ABSTRACT
In a liberal democracy, students of politics are bound to be preoccupied with the definition of freedom and with its actual expression in social and political life. Public and private governments meet in a continuum marked by partnerships, amalgamations, and substitution of roles— a continuum reminiscent more of feudalism than of liberalism. Political theory and political science have neglected the subject far too long. In political science, it was the concern of students of public administration, in economics it attracted specialists in the behavior of the firm as well as academic and practical people interested in business administration. The organization theorists are convinced that only by studying the process of decision-making in a wide variety of contexts using the methods of all the social sciences will it be possible to determine the variety of rational structural alternatives open to purposive associations of all sorts.
