How Do We Judge Policies?

Political science has paid scant attention to the way that citizens judge public policy, assuming that citizens do so, or should do so, in ways familiar to academics themselves, depending upon which of the various schools of thought they endorse. This paper argues that approaching citizens’ judgement realistically requires attention to political psychology. Indeed, our conception of citizen judgement can be enriched by attention to research and theory in cognitive psychology and neuroscience. That work emphasises that much judgement occurs spontaneously and very rapidly, that it is involuntary and non‐semantic and that it depends upon the emotional impact of experience rather than conscious weighing of situations against explicit standards of assessment such as science, self‐interest or moral theory. A moral psychology for public life is sketched out, with implications for judgment by politicians.     

PLANNING AND CONTROLLING PUBLIC EXPENDITURE IN THE UK, PART I: THE TREASURY'S PUBLIC EXPEIWITURE SURVEY

The Treasury's annual survey of public expenditure is the central element in planning and controlling public expenditure. While its purpose remains similar to that in the 1970s, the principles governing its preparation, the methodology employed and the conduct of negotiations between the Treasury and the departments have changed with successive attempts to control both the total and programme allocations more effectively. This article examines and explains the process of preparing the survey, through the main stages from the decisions about the size of total public spending in the context of the government's macroeconomic strategy to the announcement in the Autumn Statement of the planned totals and allocations for the next three years and finally to the publication in February of the departmental Public Expenditure Chapters. Part I1 [Summer issue] analyses the effects and effectiveness of the survey processes, and discusses whose interests have been best served.     

Union Africaine des Arts et des Lettres

In many ways, the Belgian Congo leads the rest of Africa, ina really serious effort at the mingling of cultures. It is,for example, significant that despite Makerere, neither SouthernRhodesia nor Kenya, main areas of British Settlement, have anythingapproaching the Centre d'Etudes des Problémes SociauxIndigénes, on which we had a note in April, 1949. Thisarticle describes another Belgian initiative. It is by the founderof the U.A.A.L., who is also editor of its journal Jeune Afrique.The translation is by M. H. C. Willems.