bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Mexico's One-Party System: A Re-evaluation
Authors: Padgett L. Vincent
Published: May 2006

Because Mexican politics since the Revolution of 1910–17 have operated mainly within the framework of a one-party system and because in the past strong men have sometimes occupied the presidency, writers in the United States have tended to treat the system as authoritarian. Emphasis upon presidential rule and the corollary explanation of the role of the Revolutionary Party as nothing more nor less than an instrument of presidential domination have served to create an oversimplified picture of presidential power. It is the purpose of this paper to outline at least four checkpoints on which the authoritarian interpretation seems to have involved miscalculation of the realities of the Mexican political system. The nature of membership in the “official” party, the degree of centralization within and without the party structure, the threefold role of the party within the political system, and the ideological bias of the political elite all seem to indicate the necessity of a re-evaluation of the politics of the republic on our southern border.
“Responsible Government,” Separated Powers, and Special Interests: Agricultural Subsidies in Britain and America
Authors: Pennock J. Roland
Published: May 2006

Political scientists today are more cautious than they used to be about comparing forms of government and evaluating their virtues. Moreover, in such comparisons as we do make, we rightly lay more stress on party systems and even more informal aspects of government than on constitutional forms. Yet much of what is said by way of comparing and evaluating the disciplined and programmatic type of political party with the American type carries an undertone of the old arguments. Virtues once attributed to the British style of Parliamentary government, honorifically tagged “responsible government,” are now associated with “party government,” while the evils earlier (and still) attributed to the separation of powers are now frequently laid at the door of a weak party system. To be sure, many who criticize the American constitutional and political arrangements for irresponsibility make no claim that the British system is superior.
The Neo-Behavioral Approach to the Judicial Process: A Critique
Authors: Mendelson Wallace
Published: May 2006

A generation ago “legal realists” led by Jerome Frank and Karl Llewellyn dismissed law as a myth—a function of what judges had for breakfast. The important thing, they insisted, was what a court did, not what it said. No doubt this was good medicine for the times. Yet, however broad Frank's 1930 language, later on the bench he loyally acknowledged the compulsive force of legal rules. As a lower court judge, he decided cases in accordance with what he found the law to be—and on occasion he made clear in addenda what he thought it ought to be.

Llewellyn, too, changed his mind. In 1934 he had said, “The theory that rules decide cases seems for a century to have fooled, not only library-ridden recluses, but judges.” Seventeen years later he confessed that his earlier behavioral descriptions of law contained “unhappy words when not more fully developed, and they are plainly at best a very partial statement of the whole truth.”

In short, after their initial enthusiasm, these and other legal realists recognized that there is and must be law in the judicial process, as well as discretion. This was inevitable, for society can no more dispense with order and coherence than it can deny the demands of changing circumstance. We must have stability, yet we cannot stand still; and so the legal system inevitably has both static and dynamic qualities. Holmes put it in a thimble: “The … law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the other, which have not been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow.”
The Canadian Senate: Politics and The Constitution
Authors: Albinski Henry S.
Published: May 2006

“… [M]ost Canadians who are aware of the subject,” says the author of a recent essay, “feel that the [Canadian] Senate has outlived its usefulness and has become a superfluous appendix to the political system. Indeed, the prestige and authority of the Senate has probably fallen to its lowest level in Canadian history.” Considering the disparagements which have been tossed at the Senate, the allusions to “… genial old gentlemen who … live on, undisturbed, meeting a few weeks in the year, bumbling and grumbling at the government, making a few good speeches, and drawing an annual indemnity [now $10,000] for less work than any other citizens of Canada,” this was a restrained indictment. Nevertheless, in 1961 and early 1962, the Senate was also being extolled in some quarters as the keeper of Canada's conscience. Yet others saw it as a crafty player of rank politics and as an infringer on constitutional propriety. The Prime Minister threatened Senate reform and the injection of Senate misbehavior as an election issue. The Senate had seemingly come to life, and in so doing thrust itself into the center of Canadian political controversy. The purpose of this article is to examine the problems surrounding the position of the Senate in the Canadian political system, through an analysis of the agitated discussions of 1961-62.
If, as Verba Says, the State Functions as a Religion, What Are We to Do Then to Save our Souls?
Authors: Lipsitz Lewis
Published: May 2006

Sidney Verba has argued that the state in modern societies may function as a religion. He is certainly not the only one to adopt such a point of view. But his work is especially notable in that he has strengthened the argument by welding together a theoretical perspective that seems to be derived from structural-functional analysis and a good deal of varied and interesting, though not crystal-clear data. Verba's discussion of the functions of the state is most explicit in his article on the Kennedy assassination—in which he seeks to interpret the many studies of public reaction to the President's death. In this article, appropriately titled “The Kennedy Assassination and the Nature of Political Commitment,” Verba attempts to go to essentials. He speaks of the deeper levels of political involvement made evident by the psychological crisis of the assassination. Repeatedly he employs the term “primordial” to describe the character of the underlying political commitment to the nation-state and its symbols in modern societies—the foremost of these symbols in America being the President. But let Verba speak for himself since he is explicit about these matters: first, on the nature of public reactions and the larger meaning of those reactions:

The Kennedy assassination … illustrates the close meshing of the sacred and the secular in the top institutions of a political system. In a society in which the formal ideology is officially secular … the close linkage of religious institutions to the events of the crisis weekend is particularly striking … a larger proportion of the American population responded to the assassination with prayer or attendance at special church services and religious ceremony and imagery abounded in the events of the weekend.
Power and Personality: The Appeal to the “Right Man” in Democratic States
Authors: Spitz David
Published: May 2006

At least from the time of Socrates, in whose ideal state philosophers would be kings, the appeal to the right man has played a major role in systematic reflections on the control of power. For if the right man does rule, Socrates argued, neither institutional nor other controls—e.g., law—need to be employed. Because he is the right man, he will do the right things: he will rule wisely; he will establish or, where already established, he will perpetuate, that order in human affairs that best approximates or achieves justice and secures liberty.

The problem, then, for those who hold this view in democratic states, is not whether the right man should rule, but how he is to be discovered and how he can be assured the reins of political power. Or, to formulate the problem in negative terms, how can we identify and exclude from power those who are the “wrong” men, those who are likely to rule badly and unjustly, those who—because they are, for example, “authoritarians” at heart—may if they achieve positions of power violate the very principles of the democratic state and thereby endanger its existence?
The Significance of Void Ballots in West German Elections
Authors: Stiefbold Rodney P.
Published: May 2006

In the 1961 federal election six per cent of West German voters failed to cast two valid votes under the single-ballot, two-vote German electoral system: 1.3 million voters cast their party list vote invalidly, while almost one million failed to vote validly for a district candidate. Since 1949—and 1953, when the present single-ballot, two-vote system was introduced —the development of the invalid vote has been as shown in Table I.

Not only has the total invalid vote increased steadily, despite the counter-movement of first and second vote trends; it has also been exceptionally high in comparison to the Weimar Republic, Imperial Germany and other Western European countries. Thus in pre-Hitler Germany the invalid vote seldom exceeded 1 per cent of the poll. In postwar parliamentary elections in Scandinavia it has not yet exceeded 1 per cent while in Britain, Switzerland and Austria it has approached 2 per cent only in rare instances. In Fourth and Fifth Republic France spoiled and blank ballots have been constant at about 3 per cent of the poll. Only in isolated cases—for example, where compulsory voting is combined with a deep-seated social and politicalmalaise, as in Belgium—has the invalid vote been comparable in proportion to that of Western Germany.
The Party Whip Organizations in the United States House of Representatives
Authors: Ripley Randall B.
Published: May 2006

In the literature on political parties in the United States Congress two points are usually stressed. First, it is said that the political party label lacks a precise programmatic content because “party government” in the British sense is absent in the American Congress. Second, however, it is contended that the party label is the single most important and reliable attribute in predicting the voting behavior of a Senator or Representative.

Between these two contentions lies a sizeable area of unexplored territory. If party is the best predictive device in analyzing voting behavior in Congress then, despite the lack of “party government,” the party machinery in both houses must have effects that deserve study. Professor Huitt has suggested the necessity and importance of this kind of study: “… the preoccupation with reform has obscured the fact that we have no really adequate model of party leadership as it exists in Congress, and that none can be constructed because we lack simple descriptions of many of the basic working parts of the present system.” Huitt himself and a few others have filled some of these gaps.
Tocqueville: Neutrality and the Use of History
Authors: Zetterbaum Marvin
Published: May 2006

It is not uncommon for a major writer to be seen by his critics in widely divergent, even contradictory terms; Alexis de Tocqueville shares this fate. To the familiar causes of controversy, Tocqueville added his own—a veil of neutrality or objectivity concealing his deepest views. The publication in 1835 of the first part of Democracy in America thus gave rise to an effort, still continuing, to discover Tocqueville's true intent: behind the façade of neutrality does he favor one social system, aristocracy or democracy, over the other?

On the one hand, does he not reveal in his writings the ineradicable bias of his aristocratic origins? Was he not hostile to the openended, unformed, and unforeseeable consequences of the democratic revolution? Did he not intend by his criticisms of the democratic system to “carry the reader to the point of wishing for its destruction?” Was not the liberty he defended a “restricted liberty, protecting a small group of privileged people who were really independent so far as economic circumstances went?” Was it not “a liberty for believers, [a] liberty for owners…an aristocratic liberalism?” Did he not believe that “the mass of men should remain bereft of political power?”
Montesquieu on Love: Notes on The Persian Letters
Authors: Kettler David
Published: May 2006

Among students of political philosophy, Montesquieu is chiefly honored as author of The Spirit of the Laws. His earlier important work, The Persian Letters, is more often cited than read and is considered primarily as a collection of fragments, some of which may be useful for clearing up some disputed point or other in the interpretation of the magnum opus. In these notes I propose to treat it as a meaningful whole—as a book which in fact has the theme which it purports to have, the theme of love and its relation to social institutions. This is not an altogether novel approach, even among political scientists. The late Franz Neumann, for example, has pointed out the importance of this theme in his introduction to the Hafner edition of The Spirit of the Laws. Nevertheless, I believe that Montesquieu's conception of love is sufficiently important and the implications of his conception sufficiently interesting, so that a closer analysis will not be redundant.
Making the Japanese Constitution: A Further Look
Authors: Williams Justin
Published: May 2006

American scholars generally take a dim view of the 1946 Constitution of Japan. Because it carries the imprint of a foreign political philosophy and, more particularly, because it was allegedly imposed through the willful and covert action of an American field commander, that instrument, they feel, is off key and should be rewritten. Their case was well stated some years ago by Harold S. Quigley, in these words:

… the SCAP draft Constitution … has been regarded widely in Japan as a foreign imposition not wholly suited to a people of very different legal and social traditions…. [It was] written hastily by men without adequate knowledge of Japanese civilization and with little regard … for the national right of self-determination…. The decision to prepare a constitution was made by General MacArthur, who interpreted directives from Washington liberally. These directives … did not require SCAP to write a new constitution…. they specifically laid down … that the new government should be established “in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”
Disillusion and Regeneration: The Quest for a Discipline
Authors: Truman David B.
Published: May 2006

A discipline, at least to the initiated, is known more by the questions it asks than by the answers that it provides. For questions indicate goals or aspirations that answers may not reach. At certain periods, however, a field of knowledge may be more conspicuously characterized by the controversies that occur among those who work in it. When these take the form of debates over the adequacy of particular answers, as determined by agreed, even though sometimes imprecise, criteria of assessment, they are unlikely to be highly prominent, except for the immediate participants. When, on the other hand, such controversies extend to the standing of the questions asked and place in dispute the means of appraising answers, it becomes obvious to all that something is happening that has implications for the entire field. Clearly the discipline is undergoing redefinition or at least an attempt at redefinition that may sharply alter its meaning.
Party, Region and the Dimensions of Conflict in the House of Representatives, 1949–1954
Authors: Marwell Gerald
Published: May 2006

Recent publications indicate a continuing interest among political scientists in both the aggregating of discrete acts of legislative behavior into underlying dimensions and the empirical specification of voting blocs. The latter interest is served by the former, as aggregation often producs sets of dimensions useful for descriptive purposes, as well as aiding other types of analysis. Recent studies include MacRae's work on the House of Representatives using various forms of scaling, Alker's paper on voting patterns in the sixteenth General Assembly of the United Nations using factor analysis, and Grumm's work on the Kansas legislature using another form of factor analysis (Q-technique).

As these papers have described in some detail, the technique of factor analysis is particularly useful in producing empirical dimensions which are unitary, stable, exhaustive and parsimonious.
Oppenheim's Defense of Noncognitivism
Authors: VanDeVeer Donald
Published: May 2006

In his recent book, Moral Principles in Political Philosophy, Felix Oppenheim provides a useful examination of the assumptions of well known figures in the history of political philosophy concerning the logical status of moral principles. Classifying them as cognitivists (if they view fundamental moral principles as either true or false) or noncognitivists (if they view moral principles as neither true nor false), Oppenheim attempts to exhibit the inadequacy of the cognitivist point of view and, importantly, the adequacy of the noncognitivist position. My critique aims at demonstrating the inconclusiveness of Oppenheim’s arguments against cognitivism. Oppenheim presupposes the availability of a plausible and workable criterion for determining when a sentence counts as a statement (statements are for Oppenheim entities which are true or false and, thus, “cognitively meaningful”), but he fails to provide any attractive candidate for that position. Further critical discussion revolves around the following related questions: Is there adequate positive support for the noncognitivist view? Does it allow for the rationality of fundamental moral commitments? And can Oppenheim really justify his case that, far from being irrational or pernicious, noncognitivism is naturally associated with certain humanistic ideals, such as toleration of those of differing moral and political viewpoint?
Early Liberal Roots of Feminism: John Locke and the Attack on Patriarchy
Authors: Butler Melissa A.
Published: May 2006

The seventeenth-century conflict between patriarchal and liberal political thought grew out of a shift in views on the nature of man and society. Sir Robert Filmer insisted that the king ruled absolutely, the divinely ordained father of his people. Sidney, Tyrrell, and Locke grounded political power in an act of consent on the part of free-born individuals.

To what extent did these changing beliefs about human nature also bring about new perspectives on the nature, role and status of women? While this aspect of political theory has usually remained unexplored, it was an important critical weapon in the battle between patriarchal and liberal thought. Patriarchal theorists, relying on the Book of Genesis, could assign women to an appropriately subordinate place in family and society. Consent theories, though, as Filmer noted, depended for consistency on the inclusion of women (as well as children) in the formation of civil society. Early liberal writers including Tyrrell and Sidney were unwilling, then, to abandon patriarchal theory in all its forms and insisted that the consent of the “promiscuous multitude” of women and children was unnecessary. John Locke never specifically dealt with the role of women in the formation of society. Thus, he seemed to have escaped some of the difficulties of finding a place for women consistent with both traditional views of female status and newer views of human nature. Where Locke did speak directly about women, he often departed from traditional views in favor of an individualist approach. Examples of this may be found in his comments on marriage, education and in his discussion of female preaching.
Metaphor and Political Knowledge
Authors: Miller Eugene F.
Published: May 2006

Since the language of political inquiry seems to be inescapably metaphorical, the question necessarily arises as to how metaphors of various types, including models, enter into the composition and expression of political knowledge. The solutions that have been most influential in contemporary political science can be called the verificationist and constitutivist views of political metaphor. While both views contain important elements of truth, there are fundamental difficulties in each that require the search for a more satisfactory view. An alternative view of metaphor and political knowledge is developed by reference to four main problems: Why is political speech metaphorical? How do metaphors make political things manifest? How are political metaphors tested? and Are metaphors indispensable to political expression and political knowledge?
Religious vs. Linguistic vs. Class Voting: The “Crucial Experiment” of Comparing Belgium, Canada, South Africa, and Switzerland
Authors: Lijphart Arend
Published: May 2006

For the purpose of determining the relative influence of the three potentially most important social and demographic factors on party choice–social class, religion, and language–a comparison of Belgium, Canada, South Africa, and Switzerland provides a “crucial experiment,” because these three variables are simultaneously present in all four countries. Building on the major earlier research achievements in comparative electoral behavior, this four-country multivariate analysis compares the indices of voting and the party choice “trees” on the basis of national sample surveys conducted in the 1970s. From this crucial contest among the three determinants of party choice, religion emerges as the victor, language as a strong runner-up, and class as a distant third. The surprising strength of the religious factor can be explained in terms of the “freezing” of past conflict dimensions in the party system and the presence of alternative, regional-federal, structures for the expression of linguistic interests.
The Roots of Interprovincial Inequality in Education and Health Services in China
Authors: Lampton David M.
Published: May 2006

The key hypotheses which find support in this study of the determinants of variations among the provinces of China in the provision of health and education services are: (1) that interprovincial variations in the provision of educational and health services can be explained largely by economic and ecological factors; (2) that specific levels of education and various types of medical services are responsive in different ways to changes in particular variables. For instance, the survival of cooperative health programs in the 1970s is much more sensitive to alterations in agricultural production than is the urban hospital system, which is much more dependent upon urban economic growth. This refines Dye's findings and makes them more applicable to Third World systems. (3) Central policy choices are therefore important because choices relating to investment strategy and program structure ultimately determine the relationship between the economy and the programs.
A Note on the ‘Equilibrium’ Division of the Vote
Authors: Spafford Duff
Published: May 2006

This research note proposes a model in which an “equilibrium” share of the vote figures as a measurable quantity. Variants of the model are fitted to election data for the U. S. House of Representatives.
Political Periods and Political Participation
Authors: Beck Paul Allen , Jennings M. Kent
Published: May 2006

Analysis of complementary data sets, a 1965–1973 panel study of young adults and their parents and the 1956–1976 Michigan presidential election series, shows that the late 1960s and early 1970s were a deviant period where participation in American politics was concerned. During this time, the young were more active politically than their elders, substantially increasing their participation from previous years, and Americans on the ideological left participated more than those at other positions along the ideological continuum. While this surge of left-wing activism was not restricted to the young, it probably accounts for the relative participation advantage enjoyed by the young. These findings challenge the “conventional wisdom” about patterns of participation in America. They are best explained by recognizing that the opportunities for political action among the American citizenry are not fixed, but instead vary with changes in the political stimuli across different periods.
Ideological Interpretations of Presidential Elections
Authors: Levitin Teresa E. , Miller Warren E.
Published: May 2006

This article presents a new way to define and measure the ideological sentiments of the mass electorate. Citizens are classified in terms of their evaluations and perceptions of liberals and conservatives. The measure is then used to assess the impact of ideology on the 1972 and 1976 presidential elections, to explore citizens' applications of ideological labels to parties, issues, and presidential candidates, and to describe the relationship between ideology and the potential for party realignment as well as meanings of issue voting.

Although many Americans use ideological labels in ways that suggest only a partial understanding of the terms and their implications, those labels have political significance for their political attitudes and election-day decisions.
Reply To Rothman
Authors: Moore Barrington
Published: May 2006

Stanley Rothman is laboring under a series of misapprehensions. What appears to give them some minimal coherence is evidently the curious conviction that in criticizing Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy he must cope with the work of a disillusioned former fellow-traveller. In discussing my alleged fundamental assumptions, toward the end of his essay, Rothman asserts:

Moore's writing indicates that he is one of that generation of scholars to whom the Soviet Revolution once represented the hope of a radical transformation of mankind. Disillusioned by the results of that Revolution, he has now, with the mellowing of the Soviet regime, been able to justify his earlier enthusiasm for it by arguing that it has been no more repressive than other alternatives. (31,506.)

Upon reflection I think I am entitled to take this as a compliment to my efforts at critical detachment. In my books on the Soviet Union I must have restrained my hostility to the point where my critic could succeed in discovering what he takes to be evidence of enthusiasm. At any rate, his discovery is a completely original one!

After this discovery Rothman goes on to attribute ideas to me that he probably got from reading the works of my very good friend, Herbert Marcuse. For example, so far as I remember, I have never used the expression “non-repressive society,” which has become in a way Professor's Marcuse's trade-mark. (“Less repressive” is quite another expression, which I do use.) Nor did I use the expression “free non-repressive society,” preferring to say “free and rational society,” on the page cited by Rothman in this same paragraph. Indeed, to continue examining this passage as an example of Rothman's criticism, I have never been sanguine about “revolutions in the third world as embodying hope for the future” of mankind, much as such revolutions against American attempts to prop up various forms of political landlordism do seem to me justified. But perhaps Rothman is simply mixed up, because I doubt very much that either Marcuse or I would ever speak about “the goal of a compulsionless society!”
Political Stability of Two-Party and Multiparty Systems: Probabilistic Bases for the Comparison of Party Systems
Authors: Midlarsky Manus I.
Published: May 2006

The stability of the American two-party system is examined from 1866 until 1980. Following the approach of Stokes and Iversen (1962), restoring forces are posited for presidential elections, but restraining forces also are suggested for congressional elections, leading to an equilibrium between the two in elections to the House. Points of maximum restoration in presidential elections are derived using autocorrelations, and these points suggest a pattern of second-term Republican victories every 28 years beginning in 1872.

Equilibrium properties of the American two-party system lead to the twin criteria of representation and restraint in multiparty cabinet coalitions in order to achieve cabinet durabilities on the order of those found in two-party systems. Minimum entropy-minimum winning coalitions satisfy these criteria. Cabinet durabilities on the order of two-party systems can be achieved by means of a 44-55 percentage of the legislative seats won by the first party in a multiparty system.
Political Education and the History of Political Thought
Authors: Sabia Daniel R.
Published: May 2006

Texts designed to introduce political science students to the history of political thought or to past political theories have been commonplace in the discipline, as have disputes about their pedagogical utility or justifiability, and methodological debates concerning their adequacy or legitimacy. In an effort to address these disputes and some of these debates, I construct three models of historiographical inquiry. Each model represents a particular approach, and each is defined in terms of three common features. The methodological debates are joined both indirectly and directly: indirectly by identifying clearly the major features and purposes of these approaches, and directly by consideration of such issues as the nature of a historical tradition, the legitimacy of certain interpretive strategies and presuppositions, and the viability of certain conceptions of past political theory. I conclude that each approach can make significant contributions to the education of political science students.
Human Rights Without Discrimination
Authors: Van Dyke Vernon
Published: May 2006

This paper focuses on the requirement of the U. N. Charter that members shall promote human rights “without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.” It asks: (1) whether “without distinction” means “without any differentiation” or “without discrimination”; (2) whether the naming of race, sex, language, and religion means that “distinction” on other bases remains permissible, or whether what is ruled out is discrimination of any kind that affects human rights; and (3) whether the search for equality has not been internationalized, at least in principle, and what the implications of the internationalization may be. The inquiry can be classified as legal/philosophical.

The third question leads to an analysis of the “without distinction” clause of the Charter in terms of the principle of equality. Claims to nondiscrimination are negative claims to equality, and they have as their counterpart claims to affirmative action on behalf of equality—often for groups. The problem is that affirmative action promoting equality for groups entails differentiations among individuals that may be discriminatory. To resolve the dilemma, the test of reasonableness is endorsed—and the search for standards for judging it goes on—at both the domestic and international levels.
Modernization and Traditionality in a Multiethnic Society: The Soviet Case
Authors: Jones Ellen , Grupp Fred W.
Published: May 2006

Exposure to modernizing institutions such as the school, factory, and city has been found to be associated with the breakdown in traditional values, beliefs, and behaviors in a wide variety of cultural settings. Socioeconomic change has had a similar impact on the late-modernizing Islamic minorities in the USSR. Although patriarchal attitudes and behaviors have persisted in some areas of family life, extensive shifts in family values and approved gender roles have occurred, particularly in the last two decades. These trends parallel those found in nonsocialist settings.
The Political Context of Tolerance: The United States and Israel
Authors: Shamir Michal , Sullivan John
Published: May 2006

This article extends recent work on political tolerance to a cross-national context. In it we argue that a content-controlled measurement strategy is ideal for cross-cultural research, and we examine the dual processes of target group selection and of deciding the extent to which one tolerates target groups, once they are selected. We argue that the first process is rooted in concerns of social adjustment, and the second in externalization and object appraisal. This leads to a certain set of predictions, which we modify slightly when we combine this social psychological theory with a cross-national research design, one we ultimately label a modified most-different-systems design. The same individual level model is estimated on the U.S. and on the Israeli data, and the results suggest that although the social and psychological processes underlying political tolerance are very similar in the two contexts, there are significant political differences between the two nations which do affect the impact of individual-level variables on tolerance.
Interest Groups and Political Integration: the 1972 EEC Decisions in Norway and Denmark
Authors: Leslie Peter M.
Published: May 2006

The article examines four themes of Robert J. Lieber's article in the APSR of March 1972: “Interest Groups and Political Integration: British Entry into Europe,” bringing in new evidence from the Norwegian and Danish EEC decisions of 1972. The conclusions are that:—

(a) there is conflicting evidence regarding the applicability of functionalist theories of political integration to the geographical expansion of an existing union;

(b) the attempt to link theories of interest group activity and theories of political integration is based on a premature if not unwise generalization about decision-making processes within interest organizations;

(c) politicization (as Lieber defines it) is inherently neither favorable nor unfavorable to integration; and

(d) in discussing political integration, the distinction between “high” politics (Hoffman) and welfare considerations is best abandoned, provided the observer remembers that there are more dimensions to critical decisions than the economic.

The article concludes with the suggestion that there are slim prospects for developing a theory of political integration applicable to the creation or extension of a union, and that the appropriate “vocation” for such a theory is to elucidate the workings of political systems which have two or more “levels” of political authorities.
Creating the Statutory State: The Implications of a Rule of Law Standard in American Politics
Authors: Bensel Richard F.
Published: May 2006

The rise of the modern state has been accompanied by a decline in the importance of statutory law to the operation of Western democratic governments. Two of the strongest critiques of the modern state and of this decline in statutory law have come from Friedrich Hayek and Theodore Lowi. Each has argued that only the restoration of a rule of law can ensure the continued survival of democratic societies. Their indictments of the modern state suggest a standard by which legislative policy alternatives might be evaluated. This article develops such a standard, adapted specifically for use in American politics, and uses it to analyze legislative behavior in the House of Representatives under four different presidential administrations. The development and application of the rule of law standard provides a critique of American government from the Hayek-Lowi perspective and reveals a basic incompatibility between the imposition of a rule of law and the establishment of a responsible-party government system.
Max Weber's Politics and Political Education
Authors: Scaff Lawrence A.
Published: May 2006

Max Weber's work has long been considered the property of sociologists. This paper attempts to restore an understanding of the fundamental political nature of his thought and action. Through an examination of Weber's political writings and involvements, beginning with the Freiburg Inaugural Address of 1895, it is demonstrated that Weber developed a political theory which was both critical and empirical, and attempted (unsuccessfully) to put it into practice. The two sides of this attempt are discussed: the critique of Bismarckian and Wilhelmian politics and Weber's own “positive” construction of a new political order. “Bureaucratization” and “democratization” are understood as the key themes of this analysis. Identification with the middle class is stressed as a major determinant of action, transcended only by a profound commitment to political education of the nation. Political education is judged to be the supreme task of theory; it supplies the source of Weber's political and scientific commitments, and the explanation for his ultimate political failure.
A Research Note on the Impact of Interparty Competition on Congressional Voting in a Competitive Era
Authors: Brady David W.
Published: May 2006

In the modern House of Representatives party competition for seats is not strongly correlated with or predictive of party voting behavior. The most plausible explanation for this weak relationship is that less than 20 per cent of House seats are competitive from one census to the next. In this study the Hasbrouck-Jones Fluidity Index was applied to House elections in the 1890—1900 period, and almost 50 per cent of House seats in this era were found to have been competitive at that time.

From the 1892—1900 period the 55th and 56th U.S. Houses were selected for analysis. A varimax factor analysis was run on the party votes in these Congresses, and the resultant factor scores formed a unidimensional measure of the number of times a member voted with a party majority. A multiple regression analysis was run, with these party support scores used as the dependent variable and with party competition and occupational composition of the district used as the independent variables. The results showed that in both houses party competition was strongly correlated with and predictive of party support scores. The same analysis on the 89th House yielded much weaker correlations and showed little predictive ability.
Democratic Committee Assignments in the House of Representatives: Strategic Aspects of a Social Choice Process
Authors: Rohde David W. , Shepsle Kenneth A.
Published: May 2006

This paper examines the committee assignment process for Democratic members of the House of Representatives. Unlike previous studies of committee assignments, this paper employs data on the requests for assignments submitted by members to the Committee on Committees. The theoretical perspective employed is one in which all the participants in the process are rational actors who have goals they want to achieve and who choose among alternative courses of action on the basis of which alternative is most likely to lead to the achievement of those goals. We argue that the allocation of committee assignments affects the goals of all the participants in the process, and thus we consider the choices of actors in the process in terms of their goals; specifically the goals of re-election, influence within the House, and good public policy.

After first considering the process from the point of view of the member making requests, we show that the member's requests are related to the type of district he represents, and that the number of requests he makes is related to such considerations as whether he is a freshman, whether he faces competition from a member from his state, and whether there is a vacancy from his state on his most preferred committee.

The process is also considered from the point of view of the members making the assignments. Decisions on assignments are found to be affected by seniority (where success in getting requested committees is inversely related to seniority), margin of election (where members from marginal districts are more successful), and region (where southerners are less successful than members from other regions).
Hegel's Critique of Liberal Theories of Rights
Authors: Stillman Peter G.
Published: May 2006

In “Abstract Right,” the first part of the Philosophy of Right, Hegel criticizes the usual content and formulations of liberal theories of rights. In terms of content, Hegel argues that the subject of rights is only a narrow abstraction from the full human being; that he has limited self-determination and limited political freedom; and that, when he acts on his rights, he produces terror and destruction. In terms of formulations, Hegel argues that the pervasiveness of contract relations is inaccurate and undesirable; that the state cannot be derived from the natural man's alienating his right to punish; and that it is inaccurate to conceptualize civil society as only limiting natural man's freedoms. By transforming natural to abstract rights, Hegel retains much of the substance of rights, while concurrently preparing for the later sections of his text which try to overcome the inadequacies of a political theory based only on rights.
Clientelist Politics in the Philippines: Integration or Instability?
Authors: Nowak Thomas C. , Snyder Kay A.
Published: May 2006

Philippine data are presented which indicate that a contradiction exists between changes induced partly through capital accumulation by the indigenous elite and foreign investment, and both increased political factionalism and declining voting participation. While national elites become more powerful through capital accumulation, local political machines confront structural changes weakening their power. More specialized patron-client structures diminish local elites' ability both to deliver votes to national patrons and to stimulate electoral participation. Growth of the middle class in a stagnant economy increases competition for lucrative local political office Factions proliferate and with the increased concentration of private income, become more dependent on national patronage resources. Unable to meet rising patronage demands, the government resorts to extensive deficit spending which stimulates inflation and further undermines economic growth. The national elite's economic activities thus undermines its authority base as the state becomes increasingly less able to provide security to individuals dislocated by changes generating profit for the elite.
Science and Rule in Bacon's Utopia: An Introduction to the Reading of the New Atlantis
Authors: Weinberger J.
Published: May 2006

Bacon's New Atlantis presents a picture of human life governed by the new science to be produced by his reformation of the arts and sciences. Unlike his successor Hobbes, who forged a link between modern science and a certain, demonstrable doctrine of political rule, Bacon made no claim to found or present a political science. The reason for this is shown by an analysis of the political teaching of the New Atlantis. Bacon's political teaching is indirect, but it is the core of his comprehensive account of science and man. According to Bacon, the end of science is fully disclosed by political wisdom, and that wisdom shows the perfection of science to reverse the moral superiority of moderation over excess. The full meaning of Bacon's scientific utopia consists in a new stance toward the traditional problems of political philosophy.
Toward A Political Explanation of Government Vote Losses in Midterm By-Elections
Authors: Mughan Anthony
Published: May 2006

By-elections in parliamentary democracies are remarkable for the almost invariable loss of support experienced by governments relative to the preceding general election. There has been, however, surprisingly little research into this phenomenon. Using Britain as a test case, this article goes some way towards filling this gap. It identifies and tests three political explanations of governments' by-election vote losses, which it labels the turnout, referendum and personal vote models. No simple conclusion emerges, since different results are obtained depending on whether the models are treated as separate entities or their interplay is taken into account by integrating them into a single causal model. This latter strategy is argued to involve a superior conceptualization of the processes at work in bringing about governments' midterm vote losses.
The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought
Authors: Lutz Donald S.
Published: May 2006

Drawing upon a comprehensive list of political writings by Americans published between 1760 and 1805, the study uses a citation count drawn from these 916 items as a surrogate measure of the relative influence of European writers upon American political thought during the era. Contrary to the general tendencies in the recent literature, the results here indicate that there was no one European writer, or one tradition of writers, that dominated American political thought. There is evidence for moving beyond the Whig-Enlightenment dichotomy as the basis for textual analysis, and for expanding the set of individual European authors considered to have had an important effect on American thinking. Montesquieu, Blackstone, and Hume are most in need of upgrading in this regard. The patterns of influence apparently varied over the time period from 1760 to 1805, and future research on the relative influence of European thinkers must be more sensitive to this possibility.
Political Decision Making in Face-to-Face Groups: Theory, Methods, and an Empirical Application in Switzerland
Authors: Dorff Robert H. , Steiner Jürg
Published: May 2006

This article presents a model of decision making and introduces a new theoretical variable to the literature, namely, the modes of decision making. The theoretical focus is on the face-to-face group, and the article also develops an innovative methodology for studying this type of decision-making behavior. Variation in the decision modes is explained as a function of the strategic considerations of individual decision makers. These considerations are affected by a set of four independent variables: structure of the decision group, substance of the conflict, context of the conflict, and the decision process. The data, drawn from observations of decision-making groups in Switzerland, are tested with discriminant analysis and a simulation. In both cases total correct classifications exceed 55 percent, indicating that there is a meaningful structure relating variation in the decision modes to the theoretical framework.
The End Game in Presidential Nominations
Authors: Collat Donald S. , Kelley Stanley , Rogowski Ronald
Published: May 2006

This study shows that a simple, empirically derived rule accounts well for the outcome of multi-ballot, majority-rule conventions in the period 1848-1948 and that the same rule would have enabled one to predict correctly the outcome of all contested presidential nominations since 1952 before any candidate had achieved majority support in the Associated Press'polls of delegates. The rule's success suggests two conclusions about the behavior of delegates: (1) that their guesses about outcomes are based on objective cues, similarly interpreted, and (2) that the trend in voting for candidates, in addition to the level of support they attract, is an important element of such cues. The study's findings also suggest that delegates in recent years do not contrast sharply with their predecessors in their predilection for bandwagon voting.
Punishing Liberals or Rehabilitating Liberalism?
Authors: Terchek Ronald J. , Brubaker Stanley C.
Published: May 2006

In the September 1988 issue of this Review, Stanley C. Brubaker argued that liberals strive for neutrality concerning how people should live and that this moral ambivalence prevented them from punishing. In this Controversy, Ronald Terchek denies that liberalism is crippled by moral relativism or incapacitated for punishment. In return, Brubaker defends his firm no to the question, Can liberals punish?