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You have reached the academic Website of Lloyd Etheredge. This site (under construction) includes reference copies of earlier books; teaching notes; and other materials used for teaching. For convenience, the papers of the International Scientific Networks and Government Learning projects are on a parallel Website, www.policyscience.net.

A References page includes on-line reference copies of handouts and several articles (in the public domain) used in courses or discussed in lectures.

Books and Monographs

The Case of the Unreturned Cafeteria Trays (1976). [In one file. Click here to download only Figure 1].


• Foreward and Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• I. The Cybernetic Model
• II. Social Learning
• III. Psychoanalytic Theories
• IV. Dramaturgical and Role Theory ("All the World's a Stage")
• V. Humanistic Psychology
• VI. Specialized Theories
• VII. Field Theory: Different Strokes for Different Folks?
• VIII. Thirty Theories in Search of Reality
• Additional Readings & Analysis Topics

 

• A World of Men: The Private Sources of American Foreign Policy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1978.

  

  A comparative test, with multiple indicators, of five theories of personality influence on foreign policy advocacy and on perception. Quantitative data from a random sample of 126 State Dept. FSOs, with two comparison groups of OMB (domestic) professionals and mid-career military officers at the National Defense University. Also, a convergent study of American Presidents and Secretaries of State, 1898-1968, assessing personality differences and directions of policy disagreement. Variations in circumstances account for more of the difference in tendencies to advocate or oppose (for example) the use of military force, but personality predispositions can affect the decision in a range of situations such as US foreign policy decision makers have faced. Personality effects on policy and on perception tend to work in the same direction, so that highly ambitious, force-advocating males are more likely to perceive a world of dangerous, expansionist competitors (and vice versa).

  • Front material
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 - The Problem of Mistakes in Foreign Policy
  • Chapter 2 - The Context and Proesses of Personality Influence
  • Chapter 3 - The State Department Study: Descriptive Overview
  • Chapter 4 - Foreign Policy as Self-Expression
  • Chapter 5 - Projective Intuition and Emotion-Based Syndromes
  • Chapter 6 - Personality and American Foreign Policy, 1898 - 1968
  • Chapter 7 - Summary: Sources of Error and War
  • Appendix A: Methodology of the State Department Study
  • Appendix B: Statistical Tables for the State Department Study
  • Appendix C: The Possibility of Personal Bias
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index

  Government Learning: An Overview. Cambridge, MA: MIT Center for International Studies. September, 1979. Published in Samuel L. Long (ed.), Handbook of Political Behavior. (NY: Plenum Press, 1981), vol. 2, pp. 73-161.]

  
  • Introduction (pp. 1-5).
    • A Model for Theory Development: Medical Diagnosis Capability
    • Overview and a Preliminary Caution
  • Defining Learning (pp. 6-18).
    • Types of Individual Learning
    • Organizational Learning
    • Learning Agendas
  • Normative Issues (pp. 19-21).
  • Trends (pp. 22-24).
  • Motivation and Cognition - Individual Bases (pp. 25-64).
    • Three Images of Individual Learning
      • Fixed Behavior and Thought Patterns
        • Fixed Emotional Drives
        • Limited and Fixed Abilities and Intelligence
        • Fixed Personality Structure and Dynamics
        • General Observations
      • Passive Reactive Models of Human Learning
        • The Theory of Context Embeddedness
        • "Will This Be on an Exam?"
        • The Necessity for Leadership
        • Imitation of High-Status People
        • Avoiding Unpleasantness
        • Cross Reward System Interference
        • General Observations
      • Active Learning-Developmental Theories
        • The Prediction of Semiconfused Thinking
        • The Prediction of Massively Underutilized Capacity
        • The Need for Optimum Conflict
        • The Need for Outside Perspectives
        • Usable Memory as a Basis for Autonomy
        • General Observations
    • Selected Additional Issues
      • Induced Blockages and Aversions
        • Stress
        • Aversive Motivations
        • Resistances to Rethinking after Personal and Public Commitment
      • General Emotional Issues
        • Unconscious Motivation
        • Action Mood Theories
      • Cognitive Process Modeling
      • Physiology of Knowledge and Learning
  • Organizational Structure and Dynamics (pp. 65-77).
    • "Smart" Organization theory
    • Organizational Memory
    • Qualitative Differences of Public Bureaucracies
    • Intelligence Functions and Decision-Making Processes
  • The Washington Political Environment (pp. 78-84).
    • The Structure of Time in Washington
    • Lobbying
    • Accountability and Review Systems: Legitimacy Trade-Offs
    • News Media Effects
    • Uniqueness and Self-Transforming Capacity
  • Societal, World, and Historical Contexts (pp. 85-88).
    • Truth Theory
    • Secularization and Orthodoxy Theories
    • Government Learning: A Dependent Variable?
  • Problem Types (pp. 89-94).
    • No Problem
    • Technology- Dependent Problems
    • Resource-Dependent Problems
    • Known-Answer Problems
    • Unproductively Conceptualized Problems
    • Problems Amenable to Full Scientific Method
    • Strong-Norm-System Problems
    • Pluralist, Low-Norm-Salience or Rapid-Change Problems
    • Forecasting with Uncertain Precedents
    • Problems Unanswerable or Unposable from Brain Constraints
    • Secrecy Penetration Problems
    • Different People and Different Cultures Problems
    • Time-Constraint Problems
    • Incoherent-Policy Problems
  • Diagnostic Repertoires (pp. 95-96).
    • Overview
    • Illustrative Individual Diagnoses
  • Concluding Observations (pp. 97-102).
    • The Design of Institutional-Memory Capabilities
    • Increasing Effective Transitions and Competence of Political Appointees
    • Quality of Watchdog and Critic Systems
    • Dependency Theory of Motivational Blockage
    • Good Judgment
    • Overload and How to Cope
    • The Critique of Ideology and Overconfidence
  • References (pp. 103-125).

  Can Governments Learn? American Foreign Policy and Central American Revolutions. Elmsford, NY: Pergamon Press, 1985.

  

  An evaluation of major theories of American foreign policy decision making, and government learning/non-learning, using three return engagements with similar decisions across 3 decades. Develops a new framework to account for decision processes and system-level barriers to long-term learning and follow-through. Also discusses counter-learning as the successful CIA overthrow of the Arbenz regime in 1954, with about 110 people, was followed by two increases in orders of magnitude - the Bay of Pigs (1200) and the Contras (15,000) - that failed, in part because of learning by Central American revolutionaries.

  • Front material
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1 - Plans, a Battle . . . and Failure
  • Chapter 2 - Reality and the Policy Process: Nine Stories
  • Chapter 3 - Executive Branch Lessons, MONGOOSE, and the Missile Crisis
  • Chapter 4 - Blocked Learning in the Executive Branch
  • Chapter 5 - System-Constrained Learning
  • Chapter 6 - Dual-Track Decision Making and the American Foreign Policy System
  • Chapter 7 - Return Engagement: The 1980s
  • Index

  Politics in Wired Nations: Selected Writings of Ithiel de Sola Pool. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications, 1998.

  • Front material
  • Introduction
  • I. Political Communication
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 1. Introduction to Political Communication
    • 2. Changing Images: The role of Communications in the Process of Modernization
    • 3. Newsmen's Fantasies, Audiences, and Newswriting
    • 4. Deterrence as an Influence Process
    • 5. Contacts and Influence
    • 6. American Politics: Congress and Its Constituents
    • 7. Trends in Content Analysis Today: A Summary
  • Part II: Societal Impact
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 8. Foresight and Hindsight: The Case of the Telephone
    • 9. Communications Technology and Land Use
    • 10. The Mass Media and Politics in the Modernization Process
    • 11. Four Unnatural Institutions and the road Ahead
  • Part III: Technology, Policy, and Freedom
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 12. Tracking the Flow of Information
    • 13. The Public and the Polity
    • 14. Citizen Feedback in Political Philosophy
    • 15. Communication and Integrated Planning
    • 16. Technology and Confusion: The Satellite Broadcast Controversy in the U.N.
    • 17. From Gutenberg to Electronics: Implications for the First Amendment
    • 18. Policies for Freedom
  • Bibliography of the Works of Ithiel de Sola Pool
  • Index

  Humane Politics and Methods of Inquiry: Selected Papers of Ithiel de Sola Pool. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publications, 2000.

  • Front material
  • Introduction
  • Part I: The Analysis of Communications
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 1. Symbols, Meanings, and Social Science
    • 2. Content Analysis and the Intelligence Function
    • 3. Scratches on Social Science: Images, Symbols, and Stereotypes
  • Part II: Computer Simulation
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 4. The Simulmatics Project
    • 5. A Postscript on the 1964 Election
    • 6. The Kaiser, the Tsar, and the Computer: Information Processing in a Crisis
  • Part III: Forecasting
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 7. The International System in the Next Half-Century
    • 8. The Art of the Social Science Soothsayer
    • 9. Foresight and Hindsight: The Case of the Telephone
  • Part IV: Network Theory
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 10. Contacts and Influence
  • Part V: Social Science in Political Contexts
    • Editor's Introduction
    • 11. Some Facts About Values
    • 12. What Ferment? A Challenge for Empirical Research
    • 13. How Powerful is Business?
    • 14. Human Subjects Regulations on the Social Sciences
    • 15. What's Next? The Intellectual Legacy of Ithiel de Sola Pool by Lloyd S. Etheredge
  • Index

  Other Writing

  • "The Sciences of Man: How Man is Governed." Evening lecture at the Chicago Academy of Sciences, 1991.

  This page was last updated on November 5, 2001.