1 The seminal essay on ‘The Crisis of the Tax State’ by the pre‐Harvard vintage Schumpeter (1919) is absent, as are Jules Dupuit's writings on public works, or those of Raymond Boudon on effeets pervers. While John Rawls clearly deserves the rather lengthy treatment he is granted, other non‐economists like Wildawsky or Richard Rose might usefully have been included in this survey. Finally the absence of Arthur Laffer and his now famous curve is quite astonishing.

2 The so‐called politometrics, some empirical results of which are described in Bruno Frey, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 1979–2. Interestingly enough, some research done in France by J. ‐D. Lafay on East European countries suggest that the methodology seems applicable even in non‐democracies.