bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Policy Voting and the Electoral Process: The Vietnam War Issue
Authors: Page Benjamin I. , Brody Richard A.
Published: May 2006

The infrequency of issue voting in American presidential elections is usually attributed to a lack of policy rationality among voters. An examination of the Vietnam war issue in 1968 suggests, however, that much of the explanation may lie instead with the electoral process itself, and with the kinds of choices which are offered to citizens.

Policy preferences concerning Vietnam were only weakly related to the two-party vote. Less than 2 per cent of the variance in voting choices between Nixon and Humphrey could be accounted for by opinions on Vietnam. Yet the absence of issue voting could not be fully explained by voters' failings. Most people had strong opinions about Vietnam. The public was generally able to perceive where prenomination candidates stood on the issue. People were able and willing to take account of Vietnam in evaluating other candidates.

Voters did not bring their Vietnam preferences to bear upon the choice between Nixon and Humphrey because they saw little difference between the positions of the two, and because they were not certain precisely where either one stood. These perceptions, in turn, were rooted in reality. Humphrey's and Nixon's campaign speeches show that they did differ rather little on specific proposals about Vietnam. Further, both candidates indulged in so much ambiguity about Vietnam that public confusion over their positions was understandable.

There are theoretical reasons for believing that candidates in a two-party system often have an incentive to converge at similar policy positions, and to be vague. If they generally do so, their behavior may contribute significantly to the apparent nonrationality of voters. In addition, it may have important implications for questions of collective rationality and social choice.
Political Science and the Enlightenment of Enthusiasm
Authors: Farr James
Published: May 2006

I provide a narrative of the emergence of an expressly articulated “political science” in the Scottish Enlightenment. Political science was designed by Hume, Smith, and others to advance both a Newtonian method for the study of politics and a politics of moderation whose tasks included a critique of enthusiasm. In this way, political science, moderation, and (anti)enthusiasm were conceptually connected. The emergence of political science, understood in this way, required a number of conceptual changes in a structure of argument shaped largely by Locke. These conceptual changes, in turn, fixed a rhetorical framework for persistent debates over the methodological and political identity of political science, even as ideology literally replaced enthusiasm. These persistent debates reveal the relevance of the history of political science as a forum for remembrance, reflection, and critique.
The Rationality of Hegel's Concept of Monarchy
Authors: Yack Bernard
Published: May 2006

In this essay I argue that Hegel's concept of monarchy, far from being more evidence of his supposed abstract rationalism or deference to Prussia, is the most complete modern account of the necessary political conditions of a rational state. Hegel believed that the peculiar historical development of European monarchy made the rational state politically possible. Who rules is the fundamental political problem. Some person or persons must have the final power of decision, even in constitutional and parliamentary regimes, and thus stamp the regime with their own particular views. Hegel believed that only the constitutional monarch of a modern state, bom to sovereignty regardless of his personal abilities or constituencies, limited by harsh experience and public sentiments to legitimization of public acts, could depoliticize this final power of decision. This alone would allow unimpeded public administration according to rational legal standards. Marxist and technocratic dreams of rational administration will remain mere dreams as long as the dreamers offer no alternative solution to the fundamental political problem.
The Emergence of Political Parties in Congress, 1789–1803
Authors: Hoadley John F.
Published: May 2006

Although the political leaders who wrote the Constitution did not hold the idea of party in high regard, these same individuals (according to many historians) became the founders of a new party system within the first decade of the new government. This article considers the question (on which no consensus exists) of whether parties did develop. The analysis focuses upon one aspect of party development, namely, the agreement among members of Congress in their roll-call voting records. Spatial analysis (multidimensional scaling) permits a visual picture of the increased clustering of congressmen into two party blocs from 1789 to 1803, especially after the Jay Treaty debate in 1796. This very clear trend supports the idea that politics was moving away from a sectional basis to one founded more clearly on partisan grounds.
A Causal Approach to Nonrandom Measurement Errors
Authors: Blalock H. M.
Published: May 2006

The purpose of this paper is to examine several specific kinds of nonrandom measurement errors and to note their implications for causal model construction. In doing so, my secondary purpose is to sensitize the reader to the crucial importance of making one's assumptions fully explicit and to the advantages of a causal models approach to measurement errors. It is well known that the presence of even random measurement errors can produce serious distortions in our estimates, particularly whenever one is attempting to assess the relative contributions of intercorrelated independent variables. Nevertheless, common practice is to utilize what Duncan refers to as the naive approach to the presence of measurement errors: that of acknowledging the existence of measurement errors, and even discussing possible sources of such errors, while completely ignoring them in the analysis stage of the research process. That is, measured values are inserted directly into causal models as though they adequately reflect the true values. It can easily be shown that such a practice, while leading to important simplifications, can readily lead one astray. In particular, it may blind the analyst to searching for alternative plausible explanations that allow for measurement error.

There have been a number of very recent papers in the sociological literature, some of which will be briefly summarized since they may not be familiar to the reader. For the most part, these papers have dealt rather systematically with ways to handle random measurement errors, whereas nonrandom errors have been dealt with only incidentally and much less carefully.
The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split Ticket Voting: 1876–1908
Authors: Rusk Jerrold G.
Published: May 2006

In the last two decades of political science, there has been considerable interest in the determinants of electoral behavior. Theories have been developed and tested on the sociological, psychological, and political antecedents of the vote. Virtually neglected in this search for determinants have been the institutional or structural properties of the electoral system itself. With a few notable exceptions, such factors as electoral qualification requirements, registration laws, and ballot and voting systems have not generated much research enthusiasm. These institutional properties, however, provide the framework within which the effects of other independent variables must be judged. This applies to all basic electoral research—whether time specific or longitudinal—but especially to the latter. Too often longitudinal research tries to trace the causes of changing voting patterns without taking into account the institutional framework. A pointed example of this is Walter Dean Burnham's recent description of this country's “changing political universe” around the turn of the century—a change which he ascribed to a breakdown in party competition and consequent voter alienation, but which undoubtedly could be partially, if not largely, explained by reference to the many institutional changes in voting rules which occurred during this period. The effects of institutional properties must be sorted out if the researcher is to establish reliable baselines against which to measure the effects of other variables.

The purpose of this study is to analyze the effects of one such institutional property of the electoral system—the Australian Ballot reform—on the changing split ticket voting patterns of the American electorate in the 1876–1908 time period.
Determinants of the Outcomes of Midterm Congressional Elections
Authors: Tufte Edward R.
Published: May 2006

An explanatory model for the outcomes of midterm congressional elections is developed. Midterms are a referendum on the performance of the President and his administration's management of the economy. The explanatory model of midterm congressional elections is sufficiently powerful so as to yield honest and accurate pre-election predictions of the national two-party vote in midterm elections. These predictions have usually outperformed pre-election forecasts based on survey data. The model is extended by considering the translation of votes into seats, models of the electorate as a whole and of the individual voter, and the causes of the off-year loss by the President's party.
The Primary Goals of Political Parties: A Clarification of Positive Theory
Authors: Schlesinger Joseph A.
Published: May 2006

Positive or rational choice theorists have tended to suppress under the rubric of “winning” elections a critical distinction in ths goals of political parties (or candidates)—the distinction between the primary goal of office and the goal of the benefits derived from the control of office. The distinction, however, has strategic consequences. Logically, the office-seeker should follow the vote-maximization strategy put forth by Downs, whereas the benefit-seeker should find Riker's minimal winning coalition most congenial. The distinction in goals and strategies also implies divergent ways of organizing political parties. A concern for benefits logically leads to the development of structures designed to insure that the party's officeholders will deliver the desired benefits. The office-seeking goal implies structures which free the party and the office-seeker to maneuver in response to electoral needs. Thus there are two positive theories resting upon two primary political goals. In their differences we find an explanation of the tensions in democratic parties.
The Paradox of Minimax Regret
Authors: Beck Nathaniel
Published: May 2006

The introduction of decision making under uncertainty by Ferejohn and Fiorina is an interesting addition to the literature on rational theories of citizen participation. Decision making under uncertainty assumes, however, that the actor has no knowledge of the probabilities of the various outcomes; this is obviously no more true than the assumption of perfect information about these probabilities made in the decision making under risk model. Voters have some, but not perfect, information about the probabilities of at least some of the different possible outcomes.

Specifically, let us look at the two-party case. In Ferejohn's notation, (p3 + p4) is the probability of an individual's vote making a difference. We might expect a rational citizen to know that this probability is at most minuscule, even if he cannot calculate its exact value.
Caste and the Decline of Political Homogeneity
Authors: Somjee A. H.
Published: May 2006

The relationship between the traditional social organization of India, based on the principle of hierarchy, and the newly introduced democratic institutions and procedures, based on the principle of equality, has been a subject of diverse interpretations. The more significant of these interpretations are that the social organization has subsumed the new political system, and that the various units of social organization, namely, castes, have developed voluntary bodies or caste associations of their own in order to enter into an operative relationship with the new political system. The latter interpretation also implies that the democratic political socialization in India has been taking place by means of the caste associations. This study takes a hard look at such interpretations and points out that the internal cohesion of the social organization materially alters when it moves away from its primary social concerns—ritual, pollution, and endogamy—to nontraditional concerns. This change is reflected in the fact that highly fragmented decision-making processes of castes in nontraditional matters often lead to their substantial vote against candidates of their own castes. Such political differentiation within castes has occurred before the advent of certain caste associations, and in some cases despite them. These and other assertions are substantiated through data collected in a rural and an urban community where fieldwork designed to understand their political dynamics extended over a number of years.
Electoral Choice in the American States: Incumbency Effects, Partisan Forces, and Divergent Partisan Majorities
Authors: Cowart Andrew T.
Published: May 2006

It is a relatively common occurrence in American politics for state electorates to divide their partisan majorities between different parties, depending on the office contest. Observations concerning these divergent aggregate patterns are usually accompanied by speculation that the theoretical propositions on individual voting behavior, developed and tested in the context of presidential voting, hold less relevance for voting in statewide contests. Evidence presented in this paper does not bear out that view of state elections. The candidate incumbency context of state elections is introduced as an aid in predicting the partisan direction of split-ticket voting at the state level. Setting respondents in various conflict situations with respect to (1) basic party loyalties, (2) net assessments of presidential candidates, and (3) incumbent partisanship yields reasonably accurate specification of split-ticket voting patterns in gubernatorial, senatorial, and presidential contests; it also suggests at least one source of disparate partisan majorities among state electorates.
The Concept of Organizational Goal
Authors: Mohr Lawrence B.
Published: May 2006

The organizational goal concept is important for significant types of organizational research but its utility has been downgraded in recent scholarship. This paper reviews critically key contributions to conceptualizing the organizational goal and synthesizes many of their elements into a more concrete and comprehensive conceptualization. The efforts of Etzioni, Seashore and Yuchtman, Simon, and Thompson to bypass the need for a goal concept in evaluative and other behavioral research are unconvincing in important respects. However, they are persuasive in underscoring the importance of viewing organizational goals as multiple and as empirically determined. Perrow, Gross, and others convincingly suggest a dual conceptualization, so that goals are dichotomized into those with external referents (transitive goals) and those with internal referents (reflexive goals). Deniston et al. contribute the desirability of subsetting the goals of organizations into “program goals” and of differentiating goals from both subgoals and activities. The existence and relative importance of organizational goals and an allied concept, “operative goals,” may be operationally determined by current social science methods. The goal concept as presented here has implications for the evaluation of organizational effectiveness, for research on organizational behavior, for organization theory, and for views of the role of organizations in society.
The Strange Case of Relative Gratification and Potential for Political Violence: The V-Curve Hypothesis
Authors: Grofman Bernard N. , Muller Edward N.
Published: May 2006

Perception of discrepancy between optimum level of achievement with respect to desired values and actual level of achievement is a concept that has figured importantly in explanations of collective violence and its subset, political violence (approval of and readiness to engage in behaviors which constitute progressively greater challenge to a political regime). Hypotheses about relationships between a number of static and dynamic achievement discrepancy constructs (labeled “relative gratification,” and built from a variant of the Cantril Self-Anchoring scale) are tested. The achievement discrepancy constructs generally show only a weak degree of association with potential for political violence. However, measures of shift over time in discrepancy show an unexpected and intriguing relationship with potential for political violence: individuals who perceive negative change and individuals who perceive positive change show the highest potential for political violence, while individuals who perceive no change show the lowest potential for political violence; and this V-Curve relationship persists in the presence of various control variables. Moreover, absolute magnitude of shift in discrepancy from present to future shows a moderate degree of correlation with potential for political violence, and makes an independent contribution to a linear additive model. The data base is a sample of a population in which instances of political violence have been relatively frequent in the past.
Organizing Political Life: What Administrative Reorganization Tells Us about Government
Authors: March James G. , Olson Johan P.
Published: May 2006

We examine the political history of twelve twentieth-century efforts at comprehensive administrative reorganization in the United States. These efforts account for only a small fraction of administrative changes and do not seem to have had a major impact on administrative costs, efficiency, or control. They have been a source of frustration for presidents and others and have become regular and unlamented casualties of experience. Nevertheless, the idea of comprehensive administrative reorganization has been persistently resurrected by the political system. The history of comprehensive reorganization suggests that short-run outcomes are heavily influenced by the problematics of attention; that influence over long-run administrative development involves affecting gradually evolving systems of meaning; and that reorganization rhetoric and ritual affirm an interpretation of life at least as much as they are bases for short-run political decisions. We suggest some implications of such conclusions for a more general understanding of the organization of political life.
Party Identification and the Floating Vote: Some Dynamics
Authors: Dobson Douglas , Angelo Douglas St.
Published: May 2006

Several authors have now addressed themselves to the dynamics of party identification. The meaning of such dynamics has, however, been left in some doubt. In particular, it is unclear whether changes in party attachments are best described as completely random phenomena or as phenomena exhibiting patterned time variation. This paper argues that the answer to the question depends in part on the observable consequences of changes in partisan ties. The analysis utilizes SRC panel data to describe patterns of variation in party identification and to attempt to assess their consequences for our understanding of the floating vote.
Turnout and Representation in Presidential Primary Elections
Authors: Ranney Austin
Published: May 2006

This paper provides a partial test of the widely-held assumption that preference primaries are the most representative element of the presidential nominating system. It notes that the average voting turnout in presidential primaries is only 39 per cent, compared with 69 per cent in the same states' ensuing general elections. The representative quality of these electorates is examined with data from sample surveys of the 1968 New Hampshire and Wisconsin primaries. A comparison of the primary participants with non-participants among each party's identifiers shows, first, that presidential primary electorates are demographically unrepresentative of their nonvoting fellow partisans in age, education, income, and social status. Second, primary participants have no more intense party identifications than do non-participants. Third, participants hold issue positions more strongly than nonparticipants do, and on some issues they even hold positions contrary to those of nonparticipants. Finally, both of the Democratic primaries overrepresented Johnson sentiment and underrepresented McCarthy and Kennedy sentiment. The author concludes that the preference primaries' claim to be the most representative element of the presidential nominating system may not be warranted, especially if and when the national conventions are reformed along lines such as those laid down by the McGovern-Fraser Commission. In any case, 1972 offers a unique opportunity to study the comparative representativeness of local, state, and national party conventions and the preference primaries.
Standing to Sue: Interest Group Conflict in the Federal Courts
Authors: Orren Karen
Published: May 2006

The law of standing—rules by which judges find whether a party may bring suit—has been liberalized in the federal courts to permit interest group disputes not ordinarily possible. Following an historical pattern of conflict containment within judicial-style processes, consumer and environmental groups contest corporate business decisions by challenging the legality of their regulatory or legislative authorization. The vagueness and substantive emphasis of the new rules give groups more influence in determining when courts will intervene in the affairs of the other branches; and the doctrine's recognition of noneconomic injuries logically forces judges to consider whether they may find standing for some “public interest” beyond a specific plaintiff. Changes in standing equalize social power; but the entanglement of courts in the puzzles of interest representation may restrict protections for strictly private litigants, and may further remove the political system from the Rule of Law.
“Virtue, Obligation and Politics,” Revisited
Authors: Bank Richard M. , McCarl Steven R.
Published: May 2006

Stephen Salkever in thisReview(“Virtue, Obligation and Politics,”APSR68 [March, 1974]) discusses two paradigms of politics: one based on the concept of virtue (ancient political philosophy), the other resting on obligation (modern political thought). We analyze the meaning and significance of these two paradigms in terms of the cognitive-developmental moral psychology common to Lawrence Kohlberg, John Dewey, and Jean Piaget. We first present the cognitive-developmental theory and its empirical findings. We then demonstrate that the politics of obligation falls within the virtue paradigm as a necessary stage in the development of virtue, which involves placing Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Rawls within our developmental scheme. Finally, we explore the nature of understanding moral principles from within the cognitive-developmental perspective. In all this, we agree with Salkever's basic assumption that any account of political good (public as opposed to private) must be based on moral psychology, i.e., it must deal with the question of “What is good for the most inclusive of all publics, the human species?” We go two steps beyond Salkever, however, by showing the significance of the question, and by providing an answer to it (both of which bear upon the understanding of morality). An underlying purpose of our research is to present and to promote the political relevance and significance of moral psychology in general and cognitive development in particular.
Ethnic Voting and Political Change in South Africa
Authors: Peele Stanton , Morse Stanley J.
Published: May 2006

Immediately prior to the 1970 parliamentary election in the Republic of South Africa, 462 white voters in Cape Town were questioned about their demographic backgrounds, voting intentions, and political attitudes. The study showed that ethnicity is the major determinant of party vote: Afrikaners vote for the National Party, the English-speaking for the United Party. SES-related factors predict party identification only insofar as they covary with ethnicity. While a liberalization of political attitudes with rising SES can be observed, this has no bearing on electoral behavior. Party vote is not related to ideological or issue orientations, but is related to the intensity of the voter's identification with his own ethnic group and with white South Africans in general. Voters tend to react positively or negatively to the NP, with the UP serving chiefly as a vehicle for protest votes against the government. The slight drop in NP support in 1970 was due to a key group of abstainers who—while basically Nat supporters—were more liberal than those who said they would vote for the NP. It is “Ambiguous Afrikaners” (those who are changing to an “English” identity), and only some of those, who are defecting completely from their traditional political allegiance. They represent the one sign of potential change in South Africa's uniquely stable political system.
Trapping the Prince: Machiavelli and the Politics of Deception
Authors: Dietz Mary G.
Published: May 2006

Machiavelli's most famous political work, The Prince, was a masterful act of political deception. I argue that Machiavelli's intention was a republican one: to undo Lorenzo de Medici by giving him advice that would jeopardize his power, hasten his overthrow, and allow for the resurgence of the Florentine republic. This interpretation returns The Prince to its specific historical context. It considers Machiavelli's advice to Lorenzo on where to reside, how to behave, and whom to arm in light of the political reality of sixteenth-century Florence. Evidence external to The Prince, including Machiavelli's other writings and his own political biography, confirms his anti-Medicean sentiments, his republican convictions, and his proclivity for deception. Understanding The Prince as an act of political deception continues a tradition of reading Machiavelli as a radical republican. Moreover, it overcomes the difficulties of previous republican interpretations, and provides new insight into the strategic perspective and Renaissance artistry Machiavelli employed as a theoretician.
War, Accommodation, and Violence in the United States, 1890–1970
Authors: Rasler Karen
Published: May 2006

War, postwar demobilization, and economic depression are national crises that ultimately test the state's capacity to respond simultaneously to internal and external challenges. This analysis probes the nexus between crises and domestic violence, investigating how this relationship is mediated by the influence of two variables: the severity of crisis and the presence or absence of government accommodation. Box-Tiao impact assessment models are used to estimate the separate and combined effects of American involvements in wars (the Spanish-American War, World Wars I and II, and the Korean and Vietnam Wars), their postwar periods, and the 1930s depression on economic, social, and political forms of American violence from 1890 to 1970. After establishing historical evidence for the role of national accommodation, I demonstrate that strong, positive associations between severe crises and domestic violence are to be found during the tenure of nonaccommodating administrations. Accommodating governments are associated with either negative or historically weak linkages between severe crises and domestic violence. Overall, the evidence underscores the benefit of using broad theoretical perspectives for understanding the linkages between international and domestic conflict.
Bounded Rationality in Budgetary Research
Authors: Padgett John F.
Published: May 2006

Two bounded rationality theories of federal budgetary decision making are operationalized and tested within a stochastic process framework. Empirical analyses of Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson domestic budget data, compiled from internal Office of Management and Budget planning documents, support the theory of serial judgment over the theory of incrementalism proposed by Davis, Dempster and Wildavsky. The new theory highlights both the structure of ordered search through a limited number of discrete alternatives and the importance of informal judgmental evaluations. Serial judgment theory predicts not only that most programs most of the time will receive allocations which are only marginally different from the historical base, but also that occasional radical and even “catastrophic” changes are the normal result of routine federal budgetary decision making. The methodological limitations of linear regression techniques in explanatory budgetary research are also discussed.
Elite Integration in the United States and Australia
Authors: Higley John , Moore Gwen
Published: May 2006

Taking its point of departure in the elitist paradigm and the much-discussed relationship between elite integration and stable democratic political systems, this article offers a typology of fragmented and integrated national elites and investigates the structure of the “consensually integrated” elite type. It is hypothesized that “consensually integrated” elites have largely similar structures consisting of personal interaction networks which are more inclusive and less class-based, and which contain more extensive and centralized connections among all major elite groups, than the plural elite, power elite or ruling class models of elite structure separately depict. Support for these hypotheses is found in a comparison of the network structures of two consensually integrated national elites, the American and Australian, as these structures are revealed by issue-based sociometric data taken from closely comparable elite samples and studies in the two countries.
Madison's Analysis of the Sources of Political Authority
Authors: Morgan Robert J.
Published: May 2006

James Madison believed that political institutions are not the effects of conflicts among private groups in society. He traced political authority to human nature. It is the ultimate source of both public opinion and the motives which impel some individuals to hold government offices. Prudently contrived governmental institutions can moderate the countervailing tendencies arising from these two sources of authority, although they are necessarily in a state of continuing tension. Strict accountability of representatives to the whole range of diverse opinion in society is in conflict with the tendency of government to become autonomous. The latter tendency follows from government's using its power to establish the fiscal and military institutions required to wage war. By doing so a government may Creole a new political equilibrium which is masked by apparent adherence to established constitutional balance and is then independent of the balance of private property.
Research Frontier Essay: When Are Interests Interesting? The Problem of Political Representation of Women
Authors: Sapiro Virginia
Published: May 2006

Recent years have witnessed an increasing demand by women for political representation of women. This demand points the way toward a number of important problems for political research, many of which remain unsolved primarily because of the segregation of women's studies from the dominant concerns of political science. This discussion focuses on the problem of group interests and representation, drawing on and suggesting further research on public opinion, interest groups, social movements, international politics, political elites, and public policy.
The Constituency Service Basis of the Personal Vote for U.S. Representatives and British Members of Parliament
Authors: Cain Bruce E. , Ferejohn John A. , Fiorina Morris P.
Published: May 2006

Under the guise of the “incumbency advantage,” American research of the past decade has devoted heavy emphasis to what may be termed the “personal vote” in congressional elections. Is this phenomenon purely American, or is it susceptible to comparative treatment? This article contrasts the personal vote in the 1980 U.S. House elections with that in the 1979 British general election. The analysis utilizes data from surveys conducted by the Center for Political Studies and British Gallup in combination with interviews of congressional administrative assistants (AAs) and British MPs and party agents whose constituencies fall in the sampling frames of the mass surveys. The analysis finds an incumbency advantage or personal vote in Britain which is much weaker than that in the United States but of somewhat greater importance than is commonly believed. As in the United States, constituency service appears to be an important component of the personal vote.
The Allocation of Federal Aid Monies: The Synthesis of Demand-Side and Supply-Side Explanations
Authors: Stein Robert M.
Published: May 2006

Previous research on the distribution of federal aid monies has been dominated by the donor's perspective. Different distribution formulas, political influence of congressional representatives, bureaucrats, and individual aid recipients have been studied as the sole determinants of aid allocations. Each explanation, however, fails to examine the question of aid allocations from a demand-side perspective. This omission assumes that all governmental units are equally desirous of federal assistance and that any bias in the distribution of federal aid is a function of supply-side conditions. Identifying a linkage between demand-side and supply-side determinants of aid allocations, this article proposes and tests hypotheses derived from an integrated model of federal aid allocations.
The Election of Blacks to City Councils: Clarifying the Impact of Electoral Arrangements on the Seats/Population Relationship
Authors: Engstrom Richard L. , McDonald Michael D.
Published: May 2006

The notion that at-large elections for city council seats are discriminatory toward blacks has recently been attacked as empirically invalid. Recent studies have reached conflicting conclusions as to whether electoral arrangements or socioeconomic factors are the major influence on how proportionately blacks are represented. This article addresses this issue, using a regression-based analysis in which proportionality is treated as a relationship across cities with electoral structure as a specifying variable. Socioeconomic variables found to be important in other studies are included. The results support the traditional notion and suggest that the electoral structure begins to have a discernible impact on the level of black representation once the black population reaches 10 percent of the total municipal population. While one socioeconomic variable, the relative income of the city's black population, is found to affect the election of blacks, its impact is greater than that of the electoral structure only when the black population is less than 15 percent.
Personal Attribute Models of the Voting Behavior of U.S. Supreme Court Justices: Liberalism in Civil Liberties and Economics Decisions, 1946–1978
Authors: Tate C. Neal
Published: May 2006

The prevailing view among students of judicial politics is that judges' background characteristics or personal attributes cannot provide satisfactory explanations for variation in their decision-making behavior. Parsimonious attribute models reported here account for 70 to 90 percent of the variance in the voting of postwar Supreme Court justices in split decisions concerning civil rights and liberties, and economics. Seven variables representing six meaningful and easily interpretable concepts achieve this success. The concepts are Judge's Party Identification, Appointing President, Prestige of Prelaw Education (economics only), Appointed from Elective Office, Appointment Region (civil liberties only), Extensiveness of Judicial Experience, and Type of Prosecutorial Experience. The impressive performance of these models is attributed to superior measurement, operationalization, and model building; to a greater similarity between personal attribute models and more fully specified ones than has been assumed; and to the possibility that the attitudes which intervene between the personal attributes and the voting of judges are causally very closely linked to voting.
Macropartisanship
Authors: MacKuen Michael B. , Erikson Robert S. , Stimson James A.
Published: May 2006

From an early, incorrect consensus that party identification was free of the short-term influences of political life, its aggregate, macropartisanship, drew little scholary notice. Though macropartisanship, typically seen as a biennial time series, appears essentially constant, our quarterly treatment demonstrates substantial and notably systematic movement of this crucial barometer of the U.S. party system. We demonstrate that it varies systematically with respect to time, has electoral consequences, and can be modeled as a function of economic evaluations and approval of the incumbent presidential administration. Macropartisanship, we argue, is a variable like others, subject to routine ebb and flow as citizens in the aggregate reflect their experiences of politics onto the parties. Its medium-term movements of considerable magnitude are lasting enough to matter but occur without connoting shifts in the underlying party system and can be understood without invoking the crises and convulsions of realignment theory.
Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and Free Trade
Authors: Gowa Joanne
Published: May 2006

Recent literature typically attributes the relative scarcity of open international markets to the prisoner's dilemma structure of state preferences with respect to trade. I argue that the prisoner's dilemma representation does not reflect the most critical aspect of free trade agreements in an anarchic international system: security externalities. Explicit consideration of these effects suggests that a bipolar international political system has an advantage relative to its multipolar counterpart with respect to the opening of markets among states. Less credible exit threats and stronger incentives to engage in altruism within its alliances explain the advantage of a two-power system.
How Much Do Interest Groups Influence State Economic Growth?
Authors: Brace Paul , Cohen Youssef , Gray Virginia , Lowery David
Published: May 2006

In the March 1988 issue of this Review, Virginia Gray and David Lowery presented a respecification of Mancur Olson's model of economic growth and tested the revised model with U.S. state data. A special feature of the Gray-Lowery analysis is its more thorough measurement of interest group effects. These investigators found interest group influences quite different from those anticipated by Olson's model. Paul Brace and Youssef Cohen argue that the Gray-Lowery model misspecifies the determinants of state economic growth, overstating the role of interest group size and failing to incorporate crucial exogenous variables. Gray and Lowery join the issue and defend their specification.
Class Compromises in Industrial Democracies
Authors: Masters Marick F. , Robertson John D.
Published: May 2006

The stability of democracies has been of critical interest to students of comparative politics. One question that has received limited empirical analysis is, How do we integrate class conflict into the broader concept of democratic stability? We extend the work of Przeworski and Wallerstein. Our principal thesis is that as the material bases of class exchange diminish, the state intervenes economically to expand the resources conducive to class consent. A tripartite coalition thus emerges, with the state facilitating class compromise between labor and capital through economic policies. We explore this thesis in a cross-national analysis of data collected from 20 advanced industrial democracies during the time period 1965–83, and explore the essential conclusions and the political-economic implications of our findings.
Condorcet's Theory of Voting
Authors: Young H. P.
Published: May 2006

Condcrcet's criterion states that an alternative that defeats every other by a simple majority is the socially optimal choice. Condorcet argued that if the object of voting is to determine the “best” decision for society but voters sometimes make mistakes in their judgments, then the majority alternative (if it exists) is statistically most likely to be the best choice. Strictly speaking, this claim is not true; in some situations Bordas rule gives a sharper estimate of the best alternative. Nevertheless, Condorcet did propose a novel and statistically correct rule for finding the most likely ranking of the alternatives. This procedure, which is sometimes known as “Kemeny's rule,” is the unique social welfare function that satisfies a variant of independence of irrelevant alternatives together with several other standard properties.
Fear and Trembling: Terrorism in Three Religious Traditions
Authors: Rapoport David C.
Published: May 2006

As the first comparative study of religious terror groups, the article provides detailed analyses of the different doctrines and methods of the three best-known groups: the Thugs, Assassins, and Zealots-Sicarii. Despite a primitive technology, each developed much more durable and destructive organizations than has any modern secular group.

The differences among the groups reflect the distinguishing characteristics of their respective originating religious communities: Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism. The distinctive characteristics of religious terror are discussed, and relationships between religious and secular forms of terror are suggested.
Political Context and Attitude Change
Authors: MacKuen Michael , Brown Courtney
Published: May 2006

Political context has an important impact on individual attitude change. This is an analysis of the dynamic effects of contextual variables. Drawing on data taken from the American National Election Study (ANES) panel study, we demonstrate that the environment shapes the way the citizen views politics. While varying in degree, the results hold for a broad (county-level) and a narrow (residential neighborhood-level) definition of the relevant context. The patterns involved suggest that citizens' evaluations of candidates and parties are most directly influenced by what their neighbors are saying at the moment, that is to say, the content of current discussion. In contrast, citizens' self-identification evinces sensitivity to the more stable partisan character of the environment. The results indicate that the impact of social influence is crucially dependent on the nature of contemporary political debate and that the social setting serves as an intervening mechanism in the broader communication system and not merely as an exogenous source for political information.
Political Self-Efficacy Tested
Authors: Madsen Douglas
Published: May 2006

A subset of citizens in a democratic system directly test their political self-efficacy by petitioning government for assistance of one kind or another. Drawing on survey data gathered in India in 1967, this investigation focuses on the consequences of success or failure for perceived self-efficacy and for perceived government responsiveness. The analysis demonstrates that (1) successful petitioners come to enjoy a somewhat enhanced sense of self-efficacy but do not view government as particularly responsive, (2) unsuccessful petitioners do not see themselves as inefficacious but—possibly instead—do see government responsiveness in distinctly negative terms, and, (3) the kind of evidence that can help sustain a positive sense of self-efficacy will not suffice to undergird a belief in system responsiveness.
Strategic Politicians and the Dynamics of U.S. House Elections, 1946–86
Authors: Jacobson Gary C.
Published: May 2006

Analysis of both district-level and aggregate time-series data from postwar House elections supports the thesis that strategic political elites play a pivotal role in translating national conditions into election results and therefore in holding members of Congress collectively accountable for the government's performance. More high-quality candidates run when prospects appear to favor their party; they also win significantly more votes and victories than other candidates in equivalent circumstances. Thus, strategic career decisions both reflect and enhance national partisan tides. The electoral importance of strategic politicians has grown over time in tandem with the trend toward candidate-centered electoral politics. This has rendered the effects of national forces less automatic, more contingent, thus threatening the capacity of elections to enforce some degree of collective responsibility.
Incumbency, Electoral Safety, and Turnover in the House of Representatives, 1952–76
Authors: Collie Melissa P.
Published: May 2006

Two hypotheses have received a great deal of attention from students of congressional elections. First, many analysts have concluded that an increase in the electoral value attached to incumbency accounts for the rise in incumbents' victory margins observed since the mid-sixties. Second, many scholars have attributed the decline in electoral turnover to the percentage increase in victory margins. Analyzing the electoral histories of 13 House cohorts (1952-76), this study reexamines these two hypotheses within the framework of a quasi-experimental design. The results presented here, in contrast to those of previous studies, cast doubt on the increased incumbency effect. Moreover, little relationship is found between an increase in electoral safety, as reflected by increased victory margins, and a decline in electoral turnover.
Toward a Diachronic Analysis of Congress
Authors: Cooper Joseph , Brady David W.
Published: May 2006

This article assesses the status of diachronic research on the United States Congress. A literature review reveals a lack of truly diachronic studies, but a wealth of insightful and useful historical and contemporary studies. Drawing on organization theory, a research approach designed to facilitate and improve diachronic analysis is put forward. A major focus of the approach is on the ways in which environmental factors—both fixed and variable—shape the operations and performance of Congress. In addition, problems and strategies in analyzing the impacts of Congress on the wider political system are examined. The concluding section presents a research agenda for political scientists interested in applying diachronic analysis to the study of Congress.
An Impression-Driven Model of Candidate Evaluation
Authors: Lodge Milton , McGraw Kathleen M. , Stroh Patrick
Published: May 2006

We describe and test two process models of candidate evaluation. The memory-based model holds that evaluations are dependent on the mix of pro and con information retrieved from memory. The impression-driven model holds that evaluations are formed and updated “on-line” as information is encountered. The results provide evidence for the existence of stereotyping and projection biases that render the mix of evidence available in memory a nonveridical representation of the information to which subjects were exposed. People do not rely on the specific candidate information available in memory. Rather, consistent with the logic of the impression-driven processing model, an “on-line” judgment formed when the information was encountered best predicts candidate evaluation. The results raise both methodological and substantive challenges to how political scientists measure and model the candidate evaluation process.