ABSTRACT
Which thinkers, besides those already mentioned, could have influenced the thought of Dahl and Lindblom in the postwar period, the years in which they produced works such as Politics, Economics, and Welfare (1953)? The view that reducing a conceptual world to one or just a small number of inspiring mentors amounts to twisting the facts and seems to correspond with the impressions that Dahl and Lindblom have of their own intellectual history. For instance, when reviewing the state of political science in the 1940s and 1950s, Lindblom notes its fragmented and divided character. When he began his career, there were no canonical works that could give his research an obvious direction. For this reason, the inspiration for Politics, Economics, and Welfare came, in his view, from issues such as the Depression and the New Deal (1997: 246).2 Conceivably, Dahl and he might have found inspiration in Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies
(1945),3 though, in Lindblom’s words, “I cannot recall whether our interest in that book preceded or followed our project, nor can I remember whether we much talked or thought about Popper” (1997: 246).4
