that often reduce complex issues and decisions down to two simple choices. Related to this is the concurrent concentration of the U.S. mass communications media into an Oligopoly, which effectively controls who gets to participate in the national dialogue and who suffers a censorship of silence. Politics And Markets provoked a wide range of critical reactions that extended beyond the realms of academia. The Mobil Corporation took out a full page ad in The New York Times to denounce it. This helped the book achieve greater notoriety, which in turn helped it get onto The New York Times Best Seller list (a rarity for a scholarly work). Due to his criticism of democratic capitalism and polyarchy, and also for his seeming praise for the political-economy of Tito's Yugoslavia, Lindblom was (perhaps predictably) labeled a "Closet Communist" and a "Creeping Socialist" by conservative critics in the west. Marxist and Communist critics chided him for not going far enough. Originally, Dahl, too, disagreed with many of Lindblom's observations and conclusions; but in a recent work How Democratic Is the American Constitution? he also has become critical of polyarchy in general and its U.S. form in particular. Lindblom elaborated on his work in a 1982 Journal of Politics article. According to Lindblom, it is hard for politicians to implement change when those changes adversely affect those who control capital, because those who control capital create the conditions that determine the success of society. Unlike other actors, who must proactively advocate for and against policies, the owners of capital can by virtue of their importance for society shape public policy decisions. In The Market System: What It Is, How It Works, and What to Make of It (2001), Lindblom echoed and expanded upon many of his concerns raised in Politics And Markets. The most important of these is that while the Market System is the best mechanism yet devised for creating and fostering wealth and innovation, it is not very efficient at assigning non-economic values and distributing social or economic justice. Select bibliography Lindblom, Charles E. (1959), The science of 'muddling through'. Public Administration Review, 19, pp. 79–88. Lindblom, Charles E.; Braybrooke, David (1963), A strategy of decision: policy evaluation as a social process. Free Press. Lindblom, Charles E. (1965), The intelligence of democracy, Free Press. Lindblom, Charles E.; Dahl, Robert A. (1976), Politics, economics, and welfare: planning and politico-economic systems resolved into basic