INTRODUCTION.

The way in which land is regulated in the United States is undergoing fundamental examination and rethinking. The symposium on land policy in the U.S. for the "Policy Studies Journal" was organized around several of these issues and writers were asked to examine the major conceptual ideas evident in this re-evaluation. Specifically, the symposium was started with the premise that there were two trends most important to understanding present changes in the land policy arena. First, the land policy is being affected by the fundamental re-examination of intergovernmental relations presently taking place in the United States. Historically the system of intergovernmental relations has witnessed continual changes. But at certain times, the depth of these changes is greater than at others.