Charles E. Lindblom

Alternatives to Validity Some Thoughts Suggested by Campbell's Guidelines

The conventional scientific preoccupation with validation of knowledge is challenged: One might say that it itself lacks validity. Campbells endorsement of it in his article in this issue of Knowledge is the point of departure. Noting that Campbell assumes rather than argues the case for such a preoccupation, this article proceeds to examine the grounds on which it might be justified and the counterarguments. It also suggests what other kinds of activities social scientists engage in other than pursuing valid knowledge, and why it makes sense that they do.

Market and Democracy—Obliquely

Editors Note: Charles E. Lindblom of Yale University was designated the 10th Annual John Gaus Distinguished Lecturer at the Associations 1995 Annual Meeting in Chicago. Lindblom joined the company of previous winners: Herbert Kaufman [1986], C. Dwight Waldo [1987], James W. Fesler [1988], Aaron Wildavsky [1989], Frederick C. Mosher [1990], Norton E. Long [1991], Martha Derthick [1992], Francis E. Rourke [1993], and James Q. Wilson [1994]. The Gaus Award honors Lind-

Solving Problems of Bureaucracy Limits on Social Science

Remedies for the problems of bureaucracy take many forms, ranging from simply pruning existing organizations to creating new organizations or procedures. One remedy, increasingly popular in recent decades, is better information and analysis for decision-making. Bureaucracies work badly, it is often argued, because inadequate information and analysis are brought to bear on decisions. Typically the inadequacies are said to arise from the experience of workers within bureaucracies: their information and analysis are said to be anecdotal, fragmentary, and powerfully shaped by the perspective of their particular agency or bureau. Better information and analysis would be more impartial, more independent of particular perspectives, and it would be generalizable rather than fragmented and anecdotal.

Has India an Economic Future

1ET us get down to cases rather than generalize grandly. In India, food-grain output is the pivot on which economic de velopment swings. The most urgent demand of the popu lation is for more to eat; the most acute problem of economic stability is keeping food-grain prices from rising too sharply as money demand outpaces the supply of food; and the core of de velopment strategy has to be either an increasing provision of food-grains to satisfy new consumer demands in the urban and industrial sectors or deliberate retardation of industrial growth to head off the new demands. What is the record and prospect on food-grains? In 15 years of planned development, India has increased food grain production about 50 percent. Interrupted between 1961 and 1964, agricultural growth resumed with a 10 percent jump in production last year, the crop year 1964-65. The resulting gain in welfare has been partly drained away in population growth, so that the per capita gain in food-grain production is perhaps 15-20 percent instead of 50. Still, India has managed to put a poorly trained labor force, whose marginal productivity has often been estimated to be zero, to work with little capital on exhausted soil and somehow come up with a massive increase in product. We know why the gain was not more. Exhausted soil. Poor seeds. Little mechanization. Crude tools. Primitive plows, and bullocks too weak to pull heavier ones. Untrained farmers. Little capital investment in the land. The low repute of manual labor. Caste rules that block innovation. Traditionalism. Ignorance. Insecurity. Corruption. Apathy. But how in the face of these obstacles was any progress made at all? Perhaps between one-fourth and one-third of the growth in out put in the last 15 years came from new acreage brought under cultivation. That is a substantial share, and it has implications for the future to which we need to return. But what of the rest of the increase? Given the power of the obstacles, one would ques tion the possibility of greatly raising productivity. It should not have been possible. How was it done? Output requires input, and in many parts of the world it is encouragement of the use of chemical fertilizer that has

Usable Knowledge: Social Science and Social Problem Solving.

An agenda of basic questions about the impact of social science and research on real life problems. How social scientists are often crippled by a misunderstanding of their own trade.

Economics and the Administration of National Planning

T HE contribution of economics to national economic planning is obvious and overwhelming. Regulation of national output and employment requires that plan administration be interlarded with competence in fiscal policy, aggregative economic theory, and the economics of industrial organization, to mention only a few areas in which public administration draws directly on economics. The development of investment projects to implement planned production targets requires economic analysis of benefits and costs. The design of complex plans calls for calculation of capital-output ratios, intersectoral relations, and domestic savings. The market mechanism, a central concern of the economist, is equally significant in the duty of planning administration.

Politics, Economics and Welfare.

For most of this century, the habit of thinking about politics and economics in terms of grand and simple alternatives has exerted a powerful influence over the minds of those concerned with economic organization. Politics, Economics, and Welfare is a systematic attack on the idea of all-embracing ideological solutions to complex economic problems.