The central concern of Understanding Political Change is to explore the social and political sources of electoral change in Britain. From the Labour successes of the 1960s through the reemergence of the Liberals as a national force in 1974 and the rise and fall of the SDP to the potential emergence of the Green Party in the 1990s, Dr Heath and his collaborators chart the continually changing mould of British politics. Questions of the greater volatility of a more sophisticated electorate, of new cleavages in society replacing those based on social class, of the Conservative government's deliberate and inadvertent interventions to shape the emerging social structure, and of the influence which the political parties have been able to exert on public attitudes are all addressed with reference to data from the election surveys carried out after each general election since 1964.
Soviet Economic Thought and Political Power in the USSR examines the evolution of economic theory in the Soviet Union from uniformity under Josef Stalin to diversity in the post-Stalin period. The reasons for uniformity and diversity in Soviet economics are analyzed, along with the structure of this diversity, the paradoxes in its development, and the conditions under which it will continue. The connection between leaders of Soviet economics and the Communist Party rulers is also discussed. Emphasis is placed on one of the principal trends in Soviet economics in the post-Stalin period: mathematical economics. This book is comprised of six chapters and begins with a discussion on the development of the economic-mathematical trend in the USSR. The social environment in the Soviet Union is examined in macro terms, along with the role of various mutations among the economists and the institutionalization of such mutations, especially in the framework of the existing research institutes and universities. The book also considers the attitudes of various factions of economists such as reactionaries, conservatives, and modernizers toward the question of the limitation of the leaders' power and toward some areas of economics, such as problems of mathematical modeling and institutional economics, and toward the Marxist ideology. The final chapter highlights the confusing struggle among the various trends in Soviet economics and the ways in which this struggle is supported by the country's political leaders. This monograph will be of interest to economists, political scientists, politicians, and economic policymakers.