James A. Robinson

SURVEY INTERVIEWING AMONG MEMBERS OF CONGRESS

Interviewing government officials and other public leaders is a special art. This article reports the experience of a researcher who has learned the art by practicing it. James A. Robinson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University, is engaged in a study of decision making. Some of the findings will appear in a book on the role of Congress in making foreign policy decisions.

Decision-making and coalition building: a review : William H. Riker, The Theory of Political Coalitions

The book’s specific purpose &dquo;is to construct, with the help of an existing general theory of coalitions (the theory of n-person games), a theory of coalitions that will be useful in studying politics&dquo; (p. vii). The author follows the familiar conception of politics as authoritative allocation of values by conscious action among and by groups. Politics is allocating, i.e., decision-making, and the process of decision-making is coalition-building. For the study of coalitionbuilding, Riker turns to the theory of games, that part of the theory which covers nperson games. From this source, he derives the following statement: &dquo;In n-person, zerosum games, where side-payments are permitted, where players are rational, and where they have perfect information, only minimum winning coalitions occur&dquo; (p. 32). This deduction is translated into the following prediction about the natural world: &dquo;In social situations similar to n-person, zero-sum games with side-payments, participants create coalitions just as large as they believe will ensure winning and no larger&dquo; (pp. 32-3). That this proposition is not obvious from common sense is indicated by the fact that another and influential model of political decision-making rests on a partially contradictory axiom, &dquo;That every government seeks to maximize political support&dquo; (Downs, 1957, p. 11; Dahl, 1961, p. 218). Riker is conscious of the need for the next step, verification of the predictions derived from the model. He adduces several kinds of evidence about the size principle. He cites and briefly reinterprets the experimental work of Caplow and Vinacke and Arkoff (p. 49). He reports suggestive but admittedly not compelling evidence from two &dquo;experiments&dquo; of his own (pp. 50-3). In general, however, Riker is discouraged about the possibilities of small group research and laboratory and experimental work for testing his predictions (pp. 51, 53). He is inclined to rely on other forms

Decision processes and defense policies in Great Britain and the United States: a review: Paul Y. Hammond, Organizing for Defense: The American Military Establishment in the Twentieth Century Franklyn A. Johnson, Defence by Committee: The British Committee of Imperial Defence, 1885-1959

The nearly simultaneous publication of two extensive works on major institutions for making national defense policies in the United States and Great Britain (2, 4) marks the occasion for a comparison of the books and of the institutions they analyze. Paul Y. Hammond of the Department of Political Science, Yale University, covers the development of the United States military establishment from 1903 to the present; Franklyn Arthur Johnson, President of Jacksonville University, reviews the British Imperial Defence Committee from its predecessors in 1885 through its demise in 1946