bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Explaining Party Activism: The Case of the British Conservative Party
Authors: Whiteley Paul F. , Seyd Patrick , Richardson Jeremy , Bissell Paul
Published: January 2009

In common with most other mass democratic parties the Conservative party has a large group of active members who sustain the party over time. A model is developed to explain variations in activism within the party, which takes account of the ‘paradox of participation’. The results, based on the first national random sample survey of Conservative party members, show that activism is motivated by three classes of factors. Activism is motivated, firstly, by a variety of selective incentives, such as ambitions for elective office. It is motivated, secondly, by a desire for the party to achieve policy goals. These are ‘collective goods’, which are subject to the problem of free-riding. However, since activists can influence policy outcomes, via their contacts with party leaders, they have high levels of personal efficacy and a direct incentive to participate, which can override the paradox of participation. Finally, activism is motivated by expressive concerns, as measured by the strength of the respondent's partisanship, a motivation for involvement which lies outside a narrowly cast rational choice model of political participation.
Structural Dependence: A Simple Marxian Analysis of the Limits to Redistribution with International Capital Transfers
Authors: Coram Brucetalbot
Published: January 2009

States in liberal democracies are said to be structurally dependent on the decisions of private investors in the sense that governments do not directly control the level of investment and economic growth. The general consensus amongst Marxian political economists and neo-classical economists is that this imposes restrictions on the scope of the redistributive policies that governments can pursue. It is also frequently argued that these restrictions are increased with international capital mobility because of the threat or reality of capital flight. The McCracken Report noted this link between capital mobility and restrictions on government as early as 1977. It warned that some governments appeared to have ‘overrated their scope for independent action’ and they had paid insufficient attention to the consequences of ‘capital flight’. Since then, both the rate of capital mobility and the severity of these restrictions have probably increased. In the 1970s, capital outflows from the thirteen leading industrial countries averaged $52 billion per annum. In 1989 they averaged $444 billion. The problems that this presents to governments attempting to make transfers from capital to labour have been described in considerable detail and there is an extensive formal literature in trade theory that deals with capital transfers. There is also some work on strategies for social democratic governments wishing to minimize capital losses. The main gap in this literature, however, is that some of the fundamental political, or ‘democratic choice’, aspects of these problems are not well understood. In particular, little is known about the optimum rate of taxation for a government attempting to maximize workers' consumption out of profits. The purpose of this Note is to contribute towards such an analysis.
The Politics of Coalition Building in Japan: The Case of the Katayama Government Formation in 1947
Authors: Kohno Masaru
Published: January 2009

This Note examines the formation of the Socialist-led coalition government in Japan in 1947. Despite the recent expansion of positive research on coalition governments, the existing literature remains ‘European’ in its scope, leaving ambiguity as to whether the currently available models are truly general theoretical models, as some formal theorists seem to claim, or only applicable to a certain cultural and socio-political environment. The Japanese example presents an excellent vehicle, a hard case, with which to test contemporary coalition theories, because Japan is usually described as a country with a distinctive political culture and historical background.
The Price of Conscience: The Electoral Correlates and Consequences of Free Votes and Rebellions in the British House of Commons, 1987–92
Authors: Pattie Charles , Fieldhouse Edward , Johnston R. J.
Published: January 2009

Conventional accounts of British politics play down the electoral importance of MPs' actions in the House of Commons. Party, it is assumed, is the key feature in shaping voters' preferences: few voters are aware of how their local representative voted on a particular issue, and in any case most MPs vote along party lines. On occasion, however, MPs do vote against the party line. Where the issue involved commands considerable public interest, this may raise an individual MP's profile with his or her constituents, with consequent effects upon future electoral prospects. This article investigates the connection between MPs' votes on a series of free votes and rebellions during the 1987 Parliament and their share of the vote in the 1992 general election. Generally, Conservative MPs' actions in the Commons had no effect on their subsequent share of the popular vote. However where an issue was of marked public interest, such as capital punishment or the poll tax, how the MPs voted did exert a small but discernible effect on the support that they received in 1992.
The Rise of New Politics and Market Liberalism in Australia and New Zealand
Authors: McAllister Ian , Vowles Jack
Published: January 2009

The rise of ‘New Politics’ concerns since the 1970s parallels the rise in popularity of market liberalism. Although often considered to be opposites, both goals have been pursued vigorously and simultaneously by social democratic governments in Australia and New Zealand. This article examines the circumstances of this unlikely marriage and, by applying multivariate analysis to election survey data collected in each country in 1990, examines the implications of these apparently contradictory policies for public opinion and party support. We conclude that value orientations associated with New Politics have mixed associations with party support. Postmaterialist and materialist value orientations are linked to attitudes towards the specifically Australasian old left strategy of ‘domestic defence’. The findings suggest that the effects of value change are more far-reaching in New Zealand, where social liberalism may have overtaken collectivism as the dominant value cleavage in the party system.
Merger or Bust: Whatever Happened to Members of the SDP?
Authors: Denver David , Bochel Hugh
Published: January 2009

The Social Democratic Party (SDP) was perhaps the nearest thing to a ‘flash’ party seen in British politics in modern times. It was formed in March 1981, largely on the initiative of four leading figures in the Labour party (Roy Jenkins, David Owen, Shirley Williams and William Rogers), following the apparent success of the left in dominating the party, and initially it had a sensational impact on British politics. It had thirty MPs by March 1982 (mostly as a result of defections by Labour MPs); in alliance with the Liberals it immediately went to first place in the opinion polls and stayed in that position until May 1982. The Alliance won four by-elections between 1981 and 1983, and in the 1983 general election, with 25.4 per cent of the vote, came within two points of ousting Labour from its second place. For the next four years the Alliance held its position and in the 1987 election its vote fell only slightly to 22.6 per cent.
Communists and Democrats: Democratic Attitudes in the Two Germanies
Authors: Dalton Russell J.
Published: January 2009

German unification has revived earlier scholarly debates about the nature of the German political culture and the ability of the nation to rise above its cultural heritage – now focused on the cultural inheritance from the German Democratic Republic. This article examines popular support for democratic attitudes as a prerequisite for successful political unification and the development of democracy in a unified Germany. Our evidence focuses on a study of democratic attitudes conducted in West Germany and East Germany by the Mannheim Research Unit for Societal Development in early 1990, with supplemental data from more recent surveys. We find that East Germans voice support for democratic attitudes that rivals or excels the expression of democratic norms in the West. The correlates of these opinions suggest that democratic norms in the East developed from an on-going process of counter-cultural socialization and from judgements about the relative economic strength of the Federal Republic.
Presidential Succession Effects in Voting
Authors: Mattei Franco , Weisberg Herbert F.
Published: January 2009

Attitudes towards a departing administration can help shape attitudes towards candidates, especially when the incumbent vice-president is one of the candidates. This succession effect was apparent in the 1988 presidential election, when Vice-President Bush benefited from the enduring popularity of retiring President Reagan. This article develops a model in which succession effects, the net candidate score and party identification affect the general election vote. Analysis shows that this effect remains when controls are instituted for retrospective voting more generally. Attitudes towards Reagan also had an indirect impact by affecting the net Bush-Dukakis candidate score; altogether the estimated impact of the Reagan effect in 1988 was to turn the vice-president's predicted loss into his observed victory. Additionally, a succession effect was detected in the 1988 nominating campaign, with Bush's popularity over Dole benefiting from reactions to the Reagan administration. There is evidence of succession effects in other presidential elections, particularly a Johnson effect in 1968.
The Two Faces of Tactical Voting
Authors: Franklin Mark , Niemi Richard , Whitten Guy
Published: January 2009

In a recent Note we investigated the incidence of tactical voting in the British election of 1987. A major hypothesis was that in situations where it made sense (i.e., in which voters preferred a party that was a long way from contention, so that a vote for that party was likely to be ‘wasted’), tactical voting would be much more frequent than had hitherto been assumed. We discovered that this was indeed the case; in what we called ‘objectively tactical situations’, tactical voting was as high as 25 per cent or more in the general case, rising to more than 50 per cent among highly educated weak partisans who had strong negative feelings about the winning party. In the process, however, we discovered what appeared to be an anomaly in need of further exploration.
The Rational Politics of Cultural Nationalism: Subnational Movements of South Asia in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Mitra Subrata K.
Published: January 2009

The recent politics of South Asia has been dominated by separatist movements that have waged violent struggles to assert their control over parts of existing national states. The precise moment of the outbreak of these movements is influenced by the perception of the geopolitical context by their leaders and the stability of the central state against which they rebel. But their main driving force originates from a shared belief in their unique and distinct cultural identity, which, in their eyes, justifies their right to an exclusive homeland. This article examines subnationalism in South Asia as a special case of cultural nationalism. Subnationalism has long been an anomaly for both liberal and Marxist social theorists, who concede its existence but cannot explain it adequately. The analysis undertaken here moves beyond the sociological and historical accounts of the origins and evolution of subnationalism in South Asia by formulating a political explanation drawing on theories of rational choice and collective action. The article argues that (a) leaders of subnationalist movements draw on both sentiments and interests, and (b) the direction and pace of these movements are influenced by the political resources that they are able to mobilize. Though the case studies on which the article draws are mainly from South Asia, the model that underpins them is applicable to other cultural and temporal contexts as well.
Privatization, Share Ownership and Voting
Authors: Saunders Peter
Published: January 2009

Popular support for the British government's privatization programme has never exceeded 40 per cent of the electorate, and by the end of the 1980s, huge public flotations of industries like water and the electricity suppliers and generators were taking place in the teeth of widespread popular opposition. The evidence on voting behaviour suggests, however, that it was the Labour party rather than the Conservatives which lost electoral support as a result of the privatization programme. This Research Note offers an explanation for this apparent paradox.
The Organizing of the European Parliament: Committees, Specialization and Co-ordination
Authors: Bowler Shaun , Farrell David M.
Published: January 2009

This article addresses the issue of specialization and committee formation in the European Parliament in the light of the largely US-centred debates on these issues. Clear evidence is found of specialization of behaviour, both with regard to committee assignment and the use of parliamentary questions. This is also accompanied by a trend towards a greater role for the party groups in co-ordinating and controlling behaviour across these specializations.
Two Models of Class Voting
Authors: Weakliem David L.
Published: January 2009

Until the late 1960s, most informed observers agreed with Pulzer's well-known claim that ‘class is the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail’. More recently, however, most analysts have come to believe that there has been a decline in the association between class and party choice, a development that is generally referred to as ‘class dealignment’. Nevertheless, several researchers have challenged this new consensus and argued that there has been little or no trend in the association between class and party.
Managing Political and Societal Conflict in Democracies: Do Consensus and Corporatism Matter?
Authors: Keman Hans , Pennings Paul
Published: January 2009

In their Note ‘Corporatism and Consensus Democracy in Eighteen Countries’ (this Journal, 21 (1991), 235–46) Arend Lijphart and Markus Crepaz sought to analyse the conceptual and theoretical linkages between corporatism and consensus democracy. Their aim was not only to investigate whether the concepts were linked to each other, but also to examine to what extent they overlapped. The authors claim that corporatism is part and parcel of consensual types of democracy (p. 235). If corporatism could be included as a dimension of consensual democracy the contrasts between Westminster and consensual types of democracy would be empirically enhanced and would be more comprehensive. Although this is an interesting line of thought, we think that there are a number of conceptual and methodological flaws in the elaboration of this idea that should be discussed in more detail, because they may very well cast some doubt on the degree to which corporatism is indeed ‘part and parcel’ of consensual politics. In this Comment we shall elaborate this argument and also suggest some ways in which the thrust of Lijphart and Crepaz's theoretical arguments can be upheld and their empirical analysis improved.
Linking and Integrating Corporatism and Consensus Democracy: Theory, Concepts and Evidence
Authors: Crepaz Markus M. L. , Lijphart Arend
Published: January 2009

Hans Keman's and Paul Pennings's critique (‘Managing Political and Societal Conflict in Democracies: Do Consensus and Corporatism Matter?’, this Journal, preceding pages) of our attempt to link corporatism and consensus democracy falls essentially into three parts. Their first criticism deals with the way we measured corporatism. They reject our ‘composite’ approach on the basis that different experts have different conceptual understandings of corporatism. Hence, they argue, it is unwarranted to add up these various scores. Secondly, they claim that our central relationship between consensus democracy and corporatism is a function of our particular measure of corporatism and, in addition, driven by two outlying cases: Italy and Austria. Thirdly, they claim that corporatism and consensus democracy are two different phenomena, and that therefore, corporatism should not be integrated into the concept of consensus democracy. We shall address these three main criticisms in the order described.
Decision Making in Political Systems: Veto Players in Presidentialism, Parliamentarism, Multicameralism and Multipartyism
Authors: Tsebelis George
Published: January 2009

The article compares different political systems with respect to one property: their capacity to produce policy change. I define the basic concept of the article, the ‘veto player’: veto players are individual or collective actors whose agreement (by majority rule for collective actors) is required for a change of the status quo. Two categories of veto players are identified in the article: institutional and partisan. Institutional veto players (president, chambers) exist in presidential systems while partisan veto players (parties) exist at least in parliamentary systems. Westminster systems, dominant party systems and single-party minority governments have only one veto player, while coalitions in parliamentary systems, presidential or federal systems have multiple veto players. The potential for policy change decreases with the number of veto players, the lack of congruence (dissimilarity of policy positions among veto players) and the cohesion (similarity of policy positions among the constituent units of each veto player) of these players. The veto player framework produces results different from existing theories in comparative politics, but congruent with existing empirical studies. In addition, it permits comparisons across different political and party systems. Finally, the veto player framework enables predictions about government instability (in parliamentary systems) or regime instability (in presidential systems); these predictions are supported by available evidence.
The Irresponsible State? The Politics of Child Daycare Provision in Britain
Authors: Randall Vicky
Published: January 2009

This article seeks to shed light on the scarcity of public child daycare provision in Britain. Following a brief account of the development of policy since the Second World War, it notes the institutional and discursive fragmentation of the process through which child-care policy has been resolved. However, it concentrates on the way that process has been shaped by the intersection of two variables, the type of issue constituted by child care and the British national policy-making style. It argues that public child-care provision is both a ‘redistributive’ issue, and as such particularly unappealing to recent Conservative governments, and an issue that concerns the family, invoking an ‘ideology of motherhood’. Moreover, national policy style has entailed a reluctance to intervene either in the labour market or in the ‘private’ family sphere. This combination of issue type and policy-making tradition has conspired to marginalize child care on the national policy agenda.
The Politics of Institutional Choice: Presidential Ballot Access for Third Parties in the United States
Authors: Lewis-Beck Michael S. , Squire Peverill
Published: January 2009

During the nineteenth century, a presidential voter actually selected a party-prepared candidate list, casting it in full view of others. The ‘Australian’ ballot, adopted in nearly all states by 1900, took away party preparation of the ballot. State officials now prepared overall candidate lists from which the voter picked in secret. The introduction of the Australian ballot was heralded as a blow against political corruption and for ‘good government’. But practical questions arose. With the state itself responsible for the ballot, how should it decide which candidates to list? Some barriers to entry seemed necessary, otherwise the list would be unwieldy. Each of the states began to pass laws restricting ballot access, often aimed at third parties.
Can Power Be Reduced to a Quantitative Index – And If So, Which One? A Response to Garrett, McLean and Machover
Authors: Johnston R. J.
Published: January 2009

Garrett, McLean and Machover's critique (see pp. 563–8) of my recent Note on the use of power indices to analyse the UK's stance on qualified majority voting in the expanded European Union Council of Ministers focuses on both my choice of power index and the validity of the use of any such indices.
The CPSU and Its Members: Between Communism and Postcommunism
Authors: White Stephen , Mcallister Ian
Published: January 2009

Once dominant and unchallenged throughout the USSR, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union rapidly lost authority in the last two years of Soviet rule. Banned by Russian presidential decree after the failure of the attempted coup of August 1991, it was re-established in February 1993 and soon became the largest of the postcommunist parties. A 1992 survey of current and former party members as well as other Russians found that members were characterized by a relatively high degree of activism. They were disproportionately male, more affluent than non-members, and better provided with consumer goods. Younger respondents and religious believers were more likely to have left the party than their older colleagues. Those who still regarded themselves as party members were the most likely to oppose economic reform and support the collectivist principles of the communist era, particularly if they were activists; but the differences between members and non-members were not substantial, and both were found to hold generally pessimistic views on the postcommunist system. These findings suggest that, although former members will continue to be influential, CPSU membership is by itself likely to play a limited part in shaping the political direction of postcommunist Russia.
The Politics of Intergovernmental Transfers in Post-Soviet Russia
Authors: Treisman Daniel
Published: January 2009

In Russia's lingering constitutional crisis, struggles over fiscal politics have taken on a broader institutional significance – at times even threatening to undermine the federal state. This article studies the evolving fiscal relationship between Moscow and the regional governments in the early post-Soviet period. To explain why some regions currently receive large net transfers (subsidies, grants, other benefits) from the centre while others pay large net taxes, net central transfers per capita have been regressed on a range of predictors reflecting social ‘need’, preferences of central politicians (electoral interests, pork barrel allocation, policy objectives) and lobbying capacity of regional governments. The most significant turn out to be three bargaining power variables that signal regional discontent and credible resolve to threaten economic and constitutional order – a low vote for President Yeltsin in the 1991 election, an early declaration of sovereignty and the incidence of strikes in the previous year.
Theoretical and Empirical Issues in the Comparative Measurement of Union Power and Corporatism
Authors: Mitchell Neil J.
Published: January 2009

What aspects of national trade-union movements systematically affect national policy making and economic performance? While there is general agreement that union density, the proportion of the workforce organized in unions, is an important element of union strength, social scientists are only beginning to identify the other critical elements. That union density is not the whole story can quickly be appreciated by comparing the influence of unions in Britain and Germany. For much of the post-war period, union density has been higher in Britain than Germany, although German unions have sustained at least as important a political and economic role as British unions. An influential theory of group-government relations directed our attention to the degree of hierarchy and monopoly present in an interest structure and to the degree of institutionalized access to policy-making circles, wrapping these characteristics together in the concept of corporatism. Yet there is a developing interest, particularly in the analysis of labour movements, in disaggregating corporatism as part of an effort to understand the specific characteristics that produce political and economic influence.
The Role of Analogical Reasoning in Novel Foreign-Policy Situations
Authors: Houghton David Patrick
Published: January 2009

A number of scholars have argued that historical analogizing plays an important role in foreign-policy decision making; the extent of that importance, however, remains largely a mystery to us. This article proposes that analogical reasoning is probably even more commonplace than previously thought, since it may play a crucial role even in ‘novel foreign policy situations’ (scenarios which appear largely unprecedented to the decision makers confronting them).

One notable example of a novel foreign-policy situation is provided by the Iranian hostage crisis. Examining the Carter administration's decision-making processes during that crisis, the article concludes that even though many saw the hostage crisis as a unique occurrence, the participants drew upon a wide range of historical analogies in order to make sense of what was occuring and to propose suggested ‘solutions’ to the crisis.
On Keeping Touch with Reality and Failing to be Befuddled by Mathematics
Authors: Johnston R. J.
Published: January 2009

Peter Morriss (see pp. 595–7) criticizes most applications of mathematically derived power indices, including mine and the response to my original Note. He uses uncomplimentary terms, implying that we are not only wrong but also fools for being wrong.
American Democracy Reconsidered: Part I
Authors: Sharpe L. J.
Published: January 2009

In his celebrated study of American democracy written in 1888, Lord Bryce reserved his most condemnatory reflections for city government and in a muchquoted passage asserted: ‘There is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States. The deficiencies of the National government tell but little for evil on the welfare of the people. The faults of the State governments are insignificant compared with the extravagance, corruption and mismanagement which mark the administration of most of the great cities'sangeetha.
The Politics of ‘Affluent’ and ‘Traditional’ Workers in Britain: an Aggregate Data Analysis
Authors: Crewe Ivor
Published: January 2009

In their study of the ‘affluent worker’ in Luton,1 Goldthorpe and his colleagues reached a number of important conclusions about the political behaviour of the ‘traditional’ and ‘new’ working class in post-war Britain. They rejected the belief, commonly held by the late 1950s, that a growing proportion of manual workers was beginning to support the Conservative Party as a result of attaining a middle class level of income and material possessions (the ‘embourgeoisement’ theory). In their sample, which was elaborately designed to ensure the most favourable conditions for confirmation of the embourgeoisement theory, they found (i) that the level of stable Labour support was higher than the national average for manual workers; (ii) that there was no evidence of any gradual, long-term shift of support towards the Conservatives or away from Labour; and (iii) that the small minority of Conservatives was distinguished not by a higher than average standard of living, but by a relatively large number of white collar workers among their kin. The notion that there was a necessary connection, among manual workers, between growing material prosperity and increased support for the Conservative Party was therefore decisively rejected.
The Political Socialization of Activists in the British Communist Party
Authors: Denver D. T. , Bochel J. M.
Published: January 2009

In the ten years or so since the publication of Hyman's seminal work, 1 students of politics have given increasing attention to political socialization. There has been a proliferation of works utilizing the concept. 2 The notion of socialization has perhaps been most rigorously applied in studies of the development of the political attitudes of children and adolescents, 3 but it has also been employed, if rather more loosely, in the study of adult electors. 4 There is, however, a dearth of material relating to the socialization of party activists at local level. This is not to say that the social and political background and the recruitment patterns of party activists have not been investigated, 5 but the concept of political socialization has not been explicitly or very rigorously employed. The importance of local party organizations and their memberships has not always been self-evident to students of politics and we do not propose to argue the point here. We merely assert that British parties and British politics derive much of their ‘style’ from the character of party activists. This being the case, we feel that the relative lack of information about the socialization of activists represents a considerable gap.
Aspects of Theory Evaluation
Authors: Grant Lawrence V.
Published: January 2009

Mathematical languages and computer algorithms are becoming important modes of analysis for theory evaluation in political science. Typically, the process involves (1) translating the major theoretical relationships into a ‘formal’ language for the logical analysis of internal consistency, or, (2) empirically interpreting the formal language in order to make specific predictions, which, in turn, allow evaluation of external consistency with theoretically significant real world phenomena. In this paper I wish to discuss, first, some basic concepts and, second, some aspects of the technology and methodology of these modes of theory evaluation.
Minority Governments in Western Democracies
Authors: Herman Valentine , Pope John
Published: January 2009

All the theories of coalition formation known to us incorporate an assumption (or a set of assumptions which imply) that coalitions which are formed must at least be ‘winning’. 1 In the present context, a coalition is said to be winning if the sum of the seats held by its members is at least a simple majority of all the seats in the parliament. Most of these theories were intended to apply to government coalitions: indeed, several of them were specifically designed for this situation. Yet out of the total of 207 governments which have formed in twelve western democracies since the war, 2 seventy-four of them have not been winning.
Career Patterns in the Irish Political Elite
Authors: Cohan A. S.
Published: January 2009

In 1919, three years after the Easter Rising in Dublin, a revolutionary government was established in Ireland. This government, the Dail Eireann, was the forerunner of the Irish Free State that ultimately resulted from the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1922. Slightly more than fifty years have elapsed since the union of Ireland and Great Britain was formally dissolved and, in that period of time, many changes have occurred in both the social and political systems of Ireland. Not the least of these changes has been the passing of one elite generation from the political scene and the emergence of another.
The Appeal to the Public Interest
Authors: Cox J. W. Roxbee
Published: January 2009

I wish to consider what kind of force attaches to the fact that a certain policy or course of action is in the public interest. How, for example, does it compare with the consideration that a policy is in the interests of a majority, or the consideration that a policy is a fair one? Such questions about the weight to be attached to the fact that a policy or course of action is in the public interest arise naturally if we accept the view, put forward by Barry, that just as to say that a policy is in the interests of farmers, for example, is to say that it is in the interest of each farmer as a farmer or qua farmer, so to say that a policy is in the public interest is to say that it is in the interest of each member of the public as a member of the public or qua member of the public.1
Ideas, Institutions and the Policies of Governments: a Comparative Analysis: Parts I and II
Authors: King Anthony
Published: January 2009

This paper is about the things governments do and why they do them. It is written in the belief that, while we know quite a lot about decision-making processes in individual countries, we do not know nearly enough about why the governments of different countries make different decisions and pursue different policies. The countries of North America and western Europe are often described as ‘welfare states’, the implication being that the governments of all of them do broadly similar things in broadly similar ways. As we shall see, however, these broad similarities conceal important, wide divergences. These divergences deserve to be explained.
The Linkage between Urban Policy Outputs and Voting Behavior: New York and London
Authors: Glassberg Andrew
Published: January 2009

One of the complaints most frequently raised against modern empirical political science is that it overemphasizes political inputs (such as voting behavior) and pays insufficient attention to political outputs (such as allocation of resources). In response to this complaint, a number of political scientists in recent years have focused their attention on the question of whether variations in political inputs are much related to variations in outputs. A considerable literature has grown up around this question, particularly focusing on relationships between variations in electoral competitiveness and variations in public spending patterns across a range of different political systems. Because they are different yet comparable, American states have been the setting for much of this research. In addition to the state policy outputs literature, investigations have been undertaken of variations in outputs among differing jurisdictions within a metropolitan area and between variations in outputs and differing types of city organizational structure. The focus of the research reported on here is somewhat different. Rather than looking at variations between political systems, we focus here on variations within political systems. Without dealing with all of the literature alluded to above, and the myriad criticisms that each attempt has spawned, it seems fair to say that the general conclusion of most researchers has been that political characteristics account for little of the variation in output between political systems, and that variation in levels of wealth is usually a far more powerful predictor. Such a conclusion, however, does not relate to the possible impact of politics on allocational decisions within a single jurisdiction. While the City
An Experimental Study of Individual and Collective Decision-making
Authors: Halfpenny Peter , Taylor Michael
Published: January 2009

Several theorems have been established recently on the existence or location of equilibrium policies in collective decision-making in the case when the alternatives are points in a multi-dimensional space. One of these theorems is founded on an assumption about individual preferences which seems intuitively plausible in the context of political decision-making. We have conducted a number of experiments designed to test this theorem directly. In addition, the resulting data were used to compare the accuracy of this assumption about individual preferences with that of certain alternative assumptions, some of which have also been used in theories of collective decision-making. Before the experiments and the analyses of the results are described, we first briefly present the theorem and the various alternative assumptions to be tested.
Political Recruitment and Dropout: Predictive Success of Background Characteristics Over Five British Localities
Authors: Budge Ian , Farlie Dennis
Published: January 2009

In this analysis we have used a procedure based on estimating likelihoods, from background characteristics, of someone's - or something's - belonging in some category of a dependent variable. We have tried to demonstrate the applicability of this procedure to the specific task of distinguishing activists from ordinary electors in five divergent British localities, with a view to its general use in the prediction and description of initial participation and of activist dropout. The conclusions are:
Two Types of Middle-Class Labour Voter?
Authors: Rallings Colin S.
Published: January 2009

The phenomenon of the Labour middle class is much neglected in studies of political behaviour, and its importance is often dismissed without either statistical evidence or theoretical justification. Whilst there has been considerable research into the characteristics of and differences between ‘traditional’ Labour and ‘deferential’ Conservative working-class voters, our knowledge of the other side of the coin of class-party deviancy remains sketchy. The purpose of this Note is to attempt to explain something of this not insubstantial part of the electorate, to show how it differs from the Conservative middle-class electorate, and to argue that one can break down the Labour middle class itself and identify two distinct types of Labour supporter.
The Economic Contradictions of Democracy
Authors: Brittan Samuel
Published: January 2009

The conjecture to be discussed in this paper is that liberal representative democracy suffers from internal contradictions, which are likely to increase in time, and that, on present indications, the system is likely to pass away within the lifetime of people now adult.
Political Elite and Mass Perceptions of Party Locations in issue Space: Some Tests of Two Positions
Authors: Kornberg Allan , Mishler William , Smith Joel
Published: January 2009

Our analyses have enabled us to test several important theoretical propositions advanced by two outstanding scholars, Anthony Downs and Donald E. Stokes. Our data do not support the Downsian position that it is possible to array parties along a single left-right continuum. The factor analyses suggested that a left-right factor underlies the perceptions some individuals have of the positions Canadian parties take on some specific issues. However, the left-right factor that emerged from the analyses was not always what conventional wisdom supposed it to be, with the NDP on the left, the Liberals to the left of center, the Conservatives to the right of center and Social Credit on the right.39 Nor was it in accord with the structuring of parties that places the NDP on the far left, both the Liberals and the Conservatives in the same right-of-center position and Social Credit on the far right.40 Moreover, the left-right factor most often underlies the perceptions of MPs. To a lesser extent it underlies the images of the upper stratum of the public. It least often underlies the perceptions of average Vancouver and Winnipeg citizens.
Trends in Public Support for the American Party System
Authors: Dennis Jack
Published: January 2009

To this point I have presented a variety of available observations on what I take to be several types of most relevant indicators of support for the party system in the United States. I have paid special attention in this analysis to the trends in public opinion regarding the parties over time. Given the fragmentary nature of the available indicators, when they are considered in combination they do reveal some fairly common general tendencies. First, these data show that public support for the parties, both in historical and cross-institutional perspective, is relatively weak. Attitudes toward the parties and the evaluations of the importance of the party institution show, with few exceptions, a general state of low public regard and legitimation. More importantly, even the areas such as party identification or a preference for keeping party labels on the ballot, relatively strong points of support a decade ago, have shown a significant decline since that time. The decline is greater for some aspects of public evaluations of parties than for others. But this downward trend, especially beginning in the years i960 to 1964, is fairly uniform across the various areas that we have touched upon. There are a few exceptions to these trends - such as one aspect of contributor support, willingness to contribute money. Yet, even at the point of measurement when people are most willing to contribute, those who are positively supportive are far from a majority. Thus, the improvement here does not really offset the many other kinds of losses the party institution has suffered in public regard over the past decade.
Reply to Hope's Note
Authors: Crewe Ivor
Published: January 2009

Hope's comments provide me with the opportunity to correct one statistical error which unfortunately found its way into the original article. He points out that, as the correlations rac and rbc were each about +0.2, deviations from the expected level of car- and house-ownership given a constituency's proportion of manual workers can only account for about 4 per cent of the variance in deviations from the expected Conservative share of the two-party vote. This, it is gently implied, hardly amounts to convincing evidence on behalf of the embourgeoisement thesis. The correlation coefficients given in the article were serious underestimates, however, and are in fact +0.571 and +0.328 respectively. Thus, deviations from the expected level of houseownership explain almost a third (32.6 per cent) of the variance in deviations from the expected Conservative share of the two-party vote, and deviations from the expected level of car-ownership explain over one-tenth (10.8 per cent) – which is more substantial
Economy and Polity in Australia: A Quantification of Commonsense
Authors: Douglas Roger
Published: January 2009

One of the most firmly established pieces of Australia’s political conventional wisdom concerns the influence of the economy on the level of support for the government. When all is well, the government can look forward to continued office by courtesy of a grateful electorate. When unemployment is high or inflation galloping, its prospects become gloomy and political leaders are tempted to delay the date of the next general election as long as possible in the hope that something will turn up.
The Used Vote and Electoral Outcomes: The Irish General Election of 1973
Authors: Cohan A. S. , Mckinlay R. D. , Mughan Anthony
Published: January 2009

In the 1969 Irish general election, the outgoing government party, Fianna Fail, was once again returned with a majority of seats in the Dail Eireann; it had been in power since 1957. All but one of the remaining seats were distributed between Fine Gael and Labour, which fought the election as separate parties. In 1973, Fine Gael and Labour agreed to form a coalition to fight the coming election and won a majority despite the fact that Fianna Fail received a higher percentage of first-preference votes in 1973 than it had in 1969.1This raises the question of how a political party can increase its total share of the vote yet lose seats in parliament.
Issues, Candidates and Partisan Divisions in the 1972 American Presidential Election
Authors: Miller Arthur H. , Miller Warren E.
Published: January 2009

American presidential politics in the 1960s and early 1970s was marked by the kinds of forces that characterize a period of electoral instability. These forces affected not only individual voters but also the candidates, parties and issues that interact as part of the electoral system. Among them was an increase in ‘issue voting’ which emphasized intra-party polarization on various non-economic issues. The civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, riots in the cities, crime in the streets and other issues provided focal points for increased debate among political leaders and for the responses of an electorate newly mobilized by policy concerns. At the same time, the established political parties were faced with increased partisan defection and ticket splitting, by a rise in the number of political Independents and by the appearance of a threatening third-party movement. Even the styles and personalities of the parties’ presidential candidates contributed to the instability. The candidates presented to the electorate ran a gamut of styles and personalities that included the articulate Kennedy, the folksy Johnson, the impulsive Goldwater and the calculating Nixon. Along with the rise in mass interest in matters of policy came a new questioning of the trustworthiness and integrity of political leaders and the government in general. There also appeared in this period a new politics of confrontation, an influx into the electorate of young voters following the lowering of the voting age to 18, and a budding concern with the issues of ‘acid’, amnesty and abortion that the ‘New Politics’ promoted.
A Re-assessment of the Concept of Political Support
Authors: Easton David
Published: January 2009

It has been said about the United States that it is now suffering ‘a crisis of regime’. Europe, we have been told, is in little better condition: ‘all over Europe the First World War broke up the structure of society which, before 1914, had provided the necessary basis of confidence between government and governed. There no longer exists, except in a few places such as Switzerland, that general acceptance of the conduct of national affairs that adds to the vigor of government and society alike.’1These are the kinds of practical political problems to which the concept of political support, as found in systems analysis, has been directed.
Constituency Agents and British Party Politics
Authors: Frasure Robert , Kornberg Allan
Published: January 2009

We began by reviewing the history of agency and by describing the two major parties' procedures for recruiting and training agents. Not surprisingly, the perceptions that agents have of their roles is not entirely congruent with official perceptions. Approximately 20 per cent of the agents of both parties felt that the performance of various representational functions was the most important part of their job although these tasks are not included in official job descriptions. Moreover, although a majority of the agents in each party believed that their most important job was to build and maintain constituency organizations capable of winning elections, the majority of their time was not spent on this task. Conservative agents seemingly spent a disproportionate amount of time doing routine office work, whereas over 40 per cent of the Labour agents spent much of their time trying to raise the funds that paid their salaries. Large numbers of agents in both parties agreed that raising money in their constituencies was a difficult and largely unrewarding task.
Reflections on a Fiery Chariot
Authors: Cornford James
Published: January 2009

In a recent review article [this Journal, VI (1974), 345–69] Professor Berrington helpfully corrects and refines the statistics contained in Lucille Iremonger's volume, The Fiery Chariot: A Study of British Prime Ministers and the Search for Love and suggests that there may well be something in the idea that prime ministers differ systematically in their psychological make-up from the rest of the population. It is clearly the case that they have been unfortunate in their choice of parents, who have been more apt to die when the putative PM is young than is generally the case. And one cannot sensibly, in the light of theoretical evidence cited by Berrington, object to his proposal that premature bereavement may establish in the child a condition or conditions of mind and a psychological disposition that may well be relieved, made tolerable or even cured by immersion in the life-style of a professional politician. However, there are a number of points worth making about Professor Berrington's endorsement, limited though it is, of Iremonger's thesis.