bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
When the Bubble Burst: Transient and Persistent National Front Supporters, 1974–79
Authors: Husbands Christopher T.
Published: January 2009

One point of interest about the period of the Labour government from October 1974 to May 1979 is the short-term surge and subsequent decline between these dates of electoral support for the National Front (NF). This episode of NF voting raises a number of questions. Some of these are simple empirical ones. What, for example, were the political origins, in terms of voting behaviour in the October 1974 general election, of this body of NF voters? What were their political destinations in May 1979? What characterized the various groups of voters who between 1974 and 1979 had different voting trajectories, all of which none the less included at least a period of support for the NF? This research note presents data on the numerical size of these different groups and it analyses some of their aggregate social and attitudinal characteristics.
Continuity and Change in British Central-Local Relations: ‘The Conservative Threat’, 1979–83
Authors: Rhodes R. A. W.
Published: January 2009

The description ‘radical’ tends to invoke left-wing images in many people's heads: it has almost become the antonym of conservative. But in the sense of appealing to fundamental principles, the present Conservative Government certainly claims to be radical. Its policies purport to break with the immediate past in British politics and they are said to derive from the principles of monetarism. No area has been subject to a more radical reassessment than that of central-local relations. Conservative policies have been seen as a grave threat to local government. They are said to undermine its constitutional foundations and considerable concern has been expressed about the erosion of local autonomy. This paper attempts to evaluate the distinctiveness of present policies. But in order to assess recent changes, it is necessary to look to the immediate past and to identify any continuities as well as disjunctions in central government's policy. A decade is a short time in the life of a polity but, by insisting that current developments be located in even this confined context, it will become clear that there is, in fact, a large measure of continuity in the relationship between central and local government. Whether the government has been Conservative or Labour, the trend has been towards the increased control of the level and pattern of sub-national expenditure.
Decision Arenas in Executive Decision Making: Cabinet Committees in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Mackie Thomas T. , Hogwood Brian W.
Published: January 2009

Decision making in political executives is an oddly neglected subject in political science. The roles played by both formal institutions and less formal mechanisms in arriving at decisions in political executives are surprisingly understudied. There have been some important comparative studies of political executives but these have tended to focus on the role of the head of the political executive – the president or prime minister. The distinctive nature of cabinet systems as against presidential systems has been well brought out but a comparative framework for the analysis of variations among cabinet systems in the role of decision arenas other than the full cabinet has not been developed. Blondel in his wide-ranging survey of government structures gives only a passing mention to cabinet committees. Accordingly, in seeking to place the roles of cabinet committees in perspective, we have found it necessary to develop our own framework of decision arenas in cabinet systems.
Ideology and Public Policy in Canada
Authors: Ornstein M. D. , Stevenson H. M.
Published: January 2009

This article examines the political ideology of Canadian elites on the basis of a sample survey conducted in 1977. The six hundred respondents include business executives, politicians, government bureaucrats, labour leaders, lawyers, media executives, and academics. Our purposes are, first, to make comparisons among and examine variation within these sectoral groups; second, to relate ideological cleavages to differences in support for the federal political parties; and, third, to examine the correspondence between more general ideological principles and elite opinions on a variety of specific public policy issues.
Leftist and Rightist Ideology in a Social Democratic State: An Analysis of Norway in the Midst of the Conservative Resurgence
Authors: Lafferty William M. , Knutsen Oddbjørn
Published: January 2009

The re-emergence and political re-establishment of conservatism in a number of leading western welfare states has provided the empirical dots on the ‘i's’ of the ideology-is-not-dead-argument. Political issues have clearly become more technical, but their resolution has become anything but consensual. The current political dialogue may be tortuously symbolic, masking more than it reveals and more than technicians feel is good for us all, but this is perhaps more an indication of the balance of power between politicians and technicians than a sign of ideological deflation. We are not concerned in the present paper, therefore, with whether ideology is alive and kicking, but rather with who is kicking for what.
The SDP and the Left-Right Dimension
Authors: Bochel J. M. , Denver D. T.
Published: January 2009

When the SDP was founded in March 1981 it was a product of two main strands of opinion embodied in the persons of Roy Jenkins on the one hand and the ‘Gang of Three’ (David Owen, Shirley Williams and William Rodgers) on the other. Jenkins was the first of the four to talk openly of the desirability of ‘breaking the mould’ of British politics by the formation of a new centre party. During his time as President of the European Commission he had become convinced that a realignment of British parties was necessary and he argued this in the Dimbleby Lecture in November 1979. Initially the ‘Gang of Three’ were hostile to the idea of a new party. They remained deeply involved in the Labour party until the end of 1980, leading the battle against the constitutional and policy changes favoured by the left. When they eventually resigned from the Labour party the ‘Gang’ claimed that this was because the party had changed, not them.
Persuasion as a Political Concept
Authors: Burnell Peter , Reeve Andrew
Published: January 2009

This article discusses the notion of ‘persuasion’ applied to a political method. It proceeds by comparing and contrasting ‘persuasion’ with concepts within the ‘power’ family. There are two sorts of justification for such an exploration of ‘persuasion’, the first positive and the second negative.
Persistence and Change in Political Confidence over the Life-span: Embedding Life-cycle Socialization in Context
Authors: Langton Kenneth P.
Published: January 2009

There are currently two views of the potential link between early learning and adult political attitudes and behaviour. The first holds that the consequences of early socialization persist over the life-cycle and have a pervasive effect on adult behaviour. Much of the research on child and adolescent political socialization adhered to this position. It is supported by studies which find that some orientations and personality dispositions seem relatively stable over time. This approach also finds some support in research which shows that earlier-learned orientations and experiences may influence later attitudes and behaviour, although this has been strongly contested.
How the Decline of Class Voting Opened the Way to Radical Change in British Politics
Authors: Franklin Mark N.
Published: January 2009

The victory of an established major party in the 1983 British general election, with the other established party coming second, should not be allowed to obscure the fact that the outcome could easily have been very different. The purpose of this article is to show how the social structure that used to underpin traditional two-party voting has changed its nature in recent years, so that at least since 1974 the potential has existed for the right combination of political forces to reduce one or both traditional major parties either to the status of minor contender, or else to that of a more equal partner in what is no longer a two-party system. In a recent article, Crewe has documented the extreme and unpredictable nature of the volatility that has marked party preferences among the British electorate in recent years. The present article seeks to lay bare the underlying concomitants of that more visible phenomenon.
Risk-Sharing and Social Justice: The Motivational Foundations of the Post-War Welfare State
Authors: Dryzek John , Goodin Robert E.
Published: January 2009

Much political behaviour can be interpreted as the pursuit of more or less naked self-interest. Occasionally, though, individuals do apparently exhibit some concern for their fellow human beings. The result is a less cold and dismal world – and one in which moral philosophers can find a role. Our focus here, however, is more on practical problems than philosophical ones. We shall be less concerned with questions of what moralists should demand of people than with questions of how such demands could be enforced upon people. Specifically, we will be asking how it is possible to evoke from people support for policies aiding those less fortunate than themselves. We propose to address this question by exploring the sources of support for the most broadly-based institution presently available for promoting social justice, the welfare state.
Party Differences and Spatial Representation: The Irish Case
Authors: Sinnott Richard
Published: January 2009

‘The Irish party system is unique. In no other European polity does a small number of programmatically indistinguishable parties, each commanding heterogeneous electoral support, constitute the entire party system.’ This bold statement is merely a particularly forthright expression of a commonly held view about political parties in the Republic of Ireland. This view is understandable given that the formal casus belli between the two major parties was the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921; surely this issue must at some stage have been overtaken by events. In the revised edition of his standard text on Irish politics, Chubb points to the year 1948 as the date by which the ‘issues which had split Sinn Fein were either resolved or increasingly irrelevant’. He goes on to argue that from the 1950s ‘all parties were to a great extent drained of ideology; they overlapped considerably in the policies they proposed; and they competed for the votes of a public increasingly concerned with welfare and consumer politics and less and less with national issues’. What we may call ‘the no-differences thesis’ has far-reaching implications for our understanding of the Irish party system and of the role it plays in policy formulation and the wider political process.
Early Day Motions as Unobtrusive Measures of Backbench Opinion in Britain
Authors: Franklin Mark N. , Tappin Michael
Published: January 2009

One of the major unexplored areas in the literature of political science in Britain is the relationship between the attitudes of individual legislators in policy areas and their behaviour in the House of Commons. In the United States, the study of legislative behaviour has benefited from the fact that the unobtrusive measurement of the attitudes of legislators has been possible through the aggregation of roll-call votes. This procedure has provided the foundation for a body of literature upon which a theoretical framework has been constructed for further research.
A Temporal Sequence of Adolescent Political Participation: Some Israeli Data
Authors: Nachmias David
Published: January 2009

Adolescents in Western democracies acquire participatory-related dispositions early in life. They believe that it is the obligation of the good citizen to be informed and to take a participatory role in the affairs of his community and in politics. Some children start to participate in political activities as early as the third grade; through the twelfth grade, there is a gradual increase in the number of pre-adults who engage in such activities. Variations in adolescent political participation are large, however; they have been found to be associated not only with age but also with socioeconomic status and background measures, with the adolescent's expressed political interest, with the political interest displayed by the adolescent's parents, with curricular and extra-curricular activities, and with the adolescent's social milieu.
Computational Criteria for Voting Systems
Authors: Campbell Donald E.
Published: January 2009

Condorcet's paradox of voting and Arrow's impossibility theorem are by now well known. Inspired by Arrow's treatment of social choice, others have presented alternative proofs of his theorem and different impossibility results. Professor Fishburn has recently treated us to some interesting new voting paradoxes. It is important to have the area of inconsistency among the various treatments explored and clearly mapped out. It is equally important to come to terms with the known inconsistencies in order to construct a solid social choice edifice on safe ground. Coming to terms with the inconsistencies must surely mean deciding between alternative normative conditions when all of them cannot be satisfied simultaneously. This paper attempts to do just that by adding some computational criteria to the standard list of normative criteria and then singling out a subset as being more important (to the author at least) than the rest. Since the ‘important’ criteria are mutually consistent they can be used to derive some properties of democratic decision processes. Simple majority rule, applied in sequential elimination, is distinguished as the best collective decision method. It fails to satisfy the Pareto, or unanimity, criterion – one often regarded as a sine qua non of social choice – but when this condition is added to the author's list an impossibility result obtains. An argument is proposed to counter the suggestion that Pareto optimality be added to the list and some other condition removed.
‘Crisis, Choice, and Change’, Part I
Authors: Barry Brian
Published: January 2009

A major new study by Professor Gabriel Almond is a significant event in our discipline. Whether one believes that The Politics of the Developing Areas (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, i960) set comparative politics on the sure path of a science or set it back a decade, there can be no denying the influence of the so-called ‘functional’ framework set out in Almond's introductory essay. Crisis, Choice, and Change may well have the same degree of influence. Whether or not this is a prospect to be welcomed depends entirely upon the aspects of the book that make an impact. This essay is written in the conviction that the main drift of the book is disastrously misdirected but that part of it – the quasi-game-theoretical analysis of coalition formation – is valuable for what it tries to do, though seriously defective in execution. Since there is obviously a risk that these deficiencies could discredit the whole notion of applying game-theoretical concepts to the analysis of real political situations, my object will be, while drawing attention to the defects, to suggest that they are not inherent in game-theoretical treatments.
Labour Party Politics and the Working Class: Problems of Validity
Authors: Mughan Anthony
Published: January 2009

Steven Beackon's ‘Labour Party Politics and the Working Class’ (this Journal, VI (1976), 231–8) highlights a common problem in political science research, an inadequate concern for the validity of measuring instruments.

On the basis of six statements, the first three of which are claimed to be of an explicitly class character whilst the other three are not, Beackon classifies Labour party activists into those who perceived the party as a class party and those who did not. The weak discriminatory power of these statements is evidenced by their failure to assign fully 39 per cent of the respondents to either category. This third group of activists was labelled ‘Ambivalents’. An assessment of the measuring instrument's face validity, however, suggests that this ambivalence is due not so much to these activists' ambiguous perceptions of the party as to the shortcomings of the instrument itself.
The Programme Approach to the Growth of Government
Authors: Rose Richard
Published: January 2009

In order to understand the dynamics of contemporary government, we must considerwhatgovernment does as well aswhyit grows. This is true whether theories seek to explain past growth or are hypotheses about future developments. Political science has a unique responsibility to address this problem, because it is the discipline for which government is central. Whereas economists and sociologists can produce models that treat political change as epiphenomenal, political scientists must identify what it is that changes when government changes.
Party Realignment in the United States and Britain
Authors: Williams Philip
Published: January 2009

Realignment theory is a recent but flourishing sub-branch of the study of American political parties. Over the last thirty years, the original suggestions of its inventor, V. O. Key, have been elaborated and refined in several directions and through several phases, gradually being modified to take variations in historical circumstances more carefully into account. Problems of the same kind often occur, and are likely to prove even less manageable, when efforts are made to apply the theory to another political system and culture as authors from both countries (and from neither) have in recent years tried, more or less explicitly, to use it to explain developments in the British party system. Some techniques travel quite well, and some useful insights can be obtained by looking afresh at familiar patterns in the light of similar experiences elsewhere. But the differences between the two nations and states preclude any rigorous attempt to apply a theory derived from the history of one country with a view to explaining the experiences of the other.
Groupthink and the Hostage Rescue Mission
Authors: Smith Steve
Published: January 2009

Irving Janis's work on groupthink has attracted considerable attention from those who seek to explain foreign-policy decision making. The basic argument – that excessiveesprit de corpsand amiability restrict the critical faculties of small decision-making groups, thereby leading to foreign-policy fiascos – is both an appealing and a stimulating one. In addition, it is also an argument that is capable of being tested against empirical evidence. Thus, Frank Heller has suggested that groupthink may be very useful in explaining British policy during the Falklands Crisis. The purpose of this note is to indicate the utility of the notion of groupthink in explaining one recent foreign-policy fiasco, the attempt by the United States to rescue its hostages in Tehran.
Comparing Decision Modes at the Country Level: Some Methodological Considerations Using Swiss Data
Authors: Germann Raimund E. , Steiner Jürg
Published: January 2009

In comparative politics, the units of analysis are usually countries. For many variables, this does not raise any particular measurement problems, because they can easily be aggregated at the country level. For other variables, however, measurement at the country level is a much more severe problem. The prevailing decision mode in a country is perhaps the most conspicuous case. In the last ten to fifteen years, this variable has gained key importance in several theories, most prominently in the theories of consciationalism and corporatism. Yet, these theories are plagued by perennial measurement problems. As an illustration, we use the case of Switzerland, but our argument should apply to other countries as well.
Bargaining Theory and Portfolio Payoffs in European Coalition Governments 1945–83
Authors: Schofield Norman , Laver Michael
Published: January 2009

Coalition formation has been the subject of much theoretical and empirical work in the past decade or so. The theories that have been tested all rest, one way or another, upon assumptions about the ways in which the payoff accruing to a particular coalition is distributed among its members. Yet much less empirical work has been done on the process of payoff distribution. Thus some of the fundamental assumptions of coalition theories, at least in terms of their practical application to coalition governments, have been more scantily tested. Several theories of payoff distribution have been recently developed, however. It is the purpose of this article to test the application of these theories to the practice of coalition government in Europe.
Congressional Reform and Party Discipline: The Effects of Changes in the Seniority System on Party Loyalty in the US House of Representatives
Authors: Crook Sara Brandes , Hibbing John R.
Published: January 2009

The US House of Representatives underwent a series of reforms in the 1970s which, on paper, changed the institution in fundamental ways. Often, however, institutional inertia is able to transform important ‘paper’ changes into barely discernible actual changes. Have the reforms really led to alterations in the way Congress operates and the policies it produces? To provide a partial answer to this question, we single out one of the reforms – a change in the application of the seniority system in the selection of committee chairmen – and analyse it with an eye towards one hypothesized effect – alterations in the level of party support among key representatives. But by restricting our study in this manner, we are able to provide specific empirical facts which should be of considerable assistance in the important task of formulating more generalized conclusions about the ability of legislative reform to produce real change in the governing process.
Blocks of Voters and the Cube ‘Law’
Authors: Upton Graham
Published: January 2009

The so-called cube ‘law’ has become ‘part of the political folklore of Great Britain’. Indeed it seems also to have passed into the general folklore of political science, having been applied to electoral systems having single-member constituencies contested by two major parties in the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Reiter's ‘Limitations of Reform’: Right Track, Wrong Conclusion?
Authors: Wekkin Gary D.
Published: January 2009

It is possible to agree with Professor Reiter's general argument and still fault some of his data and take exception to his conclusions. There is little doubt that the original sources of the state and local parties' weakness, and of their loss of control over the presidential nominating process, preceded the party and campaign reforms of the 1970s. Reiter is not alone in arguing that the eclipse of state and local ‘king-makers’ slowly began to take effect earlier, as a result of the advent of civil service reforms, presidential primaries, electronic media, new campaign techniques and the nationalization of the electorate. The reforms are indeed only the latest chapter of a long-running saga.
Response to Polsby and Wekkin
Authors: Reiter Howard L.
Published: January 2009

First I would like to thank Professors Polsby and Wekkin for their thoughtful comments on my article. I am also grateful to the Editors of the Journal for providing this forum for us to exchange our views.

Professor Polsby's first comment is that I have misinterpreted his position on the causes of the current sorry state of American political parties. In reply, I shall focus on his book, which provides the most elaborate development of his thoughts on the subject. The passage he cites in his third footnote is one of at least four which seem to agree with the thrust of my argument. however, in the context of a book that is, after all, entitled Consequences of party Reform, these qualifications are peripheral indeed.
Theory, Methodology and Results in Political Science – The Case of Output Studies
Authors: Boyne George A.
Published: January 2009

This review evaluates the success of output studies in explaining intranational variation in the policies of local governments. Output studies address the central question of political science: why do different governments adopt different policies? It is therefore important to examine the contribution of output studies to our understanding of the reasons for policy variation and the role of politics within the relevant causal processes.
The Impact of Race on Political Behaviour in Britain
Authors: Welch Susan , Studlar Donley T.
Published: January 2009

In contrast to the United States, where analyses of the political behaviour of blacks number in the hundreds, if not more, substantial studies of the political attitudes and behaviour of Britain's non-white minority are fairly scarce. As non-whites have become more visible in the political arena, however, attention by academics has increased. But as yet there have been few countrywide, empirical, and systematic investigations of the political behaviour and attitudes of this population. Our Note uses multivariate methods to investigate the extent of political participation of Britain's non-white minorities in the 1979 election. We focus on a wide variety of political activities and a few selected issue concerns. We attempt to place our findings in the context of some theories of ethnic politics that have developed to explain black political behaviour in Britain and in the United States.
A Theory of Political Socialization: Institutional Support and Deradicalization in Britain
Authors: Searing Donald D.
Published: January 2009

When streams of research are isolated from one another by methodological style and ideological character, the fact that they share similar explanatory principles is easily overlooked. Thus, since the 1950s many quantitative and ‘pluralistic’ American studies have argued that political leaders are more likely than the public to support procedural rules of the game. And since at least the 1930s, many qualitative and ‘left-wing’ European commentaries have argued that, in matters of socio-economic policy, members of parliaments become more moderate than their parties' activists. These important claims are embedded in two partial theories which have previously been treated as unrelated, the theories of institutional support and of deradicalization. And yet, different as these theories may be in many respects, they are driven by similar socialization principles which accompany movement from one role in the political system to another. Such socialization principles are a conservative force inculcating both institutional support in procedural rules of the game and deradicalization in orientations towards public policy.
Some Recent Work in Public Choice
Authors: McLean Iain
Published: January 2009

The standing of the public choice approach to politics is ambiguous. Most people now accept that there is something in it, even if the ‘something’ is restricted to Arrow'sSocial Choice and Individual Values, Downs'sAn Economic Theory of Democracy, Olson'sThe Logic of Collective Action, and (perhaps) Riker'sThe Theory of Political Coalitions. The Logic, for instance, is a cult abbreviation propagated by Olson himself but accepted by others. Three new adjectives (Downsian, Arrovian and Olsonian) are now established, although I have not yet found ‘Rikerian’. By analogy (Keynesian,The General Theory), the language seems to denote acceptance. But the seminal works (they are always seminal, as dawn in the Odyssey is always rosy-fingered) came out between 1951 and 1965; so where are their successors? Why have they had relatively little impact on student texts and informed public opinion? In short, what has been going on?

A very great deal, in fact. The first generation proposed bold hypotheses; their successors have put enormous efforts into refining them and proposing new ones, and (unfortunately) rather limited efforts into testing them. There have been four main lines of development. It would be impossible to review all four critically in a single article; therefore I make only fairly brief comments on the first three and devote most of this article to the fourth, which I think is one of the most promising and of the greatest interest to political scientists.
Reasoning Chains: Causal Models of Policy Reasoning in Mass Publics
Authors: Sniderman Paul M. , Hagen Michael G. , Tetlock Philip E. , Brady Henry E.
Published: January 2009

Citizens do not choose sides on issues like busing or abortion whimsically. They have reasons for their preferences – certainly they can give reasons for them. But how is this possible? Citizens as a rule pay little attention to politics, indeed take only a modest interest in it even during election campaigns when their interest in politics is at its height. And since they pay little attention to politics, it is hardly surprising that they know little about it. Many, in fact, are quite ignorant of basic facts of political life – such as the identity of the party that controls Congress or indeed the name of the congressman who represents them. Which, of course, raises a question of some interest: how do citizens figure out what they think about political issues, given how little they commonly know about them?
More Power to the Soviets? Reform and Local Government in the Soviet Union
Authors: Slider Darrell
Published: January 2009

In recent years the chief emphasis of Soviet legislation on urban administration has been to expand the rights and responsibilities of city governments in planning and co-ordinating economic activities within their territory. Very little has been done, however, to enhance the power of city Soviets so that they might actually carry out these new responsibilities. The same problems that historically have plagued local Soviets continue to undermine their capabilities. Chief among these problems are the following:

1. Insufficient powervis-à-visthe ministries; in most decisions concerning enterprises subordinate to all-union (Moscow-based) or republic-level ministries, the local soviet has little influence. With the exception of Khrushchev's short-livedsovnarkhozreform, which dismantled most of the central ministries and attempted to expand the power of regional authorities over economic decision-making, the branch principle of management has been dominant ever since the beginning of Stalin's industrialization drive. The most powerful actors are the ministries located in Moscow or in the republic capitals. A large percentage of the money invested in the construction of housing, cultural facilities and the urban infrastructure is not part of the budget of the local soviet. Instead, such facilities are financed out of funds that the ministries allocate to enterprises for these purposes. In the mid-1970s, ministries paid for and supervised the construction of 70 per cent of housing and 65 per cent of new kindergartens and nurseries. The result is that facilities are built according to the interests of the ministries rather than in response to more general, local needs.
British Political Recruitment: Labour in the Euro-Elections of 1979
Authors: Holland Martin
Published: January 2009

Research into the recruitment process within British political parties has tended to focus on either the institutional machinery of selection or the socio-economic characteristics of candidates. The analysis of non-selected aspirants has been ignored and those hypotheses that do exist remain empirically untested. In this article data on the Labour party's recruitment process for the 1979 direct elections to the European Parliament are used to test a research strategy. A major finding is that significant differences exist between selected and non-selected aspirants which may reflect gate-keeping criteria. In particular, pro- or anti-EEC attitudes were found to be a dominant recruitment factor.
State Structures and Clientelism: The French State Versus the ‘Notaires’
Authors: Suleiman Ezra N.
Published: January 2009

The autonomy of a state is thought to depend on the state's structures. This widely accepted view of the policy-making process has given rise to an uncontested assertion: states that possess centralized administrative structures are better able than decentralized states to formulate and implement policies independently of societal pressures.

Is a decentralized state more permeable than a centralized one? We seek to answer this question by treating it as a hypothesis. The empirical material derives from a case study of a reform project proposed by the French state and objected to by the group in question, thenotaires.
Government Popularity and the Falklands War: A Reassessment
Authors: Sanders David , Ward Hugh , Marsh David , Fletcher Tony
Published: January 2009

Mrs Thatcher's decisive and determined stand during the Falklands crisis in 1982 has been widely credited with restoring the electoral fortunes of the Conservative party in the run-up to the 1983 general election. This article argues that the Falklands war produced a boost to Conservative popularity of at most three percentage points for a period of only three months. Government popularity was already accelerating as a result of macroeconomic factors before the outbreak of the Falklands crisis, in particular ‘personal economic expectations’ proved to be of critical theoretical and empirical significance, and can be modelled satisfactorily on the basis purely of objective macroeconomic indices. Thus macroeconomic factors were at the root of the revival of Mrs Thatcher's political fortunes, and most of the boost to government popularity which occurred in the spring of 1982 derived from intelligent (or cynical) macroeconomic management. The Falklands crisis merely coincided with a jump in government popularity which would have occurred anyway in the wake of Geoffrey Howe's 1982 Budget.
Does Politics Matter? Redistributive Policies in English Cities 1949–74
Authors: Hoggart Keith
Published: January 2009

The importance of political parties for inter-governmental differences in public policies has long been the subject of dispute. Given their comparative intentions and their concern with end-products rather than decision processes, statistical analyses of policy outputs should provide a valuable tool in evaluating this question. This they have seemingly failed to do, largely because they have devoted insufficient attention to the conceptual and theoretical underpinnings of their investigations. However, with Sharpe and Newton's Does Politics Matter? a theoretical approach has been introduced into the local outputs literature which should herald a new era in comparative statistical investigations and the welcome emergence of conceptual and theoretical advances. In addition, their efforts raise the promise of forging a closer alliance between the outputs literature and more detailed, qualitative investigations of policy-making processes in individual local authorities.
The Ideological Position and Electoral Appeal of Labour Party Candidates: An Analysis of Labour's Performance at the 1983 General Election
Authors: Kimber Jon
Published: January 2009

There is a generally accepted view among academic observers of British politics that no strong relationship exists between the ideological position of a party's candidate and the vote-winning capacity of his or her party. This is said to be a reflection partly of the electorate's lack of knowledge of particular candidates and partly of the strength of party allegiance. Political developments in the 1980s, however, suggest that there is an a priori case for re-examining this accepted view, at least as far as the Labour party is concerned.
A Note on Reece's Proportional-Loss Model
Authors: Moores Brian
Published: January 2009

In a recent publication Reece proposes to substitute for the ‘swing’ method what he labels a proportional-loss model. Although his argument against the logic of the swing method is perfectly valid, this short Note will demonstrate that what he offers as a substitute is just as unsound intellectually.
The Structure of Western European Attitudes Towards Atlantic Co-operation: Implications for the Western Alliance
Authors: Ziegler Andrew H.
Published: January 2009

Previous studies of Western European foreign policy attitudes rely almost exclusively on single-item measures, such as support for defence spending, support for the new missiles in Europe, opinions on NATO, and so on. This article, using a multi-country data set, aggregates several survey items and explores the manner in which Europeans structure their attitudes towards one aspect of foreign policy: Atlantic co-operation. A factor analysis uncovers two underlying conceptual dimensions: military and non-military co-operation. These dimensions provide the axes to construct a four-fold typology of viewpoints, consisting of Atlanticists, Military Allies, Dovish Partners and Isolationists. Respondents are classified within this typology, and the European-wide and cross-national distributions of opinion are presented. The highest support for Atlantic co-operation is found among the West Germans, and the lowest is found among the French.
Coalition Theory and Local Government: Coalition Payoffs in Britain
Authors: Laver Michael , Rallings Colin , Thrasher Michael
Published: January 2009

Formal coalition theory has tended to ignore the existence of local government coalitions. Local government studies have tended to ignore the existence of formal coalition theory. Yet local administrations frequently comprise coalitions of parties. There is clearly a need, therefore, to bring the two areas of study together.
Tributes, Tariffs, Taxes and Trade: The Changing Sources of Government Revenue
Authors: Tarschys Daniel
Published: January 2009

Government action presupposes extraction. Historically, four different sources of public revenue may be distinguished. Tributes, which are common in peimitive and belligerent states, are variable levies exacted at irregular intervals. Tariffs raised on the basis of the physical control of strategic passageways are important sources of income for mercantile states in the early stage of their development. Taxes play some role in semi modern economies but evolve more fully as the financial mainstay of government in advanced industrial societies. In addition, many states draw large receipts from the profits of trade. The planned economies in the socialist bloc are trading states rather than tax states. The different logistic properties of these revenue sources affect the prospects for government growth at various stages of economic development. The expansion of the tax state is strongly linked to the proliferation of monetary flows in modern society. At the same time, some non tax receipts such as user charges and other incomes from trade retain their importance, and the present ‘crisis of the tax state’ might possibly lead to a more composite structure of government revenue.
Peasant Autonomy, Peasant Solidarity and Peasant Revolts
Authors: Meadwell Hudson
Published: January 2009

I have argued two points. Firstly, Skocpol has confused peasant autonomy and peasantstate alliances. The relationship between autonomy and revolt is spurious. Secondly, peasant solidarity is neither a necessary nor a sufficient cause of peasant revolt. It is not necessary because revolt concentrated in a specific niche in a peasant community cannot be attributed to peasant solidarity. Nor is solidarity sufficient, because it has effects only in communities with relatively high skill levels. When solidarity does have independent social effects, it is as a community norm and tends to be associated with a sort of revolt that is not intended to change the lord—peasant relationship.
Voting Procedures: A Substitute Proposal
Authors: Paine Neil R.
Published: January 2009

This Comment proposes a new procedure for selecting a single winner in a multicandidate election. This procedure may be viewed as an offspeing of two other procedures which have been recently analysed in this journal.
Electoral Distortion under STV Random Sampling Procedures: A Comment
Authors: Fischer A. J.
Published: January 2009

In a recent Note in this Journal by Gallagher and Unwin, it was stated that the element of randomness due to sampling surplus votes in single transferable vote (STV) elections ‘has long been recognized, but no previous attempt has been made to assess its impact’. This is incorrect. Work done in Australia (and reported in the leading Australian journals in their respective fields) has comprehensively dealt with this problem both in theory and practice. Since STV is practised in national elections in only three countries (Australia, Ireland and Malta, the most populous being Australia) it is surprising that contributors to, and referees of, this Journal should be unaware of such material. It was largely because of the evidence contained in these articles that the Joint Committee on Electoral Reform recommended to the Australian Parliament an amendment to the Electoral Act, to avoid the problems caused by sampling votes, by using the Gregory method of counting them. The Act was amended in this way in 1983.
Political Independence in America, Part II: Towards a Theory
Authors: Dennis Jack
Published: January 2009

This second article asks what it means to be independent in the contemporary United States. Four different meanings are hypothesized: (1) negative feelings about major political parties and partisanship; (2) positive identification with ideals of independence, especially individualistic autonomy; (3) neutrality or indifference because of no detectable party differences of significance; (4) a self-perceived pattern of variability in partisan behaviour. These four attitudinal dimensions are supported empirically via principal components analysis using both national and Wisconsin data. The four dimensions of independence attitudes show varied patterns of association with general indices of Independence self-classification, relevant political attitudes and behaviours, and various antecedents such as age and education.
Beyond Hayek's Pessimism: Reason, Tradition and Bounded Constructivist Rationalism
Authors: Rowland Barbara M.
Published: January 2009

Two competing themes – traditionalism and constitutional design – lead to inconsistency in F. A. Hayek's work. This inconsistency and its implications for understanding his thought are examined. It is shown that his failure to reconcile these conflicting emphases reflects uncertainty about the proportions of reasoned choice and unreflective rule-following in human decisions. This uncertainty is traced to Hayek's growing pessimism about modern man's ability to preserve the market and the traditions upon which the market rests. Once Hayek's pessimism is set aside, the implications of his work on tradition can be developed in a more useful direction. Realization that reason rests on a non-rational matrix and that people's choices affect that matrix should not lead towards embrace and veneration of the past, but towards emphasis on the necessity of responsible political choice in the present and future.
The Effects of Candidate Gender on Voting for Local Office in England
Authors: Welch Susan , Studlar Donley T.
Published: January 2009

There has been considerable controversy over the reasons why women hold less than 20 per cent of all local council offices in England. Using a simple model of the votes a candidate might be expected to receive, this Note uses data from the 1985 English non-metropolitan county council elections to shed light on the paucity of women in local elected office. Our analysis evaluates the following alternative explanations for the low proportions of women in local office:

1. Relatively few women are selected by parties to run for local office;

2. Parties tend to nominate their women candidates for unwinnable races;

3. Voters disproportionately vote against women candidates.
The Architecture of Parliaments: Legislative Houses and Political Culture
Authors: Goodsell Charles T.
Published: January 2009

The architecture of houses of parliament and of legislative chambers in countries around the world is analysed for its relationship to political culture. It is argued that parliamentary buildings and spaces (1) preserve cultural values of the polity over time; (2) articulate contemporaneous political attitudes and values; and (3) contribute to the formation of political culture. Preservation is illustrated by how parliament buildings occupy sacred sites, symbolize the state and assure the continuity of legislative traditions. Articulation is exemplified by reflecting the relative importance of the two legislative houses and making expressive statements about the role of parties, executives and individual legislators. Formation can be affected by the physical dimensions of chambers, the arrangement of seats, aisles and lecterns, and spatial relationships between houses and the parliament versus the executive. It is concluded that the advent of television broadcasting of parliamentary sessions may make these architectural features even more important in perpetuating, manifesting and shaping political culture.
The Impact of Structural and Ideological Party Cleavages in West European Democracies: A Comparative Empirical Analysis
Authors: Knutsen Oddbjørn
Published: January 2009

This article examines the relative impact of different political cleavages on party preference in a comparative West European context. The point of departure is the so-called ‘new polities’ theory, which postulates that the value polarization between materialist and post-materialist (MPM) political orientation is a new and increasingly important dimension in this respect.

The findings from ten West European democracies confirm that the MPM cleavage is an important party cleavage in most of the countries examined, although the traditional structural cleavages are still most important from a causal perspective. The MPM dimension does not, however, have the largest impact in the most advanced industrial democracies, something new politics theory appears to contend. Another ideological cleavage dimension – ‘Left-Right Materialism’ – is also an important party cleavage, and appears to have most impact in the most advanced (post-industrial) West European countries.
Citizenship, Social Citizenship and the Defence of Welfare Provision
Authors: King Desmond S. , Waldron Jeremy
Published: January 2009

This article analyses the normative status of claims to the social rights of citizenship in the light of New Right criticisms of the welfare state. The article assesses whether there is any normative justification for treating welfare provision and citizenship as intrinsically linked. After outlining T. H. Marshall's conception of citizenship the article reviews its status in relation to: traditional arguments about citizenship of the polity; relativist arguments about the embedded place of citizenship within current societies; and, drawing upon Rawlsian analysis, absolutist arguments about what being a member of a modern society implies. Each argument has some strengths and together they indicate the importance of retaining the idea of citizenship at the centre of modern political debates about social and economic arrangements.
The Instability of Partisanship: An Analysis of the 1980 Presidential Election
Authors: Brody Richard A. , Rothenberg Lawrence S.
Published: January 2009

Scholars have long assigned a key role to party identification as an explanation of voting behaviour. In doing so, they have assumed that individuals' partisan affiliations remain unchanged for long periods of time. But is partisanship sufficiently stable to justify this assumption? At the very least, to be considered a long-term force party identification cannot change during an election. Yet the intra-election stability of party affiliations has been accepted on faith, rather than examined empirically.

Our analysis tests this assumption by looking at the evolution of partisanship over the course of the 1980 election. We find that many citizens do alter their partisanship over a single electoral period. These changes in party identification follow a systematic - and not a random - pattern. Both cognitive and affective factors account for this intra-election partisan lability. These findings suggest that much of the previous research on voting behaviour has been seriously misspecified.