bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Emergence of Political Science in Communist Countries
Authors: Powell David E. , Shoup Paul
Published: May 2006

The scientific study of politics requires an environment which accepts free inquiry and discussion. Scholars must be permitted to ask questions of their own choosing, gather data without hindrance, and communicate freely with one another about their findings. To be sure, freedom to investigate sensitive policy matters is limited by all governments. Moreover, political scientists themselves inevitably introduce some measure of their own values or ideological predispositions into their works. But it is obvious that without the guarantee of certain minimum freedoms, political science as we know it in the West could never exist.

Communist regimes traditionally have made independent inquiry or objective discussion of political phenomena impossible. In the Stalinist period, scholarly analyses of politics—or, for that matter, of aesthetic, literary, moral or economic questions—amounted to little more than doctrinal exegesis or the elaboration of practical measures to implement the Party's demands. An autonomous social science in Stalin's Russia or Eastern Europe was simply unthinkable.

Since the dictator's death, however, Communist governments have modified their hostility toward the social sciences in general, and toward political science in particular. A decade of de-Stalinization has been accompanied by steps to encourage the scientific study of politics. In several East European countries, political science now enjoys recognition as a discipline in its own right.

This does not mean that political science in Communist countries has freed itself of political controls, or that what is presented as political science is always of scholarly merit.
Political Dualism and Italian Communism
Authors: Tarrow Sidney G.
Published: May 2006

The poverty of philosophy, for Marx, was its formalism. The social sciences, in contrast, are blessed with the ability to adjust theory to experience. In our study of Marxist movements, however, we lack precisely the marxian flexibility we need to overcome a patrimony of ideology, misinformation and rigidity. Writers like Duverger and Selznick, for example, talk about “devotee parties” and “organizational weapons” without considering that their terminology may in some cases be misleading.

The devotee party, writes Duverger, “represents a change from the conception of the party as a class; it is the party conceived as the elite.” Its members pledge their “whole human being” to the party while its structure focuses upon “unceasing propaganda and agitation,” to the detriment of parliamentary activity. Duverger leaves no doubt that his archetype of the devotee party is the Communist Party. What he never asks, however, is whether a Communist Party may be anything but a devotee party.

With a similar focus, Philip Selznick describes “the combat party,” whose peculiar property is its “competence to turn members of a voluntary association into disciplined and deployable political agents,” and its “adoption of subversion” and “penetration and manipulation of institutional targets.” While the model is most relevant in societies in which Communist doctrine is remote and unappealing to the population, Selznick, like Duverger, holds that it “provides a fair interpretation of the Communist vanguard or combat party, wherever it is found.”
Some Reflections on Soviet-American Relations
Authors: Fainsod Merle
Published: May 2006

As World War II drew to a close, the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition—Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill—assembled at Yalta to ponder the future. Already, sharp clashes at the conference table over the future fate of Poland and Eastern Europe cast a sombre spell over the proceedings. But the necessities of the alliance still served to suppress differences and to emphasize a search for consensus. At a tripartite dinner meeting on 8 February 1945, President Roosevelt, ever hopeful, described the relations of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and the United States “as that of a family” and spoke of a future in which their common objectives would be “to give to every man, woman, and child on this earth the possibility of security and well-being.” Marshal Stalin, perhaps more realistic, “remarked that it was not so difficult to keep unity in time of war since there was a joint aim to defeat the common enemy which was clear to everyone. … the difficult task came after the war when diverse interests tended to divide the allies.” Nevertheless, he expressed himself as “confident that the present alliance would meet this test also and that it was our duty to see that it would, and that our relations in peacetime should be as strong as they had been in war.” Prime Minister Churchill somewhat grandiloquently spoke of “standing on the crest of a hill with the glories of future possibilities stretching before us.
Social Amelioration through Mass Insurgency? A Reexamination of the Piven and Cloward Thesis
Authors: Albritton Robert B.
Published: May 2006

Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward (1971, 1977) have argued that mass insurgency in the United States, occurring especially between 1964 and 1969, produced a series of responses by government, one of the most significant being massive expansion of welfare rolls. Using data on which they base their claim, this study examines the hypothesis that there is a positive association between social disorders and welfare caseload increases. The conclusion is that associations specified by Piven and Cloward are not supported by the data and a plausible rival hypothesis is offered to explain the massive increases in welfare caseloads.
Explaining Presidential Popularity: How Ad Hoc Theorizing, Misplaced Emphasis, and Insufficient Care in Measuring One's Variables Refuted Common Sense and Led Conventional Wisdom Down the Path of Anomalies
Authors: Kernell Samuel
Published: May 2006

Within the last ten years a new conventional wisdom has surfaced in political science which tells us that presidents inexorably become less popular over time. Not much else matters. Neither the economy, nor the Vietnam War, not even Watergate seems to have had much independent effect on presidential popularity once time is taken into account. Before embracing these conclusions we need to reconsider the method that produced them. I argue that previous research too willingly accepted time as an explanatory variable, enshrouding it with theoretical meaning. To preserve its explanatory power alternative, substantive variables were shortchanged in their operational definitions and measurement. In this article I reverse the emphasis. Here, time is rejected as an explanatory variable and is employed only as a diagnostic indicator of the adequacy of the equations. A variety of alternative representations of real-world forces such as the economy and war are tested and some considerably improve the time-series correlation between the environment and presidential popularity. With these substantive variables I propose a simpler, if less glamorous, theory of presidential popularity consisting of two hypotheses: first, popularity is related to real events and conditions, and second, that it responds slowly to environmental change. Popularity is then both experiential and incremental. The findings for Presidents Truman through Nixon support this common-sense view. The Korean War (measured by U.S. casualties), the Vietnam War (measured by the number of bombing missions over North Vietnam and the U.S. war dead), the economy (especially six-month changes in consumer prices), Watergate, international “rally” events, and early term surges of approval all contribute independently to short-term fluctuations in presidential popularity. Moreover, as predicted, popularity appears to be autoregressive even when represented by an instrumental variables surrogate measure to minimize serial correlation. When the equations are specified in this way, time proves to be unnecessary in order to explain trends in presidential popularity.
An Expected Utility Theory of International Conflict
Authors: de Mesquita Bruce Bueno
Published: May 2006

An expected utility theory of necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for the initiation and escalation of serious international conflicts, including war, is proposed. The theory leads to the seemingly obvious generalization that actors do not initiate wars—or serious disputes—if they do not expect to gain from doing so. Underlying that generalization are a number of counterintuitive deductions. For instance, I show that though a weak nonaligned state cannot rationally attack a stronger nonaligned nation, it might be able to attack a stronger adversary that, in addition to its own strength, expects to derive support from allies. I also show that serious conflict is more likely between very close allies than between enemies. Systematic tests, using data on serious international threats, military interventions, and interstate wars, as well as 17 cases of known attempts at deterrence, show very substantial support for the expected utility propositions deduced from the theory.
War and the Cycle of Relative Power
Authors: Doran Charles F. , Parsons Wes
Published: May 2006

Relative nation-state capability follows a generalized nonlinear pattern over long periods. Empirical evidence indicates that between 1816–1975 nine major powers have traversed at least a segment of this relative capability cycle of political ascendancy, maturation and decline. Specific changes in a state's relative capability dynamics increase its propensity to initiate extensive war. Whether the extensiveness of a war is defined in terms of duration, intensity or magnitude, major powers are likely to initiate more extensive wars at the critical inflection and turning points on the curve of relative capability where the linear role perceptions held by government and society change pervasively. This analysis involves a new theoretical focus for examining the causes of war, shifting attention from interactions between nations to the consequences of changes in relative power and to the political evolution of the nation-state itself.
Intergovernmental Organizations and Foreign Policy Behavior: Some Empirical Findings
Authors: McCormick James M. , Kihl Young W.
Published: May 2006

In this study, we evaluate whether the increase in the number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) has resulted in their increased use for foreign policy behavior by the nations of the world. This question is examined in three related ways: (1) the aggregate use of IGOs for foreign policy behavior; (2) the relationship between IGO membership and IGO use; and (3) the kinds of states that use IGOs. Our data base consists of the 35 nations in the CREON (Comparative Research on the Events of Nations) data set for the years 1959–1968.

The main findings are that IGOs were employed over 60 percent of the time with little fluctuation on a year-by-year basis, that global and “high politics” IGOs were used more often than regional and “low politics” IGOs, that institutional membership and IGO use were generally inversely related, and that the attributes of the states had limited utility in accounting for the use of intergovernmental organizations. Some of the theoretical implications of these findings are then explored.
A Swedish Road to Socialism: Ernst Wigforss and the Ideological Foundations of Swedish Social Democracy
Authors: Tilton Timothy A.
Published: May 2006

The reputation of Ernst Wigforss (1881–1977), the foremost ideologist of Swedish Social Democracy, has suffered from the lack of a coherent treatment of his work in English. This article briefly surveys Wigforss' historical contributions to Swedish Social Democracy. Then it examines the structure of Wigforss' thought, analyzing first the conceptions of equality, liberty, democracy, security, economic efficiency, and solidarity that serve for Wigforss as the aims of Social Democracy. Then it considers the reformist measures Wigforss espoused to achieve these aims–social welfare policy, progressive taxation, economic planning, industrial democracy, and socialization of industry. It concludes with an assessment of Wigforss' importance as a Social Democratic theorist and suggests the relevance of his ideas to American politics and social science.
Party Systems and Government Stability
Authors: Taylor Michael , Herman V. M.
Published: May 2006

Arguments are presented for and against a series of hypotheses about the influence of the parliamentary party system on the stability of governments, and the hypotheses are tested against data on 196 governments in parliamentary democracies since 1945. A strong relation is found between the duration of governments and the fragmentation of the parliamentary party system and of the government parties, but the fragmentation of the opposition parties seems not to affect stability. One-party governments are more stable than coalition governments, and majority governments more than minority governments. The ideological dispersion of the parties—in the whole parliament, in the government, or in the opposition—does not explain stability any better than fragmentation, which is based upon only the number and sizes of parties; but the proportion of seats held by ‘anti-system’ parties (communists and neo-fascists, mainly) is a good indicator of stability. The best explanation of government stability found here is the combined linear influence of the size of the anti-system parties and the fragmentation of the pro-system parties.
Approval Voting
Authors: Brams Steven J. , Fishburn Peter C.
Published: May 2006

Approval voting is a method of voting in which voters can vote for (“approve of”) as many candidates as they wish in an election. This article analyzes properties of this method and compares it with other single-ballot nonranked voting systems. Among the theorems proved is that approval voting is the most sincere and most strategyproof of all such voting systems; in addition, it is the only system that ensures the choice of a Condorcet majority candidate if the preferences of voters are dichotomous. Its probable empirical effects would be to (1) increase voter turnout, (2) increase the likelihood of a majority winner in plurality contests and thereby both obviate the need for runoff elections and reinforce the legitimacy of first-ballot outcomes, and (3) help centrist candidates, without at the same time denying voters the opportunity to express their support for more extremist candidates. The latter effect's institutional impact may be to weaken the two-party system yet preserve middle-of-the-road public policies of which most voters approve.
Gender Roles and Party Roles
Authors: Fowlkes Diane L. , Perkins Jerry , Rinehart Sue Tolleson
Published: May 2006

This article uses discriminant analysis to assess sex and party differences across four aspects of party organization: incentives for participation, party role definitions, party activities and electoral ambition. The results illustrate that gender roles operate most distinctly in the two areas of electoral ambition and party activities. Party context is more important than sex in terms of the other two areas, party role definitions and incentives for participation. The authors conclude that party activists' gender-related behavior can be better understood by discovering how the context of party organization either modifies or reinforces such behavior.
An Alternative Conceptualization of Political Tolerance: Illusory Increases 1950s–1970s
Authors: Sullivan John L. , Piereson James , Marcus George E.
Published: May 2006

This article proposes an alternative conceptualization of political tolerance, a new measurement strategy consistent with that conceptualization, and some new findings based upon this measurement strategy. Briefly put, we argue that tolerance presumes a political objection to a group or to an idea, and if such an objection does not arise, neither does the problem of tolerance. Working from this understanding, we argue that previous efforts to measure tolerance have failed because they have asked respondents about groups preselected by the investigators. Those groups selected as points of reference in measuring tolerance have generally been of a leftist persuasion. Our measurement strategy allowed respondents themselves to select a political group to which they were strongly opposed. They were then asked a series of questions testing the extent to which they were prepared to extend procedural claims to these self-selected targets. Using this approach, we found little change between the 1950s and the 1970s in levels of tolerance in the United States, a result that contradicts much recent research on the problem.
Power and Intention
Authors: White D. M.
Published: May 2006

The paper argues that while the state of mind of an agent exercising power is relevant in analyzing the concept of power, much of the discussion about whether an intention must be complied with for there to be an exercise of power misconceives the issue at stake because it overrates the extent to which human behavior is ratiocinative. The argument is developed in the course of a discussion of several hypothetical examples. One conclusion is that for a person to exercise power it is normally necessary that he should have a favorable attitude to the effects in question, the word “favorable” being used because it is highly general and hence relatively non-restrictive. The final conclusion is that the very generality of this criterion makes a precise conceptual analysis of power impossible.
Opinion Representation versus Social Representation; or, Why Women Can't Run as Women and Win
Authors: Perkins Jerry , Fowlkes Diane L.
Published: May 2006

This article, by employing voting simulations in a survey of party activists, examines responses to a woman's claim to party office on the basis of her sex. The degree of acceptance of this claim or the willingness to grant what is called social representation, is contrasted with the respondents' inclinations to select candidates favorable to women's rights, or the willingness to grant what is called opinion representation. Variations in responses to the two simulations are analyzed in terms of attitudes toward gender roles, government intervention and the legitimacy of groups in the political process. Voting in the simulation involving opinion representation can best be understood in terms of the respondent's attitude toward government intervention, while the simulation involving social representation activates the attitude toward groups. Discussion of the findings focuses on the dilemma of group claims for minority representation in a liberal democratic context and the need for better understanding of attitudes toward groups among political elites.
A Theoretical Analysis of the “Green Lobby”
Authors: Smith V. Kerry
Published: May 2006

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing why individuals support private environmental “public interest” groups. The model attempts to integrate past contributions which have argued that these decisions could be explained by one of several factors, including: bounded rationality and imperfect information (Moe, 1980); the features of the public goods provided (or influenced by) these groups (Mitchell, 1979); the existence of a disequilibrium in households' demands for public goods (Weisbrod, 1977); or as a response to contract failures (Hansmann, 1980). The article uses a theoretical framework originally developed to explain individuals' decisions to join private clubs and specifies the conditions for the efficient provision of access to different types of private, nonprofit groups. By describing the optimal access conditions as if individuals could be coordinated to assure this efficient outcome, the model provides insights into the benefits and costs associated with membership in the environmental groups in practice.
The Transmission of Legal Precedent: A Study of State Supreme Courts
Authors: Caldeira Gregory A.
Published: May 2006

In the course of making and justifying decisions, judges on state supreme courts often rely on precedents from other jurisdictions. These judicial references across boundaries constitute at least one means of communication and, in turn, demonstrate a complex web of deference and derogation between and among various courts. I attempt to uncover patterns of citation between the several state supreme courts and to evaluate alternative explanations for these patterns, including distance between courts; similarity of political culture; the prestige, professionalism, legal capital, and caseload of the cited court; the social diversity of the environment; differentials between courts on a number of dimensions; and presence in the same legal reporting region. More globally, I ask: Does the intensity of communications between a pair of courts result from the characteristics of the cited court or from differences and similarities between courts or jurisdictions? The results indicate the importance of legal reporting districts, distance between the courts, cultural linkages between the jurisdictions and, especially, characteristics of the cited court.
Do New Soviet Leaders Really Make a Difference? Rethinking the “Succession Connection”
Authors: Roeder Philip G.
Published: May 2006

According to an increasingly more widely held view, Leninist regimes tend to pump up mass-oriented policies during succession crises. Yet, this empirically based theory contains significant conceptual and methodological flaws, suggesting the need to reexamine the evidence and rethink the thesis. Using the Soviet evidence, a retest of its hypotheses fails to support this thesis. An alternative, consolidation connection is proposed here which considers the impact of political processes upon a General Secretary's capacity to innovate as well as his incentive structure. Tests of these hypotheses show a significantly higher rate of confirmation than the retest of the original thesis.
Innovation in the States: A Diffusion Study
Authors: Gray Virginia
Published: May 2006

This study focuses on a nonmonetary dimension of public policy—innovation by states in the fields of education, welfare, and civil rights. Innovation is considered equivalent to the adoption of a law by a state. From the literature on diffusion (or spread) of innovations, the explanation of user interaction is taken, and a simple model with an interaction term is constructed. The model performs fairly well when evaluated by several common criteria. The results do vary somewhat from one issue area to another; other types of supplementary analysis also indicate variation in diffusion patterns according to the issue involved. Political and economic differences among states are found to account for differences in time of adoption, and “innovativeness” is shown to be an issue- and time-specific factor.
Fear, Apathy, and Discrimination: A Test of Three Explanations of Political Participation
Authors: Salamon Lester M. , Van Evera Stephen
Published: May 2006

Students of political participation have generally taken as given that nonparticipation in politics is a result of apathy, and that apathy is a function of low income, low education, and low status. This article suggests that there are two additional potential explanations of political participation rates besides that offered by the conventional wisdom. One of these acknowledges that political participation for some people in some circumstances involves considerable risk, so that nonparticipation can be explained more accurately in terms offearthan in terms of apathy. The other views political participation as a response to a sense of “relative deprivation” or discrimination. After each of these three “models” of political participation is translated into operational terms, it is tested by determining how well it accounts for the variations in black political participation rates in Mississippi during the first half-decade following the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The conclusion that emerges from these tests is that political scientists have erred seriously by overlooking the role of fear in political life. In situations like those faced by blacks in Mississippi, situations that are probably similar to those in parts of the “developing world,” apathy compares poorly with fear as an explanation of political participation.
Throwing the Rascals Out: Policy and Performance Evaluations of Presidential Candidates, 1952–1980
Authors: Miller Arthur H. , Wattenberg Martin P.
Published: May 2006

This article explores two dimensions of public evaluations of presidential candidates on the basis open-ended survey questions from 1952 to 1980. The first dimension looks at whether citizens evaluate candidates on the basis of policies, performance, or strictly candidate attributes; the second examines the time perspective of these assessments, that is, whether they are retrospective or prospective. It is found that incumbents have been judged primarily on the basis of retrospective performance, challengers on prospective policy, and candidates running in nonincumbent races on prospective performance. Throughout the period from 1952 to 1980 both policy and performance considerations have become increasingly related to the vote. Except for 1964, performance has outweighed policy as a predictor of the vote, with an emphasis on retrospective evaluations whenever a incumbent runs for reelection and on prospective assessments in nonincumbent races. The 1964 case provides the best example of a policy mandate, with the 1972 election also fitting the pattern to a lesser degree. The data for the 1980 election, however, fail to support the claim of a mandate for Reagan's policy stands.
Woman Suffrage in the Progressive Era: Patterns of Opposition and Support in Referenda Voting, 1910-1918
Authors: McDonagh Eileen L. , Price H. Douglas
Published: May 2006

Sources of opposition and support for woman suffrage are analyzed with the use of the responses of male voters to constitutional referenda held in six key states during the Progressive era. Traditional axes of opposition and support for suffrage are examined, establishing that stable sources of suffrage support originate most often from Protestant and northern European constituencies (with the exception of Germans), whereas southern Europeans and Catholics (except for Germans) generally show no consistent patterns. Opposition to suffrage is most constant from Germans—both Catholic and Protestant—and from urban constituencies. A structural model indicating the greater importance of prohibition as an intervening variable compared to partisanship or turnout at the grass-roots level of voting behavior explicates the sources of direct and indirect support for suffrage while it also demonstrates the influence of educational commitment in determining suffrage voting patterns. Except in the West, opposition to suffrage was intense and greater at the grass-roots level than among legislative elites. The ultimate success of the federal amendment is discussed in the context of state referenda, the changed political climate after American entry into World War I, and the innovative efforts of state legislatures to grant “presidential” suffrage, thereby circumventing what proved to be the difficult referenda route.
Multiparty Equilibria under Proportional Representation
Authors: Greenberg Joseph , Weber Shlomo
Published: May 2006

The purpose of this article is to define and to prove formally the existence of an equilibrium under proportional representation, as well as partially to characterize it. Specifically, let m be the quota that represents the minimal number of voters necessary for a candidate to be elected. We show that there is a set of elected candidates, each choosing an alternative and each receiving at least m votes, such that no other potential candidate, by offering an additional alternative, can secure at least m votes for himself. We then investigate the structure, at equilibrium, of the set of individuals who support a given candidate, as well as study stability properties of the equilibrium. We also provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the equilibrium to consist of a single candidate, thus generalizing Black's median-voter result.
National Entanglements in International Governmental Organizations
Authors: Jacobson Harold K. , Reisinger William M. , Mathers Todd
Published: May 2006

There has been a growing propensity among states to associate together in international governmental organizations, or IGOs, for a variety of purposes. Why do states join IGOs, and what are the consequences for states of membership in IGOs? In this analysis, an explanation is sought, drawing on the theory of functionalism espoused by David Mitrany and others, taking into account the number of years a state has had sovereignty, level of technology, extent of party competition, and overall power. For Third World states, membership in IGOs is associated with enhanced economic performance. An increasing number of IGOs in the system appears to lessen the states' mean proneness to war. Functionalist predictions are upheld. But functionalism needs to be supplemented both for comprehensive explanations and as a prescription for the future. Already there are so many IGOs that it is difficult for states to control them, which could make them progressively irrelevant or even jeopardize their existence.
Politics, Primordialism, and Orientalism: Marx, Aristotle, and the Myth of The Gemeinschaft
Authors: Springborg Patricia
Published: May 2006

Nineteenth-century evolutionary historical schemas formulated in Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft, or status to contract terms, which underpin theories of modernization and development in the contemporary social sciences, are now called into serious question. Recent archaeological discoveries show ancient society to have been preeminently contractual; and anthropological studies of family, clan, and tribe reveal them to be more than primordial relics in modernizing systems. A careful reading of the ancient writers—particularly Aristotle, who was read as lending support to the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft distinction—yields a very different picture, as Marx in fact appreciated. Family, clan, tribe, patron-client, friendship, and other affinal sets were constitutive of the ancient society of the polis, and have shown extraordinary durability in the modern political society of the Mediterranean basin. In the small-scale, urban, entrepreneurial, and commercial society of the Mediterranean polis, ancient and modern, which was characterized by a high degree of face-to-face interaction, people learned participation in the plethora of little-incorporated societies—familial, religious, cultic, and recreational.
Malapportionment, Gerrymandering, and Party Fortunes in Congressional Elections
Authors: Erikson Robert S.
Published: May 2006

This paper explores the relationship between the partisan division of the northern vote in U.S. House elections and the partisan division of northern House seats. From at least 1952 through 1964, there was a noticeable pro-Republican bias to northern districting, in the sense that the Republicans consistently won about ten per cent more of the seats than the Democrats could obtain from the same percentage of the vote. Following the 1964 election, this partisan inequity has disappeared, but the evidence suggests that this change is only temporary. The normal pattern of a Republican advantage in northern House elections is produced by a Republican gerrymander of accidental origins: the tendency of Democratic voters to cluster in heavily Democratic areas where their votes for Congress go “wasted.” Neither malapportionment nor deliberate partisan gerrymandering appears to have played a major role in distorting the outcomes of House elections.
Getting Out the Vote: Participation in Gubernatorial Elections
Authors: Patterson Samuel C. , Caldeira Gregory A.
Published: May 2006

Scholarship on electoral turnout has long emphasized two main themes: explanations of nonvoting in terms of individual characteristics and in terms of contextual variables. These investigations have deeply enriched our understanding of electoral participation, but their limitations have also sensitized us to the remaining problems of explanation. Perusal of the work on American politics exposes a rather striking tendency in studies of participation to ignore, or soft pedal, the effects of active political mobilization. In this article we formulate two models of electoral turnout—socioeconomic and political mobilization—and apply them to aggregate data on voting in gubernatorial elections of 1978 and 1980. The socioeconomic model of turnout includes such influences as income, age, and educational attainment. To assess the effects of political mobilization, we have considered campaign spending, partisan competition, electoral margin, and the presence or absence of a simultaneous race for the United States Senate. Both of the models perform quite well individually, producing significant and meaningful coefficients and adequate fits. Yet in the final analysis we demonstrate that quite apart from major sources of variation in gubernatorial turnout—such as region and presidential versus nonpresidential years—the mobilizing influences of campaign activism and competitiveness have a strong impact on electoral participation; electoral law, i.e., closing date of registration, retains a small but significant effect on voting for governor; and socioeconomic characteristics, included in a fully specified model, have little to contribute independently to an explanation of electoral turnout. These findings are very much in the same vein as related cross-national investigations, which emphasize the crucial role of electoral law and political parties and downplay individual characteristics as determinants of electoral participation. On the basis of the research reported here, we argue that scholars need to pay more attention to political mobilization as an explanation of electoral turnout.
Representative Deliberations and Representative Decisions: Proportional Representation and the Borda Rule
Authors: Chamberlin John R. , Courant Paul N.
Published: May 2006

The development of social choice theory over the past three decades has brought many new insights into democratic theory. Surprisingly, the theory of representation has gone almost untouched by social choice theorists. This article redresses this neglect and provides an axiomatic study of one means of implementing proportional representation.

The distinguishing feature of proportional representation is its concern for the representativeness of deliberations as well as decisions. We define a representative in a way that is particularly attentive to this feature and then define a method of selecting representatives (a variant of the Borda rule) which selects a maximally representative body. We also prove that this method of selection meets four social choice axioms that are met by a number of other important social choice functions (including pairwise majority decision and the Borda rule).
Ideological Change in the British Conservative Party
Authors: Crewe Ivor , Searing Donald D.
Published: May 2006

We address both a puzzle and a theory. The puzzle is posed by the emergence of “Thatcherism,” an un-Conservative ideology that has appeared in an antiideological British Conservative party. We address this puzzle by determining what Thatcherism is and by showing that although it represents a minority viewpoint, it does indeed fit into previous Conservative thinking. The theory in question is the spatial theory of ideological change, which, we argue, is impugned by the circumstances of Thatcherism's construction. We address this theory by investigating potential constituencies at the time of Thatcherism's creation and by examining evidence about the intentions of those who created it. Finally, we seek both to draw out the implications of Mrs. Thatcher's campaign to convert the voters to her views and to explain why the same spatial theory that Thatcherism confounds seem confirmed by equally striking cases in postwar British politics.
Reputation and Hegemonic Stability: A Game-Theoretic Analysis
Authors: Alt James E. , Calvert Randall L. , Humes Brian D.
Published: May 2006

We develop and explicate a game-theoretic model in which repeated play, incomplete information, and reputation are major elements. A significant advance of this model is the way it represents cooperation under incomplete information among rational actors of different sizes. The model is used to formalize certain aspects of the “theory of hegemonic stability.” It shows that the “dilemma” or “limits” of hegemonic stability look like natural attributes of games where reputation is involved, unifying both “benevolent” and “coercive” strands of hegemony theory. An example, drawn from recent developments in the Organization of Petroleum-exporting Countries, shows how our model of reputation guides the study of hegemonic regime construction. We conclude by comparing the nature of cooperative behavior under conditions of complete and incomplete information.
Rousseau's General Will: A Condorcetian Perspective
Authors: Grofman Bernard , Feld Scott L.
Published: May 2006

We identify three basic elements of Rousseau's theory of the general will: (1) there is a common good; (2) citizens are not always accurate in their judgments about what is in the common good; and (3) when citizens strive to identify the common good and vote in accordance with their perceptions of it, the vote of the Assembly of the People can be taken to be the most reliable means for ascertaining the common good. We then show that Condorcet's (1785) model of collective judgment shares these assumptions with Rousseau and that understanding the implications of Condorcet's (1785) “jury theorem” enables us to clarify many of the most obscure aspects of Rousseau's treatment of the general will, including his discussion of the debilitating effects of factions and his confidence in the ability of the Assembly of the People to discern the general will by means of voting.
Materialism in Japan Reconsidered: Toward a Synthesis of Generational and Life-Cycle Explanations
Authors: Jagodzinski Wolfgang
Published: May 2006

In two recent articles, Inglehart (1981, 1982) arrives at the conclusion that the decline of materialism in postwar Japan is the result of generational change and period effects. Aging effects cannot be demonstrated empirically. This article challenges his views. It will be shown that a life-cycle explanation can claim as much empirical evidence as a generational explanation, as long as the overall goodness of fit and the sign and strength of the age effects and cohort effects are the only criteria the decision is based upon. Particularly, a two-dimensional age-period model fits the data nearly as well as the cohort-period model that Inglehart proposes. Theoretical considerations, however, plead for a three-dimensional solution that includes some cohort effects beside period and aging effects for those generations that grew up in the postwar era. Such a model can also be established empirically.
A Downsian Spatial Model with Party Activism
Authors: Aldrich John H.
Published: May 2006

A unidimensional spatial model is proposed in this article. Although its formal structure parallels the spatial model of electoral competition, this model examines the decisions of individuals as they choose whether or not to become activists in one of two political parties. An individual “calculus of participation” is developed that is similar to the spatial interpretation of the “calculus of voting.” This calculus is then generalized by examining conditions that may hold for aggregate activism probabilities, and the relationship between the two forms is investigated. Some results are then presented which concern the distributions of activists in the two parties. These results in general conform to the existence of “party cleavages,” in which there are two stable (equilibrium) distributions of activists, such that the two parties' activists are relatively cohesive internally and relatively distinctive externally. Finally, some suggestions are offered about how this model can be combined with the spatial model of candidate competition to provide a more complete model of elections.
Crisis Learning Games
Authors: Leng Russell J.
Published: May 2006

Findings from a data-based study of bargaining in recurrent crises between evenly matched states provide the foundation for the construction of four crisis-learning games. Symmetrical and asymmetrical nuclear and nonnuclear sequential three-by-three games assuming complete information and nonmyopic play are presented and analyzed. The empirical study indicated that states that were unsuccessful in one crisis were likely to move to more coercive bargaining strategies in the next crisis. The four sequential games offer insights as to why this is likely to produce unwanted consequences, while demonstrating the importance of the participants' initial strategy choices. With the realpolitik lessons suggested by the earlier study removed, the dynamics of the games present a case for beginning with a cooperative strategy and moving to reciprocating, or tit-for-tat, bargaining.
Is Minimax Regret Applicable to Voting Decisions?
Authors: Mayer Lawrence S. , Good I. J.
Published: May 2006

In a recent article (“The Paradox of Not Voting: A Decision Theoretic Analysis,” APSR, 68 [June, 1974], 525–536) John Ferejohn and Morris Fiorina suggest that a (potential) voter may be rational in deciding whether to vote and yet not use the expected-utility calculus introduced for this purpose by Downs and Tullock and extended by Riker and Ordeshook. The authors suggest that a rational voter, in deciding whether to vote, may use the minimax regret criterion due to the late L. J. Savage. Define the regret of an Act A as the difference, if the true state of nature were known (in advance), between the best expected payoff that could be obtained and the expected payoff that would be obtained by act A. Then the minimax regret criterion requires the decision maker to act in such a way as to minimize the maximum regret that he can suffer.

They also discuss the fact that the minimax regret criterion does not require the voter to supply any (objective or subjective) estimates of the probabilities associated with the various outcomes of the election. Thus they feel that it is an attractive criterion for decision making under “uncertainty” as opposed to decision making under “risk.”
The State Political Party and the Policy-Making Process
Authors: Morehouse Sarah McCally
Published: May 2006

This research investigated the proposition that variation in the structure of the political party can account for variation in the type of policy produced. The conditions under which legislators of the governor's party supported his legislative requests in sixteen sessions chosen for different degrees of party cohesion were investigated. The findings indicate that there is very little correlation between the legislator's district primary or election competition and his support for the governor's requests. The Democratic governor is supported by legislators from the districts in which he himself has strong party support as measured by his primary vote. The Republican governor's support cannot be geographically located in this manner. With respect to socioeconomic legislation, the pattern of support for a successful governor does not depend upon socioeconomic variables within the legislators' districts, but if the governor cannot control his legislators, socioeconomic variables provide the major basis for the factions which develop.
The Attribution of Variance in Electoral Returns: An Alternative Measurement Technique
Authors: Katz Richard S.
Published: May 2006

Swings in district vote for Congress are conditioned by many factors. An attempt is made here to apportion the variance in the partisan distribution of votes for U. S. representative among three levels of influence—national, state, and district—measuring the degree of nationalization, regionalization, and localization of voting. Previous attempts have defined “nationalization” of voting as the degree to which district interelection differences are numerically identical. Here this concept is defined in a two-stage regression model as the degree to which districts behave as if these differences were caused by the same factors. In contrast to previous research, national factors are found to be responsible for more than 50 per cent of the variance in local vote, with state and district forces accounting for 19 per cent and 26 per cent, respectively. Several analytic uses for this measure are suggested and illustrated.
Candidates' Perception of Voter Competence: A Comparison of Winning and Losing Candidates
Authors: Kim Chong Lim , Racheter Donald P.
Published: May 2006

This study, based on the two-wave questionnaire data collected from legislative candidates in Iowa, attempts to test the “congratulation-rationalization effect,” a highly provocative hypothesis that John Kingdon formulated regarding politicians' beliefs about voters. The hypothesis asserts that winning candidates tend to develop complimentary beliefs about voters while losing candidates tend to develop beliefs deprecating to voters. The results of analysis indicate, however, no significant difference between winners and losers in terms of the direction and magnitude of changes in their beliefs about voters, suggesting that the hypothesis is invalid. When the hypothesis is reformulated in terms of “dissonance states” rather than “election outcomes,” the evidence is strongly supportive. Among winners, those who perceive a high degree of dissonance more than those who perceive little dissonance tend to change their beliefs about voters in a favorable direction. Conversely, among losers, those who perceive a high degree of dissonance more than those who perceive little dissonance tend to change their beliefs in an unfavorable direction. Therefore, the “congratulation-rationalization” hypothesis can be sustained only if cast in direct dissonance terms.
Attitudes of the Arab Elite Toward Palestine and Israel
Authors: Suleiman Michael W.
Published: May 2006

Unlike most studies of the Arab-Israeli conflict, this one attempts not only to delineate the attitudes of Arab elite (professionals and university students) at home and abroad on the issue but also and primarily, to investigate the determinants of those attitudes. The sources include the relevant political literature, especially since the 1967 war; a set of depth interviews conducted among members of the elite in the Arab world; and a more structured sample survey conducted among Arab students and professionals in the U.S. Conclusions are based on the data from all three sources. The results show that religion, sectionalism, age, and level of education are important determinants of political attitudes and behavior among Arab elite. Neither locale (urban-rural residence) nor socioeconomic background, however, is found to be a significant factor.
Woodrow Wilson and the Study of Administration: A New Look at an Old Essay
Authors: Stillman Richard J.
Published: May 2006

Unquestionably, Woodrow Wilson's scholarly essay, “The Study of Administration,” (1887) stands as an historic landmark in American administrative thought. As Leonard D. White once wrote, “Wilson's essay introduced this country to the idea of administration.” Based upon the recent publication of the Woodrow Wilson papers by Princeton University Press, the present paper attempts to examine the origin and enduring contribution of Wilson's administrative thought. The central thesis of the paper is that Wilson's administrative theories grew out of the salient ideas of late nineteenth century America, particularly, Social Darwinism and the pressing demands for political reform. In many respects, however, Wilson's essay created more issues than it resolved since it failed to delineate clearly the substance and boundaries of the field of administration.