In the United States and other western nations, debates rage over whether welfare, medical care, educational programs, and many other aspects of public policy should be the responsibility of central govern ment, local government, or the private sector. In most nations, the issues of regional autonomy and decentralization are constantly in the news, with intensity varying from mild debate to open warfare. Less visibly, battles are continuously fought in the political arena over what groups should have the right to make decisions concerning the allocation of soci ety's resources. In response to these concerns, social scientists have focused consider able attention on the causes and consequences of centralization and de centralization in political, economic, and social organizations. Their analyses of centralization have been varied, ranging from systems that are quite small (e. g. , the family, the firm, and the community) to those sys tems that are very large (e . g. , the welfare state). While centralization is a concept of major concern in most of the social science disciplines, each discipline has tended to focus on centralization with a different set of interests. Economists have been very much concerned with the causes and the consequences of the concentration of economic resources. Polit ical scientists have long sought to understand the origins and conse quences of dictatorship and democracy. Sociologists have focused on inequalities in the distribution of power.

Back cover: In this work, Julia Rhyder examines the Holiness legislation in Leviticus 17-26 and cultic centralization in the Persian period. Rather than presuming centralization as an established norm, Leviticus 17-26 forge a distinctive understanding of centralization around a central sanctuary, standardized ritual processes, and a hegemonic priesthood.

State Intervention in Medical Care is a substantial and unique contribution to the ongoing debate about government participation in the delivery of medical care. It offers historical, cross-national comparisons of the performance of medical systems in Britain, France, Sweden, and the United States over most of the last century. J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Jerald Hage, and Robert A. Hanneman examine the impact of state intervention on a number of characteristics: mortality rates, the per capita cost of medical care, the social efficiency of the delivery of services, the introduction and diffusion of innovations, and the equality of the system—including not only regional or spatial equality but also equality in access to medical resources and equality in levels of health across social classes and income groups.

Exploring the capacity and impact of decentralization within European health care systems, this book examines both the theoretical underpinnings as well as practical experience with decentralization.

Since the end of the civil rights era in the sixties it has become increasingly clear that social and political conflicts cannot be resolved entirely at the national level. Struggles between residents of poor neighborhoods and local interest groups or public authorities present some of our most explosive domestic political problems today. This study seeks insight into these problems through an analysis of efforts during the sixties to organize the poor to pursue their interests in local decision-making processes. David J. O'Brien holds that both organizers and scholarly observers of the grass-roots movement have failed to understand properly the process by which interest groups are formed. Arguing that the demise of neighborhood organization cannot be attributed to supposedly unique social, psychological, or cultural characteristics of the poor, he develops an analytical framework that emphasizes the strategic role of incentives and organizational resource problems. This framework helps explain not only the failure of organizers in the sixties to grasp the problems of interest group formation, but also the assumptions that prevented them from identifying the source of their frustration. The author assesses the different approaches that have been taken to neighborhood organization, and outlines a model for future efforts. Originally published in 1976. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Over the years I have conducted numerous neighborhood studies, alternately focusing on specific geographic areas, public programs, and types of citizen actions. Because most of these efforts were done on a project-by-project basiS, it did not readily occur to me that these separate investigations also represented an aggregate statement about American neighborhoods: the con tinuing and complex relationship between public policy and neighborhood life. A suggestion by Lloyd Rodwin, the senior editor for this series, prOvided the opportunity to reexamine the various manuscripts, and to select (and in some cases, conSiderably edit) those bearing most on this overall theme. Thus each of the chapters in this book is a commentary on the potential uses of public policy for preserving the most cherished aspect of contemporary neigh borhoods-the social life within them. In some cases the policy actions may have only an indirect effect on neighborhoods. For instance, a whole portion of the book is devoted to the role of research in understanding neighborhood conditions; public policy is relevant because research, these days, has itself become a public policy enterprise. In other cases the policy effects are direct and pervasive-the support of citizen organizations, the delivery of neigh borhood services, and the provision of timely and relevant information to residents. I do not know whether the relationship between public policy and neigh borhoods is the same or as intimate outside the United States.