‘The decline of the Liberal Party was not due to the inescapable logic of history, or to theinapplicability of Liberal remedies to the issues of the day, but to avoidable mistakesmade by Liberals themselves.’1 This is the essence of a recent reinterpretation of the fallof the Liberal Party. The mistakes consisted chiefly of the 1906 Liberal—Labour electoralpact, which gave Labour significant parliamentary representation but was of little benefit to the Liberals: the split in the Liberal Party dating from Asquith's resignation in 1916 and the resulting electoral pact between the Lloyd George Liberals and the Conservatives: the failure of the Liberals to form a government in 1923: and the despair of the Liberal leaders after the 1929 election and their resulting failure to act as an independent party.

The public institutions that support scientific research repeatedly face dilemmas of choice. Limited budgets require a high degree of selectivity in choosing which activities are to be supported. The criteria for selection involve a great variety of factors. Yet the justification for the support of any scientific research is most commonly expressed in such terms as ‘scientific promise’ or ‘relevance’ to some social or economic objective. Such justifications have a great deal of credibility, yet it is too frequently assumed that they correspond to the criteria actually employed in the selective support of specific science activities.

The ability of humans to alter their behaviour in reaction to predictions made about it is listed but not discussed by Ake (in a recent issue of this Journal) as an objection to the possibility of producing testable general laws in political science [Claude Ake, The Scientific Status of Political Science’, n (1972), 109–15, p. 112]. McLean makes this ability the nub of his argument against the possibility of a comprehensive theory of politics and in favour of partial theories [Iain McLean, ‘Comment on “The Scientific Status of Political Science"’, II (1972), 383–4]. Unless the possibility of checking limited generalizations against subsequent behaviour is completely abandoned, however, behavioural reactions of the type cited by McLean seem likely to occur in response to limited as well as to general predictions and thus to constitute as much of an objection to partial theories as to a comprehensive general theory. Philosophically human free will is often cited as an insuperable obstacle to the development of a causal and statistical social science,1 so the question is central to any general discussion of the scientific status of political analysis. Since political scientists happily make limited generalizations, e.g. about voting and coalition behaviour, and at least loosely check them against subsequent behaviour without suffering apparent difficulties, the practical effects of these philosophic objections seem limited. In order to understand why, discussion must descend from the abstract level of free-will versus determinism to some of the conditions which limit behavioural reactions to previously formulated generalizations and predictions:

Since the two critiques [Iain McLean, Samual Postbrief, ‘"The Scientific Status of Political Science” — Two Comments,’ II (1972), 383–8] have little in common, I shall answer them separately beginning with McLean's. The main difficulty with McLean's argument is that he assumes that we know, or can know, that there cannot be a science of politics or, better still, laws of political behaviour as rigorous as the laws of the natural sciences. His assumption is supported by familiar arguments: men are not as passive and as homogeneous as silver nitrate; men have free will and could wilfully go against the predictions of the social scientist if only to show him that their behaviour cannot be predicted.

There is a continuing concern about whether politics can be made a science, revived in this Journal by Ake [Claude Ake, ‘The Scientific Status of Political Science’, II (1972), 109–15], McLean and Postbrief [‘“The Scientific Status of Political Science” – Two Comments’, II (1972), by Iain McLean, 383–4, and Samuel Postbrief, 385–8]. The word in other languages does not appear to elicit the same arguments: in French, for example, the expression ‘science politique’ is far less problematical because the word ‘science’ lacks both the theoretical and emotive implications which belong to the English word ‘science’.

In a recent Note in this Journal (‘Does Local Party Organization Matter?’, III (1972), 381–3) I reported evidence which suggested that in local elections party organization could have a major impact.1 This conclusion was reached by comparing voting movements in a marginal Newcastle ward, Walkergate, where Labour organization was very weak in 1970 but strong in 1971, with changes in Newcastle as a whole. In this Note a similar comparison is made, with evidence drawn from a Conservative ward, Heaton, in 1972, which shows even more striking evidence of organizational impact. Recent discussion in this and other journals about ward marginality and turnout2 is considered in the light of this evidence.