Review Essay: Arenas of power - Theodore J. Lowi

Some books are more keenly anticipated than others. To say that we have been waiting for the appearance of Theodore Lowi's Arenas of Power for some time would be an understatement, since the book was first promised in a footnote to Lowi's 1970 paper 'Decision Making vs Policy Making: Toward an Antidote for Technocracy.' For those of us who count themselves as among his intellectual followers - and friends (for Ted has a disarming ability to coopt and charm his critics!) - the non-appearance of Arenas of Power had become an in-joke. Lowi himself(2009: 14) refers to it as 'the best known unpublished book in political science'. Dan Ferguson, his son-in-law, went so far as to craft from wood a faux book that could be placed on the bookshelf.