The theme of this collection of essays is the interrelationship between planning conceived as a technique of public economic policy-making and the working of political and administrative institutions in three West European states after the early 1960s. The emphasis is on the impact of the attempts to plan upon political and administrative relationships at national and regional levels and the constraints that they in turn imposed upon planning. An overall judgement is made on the aptitudes of the three countries for planning and on the implications for contemporary capitalism within liberal democracies.