ABSTRACT
One of the most puzzling issues for many British students is how to account for the continuing dominance in North America of the set of ideas which can be collectively labelled public choice theory. The question arises because the ideas, which range from the economists' theory of pure public goods through to the pluralist notions of political science, have been subject to such a barrage of criticism in recent years. Compared with public choice theory, the so-called managerialist approach, with its neo-Weberian emphasis upon the independent power of bureaucracies, has had a much greater impact in Britain than in North America. More recently, the attempt by the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to focus upon the problems of teenage drinking has been interpreted as an attempt to increase the relatively low budget of the agency and resist the threat of incorporation into some more general substance-abuse agency.
