bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Antisense down regulation of connexin31.1 reduces apoptosis and increases thickness of human and animal corneal epithelia
Authors: Chang C.‐Y. , Laux‐Fenton W.T. , Law L.‐Y. , Becker D.L. , Sherwin T. , Green C.R.
Published: January 2009

The roles of the gap junction protein connexin31.1 (Cx31.1) are poorly understood, especially as the protein appears to form non‐functional channels. Cx31.1 specific antisense oligodeoxynucleotides (ODNs) were designed to evaluate its roles in a corneal epithelium model. Expression of Cx31.1 in corneal epithelium extends from the suprabasal layers of polyhedral wing cells through to the flat squamous cells of superficial layers which are shed into the tear film. Deoxyribozymes (Dzs) were tested for cleavage efficacy using in vitro transcribed Cx31.1 mRNA. Cleavage results showed a putative tertiary structure for Cx31.1 mRNA with one region appearing to have a higher potential for antisense targeting. Application of antisense ODNs designed to this region caused Cx31.1 knockdown in rat and human corneal organotypic culture models, leading to a reduction in apoptosis and a thickening of the corneal epithelium (p = 0.0045). Cx31.1 appears to play a role in triggering cell death; knocking it down may provide a novel approach for tissue repair and engineering.
Oxidative preconditioning promotes bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells migration and prevents apoptosis
Authors: Li ShiYong , Deng YuBin , Feng JianQiang , Ye WeiBiao
Published: January 2009

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) play essential roles in apoptosis and in the regulation of several transcription factors under both physiological and pathological conditions. However, the effects of ROS on MSCs are not well known, and therefore we have investigated the effects of preconditioning with hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) on the level of expression of the chemokine receptor, CXCR4, stromal cell‐derived factor‐1α (SDF‐1α)‐dependent migration and apoptosis in MSCs. Preconditioning with 20 μM H2O2 significantly increased the level of expression of CXCR4 mRNA and protein, and MSCs migration toward SDF‐1α; increased expression of CXCR4 and SDF‐1α‐induced MSCs migration was attenuated by extracellular signal‐regulated kinase (ERK) inhibitor PD98059. Preconditioning with 20 μM H2O2 significantly protected MSCs against apoptosis induced by 500 μM H2O2. These results suggest that preconditioning with H2O2 can increase MSCs migration toward SDF‐1α and protect MSCs against apoptosis.
Characterization of the endonuclease SSO2001 from Sulfolobus solfataricus P2
Authors: Han Dong , Krauss Gerhard
Published: January 2009

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and their associated protein genes (cas genes) have been suggested to act as an immune system in archaea and bacteria mimicking the eukaryotic RNA interference (RNAi) system. We have investigated the properties of the protein SSO2001 from Sulfolobus solfataricus (Sso) P2, which is part of the cas gene cluster. This study shows that SSO2001 is an endonuclease specifically digesting double‐stranded oligonucleotides and preferably cleaving at G:C pairs. Point mutations identify both highly conserved aspartate and glutamate residues as being crucial for the nuclease activity. The catalytic activity shows an optimum at neutral pH and pH 3.
A sorghum 85 kDa heat stress‐modulated protein shows calmodulin‐binding properties and cross‐reactivity to anti‐Neurospora crassa Hsp 80 antibodies
Authors: Virdi Amardeep Singh , Thakur Aditi , Dutt Som , Kumar Sanjay , Singh Prabhjeet
Published: January 2009

The present study, carried out to identify stress‐modulated calmodulin (CaM)‐binding proteins in sorghum, resulted in the isolation of several proteins, which showed binding to CaM‐Sepharose matrix. Calmodulin gel overlay assay and MALDI‐ToF MS analysis revealed that an 85 kDa protein (Hsp85), which interacted with calmodulin, cross‐reacted with anti‐N. crassa Hsp80 antibodies. Since these antibodies bind to plant Hsp90, sorghum Hsp85 is likely to be a member of the Hsp90 family. This study provides the first evidence that a member of Hsp90 (Hsp85) in plants exhibits CaM‐binding properties.
Role of the N‐terminal domain of FliI ATPase in bacterial flagellar protein export
Authors: Okabe Mayuko , Minamino Tohru , Imada Katsumi , Namba Keiichi , Kihara May
Published: January 2009

FliI, the ATPase involved in bacterial flagellar protein export, forms a complex with its regulator FliH in the cytoplasm and hexamerizes upon docking to the export gate composed of integral membrane proteins. The extreme N‐terminal region of FliI is involved not only in its interaction with FliH but also in its oligomerization, but the regulatory mechanism of oligomerization remains unclear. Using in‐frame 10‐residue deletions within the 100 residues of the N‐terminal domain, we demonstrate that the first 20 residues are required for FliH binding and that the conformation of the N‐terminal domain is sensitive to the export function, even though the oligomerization and FliH‐binding ability are retained and the ATPase activity is maintained in most of the deletion variants.
Hypotonic shocks activate rat TRPV4 in yeast in the absence of polyunsaturated fatty acids
Authors: Loukin Stephen H. , Su Zhenwei , Kung Ching
Published: January 2009

Transient‐receptor‐potential channels (TRPs) underlie the sensing of chemicals, heat, and mechanical force. We expressed the rat TRPV1 and TRPV4 subtypes in yeast and monitored their activities in vivo as Ca2+ rise using transgenic aequorin. Heat and capsaicin activate TRPV1 but not TRPV4 in yeast. Hypotonic shocks activate TRPV4 but not TRPV1. Osmotic swelling is modeled to activate enzyme(s), producing polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to open TRPV4 in mammalian cells. This model relegates mechanosensitivity to the enzyme and not the channel. Yeast has only a single Δ9 fatty‐acid monodesaturase and cannot make PUFAs suggesting an alternative mechanism for TRPV4 activation. We discuss possible explanations of this difference.
Long‐lasting neonatal inflammation enhances pain responses to subsequent inflammation, but not peripheral nerve injury in adult rats
Authors: Lim Eun Jeong , Back Seung Keun , Kim Myung Ah , Li Chengjin , Lee Jaehee , Jeong Keun Yeong , Na Heung Sik
Published: January 2009

The early postnatal period has been suggested to be the vulnerable time for structural and functional reorganization of sensory systems, and painful stimuli at this time may alter neuronal circuits, thereby leading to changes in an individual's response to pain later in life. In the present study, we examined whether inflammatory experience in the early life can affect pain responses to subsequent noxious insults later in life. The two groups of neonatal rats, treated with an inflammatory irritant and untreated, were subjected to inflammation and peripheral nerve injury in adulthood. Neonatal inflammation was induced by injection of complete Freund's adjuvant (CFA, 25 μl) into the hindpaw or tail of newborn rat pups. Adult rats which had suffered from neonatal paw inflammation at P0 were subjected to re‐injection of CFA into the paw neonatally exposed to CFA or L5 spinal nerve ligation. Paw thickness and histology of inflamed paw were examined to assess the neonatal inflammation. Adult animals whose tail had been subjected to CFA injection on P3 received tail‐innervating nerve injury. The results showed that the neonatal CFA‐treated rats suffered from chronic inflammation, confirmed by persistent increase of paw thickness and histological result of inflamed paw. These animals showed enhanced pain responses to re‐inflammatory challenge by injection of CFA (200 μl) into the neonatally inflamed paw 8 weeks after birth compared with the neonatally untreated animals. However, neuropathic pain on the hindpaw and the tail which had been induced by peripheral nerve injury in the neonatal CFA‐treated group were not different from those of the untreated group. The present data suggest that early neonatal long‐lasting inflammation differentially affects pain responses later in life, depending on the types of subsequent noxious insults.
Six Notions of ‘Political’ and the United States Supreme Court
Authors: Hodder-Williams Richard
Published: January 2009

Six different notions of ‘political’ are commonly used in discussions of the US Supreme Court. All six are familiar, but the distinctions among them are seldom carefully drawn. The six are: (1) purely definitional, in the sense that the Supreme Court, as an appellate court of last resort inevitably authoritatively allocates values; (2) empirical, in the sense that litigants use the Court to try to achieve their political purposes; (3) influence seeking, in the sense that the justices have a natural desire to prevail in arguments within the court; (4) prudential, in the sense that the justices frequently consider the probable consequences of their decisions; (5) policy-oriented, in the – usually pejorative – sense that justices are said to use the Court and the law as a cover for pursuing their own policy and other goals; and (6) systemic, in the sense that the Court's decisions frequently, as a matter of fact, have consequences for other parts of the American political system. These six notions are considered in the context of recent abortion decisions.
The International System and the Reagan Doctrine: Can Realism Explain Aid to ‘Freedom Fighters’?
Authors: Lagon Mark P.
Published: January 2009

Doctrines have been a prevalent form of foreign policy in American history. What explains their origins? This study addresses this question by examining the Reagan Doctrine, a declared policy which pledged aid to anti-communist guerrillas in the Third World. This case study examines the utility of the ‘structural realist’ theory, focusing on the international level of analysis.

Structural realism stresses the international balance of power, international conditions, limits on the government's freedom to make policy and the national interest. Sources of the Reagan Doctrine are found both in the international environment as a whole and in the individual countries where the Reagan Administration openly aided insurgents: Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Angola and Cambodia.

The findings indicate that the structural realist perspective is necessary to explain the Reagan Doctrine, but not sufficient. In particular, it fails to account for the role of political elites and their beliefs in foreign-policy making.
Activist–Leader Relations and the Structure of Political Parties: ‘Exchange’ Models and Vote-Seeking Behaviour in Parties
Authors: Ware Alan
Published: January 2009

This article examines how party organization affects, and is itself affected by, the objectives pursued by parties in liberal democracies; it focuses on vote-seeking behaviour by parties. It argues that it is a mistake to model activist–leader relations in the past as having been primarily the product of particular kinds of ‘exchanges’ between leaders and activists in a party. Such models limit our understanding of intra-party relations in four important respects – by focusing exclusively on the idea of ‘exchange’ and not examining the role of ‘gifts’; by not considering the role of solidary incentives; by omitting an analysis of loyalty; and by not taking account of the role of habit. However, the article also argues that ‘exchange’ is becoming now a far more significant element in intra-party relations and that this development will constrain party leaders and influence the goals pursued by parties. Greater reliance on exchange between leaders and activists may lead to parties becoming generally more policy-seeking in their behaviour and also to their becoming less manageable than in the past.
Political Generations and Electoral Change in Canada
Authors: Johnston Richard
Published: January 2009

This article lays out the elementary logic of age structures in party preference data and proposes a simple estimation model with demographic and historical elements. As voters age their preferences intensify. But they do not intensify much and generational differences in the direction of party preferences are correspondingly weak. The Canadian electorate does not seem all that strongly anchored by the accumulated experience of the individuals that make it up. The major source of long-term electoral change, therefore, is conversion in the existing electorate. Consideration is given to how distinctive the Canadian pattern is.
Assessing the Impact of Televised Debates: The Case of the 1988 Canadian Election
Authors: Blais André , Boyer M. Martin
Published: January 2009

A methodology is proposed for assessing the impact of televised debates on electoral outcomes, and it is applied to a specific case, that of the 1988 Canadian election. We present four tests of the debates' impact: first, a cross-sectional group comparison, which contrasts the voting behaviour of those who did and those who did not see the debates; secondly, a panel analysis of the shift in party support, before and after the debates, among those who watched the debates and those who did not; thirdly, a panel study of the impact of reactions to the debates on voting behaviour; and, fourthly, a time-series analysis, which examines the evolution of vote intentions over the course of the campaign and, more precisely, before and after the debates.

It is argued that because non-watchers are influenced by what their friends or the media tell them about the debates, the first two designs, based on a comparison of debate watchers and non-watchers, are not appropriate. The empirical analysis of the 1988 Canadian election substantiates this point. While these first two designs seem to indicate no debate impact, panel reaction and time-series analyses show that the debates had a substantial and enduring impact on the vote and that they were decisive in the contest for second place between the Liberals and the NDP.
The Quality of Political Leadership: A Case Study of John Major
Authors: Jones Philip , Hudson John
Published: January 2009

Perceptions of leadership quality depend upon personality traits. With John Major as a case study, we demonstrate that the most important personality attributes are those which contribute to the belief that a leader can govern in a business-like fashion. Changes in personality traits affect the rating of a leader and ratings affect a party's electoral support. Using this approach, perceptions of John Major's personality are changed continuously to illustrate the impact on voters. A Monte Carlo simulation is introduced to allow for the likelihood that not everyone would perceive a personality change. This approach is preferable to alternatives and can explain why, on occasion, there has been dispute over the importance of party leadership in British general elections.
Factional Competition for the Party Endorsement: The Case of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party
Authors: Cox Gary W. , Rosenbluth Frances
Published: January 2009

This Note explores the candidate-endorsement process in the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) of Japan during its period of hegemony (1955–90). Even in parties without an enduring factional structure such as the LDP, nominations are often troublesome – witness, for example, the reselection controversy in Britain's Labour party at the end of the 1970s or the perennially damaging fights in American primary elections. Moreover, it is easy to understand why nomination politics is so consistently problematic: the gist of the problem is simply that different groups within a party may differ as to who should receive the party endorsement in a given district (or, in list systems, who should get the safe spots on the list). Group A naturally wants its candidate(s) endorsed (there may be more than one in multi-member districts), but so do groups B, C and D. The resulting interaction between groups can be what a game theorist would call a co-ordination, or Battle of the Sexes, game.
Why is Secession Difficult in Well-Established Democracies? Lessons from Quebec
Authors: Dion Stéphane
Published: January 2009

Secession, defined as ‘formal withdrawal from a central authority by a member unit’, has been particularly rare in democracies. In fact, there has never been a single case of secession in democracies if we consider only the well-established ones, that is, those with at least ten consecutive years of universal suffrage. The cases most often mentioned happened only a few years after the introduction or significant expansion of universal suffrage: Norway and Sweden in 1905, Iceland and Denmark in 1918, Ireland and the United Kingdom in 1922. What is more, one would hesitate before calling the first two cases real secessions, since the ties between the political entities involved were very loose at the outset. Secessionists never managed to split a well-established democracy through a referendum or an electoral victory. We must conclude that it is very hard for them to achieve and maintain the magic number of 50 per cent support. My aim is to explain why this is the case.
Another Game with Nature: An Ecological Regression Model of the British Two-Party Vote Ratio in 1970
Authors: Crewe Ivor , Payne Clive
Published: January 2009

This article develops a number of themes first raised in an earlier paper where we attempted to publicize the existence of Census data based, for the first time, on British parliamentary constituencies, and where we briefly described the potential and limits of a variety of available statistical techniques of analysis. Until the earlier paper was published, studies of British electoral behaviour using aggregate data were largely historical, generally used only the simplest statistical techniques such as cross-tabulations, and usually proceeded blithely unaware of the snares of ecological inference. A small number of more advanced analyses had appeared but none focused on Britain or even on England as a whole. Since our earlier article appeared, there have been two attempts to construct predictive models of Labour support by applying multivariate statistical analysis to aggregate-level data. As we show in this paper, both Barnett and Rasmussen produce models that are statistically less powerful than our own and are subject to various weaknesses, of which the most important is the failure to tackle the problem of ecological inference.
Bayesian Statistics and Political Recruitment: A Comment
Authors: Whiteley Paul
Published: January 2009

In an important contribution to the improvement of data analytical techniques in political science, Budge and Farlie examine the predictive success of various background characteristics in determining political activism [Ian Budge and Dennis Farlie, ‘Political Recruitment and Dropout’, this Journal, v (1975), 33–68]. The authors use the framework of Bayesian statistics, in which the subjective probability that a given individual will be a political activist is revised in the light of sample information about the background characteristics of activists to give a posterior (i.e. after the information or event) probability that the individual is an activist. Unfortunately, as the authors admit, they do not utilize fully all the components of the Bayesian approach.
A Rejoinder
Authors: Farlie Dennis , Budge Ian
Published: January 2009

Whiteley's comment presents a ‘full’ Bayesian argument for the identification of councillors. A Bayesian analysis is a procedure by which an individual can make coherent judgements between hypotheses in terms of conceptual gambles. It is important to recognize that the coherence is between the individual's prior and posterior beliefs when presented with evidence and is not to be interpreted as the agreement between the decision and the correct decision. There is in the argument no appeal to the probability of a correct decision as a relative frequency concept. In many circumstances the correct decision may be undecidable so that a frequentist approach would be inapplicable anyway. Two Bayesians who disagree on their prior beliefs concerning a finite number of hypotheses will disagree on their posterior beliefs when presented with the same data provided that no hypothesis is declared impossible by the data.
Labour Party Politics and the Working Class
Authors: Beackon Steven
Published: January 2009

By the late 1960s the shift of the Labour party away from its traditional base among the urban working class appeared to be gaining momentum. The opinion polls showed a marked swing of working-class sentiment away from the party, and the policies advanced during the period, especially with regard to prices and incomes and industrial relations, hardly seemed designed to satisfy the redistributive concerns traditionally imputed to the working class. Indeed the government's overriding concern with the problem of the economy during a period in which the Labour party had a large majority over all other parties in the House of Commons was seen by one commentator as the final act of a tragic farce entitled ‘The Decline and Fall of Social Democracy’. Clearly this conclusion was drawn somewhat prematurely: in the 1970s there is fragmented evidence to suggest that the Labour party has regained the votes of a number of its traditional supporters who had previously defected, just as there is evidence that the ‘left’ of the party is asserting itself. However, the events of the early 1970s are not sufficient to refute the proposition that some kind of fundamental change either has occurred, or is occurring, in the relationship between the Labour party and its traditional supporters. Even if the curtain has yet to fall, there is no reason to believe that the play has not begun.
Partisanship and Policy Choice: Issue Preferences in the British Electorate, February 1974
Authors: Alt James E. , Särlvik Bo , Crewe Ivor
Published: January 2009

Inherent in many models of voting, as well as in defences of representative democracy, is the assumption that the voting public has knowledge of and opinions about public policy issues. In recent years in the United States a stream of scholarly articles has been devoted to assessing not just the extent to which issue knowledge and opinions exist but also the extent to which they influence electoral decisions. This new literature suggests that issue-related perceptions and attitudes are rather more important in the electoral process than earlier studies had suggested. This increased focus on issues appears to reflect both methodological changes in the analysis of them and also real changes in the importance of policy issues in American electoral politics. By contrast, students of British electoral behaviour have made few systematic attempts to assess the fit between popular attitudes and knowledge of party policy positions on issues. Instead, the conventional wisdom is repeated which holds that ‘a majority of people are either ignorant of, or disagree with, the specific policies of the party they support’. The implication of this seems to be that electors' familiarity with issues is so low, and the holding of policy attitudes by them so uncommon, that rigorous analysis of issues in the context of electoral politics is unnecessary.
Elites, Pluralists and Policy Arenas in London: Toward a Comparative Theory of City Policy Formation
Authors: Kantor Paul
Published: January 2009

Theories of policy formation derived from the experience of one country are not always easy to apply in another. This is particularly true of policy making in British cities, where scholars have often found that the relevance of theories developed in the United States is strictly limited. This paper seeks to explore two approaches that have been influential in orienting theory-building in American local politics – the ‘elite’ approach and the ‘pluralist’ – and to examine their relevance to policy analysis in urban Britain. Our contention is that both of these approaches, if reformulated so as to apply to policy-making processes in different arenas of decision, afford valuable insights. Data collected in three Greater London boroughs, which were attempting a vast reorganization of secondary education, suggest that distinctly British patterns of pluralist and elite-oriented policy-making behavior are related to particular types of governmental outputs.
Assessing Incrementalism in British Municipal Budgeting
Authors: Danziger James N.
Published: January 2009

One observation about the budgets of governments has passed into the conventional wisdom: budget-making, we are told, is a process of ‘incremental decision making’. The approach of the incrementalists is directed primarily to the question of how the creation of the new budget in a particular year (‘the budgetary process’) is to be explained. The approach seeks to characterize how budgeters respond to the problem of allocating resources and to develop explanatory models of budgetary outputs. But, despite the volume of research that now exists on budgetary incrementalism, the operationalization of the concept remains an issue, and many of the empirical studies have the limited perspective of a single budget-making system – that is, of one set of resource allocators, who employ the same standard operating procedures, rules of search, and so on. This paper has two objectives: (1) to explicate some simple operational models of budgetary incrementalism; and (2) to examine the adequacy of these models by means of an empirical test in four comparable budget-making systems – British county boroughs.
Correlates of Influence in Local Government: An Exploratory Investigation
Authors: Rallings Colin S.
Published: January 2009

Over a number of years, and with concerns as far apart as democratic theory and organizational behaviour, many commentators have studied the patterns of recruitment in local government and the contents of the job that elected officials take upon themselves. Most of these analyses have convincingly shown a tendency for political actors to possess a higher average socioeconomic status than the population from which they are drawn. One student is explicit in saying that ‘politics is a middle-class job and the training appropriate for middle-class jobs is also a training for politics’. What has not, however, been subject to such extended consideration is the question of differences among groups of legislators themselves. This Note attempts to restore the balance by reporting briefly on a limited and exploratory investigation of patterns of leadership/influence in one Scottish local council.
Is ‘Power’ Essentially Contested?
Authors: Macdonald K. I.
Published: January 2009

The proper role of the values of the doer in the doing of political theory is a continuing and vexed problem. Is the holding of values an encumbrance or an integral part of the process? Recently Lukes has made a determined effort to argue, in the case of one particular concept, ‘power’, that theoretical and value disputes cannot in principle be disentangled: ‘I shall argue for a view of power (that is, a way of identifying it) which is radical in both the theoretical and political senses (and I take these senses in this context to be intimately related). The view I shall defend is… ineradicably evaluative and “essentially contested”.’ The notion of ‘essentially contested’ is defined by reference to Gallie, and although the above quotation may be ambiguous, Lukes' later usage makes clear that he is claiming that it is the concept of power (and not his metatheoretic statement about it) that is ‘essentially contested’. This claim is technically mistaken and the mistake, I would argue, is substantively pernicious.
Various Concepts of Power Equivalence Among Ostensibly Unrelated Approaches
Authors: Wittman Donald
Published: January 2009

The notion of power may well be central to all of the social sciences, yet the prevailing ways of thinking about power are very unsatisfactory. Intuitive ideas about power appear at first sight to have little logical consistency and are therefore confusing, while the more precise ideas that have been offered appear to be too narrow and are therefore ignored. Perhaps the main reason for the intractability of the concept is that it encompasses a number of seemingly unrelated ideas; it is ‘not a thing at all but many things’. This view is shared by many of those who have worked most closely with the concept. William Riker, for example, feels that the concept should be banished, James March says that it is disappointing, and Robert Dahl admits that there are students of the subject who feel that the whole study of power is a bottomless swamp.
A Reply
Authors: Klein Rudolf
Published: January 2009

If the study of politics is about trying to make sense of what governments do (or think they do) then, surely, it is not only legitimate but necessary to consider the totality of public expenditure. For this is, in fact, what governments do worry about. They do have policies aimed at controlling total public expenditure at particular levels, and these policies in turn affect how much money is spent on individual programmes. To this extent there is, indeed, a common unit of currency: if Department X gets more than Department Y, both the success of the former and the failure of the latter will be measured in millions of pounds.
Partisan Dealignment in Britain 1964–1974
Authors: Crewe Ivor , Särlvik Bo , Alt James
Published: January 2009

Britain enjoys a textbook reputation as the historic home and model representative of a stable two-party system. From the factors most frequently cited by way of explanation – the electoral system, the absence of cross-cutting social cleavages – it is implied that this uncommon state of affairs is a natural and permanent part of British politics. This reputation is, in fact, somewhat exaggerated. At no time have MPs or parliamentary candidates in Britain been confined to two parties only (in contrast to the United States); and for most of the period since the introduction of the majority male franchise and the beginning of mass parties in 1884 the configuration of party forces in the Commons would be best described as multi-party (1884–1922), three-party (1922–31), or dominant one-party (1931–45). Britain's experience of a stable two-party politics has therefore been both recent and relatively short-lived; it is only since the Second World War that two parties – Conservative and Labour – have alternated in exclusive incumbency of government office on the basis of an evenly balanced duopoly of electoral support and parliamentary seats.
Self-Image, Legitimacy and the Stability of Elites: The Case of France
Authors: Suleiman Ezra N.
Published: January 2009

Why do some elites endure whereas other die? This is a question to which many historians and social theorists have addressed themselves in trying to explain the severe conflicts that have plagued particular societies. It is, of course, a truism that certain societies are more prone to conflicts and to instability than others. But even within such societies there often lies, beneath the all too evident turbulence, a considerable stability of certain groups and institutions. The change that occurs in the wake of crises often distributes its impact on different sectors of society so unevenly that sweeping changes sometimes completely by-pass, or are successfully resisted, by certain groups. The result is that some groups and institutions manage to preserve their dominant positions and their privileges even while the society as a whole is experiencing crises, instability and change.
Temporal Orientations and Political Life: The Psychology of Political Impatience
Authors: Renshon Stanley A.
Published: January 2009

This brief paper has two purposes. The first is to suggest some reasons why the study of time is important and should be of interest to political analysts. The second is to present some data which link one aspect of temporal analysis, political impatience, with a range of political orientations and behaviors. Although the magnitude of the correlations reported is not large, the patterns of association suggest a syndrome to which more attention may be profitably turned.
Are Department Secretaries Really a President's Natural Enemies?
Authors: Wilson Graham K.
Published: January 2009

It is widely believed that there exists in the United States a phenomenon called ‘clientelism’: that most federal government departments in the USA do not really control the interests with whom they do business but rather are controlled by them; that the interests and the departments between them typically have great influence over the department secretaries appointed by the president; and that in consequence a department secretary is, in reality, more likely to act as the interests' spokesman, or as his department's, than as the spokesman of the president. Thus it is often asserted that ‘cabinet officers are a president's natural enemies’. My aim in this article is to show that this belief, as it relates to the relationship between department secretaries and presidents, is widely held, plausible, but mistaken.
Beliefs, Feelings and Votes: The British Case
Authors: Harrop Martin
Published: January 2009

The image of voting in the United States developed by political scientists over the last decade differs markedly from the perspective offered in that classic study of electoral behaviour in the 1950s, The American Voter. Whereas the authors of The American Voter painted a rather unflattering portrait of the way in which the voter of the 1950s made his electoral choice, contemporary research has begun to discover some unexpected virtues in the American electorate of the 1960s and early 1970s. Compared to his counterpart in the previous generation, today's voter seems to attach less significance to his party identification, and more importance to his perceptions of the parties' stands on issues with which he is concerned, in deciding which party to support in presidential elections. Indeed, it would perhaps be only a slight exaggeration to suggest that the notion of electoral choice has now become a realistic, and not merely a metaphorical, manner of speaking about the American voter.
Horses for Courses: The Recruitment of Whips in the British House of Commons
Authors: Searing Donald , Game Chris
Published: January 2009

Whips have always aroused curiosity. Their peculiar title, which suggests coercion and social control, derives from ‘Whipper-in’, a man who keeps headstrong hounds running with the pack. The packs, that is to say the parliamentary parties, are heterogeneous associations of independent and egocentric individuals, not at all the sort to shy away from dissent and rebellion. Between 1966 and 1970 the Labour Government faced backbench opposition on almost every major policy; the 1970–74 Conservative Government was actually defeated five times by its own supporters. Still, although it may well be true that ‘the golden age of ultra-disciplined parties is past’, when the time comes to march, and regardless of the issues involved, most Members seem ready to follow a lead: remarkably few bolt upon reaching the division lobbies. Even the recent ‘undisciplined’ record must appear to administrators everywhere as very successful social control indeed.
More on Decision Rules and Policy Outcomes
Authors: Katsa Amoz , Nitzan Shmuel
Published: January 2009

An attempt to rationalize policy outcomes in voting bodies has been made by Rae and Taylor (this Journal, 1 (1971), 71–90). In that work the assumption is made that all voters' preferences are representable by ‘city block’ type utility functions. The principal result obtained in that case by the writers is that for an odd number of voters there is always a unique equilibrium point under simple majority rule, independent of the distribution of individual optimal points and independent of the dimension of the policy space. Unfortunately, the Rae and Taylor result is not correct. In particular their result holds for a one or two dimensional policy space but not in cases where the policy space has three or more dimensions. The proof given by Rae and Taylor is correct for n = 2 but is false for n ≥ 3.
Explaining Peasant Conservatism: The Western European Case
Authors: Lewis-Beck Michael S.
Published: January 2009

What is the political role of the peasantry? Is it a source of revolution or reaction? For the Third World nations, where this is an issue of special importance, the answer is by no means clear. In the advanced capitalist countries, however, the political impact of peasants has become less ambiguous. Although Lipset once argued that radical consciousness in the United States had shown itself primarily through agrarian struggles, farmers have now evolved into perhaps the most conservative occupational group in America. Harrington Moore, considering the historical place of peasants in the modernization of France, England and Germany, details their revolutionary contribution. But, concerning more recent times, Huggett indicates that, in general, the peasants of Western Europe have expressed themselves politically through the parties of the Right. The contemporary evidence presented here demonstrates that these strong right-wing sentiments on the part of the peasantry persist.
Democracy and Social Justice
Authors: Miller David
Published: January 2009

The principles that we use to evaluate social and political institutions have affinities for one another whose precise nature is hard to establish. We sense that a person who holds a particular principle of freedom, for example, ought for consistency's sake to hold corresponding principles of authority, equality and so forth, but we are hard put to it to explain what ‘corresponding’ means here. My intention in the present paper is to examine what kind of connections may exist between the principle of democracy and various principles of social justice, and in doing so to throw some light on the evolution of liberal thinking from the classical liberalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the modified form of that doctrine that is prevalent in the West today. I shall try to show that changes in the liberal theory of social justice have been intimately connected to changing attitudes towards democracy as a form of government.
The Politics of Faith
Authors: Sniderman Paul M.
Published: January 2009

Alienation, if sufficiently pervasive and profound, poses obvious dangers to a democratic political order. But obvious dangers are not the only dangers. Indeed, allegiance may pose at least as serious a threat to democratic politics as alienation, as I shall attempt to show in this paper.
Partisanship Reinstated? A Comparison of the 1972 and 1976 U.S. Presidential Elections
Authors: Miller Arthur H.
Published: January 2009

Recent presidential elections in the United States have been marked by widely divergent landslide victories. In 1964 Lyndon Johnson led the Democrats to a sweeping victory over Barry Goldwater. In 1968 Richard Nixon captured the White House for the Republicans in a contest that was close only because George Wallace ran as a third-party candidate and siphoned off a large share of the conservative vote. With Wallace eliminated from the 1972 race, Nixon easily won a lopsided re-election victory over George McGovern. Early in the campaign the 1976 election also appeared to be heading towards an overwhelming victory, this time for the Democrats. Yet, Jimmy Carter won by only two percentage points.
Why Natural Scientists are a Problem for the CPSU
Authors: Kneen Peter
Published: January 2009

For more than a decade natural scientists have been prominent amongst dissenting Soviet intellectuals. Much effort is expended in the Soviet Union in attempting to stimulate commitment to official values amongst the great mass of the population, and only a tiny minority of Soviet citizens is prepared publicly to question the party's image of Soviet society. Nevertheless amongst the scientific intelligentsia signs of widespread alienation are clear. Even when they fall far short of public dissent, natural scientists are constantly criticized in the party journals for a lack of adequatepartiinost'or party spirit.
The Politics of International Business
Authors: Moran Michael
Published: January 2009

The literature on the politics of international business has many of the marks of an academic fashion: it continues to grow rapidly from a low point; it has seen the entry of conflicting ideological traditions into its debates; and it contains a stream of polemical works. Despite these indications of intellectual modishness it also represents something more substantial: an attempt to understand very important and puzzling changes which have occurred in the international system in recent years.
Political Participation in New Towns
Authors: Baer Michael A.
Published: January 2009

From Ebenezer Howard's turn-of-the-century concept of garden cities ‘new towns’ have evolved. The growth of new towns is not a fad. The first British new town, founded by Howard and planned by architects Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker in 1903, was Letchworth. There has been a steady increase in the establishment of new towns in several countries since, and proposals for many more in the future. In Britain, twenty-nine towns were designated between November 1946 and July 1973. The final projected populations of the New Towns range from 13,000 in Mid-Wales to 420,000 in Central Lancashire New Town. Most have final projected populations in the 60,000–120,000 range. In the United States, the National Commission on Urban Growth, composed of U.S. Senators, Representatives, Governors, Mayors and County Commissioners, proposed that at least 110 new American cities be developed, with the aid of federal funding. And at a recent meeting of the International Association of Housing Science representatives of the Association's forty member countries were told that worldwide housing demands in the next thirty years will require the creation of 3,500 new cities.
Social Class and Party Choice in England: A New Analysis
Authors: Miller W. L.
Published: January 2009

It is common knowledge that party support in England is strongly polarized along class lines. But how strongly? And is the degree of class polarization increasing, decreasing, or approximately constant? It is to these questions that this article is devoted.
A Foreign-Policy Model of the Distribution of British Bilateral Aid, 1960–70
Authors: Mckinlay R. D. , Little R.
Published: January 2009

As a consequence of Truman's Point Four Program of 1949, the provision of economic assistance to independent low-income countries became the official policy of the United States. In the early and mid-1950s economic development assistance, though growing, received relatively little attention as the Korean war turned the USA's foreign aid in the direction of military assistance. However, by the start of the 1960s, the transfer of economic assistance from high-income to low-income countries had developed into an institutionalized relationship. Economic assistance was clearly distinguished from military assistance and administered separately; the USA's monopoly of aid was decreasing as other high-income countries, partially under the USA's pressure, were establishing their own aid programmes; and the volume of aid and the number of recipients were increasing.
Memory for Past Vote: Implications of a Study of Bias in Recall
Authors: Himmelweit Hilde T. , Biberian Marianne Jaeger , Stockdale Janet
Published: January 2009

For political scientists and pollsters the way the individual voted on previous occasions provides an important source of data. In the absence of longitudinal studies, recall of past vote tends to be taken as equivalent to actual vote cast. How accurate is such recall? How far does accuracy decrease with time, where recall concerns not one, but two, previous elections? How far do errors introduce a systematic bias in the conclusions drawn from such data?
Dr Marsh on Olson: A Comment
Authors: Shackleton J. R.
Published: January 2009

In a recent article (‘On Joining Interest Groups: An Empirical Consideration of the Works of Mancur Olson Jr.’, this Journal, VI (1976), 257–72), David Marsh has attempted to test Mancur Olson's hypotheses concerning the rationale for individual or corporate membership of interest groups by using data from a study of the Confederation of British Industry. It is the purpose of this Note to defend Professor Olson's broad theoretical approach from some of Dr Marsh's criticisms. Olson applies the insights of established economic analysis to political theory; it is not his methodology which represents an innovation, but rather the use to which it is put. A defence of Olson's approach is, then, of necessity to some extent a more general defence of economic analysis.
More on Joining Interest Groups
Authors: Marsh David
Published: January 2009

Shackleton's comment on my earlier article seems to me to raise a number of interesting questions. He is very critical of my methodology and suggests alternative ways of testing Olson's model. He places most emphasis on the need to consider aggregate data on the changing patterns of interest group membership over time. In this short note I do not intend to reply at length to Shackleton's criticisms. Instead, I shall re-examine Olson's analysis using aggregate data on the changing patterns of CBI membership in the last decade.
The Appeal of the Political Entrepreneur
Authors: Jones Philip
Published: January 2009

In its purest form a collective good is said to possess the characteristics of non-rivalness in consumption and non-price exclusion. Non-rivalness implies that consumption to the full by one person in no way impedes the consumption of that same quantity by others. This does not mean that the same subjective benefit is derived by each individual, but simply that consumption by one individual does not interfere with the benefits derived by another. The characteristic of non-exclusion requires that if the good is provided to one then it is provided to all. It is this attribute in particular which casts doubt on the likelihood that, in a large group, individuals will voluntarily reveal their preferences for the good. Goods which are not perfectly rival but which are price exclusive may be provided in the market by clubs. However, when an individual's consumption of a good is not dependent on his making a contribution to its provision the individual utility maximizer may be inclined to ‘free ride’, in the hope of enjoying the good at no personal expense. It is clear that if all individuals act in the same manner this good is not likely to be provided in the private market.
Reply to Abramson
Authors: Crewe Ivor , Särlvik Bo , Alt James
Published: January 2009

Paul Abramson's Note (this Journal, p. 505) is an interesting exercise in comparative data reanalysis. But we do not believe that it effectively refutes our argument that partisan weakening in Britain has been caused by ‘period’ rather than ‘generational’ factors.