bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Political Scientists and the 1980 National Party Convention
Authors: Barber Kathleen L.
Published: September 2013

While the country may not have recognized the impact of political scientists on the 1980 major party presidential conventions, we were indeed there. At least 19 known political scientists were among the 5381 Democratic delegates and alternates in New York City in August, and one known political scientist was among the 3988 Republican delegates and alternates in Detroit in July.

These relatively rare birds who combine the study and teaching of politics with the doing were asked byPSto write short essays on their observations of the delegate selection processes and of the conventions themselves. In addition, two staff participants, John F. Bibby, a veteran of five Republican conventions, and Elaine C. Kamarck, self-styled “hackademic” who served as Executive Director of the 1980 Democratic Platform Committee, have contributed thoughtful comments on their perspectives. Finally, Byron E. Shafer, political scientist practicing his profession, is the only one of our contributors to have observed both 1980 conventions.
The Republican
Authors: Hodgkin Douglas I.
Published: September 2013

My experiences as a delegate to the 1980 Republican National Convention seem to reflect the role of party professional more than that of political amateur. The professional seeks party unity, supports the nominee despite disagreements on issues, and works for the party year after year, win or lose, whether or not he likes the current candidates or some issue stands of the party (Soule and McGrath, 1975).

Having been active in the Republican Party for 12 years, including service on the state committee, as chairman of the Second Congressional District Committee, and currently as chairman of the State Platform Committee, I presumably qualified as a professional in terms of length and character of involvement (Roback, 1975). Furthermore, this service provided the wide recognition within the party that has traditionally been important for selection as national delegate by the Maine State or Congressional District Conventions.
Notes on the 1980 Democratic Convention from a Confirmed “Hackademic”
Authors: Kamarck Elaine C.
Published: September 2013

Upon advancement to candidacy in the political science department at the University of California, Berkeley, I joined the staff of the Democratic National Committee as Research Director for the Commission on Presidential Nomination and Party Structure. What was to be a short-term job ended up as a three and a half year commitment to the Democratic Party as I became, seriatim, program director for the Midterm Conference, executive director of the commission which established state party compliance with the delegate selection rules, and executive director of the 1980 Platform Committee.

During my first month at the National Committee I had the pleasure of meeting one Mark Siegel, a political scientist with several years of involvement in national politics. One afternoon we were discussing the experiences of academic political scientists turned practitioners. Mark coined a term I have used frequently since then—“hackademic”—or someone who is partially an academic and partially a political hack.
The Advanced Study Program of the Brookings Institution
Authors: Carroll James D.
Published: September 2013

The Advanced Study Program of the Brookings Institution may be the largest continuing seminar on public policy in the United States, if not the world.

Is the American Constitutional system adequate to the needs of contemporary society?

Is the American system of government dominated by “special interests”?

Do “limits to growth” threaten to bring about increasing conflict among income groups in the United States?

Is the decline in economic productivity a threat to the international security of the United States?

What are the strengths and weaknesses of supply side economics?

What are the implications of the growth of the service economy for the various regions of the United States?

What are the relationships and tradeoffs among energy policy, inflation, environmental objectives, and regulatory policy?

What are the ethical implications of major public policies?

Each year, these and similar questions are explored in the approximately 100 seminars, conferences, and other educational programs conducted by the Advanced Study Program.
Political Science and the Life Sciences
Authors: Corning Peter , Losco Joseph , Wiegele Thomas C.
Published: September 2013

At the 1980 APSA meeting in Washington, a group of approximately 25 political scientists and others, out of a much larger network of contributors and sympathizers, agreed to form anAssociation for Politics and the Life Sciencesdedicated to the advancement of an integrated biosocial perspective in our discipline. Although this short article is intended primarily to announce that fact and detail plans for the immediate future, we feel that this might also be an appropriate occasion to review briefly the history and rationale behind this intellectual activity and describe some of the objectives of the Association.

The study of the relationship between biology and politics (sometimes called “biobehavioral political science” and sometimes also “biopolitics”) drew its initial impetus in the latter 1960s and early 1970s from emergent developments in a number of other disciplines, particularly (a)ethology(the naturalistic study of animal behavior and adaptation), (b)psychophysiology(specifically, efforts to correlate various physiological characteristics and “indicators” with various mental and behavioral states), (c)psychobiology(including neurological and endocrine influences on social behavior), (d)behavior genetics(involving both human and non-human animal research), (e)psychopharmacology(especially the chemical manipulation of behavioral states), (f)sociobiology(the application of modern Darwinian theory to the explanation of social behaviors), and (g)ecology(the study of the relationships between organisms and their environments, which gained visibility when the so-called “environmental crisis” erupted).
The APSA Confidentiality in Social Science Research Project: A Final Report
Authors: Carroll James D. , Knerr Charles R.
Published: September 2013

In 1973 a research project was initiated by the American Political Science Association to investigate problems surrounding the establishment and maintenance of confidential relationships between scholarly researchers and research subjects. The effort was funded by the Russell-Sage Foundation and co-sponsored by all the various national social science associations.
Beyond Economic Disarmament
Authors: Jacobson Harold K.
Published: September 2013

The volume and value of international trade have grown at exceptional rates in the years since World War II, rates of growth that are significantly higher than those for population or production. In a substantial measure the gains in global welfare that have been achieved during this period are attributable to the growth in international trade. The reduction of barriers to trade, accomplished through the instrumentality of a modest international institution, the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), has played a major role in facilitating the growth of international trade. GATT is currently, however, at a critical juncture. The issue that GATT faces is: can the liberalized conditions for international trade that have been achieved through complicated and time-consuming negotiations be maintained and extended or will the world drift—or perhaps even rush—toward protectionism?

The trade ministers of GATT's 88 member states meeting in Geneva last November sought to promote further progress toward liberalization or at least to prevent backsliding. Whether or not their efforts will succeed remains to be seen. The obstacles in the way of success are formidable, and the instruments for overcoming them are fragile.
Statistical Packages for Personal Computers
Authors: Grafton Carl , Permaloff Anne
Published: September 2013

An impressive number of reasonably priced personal computer software packages of interest to political scientists are now on the market. Owners of computers such as the TRS-80 Model III and the Apple II can purchase software for word processing and statistical analysis which can substantially increase their productivity. Scholars trying to meet publication deadlines need no longer be delayed by harried secretaries trying single-handedly to meet the needs of an entire department. A computer/word processor used by a typist of average ability is nearly the equal of a good professional secretary. And those with even fairly large statistical analysis requirements may no longer be tied to the university's hectic “computer center” where they must wait in line for terminals, try to think amid constant movement and never-ending conversation, or suffer errors produced by noise injected between their terminal and the main frame along telephone lines.

This is an analysis of statistical packages sold by four companies for use on a variety of low, moderate, and high priced personal computers. Our focus on these packages reflects our statistical needs for research and teaching. We were looking for programs capable of handling relatively large data bases and with the capacity to perform multiple regression and time series analyses. We needed a program that could be used to analyze data generated from small survey samples. This required both frequency distribution and contingency table development and analysis. Finally, we needed a program or programs in an affordable price range.
To Run or Not to Run: Estimates of a Black Contender's Delegate Strength at the 1984 Democratic Convention
Authors: Lengle James I.
Published: September 2013

The possibility of a black contender for the Democratic presidential nomination has raised many interesting questions. Has the Democratic Party and its past nominees taken the black vote for granted? Can the black community reach a consensus on a black issue agenda? Can it agree on a candidate? Could a black candidate actually hurt black interests by dividing the liberal vote and throwing the nomination to a more conservative Democratic contender? Could the strategy seriously backfire in other less obvious ways? Do the presumed benefits, both symbolic and real, outweigh the potential costs? Could the threat of a candidacy be just as beneficial to black interests as the candidacy itself? Are there other strategies during the nomination process that could enhance black political power even more?

Although the debate has covered a wide range of questions, one crucial question has been ignored: how many delegates could a black presidential contender conceivably win in 1984? While few experts believe that a black contender could win a majority of delegates, many argue that, if the contest is close between two other contenders, blacks could be “kingmakers,” crowning the nominee in exchange for major policy concessions, patronage appointments, and, conceivably, the vice-presidency. If the nomination is not close, then a group of black delegates, at a minimum, would increase substantially black influence on important rules and platform decisions. Hopes based on these or any other convention scenario the mind can devise, however, depend on how well a black contender fares in the race for delegates. The larger his delegation, the more power he can potentially wield at the convention. Conversely, the smaller his delegation, the less power he will have.
The Reform of Presidential Selection and Democratic Theory
Authors: Polsby Nelson W.
Published: September 2013

The political science profession is very far indeed from having pronounced its last word on the subject of the reforms of the presidential nomination process which have so dramatically transformed American elections and the party system. The current wave of reform began over a decade ago, and, more or less on schedule, political scientists have now begun regularly to report findings that suggest that they have been incorporating questions about the consequences of these reforms into their research.

Many observers quite rightly have noted that central to debate about party reform among politicians and commentators have been questions of legitimacy that reflect varying conceptions of democratic theory. In this brief essay, I will consider a few of these questions further and speculate about the respects in which the work of political scientists might assist in resolving them.

Perhaps the earliest questions arose over the changes that reform seemed to induce in the sorts of people taking part in the national party conventions. Questions arose as to their “representativeness”—and especially in light of two successive Democratic national conventions— 1968 and 1972—at which there were many challenges to the right of delegates to be present. In 1968 the complaints centered on the propriety of seating delegates selected earlier than the election year and selected through processes dominated by state party leaders rather than by the insurgent forces of protest over the war in Vietnam. These complaints were largely ineffective in influencing the outcome of the 1968 nomination, but their impact on subsequent events was substantial. They formed the basis upon which the Democratic party undertook to examine the delegate selection process in its McGovern-Fraser Commission of 1969, and people associated with these complaints staffed the Commission.
Reconciliation 1982: What Happened?
Authors: Peters Jean
Published: September 2013

Reconciliation was marked by confusion and misunderstanding on Capitol Hill. Still, this unusual procedure permitted the Reagan Administration to have its budget considered and approved as a single package.

In 1974, Congress passed a budget act to assert control over the federal budget and free itself from executive dominance over spending plans. In 1981, that act instead provided the Reagan Administration with a tool to put forth its economic program as a single philosophical package and to restructure basic social legislation to reflect that philosophy. The tool is reconciliation.

Reconciliation has been slowly ripening on the budgetary vine for several years. The combined adroitness of key Administration budgeteer, David Stockman, who went from Michigan congressman to director of the Office of Management and Budget, along with the current economic climate, provided a unique opportunity for the executive branch to use congressional procedures to bypass normal congressional control over the federal budget.
The Reagan Budget: A Significant Departure from the Past
Authors: Gist John R.
Published: September 2013

In the aggregate President Reagan's budget does not differ significantly from budget growth during the early 1970s. If the budget is slightly disaggregated, however, it is clear that the Administration is dramatically altering U.S. spending patterns.

As part of his program for economic recovery announced last February and March, President Reagan called for $475 billion in budget reductions over fiscal years 1981–86. He also proposed the use of the budget reconciliation process provided for in the 1974 Congressional Budget Act as the vehicle for implementing the first installment of these massive cuts in federal spending. In this paper I will discuss the Reagan budget plan in broad outline, and then compare certain aspects of it with the outcome of the reconciliation process and with some recent budget trends.
The Electoral Connection in the 99th Congress
Authors: Cook Timothy E.
Published: September 2013

Participant observation has provided some of our most impressive insights into the contemporary Congress. In particular, two scholars relied upon this method for results that must be regarded as shaping our current paradigm on Congress and its members: David Mayhew, who, six years after serving as an APSA Congressional Fellow, published his essay,Congress: The Electoral Connection(1974), and Richard Fenno, who traveled with representatives and senators in order to assess how members of Congress interact with their constituents and the impact of those interactions upon their performances in Washington inHome Style(1978) and its companion volume on the Senate (1982).

Despite the influence of these works, some ambiguities remained when I began my stint as a Congressional Fellow in the fall of 1984. For one thing, Mayhew and Fenno had reached different conclusions regarding the impact of the need to run for reelection. Mayhew asserted that congressional behavior and congressional outcomes could be explained solely by the goal of getting reelected; on the other hand, Fenno contended that members could establish separate “home styles” and “Washington styles,” as leeway in the latter increased with more successful presentations of self back home. Likewise, whereas Mayhew made no distinction between the strength of the electoral incentive for representatives and senators, Fenno argued that having longer terms than representatives provided much more temptation for senators to do something besides merely run for reelection. A second ambiguity was that most of Mayhew's and Fenno's fieldwork was accomplished in the early to mid 1970s, before the sea-change in American politics best symbolized by Ronald Reagan's election and the dramatic shifts in policy and in political style that ensued (see especially Edsall, 1984; Chubb and Peterson, 1985). While studies suggest that congressional decision-making has changed only slightly in the Reagan years (e.g., Smith, 1985), the altered electoral environment may have produced far-reaching changes in how the electoral connection shapes Congress.
The Other Side of the Camera: A TV Reporter's Stint as a Congressional Aide
Authors: Warren Larry
Published: September 2013

On a drizzly late afternoon, soon after the November 1984 elections and well before the start of the 99th Congress, I slogged into the Cannon House Office Building for an interview with a real, live congressman. This was not a new experience. As a television reporter for a decade, I'd interviewed dozens of representatives and senators along the way. This interview was entirely different, however, because this time I was looking for a job, and the member was looking for an APSA Congressional Fellow to help out in his office.

After the usual half hour wait in the lobby, I was ushered in to meet the member. It was football season and before settling into the couch, he was bragging about his alma mater's quarterback. Fortunately, my home team had a hot quarterback too, so we debated quarterback's arms instead of the nuclear or conventional variety. I was scheduled for 20 minutes with the member, and half the time expired before the member abruptly turned to the real subject at hand—hockey. About the time I'd run through the last fact in my hockey memory, the member actually picked up my resume and scanned it.

One fact leaped from the page and got him even more worked up than his quarterback's passing percentage. “So you're a TV reporter, huh? I've always liked having TV guys around.” By now the 20-minute interview time was up, but it would be another 1½ hours before I got back out into the rain, with my first real insight into politics and TV news, from the other side of the camera.
Biracial Coalition Politics in Los Angeles
Authors: Sonenshein Raphe
Published: September 2013

In their 1984 bookProtest Is Not EnoughBrowning, Marshall, and Tabb suggest that biracial coalitions are powerful vehicles for achieving minority incorporation in the political life of cities. They argue that black electoral mobilization and subsequent incorporation depend on both the relative size of the black community and white support. Similarly, Hispanic incorporation is a function not only of the percentage of Hispanics in the population but also joint membership with blacks in a liberal coalition (pp. 245–246).

Their optimistic view of biracial and multiracial coalitions contrasts strikingly with the more common pessimism about cross-racial politics. Racial polarization in such major cities as New York, Chicago and Philadelphia (as well as in a number of medium and smaller-sized cities) has fed the belief that the black protests and white backlash of the 1960s have doomed biracial politics.

Protest Is Not Enoughfocuses on ten small and medium-sized Northern California cities. The largest, San Francisco, is the 16th most populous city in the U.S. But biracial coalition politics has been most advanced in Berkeley, a city of only 103,328 in 1980. Thus the book's argument is vulnerable to the challenge that full-blown biracial politics worked only in a rather small, unusual city and otherwise had a significant impact in cities of only moderate size in the traditionally liberal Bay Area.
Is Anything Enough?
Authors: Browning Rufus P. , Marshall Dale Rogers
Published: September 2013

Is anything enough? The authors of this forum are in agreement that the political incorporation of blacks and Hispanics achieved thus far is not enough. Not only is protest not enough: they question whether any of the political arrangements by which members of these groups have been brought into city governments are sufficient to meet the goals of the civil rights movement—political equality and the alleviation of poverty. They have much to say about ways in which the incorporation of blacks and Hispanics falls short and about the conditions that block further strengthening of their position.

Is anytheoryenough—the theory ofProtest Is Not Enough, in particular? The answer to the particular question is partly Yes, but the articles of this forum suggest qualifications and additions; we discuss these below. There are two answers to the general question, both of them No. No, because a theory of variations across cities does not fully meet the need for an understanding of possibilities or of leadership, agenda, and strategy over time in a particular city. And No, because the largest cities must be understood on their own terms, as we would seek to understand a nation or a war on its own terms.

Nevertheless, a theoretical structure of the sort inProtestis useful to practitioners and researchers because it focuses attention on a limited number of main factors and relationships, permits systematic and standardized comparisons between groups of cities, provides a way to summarize the main structure of causal factors and conditions in a given city, and allows us to estimate the levels of minority mobilization and incorporation and of governmental responsiveness that we should expect in a city on the basis of the experience in other cities.
Democracy and Religion
Authors: Reichley A. James
Published: September 2013

Relations between American democracy and religion have always been somewhat equivocal.

On the one hand, moral and ethical principles derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition have been a major source of democratic values. Religion was an important motivating factor in both the colonization of North America and the American Revolution. The Founding Fathers set such high store by religion that they included its free exercise along with free speech and a free press among the liberties specifically protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Organized religion played a key role in such drives to perfect democracy as the abolition of slavery, the enactment of woman's suffrage, and the civil rights struggle of the 1960s. Perhaps most important, the so-called Protestant ethic provided the moral bedrock on which republican institutions were built.

On the other hand, democratic theorists and much of the general public have been wary of the absolutist social outlook often associated with religion. Practically all religions claim to embody ultimate truths about the nature of the universe and the human condition. At some level, therefore, they can hardly be tolerant of rival beliefs. Religious bodies can avoid social intolerance by acknowledging that human imperfection clouds and corrupts the judgments of all institutions, including the churches, or by limiting their social pronouncement to broad moral directives. In practice, however, individuals or institutions claiming to represent transcendent moral authority are often tempted to attach certainty to their opinions on complex issues in secular politics.
Some Modest Propositions About an Immodest Subject
Authors: Dunn Charles W.
Published: September 2013

Few subjects arouse emotions like religion and politics. And when combined, few subjects raise more obstacles to balanced and objective scholarly analysis. Many strong and competing biases among both religious and political groups together with a scholar's own ideological and religious views may make it difficult to examine dispassionately the issues raised.

Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority on the right and Norman Lear's People for the American Way on the left pose perplexing problems for American democracy. Each group speaks fervently with immodest assurance that its views of American democracy is correct.

Comments by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn and former Yale University President A. Bartlett Giamatti contrast between these polarized positions. Solzhenitsyn in his 1978 Harvard University commencement address charged that humanism “started Western civilization on the dangerous trend of worshipping man and his material needs. … As humanism in its development was becoming more and more materialistic, it also increasingly allowed its concepts to be used first by socialism and then by communism” (Solzhenitsyn, p. 53). Giamatti, on the other hand, has condemned groups like the Moral Majority by saying they “would sweep before them anyone who holds a different opinion” (The New York Times, September 1, 1981, p. 1).
Election Forecasts in 1984: How Accurate Were They?
Authors: Lewis-Beck Michael S.
Published: September 2013

One autumn out of four, election forecasting surpasses baseball as America's national pastime. Then, everyone wants to know who will win, and everyone has a guess. Now, with the ballots carefully counted, forecasters await their awards. Below, I evaluate the quality of a wide range of 1984 presidential and congressional forecasts. The evaluation proceeds from nonscientific to scientific approaches, although this distinction is sometimes blurred. To lower the level of suspense, I should say that some forecasts turned out to be quite good. By way of conclusion, I offer a set of rules for selecting a high-quality forecasting instrument.

Lucky Guesses

Many popular election forecasting rules take advantage of chance, which has been working in their favor. Perhaps the most famous is the World Series forecast, which says, “If the American League wins the World Series, then the Republican presidential candidate will win.” This technique was accurate from 1952 to 1976, missed in 1980, but worked again in 1984 with the victory of the Detroit Tigers. A lesser known rule of this type, which is my personal favorite, is based on the Beaujolais wine harvest. Accordingly, “If the Beaujolais vintage looks bad, then the Republican will take the presidency.” This has held post-1960, and continues to do so with the poor 1984 crop (yielding a wine too light, with little color). There are other such rules that relate more directly to the candidates themselves and, in that sense, have more verisimilitude.
The Prospects for Contemporary Partisan Realignment
Authors: Brady David W. , Hurley Patricia A.
Published: September 2013

With the exception of 1976, all national elections since 1964 have generated commentary among both media analysts and political scientists about the possibility of realignment. Reports have varied from the straightforward—yes or no—to the contrived—realignment has been realized at the presidential but not the congressional level. In this essay, we outline our view of those factors that are necessary for a realignment, and we evaluate the 1984 elections with respect to those factors. Our focus in this analysis is on the tripartite structure of American party systems: party in the electorate, party in government, and party as organization. In addition, we discuss the policy consequences associated with realignments.

Theories of Realignments

Schlesinger (1984: 371) reminds us that “[the parts of parties] are treated as though each leads a life of its own with little attention to what if anything holds them together.” This admonition also holds for students of realignments. One school of thought, centering around the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center, focuses attention on party in the electorate. In this view, a realigning election is one in which the normal party vote shifts from one party to another, and because of the influence of individual partisan identification on electoral outcome, this new majority party dominates elections for a generation or more. This emphasis on the distribution of party identification in the electorate is beneficial in that it gives us an operational definition of realignment and allows us to assess both critical and secular (gradual) realignments.
Political Science and the Corporation
Authors: Menninger David
Published: September 2013

In 1977, Charles Lindblom concluded his study ofPolitics and Marketswith the assertion that “the large private corporation fits oddly into democratic theory and vision. Indeed, it does not fit.” In 1983, Robert Reich envisionedThe Next American Frontieras the eradication of the distinction between business culture and civic culture in the United States and the full integration of the corporation into the country's key political and social processes. Failure to achieve such a new political-economic compact could mean, Reich asserted, the end of democracy's progress in America. Between Lindblom and Reich lie six short years in time and one vast gulf in political theory and policy perspective. Their positions set the framework for a whole series of political choices confronting American politics today. They also set an agenda for political science as a discipline that studies power, authority, and social change—an agenda calling for an expansion of both intellectual focus and analytical paradigms.

Differences between the purposes and contents of Lindblom's and Reich's studies can be cited, of course.Politics and Marketspresents itself as a scholarly work in the theory of political economy, whereasThe Next American Frontierhas a definite prescriptive flavor designed to influence current political debate. But such differences do not obscure the important element shared by the two books: recognition of the power and position of large corporations as the determining factor in the political-economic future of liberal democracy. Generated from this are several critical questions both authors confront: What is the purpose of public power and that of private economic power in advanced industrial societies today? What should be the relationship between the two as regards the preservation of liberal democracy? Whatisthat relationship when the large corporation is taken into account? What redirection of corporate power is necessary or possible? What blending of corporate institutions and political institutions does liberal democracy allow—or demand?
Excerpts from First Declaration of Bernard Grofman in Badham v. Eu
Authors: Grofman Bernard
Published: September 2013

1. I am a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine.

… I am thoroughly familiar with the congressional districts delineated in Assembly Bill 2X as implemented with the so-called March 17, Technical Changes. The congressional districts of A.B. 2X (Plan II, passed in 1983) as implemented constitute an egregious form of partisan gerrymandering.

Methods of Gerrymandering

Gerrymandering is a technique which operates to minimize or cancel out the voting strength of racial or political elements of the voting population by one or more of the following twelve methods:

(1) Packing the voting strength of a group to insure that much of its voting strength is wasted in districts which are won by lop-sided margins—in particular, packing its strength to a greater extent than is true for the voting strength of the group controlling the district.

(2) Fragmenting or submerging the voting strength of a group to create districts in which that group will constitute a permanent (or near certain) minority.

(3) Reducing the re-election likelihood of some of a group's representatives by altering district boundaries to put two or more representatives from the group into the same district.

(4) Reducing the re-election likelihood of some of a group's representatives by altering district boundaries to cut-up old districts so as to make it impossible for these representatives to continue to represent the bulk of their former constituents.
Excerpts from Declaration of Gordon E. Baker in Badham v. Eu
Authors: Baker Gordon E.
Published: September 2013

Gerrymandering—the intentional manipulation of legislative boundaries for political advantage—is a venerable practice. Why, then, some might wonder, should we pay greater attention to it at this time? In particular, should judicial inquiry into constitutional issues of fair representation, intense for some two decades, now turn to what may well seem to comprise the heart of the “political thicket”? Throughout this period of reapportionment litigation, federal courts have alluded to the problem, with increasing concern shown by members of the Supreme Court of the United States, about its importance (e.g.,Karcher v. Daggett, 103 S. Ct. 2653: 1983). Is the time ripe for a direct judicial examination of the gerrymander on constitutional grounds? And, if so, does California comprise an appropriate test case?

Prerequisite to answering such questions are: (1) an understanding of how and why gerrymandering, in magnitude, extent, and impact, has become an essentially new kind of issue rather than a mere extension of a traditional practice; and (2) a need to develop judicially manageable standards of identifying gerrymanders.

Prior to the reapportionment revolution of the 1960s, there existed a variety of constraints that conditioned boundary manipulation. For one thing, a large number of states simply failed to redistrict for several decades, the situation that triggeredBaker v. Can(369 U.S. 186: 1962),Wesberry v. Sanders(376 U.S. 1: 1964),et al.This resulted in great disparities in population among districts, a form of “silent” or “status quo” gerrymander that in practice minimized periodic boundary manipulation. For example, district lines for Congress were typically redrawn only in states—usually a minority—that lost or gained seats.
Excerpts from Declaration of Bruce Cain in Badham v. Eu
Authors: Cain Bruce
Published: September 2013

1. Bruce Cain, declare as follows: …

2. Based on my study of redistricting, I believe that the attempt to define unbiased and objective standards of political fairness is futile. The reasons for this are several. First, there are many possible standards of political fairness, and political scientists do not agree as to which is best, as is demonstrated by the contradictory arguments in the declarations of Professors Grofman and Baker. Professor Baker argues for a compactness criterion while Professor Grofman disparages the use of what he terms “formal criteria” such as the shape of district lines and proposes instead a seats-votes measure. Secondly, the two standards of political fairness proposed by Grofman and Baker will prove contradictory in many circumstances, and this will force the courts to choose between them. Thirdly, the proposed standards are inconsistent with other redistricting criteria—particularly, with the court's efforts in the last decade to protect racial and ethnic minority voting strength. Finally, attempts to use fairness formulae are fundamentally flawed and impractical: they underestimate the many complex factors that determine the outcome of an election and overestimate the capacity of social scientists to predict future electoral outcomes.
Declaration of Nelson W. Polsby in Badham v. Eu
Authors: Polsby Nelson W.
Published: September 2013

1. I offer the Court this declaration because I believe that it is helpful for the Court to consider the extent to which the reapportionment process is inescapably political and value-laden. The drawing of district boundaries requires the weighing of many different and often conflicting interests. Any result will be a political result pleasing to some and not to others. Tests that could be used by the courts to manage cases, like this one, in which a partisan group petitions the courts to impose a judicial result in a state in which one political party claims to be disadvantaged by the outcome of the political process, are not neutral but political in their outcomes, and trade-offs between and among the various tests that might be used require the exercise of political judgment.

2. In the early 1960s, the United States Supreme Court affirmed the principle that members of Congress must represent districts containing equal numbers ofindividuals(regardless of whether they vote or are even eligible to vote) as measured by the United States census. The application of this standard required only that the courts determine the respective populations of districts, a readily manageable task. The plaintiffs in this case, however, are asking the Court to do something much more difficult, namely protect the interests of one of many political or socialgroups, and have suggested that there may be an ideal degree of collective “effectiveness” of votes cast by a particular group. This is an entirely different matter.
The Dual Problems of Peace and National Security
Authors: Gilpin Robert G.
Published: September 2013

The strategic consensus that has characterized American official and popular thinking about nuclear weapons since World War II has greatly eroded in recent years. That consensus consisted not only of an American determination to use nuclear weapons to deter a direct Soviet attack on the United States but also of a commitment to extend the American deterrent to cover a Soviet nuclear or large-scale conventional attack on America's principal allies. In the face of the recent massive and continuing growth of Soviet nuclear and conventional capabilities this consensus has come under growing challenge.

This challenge to the consensus on the policy of nuclear deterrence has come from both ends of the political spectrum. On the political “right,” the Reagan administration has argued that deterrence alone is too weak a reed to forestall a Soviet attack on the United States or one of its allies; the prevention of a Soviet attack requires the development of a nuclear war-fighting strategy similar to that which the Soviets themselves are presumed to possess. On the political “left,” a large and highly vocal antinuclear movement largely under the banner of the “freeze,” challenges one aspect or another of the deterrence strategy and demands a deemphasis on, if not the complete elimination of, nuclear weapons. Both of these positions, I believe, are flawed and fail to provide a satisfactory solution to the difficult situation in which the United States finds itself in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
On Political Edification, Eloquence and Memory
Authors: McWilliams Wilson Carey , Landy Marc K.
Published: September 2013

Citizenship is notterra incognitafor political science, but it is not home ground either. Citizenship is more art than science, more practice than theory, and in the education of citizens, political science is subject to two obvious limitations.

In the first place, the basic character of citizens is formed before they become students of political science and even before they are taught civics by the schools. The first principles by which they perceive the world and relate to others already have been shaped by the family, by the laws and by early education generally. In that sense, political science influences citizens most profoundly when it teaches their teachers, although in a more superficial way political science can and does instruct citizens themselves.

Second, as Aristotle taught us, civic virtue is not identical with human goodness, and citizenship is a questionable excellence. The art of citizenship is specific to and limited by the regime in which the citizen is to practice it. In the ordinary sense of the term, a good citizen accepts the laws and “works within the system,” and even if we argue that citizens should pursue ends which are universal and by nature, citizenship requires them to do so inwayswhich are adapted to a particular people, place and time.
Teaching About and Educating for Citizenship
Authors: Porter Mary Cornelia , Vanning Corey
Published: September 2013

The objective of liberal education is, surely, to help students develop the skills, capacities, perceptions, and imagination to enable them to enrich and enhance not only their own lives, but the life of the community as well. Educating for citizenship, thus broadly defined, is an endeavor shared by political scientists with colleagues in related fields, in the arts, the sciences, and the humanities. Citizenship assubject matter, however, has fallen within our purview. Put differently, as educators all of us consider, in a diffuse sort of way, the relationship between our teaching on the one hand and the polity on the other. Those of us who are political scientists must consciously concern ourselves with matters that fall under the rubric of citizenship. Notwithstanding the high purposes of the Academy as a whole, citizenship has for all practical purposes been defined in terms of the political, and political science has been charged with providing an academic experience that should inform and inspire the citizen experience. A tension, therefore, may be said to exist between political science's competency to teachaboutand its more general responsibility to educateforcitizenship. The writers here address the question of how we can best teach about citizenship, ply our trade as it were, in ways that educate for citizenship.

First, it would be useful to remind ourselves how we typically teach about citizenship. That some subfields of the discipline lend themselves more readily than others to the enterprise is not at issue. Whatever the emphasis in a wide variety of courses, our students should leave our tutelages with an understanding of citizenship as a status, a cluster of activities, a concept, and a value. More tellingly, most of us would like to think that we expose our students to frames of reference and modes of analysis that encourage them to make and act upon informed, critical, and sophisticated judgments about political phenomena and public affairs.
Politics: American and Non-American
Authors: Berger Suzanne
Published: September 2013

Tocqueville, considering how Americans compare their nation with others, observed that general ideas about politics testify to the weakness of human intelligence. “The Deity does not regard the human race collectively.… Such is, however, not the case with man. … Having superficially considered a certain number of objects, and remarked their resemblance, he assigns to them a common name, sets them apart, and proceeds onwards.”

As it is for human beings, so, too, for political scientists. And of the generalizations which have helped Americans and American political scientists organize the confusing mass of differences and similarities between this country and others, none has been more important and enduring than the notion of the uniqueness of the American political community. This conception is reflected in the split within the discipline between those who study the U.S. political system and those who study comparative politics, a field understood to encompass various foreign countries. The rubric that in theAmerican Political Science Reviewuntil the 1950s used to read “Foreign Governments and Politics” has been replaced by a subsection of the book reviews that is entitled “Comparative Politics.” But today as in the past, it is rare to find teaching or research in political science that truly integrates the analysis of American politics within a comparative framework.

Why this should remain the case is difficult to understand, for over the past half-century there have been many shifts in the discipline and in the world that challenged the premises of research based on American exceptionalism. Already in the interwar period, significant work in political science was moving beyond configurative case studies of individual countries. C. J. Friedrich's importantConstitutional Government and Democracy(1937), indeed, included the United States in its examination of how well certain general political theories explained the experiences of major political systems. Whatever reservations one might have had about the methodologies of comparative research on which Friedrich relied, the broad influence of his work promised a new integration of American politics into an expanded field of comparative politics.
Explaining the Burger Court's Support for Civil Liberties
Authors: Baum Lawrence
Published: September 2013

For eighteen years, Supreme Court watchers have been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the 1960s, the Court expanded legal protections for civil liberties far more than it had in any previous period. After Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968, many observers expected that his appointments would move the Court away from its commitment to civil liberties. When Nixon was able to appoint four new justices in his first three years in office, that expectation was strengthened. Since that time, each presidential election victory and each Supreme Court appointment by a conservative Republican has led to new hopes and fears that the Cout would abandon its strong support for civil liberties.

To a degree, these expectations already have been realized. Without doubt, the Supreme Court under Warren Burger was less supportive of civil liberties than it had been under Earl Warren. But it did not take the clear conservative position that many Court watchers had anticipated. Reflecting their surprise, a 1983 book about the Burger Court was subtitled, “The Counter-Revolution That Wasn't” (Blasi, 1983).
Reforming the “President”: The Individual as Leader
Authors: Edwards George C.
Published: September 2013

Proposals to reform the presidency fall into three increasingly exclusive categories. The most inclusive are those that focus on reforming the American political system and by doing so altering the balance of power within the government, usually in favor of the chief executive. The effort to strengthen the party system is probably the most prominent representative of this orientation. Other proposals, such as a presidential item veto, would increase the president's power on a more modest scale but still require change in the fundamental rules of the game.

A second class of proposals has the narrower aim of reforming the presidency as an institution. Rather than emphasizing increased power for the president, these recommendations attempt to aid the chief executive in carrying out his responsibilities more judiciously. They often focus on providing the president more or better decision-making resources. Plans for reorganizing or otherwise improving the White House staff system or the Executive Office of the President or for insulating the president from parochial demands through a single six-year term are notable examples of suggestions for institutional reform.

The variety of reformist proposals that is most common and most restricted in scope concentrates on improving the presidency by changing the characteristics of the individuals who occupy the Oval Office. Some would have us pay more attention to the character or personality of candidates for the office, while others stress the importance of choosing presidents who possess the proper skills for governing. To achieve these goals, proponents of change advocate reforms ranging from alterations in the processes by which we select presidents to candidate psychoanalysis.