ABSTRACT
There are critical differences as well as similarities between the challenges confronting political science and political economy. It is designed to give the reader some understanding of the basic nature of politics and government and of the role of power in political processes. While almost any social science appears to have taken a more realistic approach to power than has economics, the lessons of political science appear to be particularly pertinent and less often noted than, say, those of psychology. The approach in the chapter icludes a pragmatic evaluation in the sense that the initial assumption is that any theory must be judged against its usefulness in developing policy with which to confront perceived public problems. Whatever else these efforts may have accomplished, they have not customarily focused directly on how resource allocation operates— by what criteria and with what results— in sufficiently precise a manner to permit evaluation of economic performance or confrontation of the policy problems the economy must face.
