Theoretical Tendencies Research Articles

Theoretical Implications of Recent Work in the History of American Society and Politics

For some three decades now American historians have produced considerable new work in social history. Yet one has difficulty identifying emerging conceptual and theoretical tendencies which arise from it. In a recent review of work over the past decade, much of which concerned social history, the editors found it appropriate to stress the virtues of diversity in that scholarship rather than to identify lines of theoretical development. While they lament the balkanization of American history which has occurred, they find in the articles under review little of an integrative quality which commands attention.' Writing about political history is somewhat better. Studies of popular voting have given rise to a scheme of six periods of party over the past two centuries. Legislative analyses have identified partisanship as the persistent theme of legislative action, which displayed signs of weakening only in the mid-twentieth century. Yet even here one would hope for a more extended set of integrative concepts. Both popular voting and legislative studies are increasingly drawn in upon themselves, undertaking ever finer analyses of voting behavior and the internal workings of institutions. The frequent assertion that legislatures reflect tendencies within the broader society has hardly led to detectable attempts to establish such links.2 In both social and political history the most significant theoretical potential lies in the connection that can be drawn between society and politics, between social change and the larger realms of public choice. But neither brand of history has moved very far in that direction. Social history has remained rather markedly aloof from constructing theory that would link its detailed studies with a larger social and political framework; and political history tends to gravitate toward assertions of the significance of the internal dynamics of formal political institutions, such as parties and administrative systems themselves.3 The potential

A Question of Dependency

The dependency perspective has become a major thrust, both in bourgeois and Marxist conceptions of development and underdevelopment in Latin America, but the distinctions between the two interpretations have been blurred. No unified theory of dependency yet exists, but a variety of theoretical tendencies tends to cluster in the literature on dependency. The discussion that follows differentiates between the bourgeois and Marxist interpretations by focusing on some fundamental weaknesses of dependency theory that emanate among those who utilize a Marxist analysis. In particular, there is concern that dependency theories ignore social classes and class conflict or that these theories tend to present mechanical schemes in which external rather than internal aspects are determinant. Further, it is argued that dependency theories are nationalist in ideology and advocate autonomous capitalist development rather than offering solutions or strategies for the transition from capitalism to socialism.

The Maximum-Likelihood Estimate for Contingency Tables with Zero Diagonal

Abstract Under a reasonable hypothesis about the distribution of trade shipments among a group of K countries, or of non-self-directed acts among any group of K individuals, the likelihood of obtaining a given table of observed frequencies n ij is where n i = n i 1 + ··· + n iK and m i = n 1i + ··· +n Ki are the total number of shipments made and received, respectively, by country i, N is the total number of shipments altogether, and P i and Q,i are the theoretical tendencies of country i to ship and to receive shipment respectively and satisfy ΣP i = ΣQ i = 1. In the attempt to test the correctness of the hypothesis, a critical problem is that of finding the maximum-likelihood estimates of the P's and Q's, that is, the values making L as large as possible. We give all solutions and show that, for the usual table of observations, the solution is unique and amounts to finding the value of α for which K − 2 – R 1 – … – R K is 0- where R i = - and setting

Some Theoretical Considerations regarding Fair Trade Laws

THE FOLLOWING paragraphs present nothing new from the point of view of the tools and concepts of economic theory. Rather the aim has been to take some of the ideas which have been developed by Robinson,' Chamberlin2 and others and to apply them to a specific problem. Throughout the analysis it is assumed that the reader is somewhat familiar with the writings of these authors. The problem to be considered is that of the long run theoretical tendencies of resale price maintenance programs. It is not necessary to recite for the readers of this JOURNAL the spread of Fair Trade Laws making resale price maintenance a legal act and the increasing number of manufacturers who are taking advantage of these laws. The importance of the problem is well understood. It seems best to proceed directly with the analysis.