ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the impact of technological change on public policy issues. It focuses on two effects of technological change which are clear in the socioeconomic arena. The effort can delay the return of politics to politics, but not prevent it in the end. The Soviet Union has an advantage, and that is the real reason for US efforts to tighten up on the transfer of militarily significant new technology. In the United States, the transition was effected without essential political radicalization. In that situation political leadership depends more than ever on the capacity for achieving and maintaining public support from publics which are both less homogeneous and better informed. Vertical channels of communication, between rulers and ruled, are better than ever. An economization of politics also took place in Western Europe. European unification using the vehicle of the Common Market did have important political aims.
