STUART S. NAGEL, a Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois, is Secretary-Treasurer and Publications Coordinator of the Policy Studies Organization.

Introduction
Evaluative or Prescriptive Reasoning
Choosing Among Public Policies
Individual Decision-Making
Allocating Scarce Resources
Advocating and Influencing Decisions
Mediating Disputes
Being a Representative
Assigning People to Tasks
Optimum Sequencing
SOS Evaluation
Explanatory or Predictive Reasoning
Explaining Public Policy Making
Explaining Individual Decision-Making
Generalizing from Cases
Generalizing from Facts
Relational Reasoning
SOS Causation

This volume is a culmination of years of development, and the first to introduce the concepts of superoptimum evaluative and explanatory reasoning. Stuart Nagel's new Quorum book will help academic and practicing attorneys in two important ways. First, by understanding evaluative reasoning, they will gain a better grasp of the appropriate behavior to be adopted if they wish to achieve certain desired goals. Second, by understanding the elements of explanatory reasoning, they will understand how and why decisions are reached.
Evaluative reasoning can take several forms. It can help decision-makers select from among several public policy choices. It can enhance individual decision-making and provide means to allocate scarce resources. It can also assist in advocating and influencing decisions, mediating disputes, representing divergent viewpoints, and in assigning people to specific tasks. Explanatory reasoning, on the other hand, will help explain public policy making, and assist users in generalizing from cases and facts, and in understanding relationships. The purpose of explanatory reasoning is also to explain why superoptimum solutions are infrequently adopted and why they are seldom successfully implemented. The use of both kinds of reasoning, says Nagel, are particularly important to those who want a better understanding and want to improve the legal system.