Evaluating Political Goods and Productivity

Abstract

Because political evaluation is both inescapable and desirable, it is too important to be left to partial and unexamined criteria. Even the most self-conscious studies of political performance have tended to rely on a limited and incomplete range of standards. We are arguing here for a more comprehensive typology of "political goods," with which both the standards and the performance of specific regimes and ideologies can be compared. Although we cannot, of course, deal with every cultural and structural nuance that may itself be valued, we can attempt to consider explicitly classes of goods that are associated with each of the different levels of analysis of the political system.