Dealing in Votes

The form of the book is of a series of essays in which the details and consequences of the unintended consequences are worked out for different topics. One of the most impressive of these is the critique originally published in French of John Rawls' famous book, A Theory of Justice. Boudon shows convincingly that the fundamental error of Rawls' whole approach is that it treats society in general as just a particularly large form of complex organization. But anorganization, however complex, has degrees of central direction and control that are utterly absent from society at large, even society in its most totalitarian forms. Rawls' design for a just society leaves no room for the problem of perverse effects, and this perverts any attempt to realize his notions of justice. No translator is named, and therefore one must suppose that the lucid and idiomatic prose in which the book has been translated is the responsibility of the author. The material is a little technical in places, but nothing beyond what is in the armory of any reasonably well trained social scientist. The only point on which I felt provoked to argue with the author was over his suggestion that a large number of seemingly competing ways of explaining social events could be simultaneously endorsed by treating them methodologically while suiting them to different phenomena and to different kinds of explanation a social scientist may want. It is possible that ontological conflicts between sociologists are themselves a perverse effect of the society's need to undertake self-scrutiny and understanding because of the loss of Gemeinschaft (a perverse effect of industrialization). But one can also see these as competitors for the shaping of society at large and hence involving not just theoretical conflicts but also power struggles. It would then become important to make choices and argue rationally between the alternatives at the ontological, as well as the methodological level. I. C. Jarvie York University, Toronto Dealing in Votes: Interactions between Politicians and Voters in Britain and the USA Iain McLean Martin Robertson 1982 209pp. £15.00 (£5.95 paper

Political economy · Political science · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology · Public Administration

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