically. Had the book included a chapter on Sierra Leone, then it may have been more balanced in terms of its studies. However this should not detract from what is a highly interesting and valuable book for any scholar of British politics.

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Andrew Crines is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Huddersfield, specialising in oratorical and rhetorical analysis across British Politics. Dr Crines has written a monograph entitled ‘Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership’, and is currently editing a volume with Dr Richard Hayton (Huddersfield) on Oratory in the Labour Party. Read more reviews by Andrew.

This introductory textbook examines the factors contributing to a political party’s fortune and identity. Authors Matt Cole and Helen Deighan examine Britain’s main political parties as well as ‘peripheral’ parties including the BNP and UKIP. Eunice Goes writes that Political Parties in Britain is a highly informative, accessible and up-to-date introductory text that should be included in all British politics reading lists.

Political Parties in Britain. Matt Cole and Helen Deighan. Edinburgh University Press. July 2012.

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This book offers an accessible, informative, up-to-date introduction to British political parties and to the British party system to both Politics A-level students and university undergraduates. In their well-structured and well-written book Matt Cole and Helen Deighan examine the role of political parties in the British political system in 21^st Century Britain and argue that despite the declining voters’ turnout and party memberships, political parties are still the main vehicle whereby the interests of citizens can be represented.

Political Parties in Britain starts with an engaging theoretical overview of the role of political parties in British political life. In the introductory chapter, Cole and Deighan explain the different roles that political parties play in democratic societies, in particular in Britain, whilst at same time they draw our attention to the crisis of political parties expressed in declining party membership and funding problems. Drawing on a variety of literature on the subject the authors argue that these phenomena are “a reflection of changing lifestyles and increasingly sophisticated policy preferences among the public” (p.14). This is a classic “demand-side” explanation of declining party membership, but recent work by Colin Hay (Why We Hate Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007) has drawn our attention to “supply-side” factors, namely, the marketisation of political parties, policy and ideological convergence, and rise of the cartel party, that complement the explanation of changing civic behaviour and political engagement. It would have been interesting to have read about how these “supply-side” factors as well as the communications strategies of the main three parties have transformed their ideologies, electoral strategies, and the profile of the “typical voter”.

The remaining parts of the book are divided in three sections devoted to the “major parties”, “minor parties” (the Liberal-Democrats are controversially included in this section), and “peripheral parties”. Each chapter offers and accessible broad overview of each political party that looks into history, ideology, popular support, main policies, funding, structure and organisation. The chapters are well-written and filled with interesting anecdotes. Each chapter is enriched with boxes with excerpts of quotes by politicians and journalists that help to illustrate in a lively manner a point made by the author. Undergraduate students will also appreciate the list of glossary terms, potential exam questions and recommended reading lists.

What is missing in the book is a greater analysis of how the parties relate to each other and influence and are influenced by their rivals. In the past 20 years, ideological convergence between the main political parties has affected electoral strategies, voting behaviour, in particular the (in)ability of parties (as the authors aptly put it) to enthuse voters to engage in party politics. For example, in the chapter about the Labour Party more could have been said about how Thatcherism informed the ideological transformation of the Labour Party. The chapter describes the policies that changed under Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair but does not draw any conclusions about the impact of Thatcherism on Labour’s ideology. Moreover, the definition of social-democracy presented in a box (p. 32) comparing social democracy and democratic socialism is problematic. The authors define social democracy as “embracing neoliberal principles and reducing government intervention in the economy”. However this is a contested definition as it is one which challenges in many respects social-democratic commitments.

By the same token the chapters on the Conservative Party and on the Liberal-Democrats do not analyse how the coalition is impacting on the ideology, policy approaches and electoral strategies of both parties. It is true that it is still early to write any definitive account on this issue, but there should be at least an explanation of the internal debates undergoing within the coalition parties. For instance, the book briefly discusses the ideological splits between old Gladstonian liberals and new Lloyd George liberals (p.153), but there is no account of how this split occurs in current Liberal Democratic internal politics and how this affects the electoral prospects of the party.

But these limitations should not obscure the interesting insights that this book brings to an undergraduate understanding of British party politics in the 21^st century. The greatest value-added is the analysis it offers of the smaller and peripheral parties and their impact on Britain’s multiparty politics. Typically, textbooks on British politics and political parties will devote just a few paragraphs to small and peripheral parties. By contrast, Cole and Deigham devoted four entire chapters to the smaller players of British political party life. Each chapter is rich with important facts about the different peripheral political parties, and makes a highly pertinent analysis of the impact of these parties in mainstream political life. For instance, the section dealing with Eurosceptic parties reminds us that “no more than six Conservative seats were lost because of a peripheral Eurosceptic” (p. 184). This fact is often overlooked in most media commentary on the impact of UKIP over Conservative Party’s electoral fortunes. This section also makes a compelling and fitting typology of peripheral parties that distinguishes “tortoise” parties from “hare” parties (p. 213). According to this typology, tortoise parties (like the Greens and UKIP) are “slow but persistent in their progress”, whereas hare parties (Respect, Referendum Party) experience “sudden and highly surges of energy, only to run out of steam or become distracted” (pp. 212-213).

The conclusion about the impact of peripheral parties in Britain’s party system and party political life is equally pertinent. The authors aptly remind us that peripheral parties have begun “to edge towards taking real power, becoming the official Opposition on councils” as well as “influencing policy in other parties” (p.213) and that today they “look every bit as serious as the Liberals and the nationalists did two generations ago” (p. 214).

For these reasons,  Political Parties in Britain is a highly informative, accessible and up-to-date introductory text that should be included in all British Politics reading lists.

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Eunice Goes is associate professor at Richmond University’s School of Arts, Communications and Social Sciences. She obtained her Ph.D in political science at LSE in 2002. Her research interests lie in political parties and ideologies. She is currently writing a book about the Labour Party under Ed Miliband to be published by Manchester University Press in 2015. Read more reviews by Eunice.

Accounting for Ministers uses the tools of modern political science to analyse the factors which determine the fortunes of Cabinet ministers. Utilising agency theory, it describes Cabinet government as a system of incentives for prime ministerial and parliamentary rule. Lord Wilson has reservations about the attempts to analyse the rich, complex, impossible lives of Ministers with the methods of political analysis used in this book but nevertheless finds it a useful addition to the sum of political knowledge. 

Accounting for Ministers: Scandal and Survival in British Government 1945-2007. Samuel Berlinksi, Torun Dewan and Keith Dowding. Cambridge University Press. 2012.

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Do not read this book if you are looking for titilating holiday reading about the private lives of Ministers. That is not what it is about. It is an ambitious academic attempt by two political scientists and an economist to answer questions about Ministerial tenure in the UK by analysing a large data-base of information about politicians over the period. To what extent does a Minister’s length of time in office depend on characteristics that are fixed when they are appointed? What effect do political events, in particular calls for the resignation of a Minister, have upon their tenure? What do the data on Ministerial careers say about the nature of accountability in British politics, and the relationship between Ministers and their Prime Ministers?

I read it through the prism of my own experience as a civil servant who worked with Ministers (including two Prime Ministers) for over half the period. I found myself wanting to leap in regularly and say: “Hold on a second, what about…” or “Isn’t there a key point…” or occasionally just “No!”. I have reservations about attempting to analyse the rich, complex, impossible lives of Ministers with such equations as:

“Tigf = α+Xigβ’ + Zigγ+ Bgδ’ + Pgfλ’ + εigf where Tigf is the spell of minister i, in government g, at the time of failure f etc

And yet I found the book intriguing as well as frustrating.

The analysis of Ministers’ characteristics is interesting though not perhaps as earth-shaking as the authors imply. They must have put huge effort into it. One learns for instance that Cabinet Ministers are older, on average by some nine years, than junior Ministers (p. 65). But it is not unusual in any profession for people at the top to be older than those still climbing the ladder. We are told that, in terms of survival, nothing much distinguishes the cohort of Ministers who have been to public school from those who have not (p. 72). After the first 18 months or so in office, those with Oxbridge backgrounds appear to be more durable but the authors cannot distinguish whether this is due to their education, their underlying ability or other factors such as socialisation (p.72). So far, so mildly interesting.

The authors are surprised to find that Ministers who have previous experience of serving in office are some 40 per cent more likely to lose office than those who enter government without such experience (p.74). But is this really surprising? Most Ministers in these highly pressured jobs begin to tire after, say, 7 or 8 years. It does not seem all that unusual for people in their later years to be more likely to leave than those still in hot pursuit of their ambition. The one finding which really does stand out is that, after roughly two months in office, female ministers have a higher chance of survival than their male counterparts. Whereas 75 per cent of women in government survive a full five-year term, just over 60 per cent of their male colleagues do so (p.74). The authors do not explore the reasons for this but it is an intriguing insight.

The analysis of resignations similarly contains nuggets. The authors have identified 91 ‘forced exits’ over the period (p. 121): that is to say, Ministerial resignations which took place quite separately from reshuffles and Elections and without the planning of the Prime Minister, because the Minister decided to quit or was forced to do so by controversy or scandal (p.117). One winces as the proximate reasons for these forced exits are squeezed into eight categories: personal error, departmental error, sexual scandal, financial scandal, policy disagreement, personality clash, performance and ‘other controversy’. But in real life Ministers often leave government for a mix of reasons. Where, for instance, would you put Profumo? The authors coded him as personal error because he had admitted to the Chief Whip that he had misled Parliament (p. 131). So I am wary of the resulting analysis. Even so, it is interesting that it suggests that by far the largest reason for forced exits was policy disagreement; that forced exits for policy disagreements were much more likely in Labour governments; and that the largest number of forced exits, for whatever reason, took place under Mr Blair (22) compared with Mr Major (16) and Mrs Thatcher (13) (p. 128-9).

There is similar intriguing analysis of the effect of resignation calls on Ministerial tenure. The likelihood of a Minister losing office prematurely roughly doubles if he or she faces one resignation call and roughly quadruples with a second resignation call (p. 165); and the likelihood of a Minister being forced out of office by a resignation call is higher if other Ministers of the same government have already faced similar calls (p. 168). Working inside government one knows all too well the feeling when the political world and the media have begun to smell blood around a Minister or government. It is fascinating to see this confirmed by this analysis.

So why my frustration? For all sorts of reasons. For instance, I am irked by the theory that the relationship between Prime Ministers and their Ministers is one between principal and agent (since when did agents sack their principal as Ministers did with Mrs Thatcher? and what about the important role of backbenchers?). I found twenty pages on the style of successive Prime Ministers flat-footed and not really integrated with the rest of the analysis. There were hypotheses and occasionally plain errors which betrayed an ignorance of how governments work. I longed for this analysis to be enriched by a historian or student of government who could throw light on the real life behind these conclusions. But I do not want to be churlish. I applaud the effort and technical ability of the authors and, for all my reservations, think their book is a useful addition to the sum of political knowledge.