9401115 Karabel This is an award under the Grants for Improving Doctoral Dissertation Research Program. It is a study of policy experts, political intellectuals, and political change in the United States, 1935-1950, assessing the roles that experts and intellectuals played in mediating different policy outcomes. This will be accomplished through four case studies: 1) Social Security, 2) labor law reform, 3) national health policy, and 4) employment policy. Analysis will compare the context of policy debates and political culture in each of these domains, assessing the extent to which expert reformers and their allies among political intellectuals dominated debates in policy arenas. %%% This research will contribute to political sociology, evaluating the relative success of theories based on state- centered institutional approaches compared with those based on class-centered approaches. In addition to the scientific gains to be achieved by the research, this award will materially assist a highly promising student in completing research for the Ph.D. dissertation. Thus it contributes to the future scientific manpower of the nation and the thorough training of the next generation of social scientists. ***