bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The United States Supreme Court and the Enforcement of African-American Rights: Myth and Reality
Authors: Agyeman Opoku
Published: May 2006

Judicial review has run the gauntlet of criticism ever since John Marshall declared in Marbury v. Madison that “It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is….”

The critics have emphasized the incompatibility of judicial review with democratic values. In doing this, they have sometimes drawn, for effect, on the contrasting evolution of England and the U.S. on the issue. It is noted that the doctrine and practice of judicial review as they obtain in the contemporary U.S. were known “only in very attenuated form” in late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century England (Huntington 1968, 112), and were based on the need to guarantee that the King would no longer influence English judges “to support royal claims to the detriment of the liberties of the people” (Melone and Mace 1988, 207–08). Furthermore, by the eighteenth century the doctrine and the practice were extinct to the point where Blackstone

could flatly state that no court could declare invalid an act of Parliament however unreasonable it might be. To admit such a power, he said, “were to set the judicial power above that of the legislature, which would be subversive of all government.” (Huntington 1968, 112)

Since at the time of the Philadelphia Convention there was no hereditary monarch in America “with a vested interest in maintaining power at the expense of liberty,” and since government officials were elected by the people and were “consequently controlled by them,” it was argued, to no avail, by the likes of Robert Yates, that there was no need to repose virtually uncontrolled power in the judiciary “unless the goal is autonomy, not from a despotic King, but from the democratic tendencies of a free people” (Melone and Mace 1988, 207–08).
R. R. Wright, Congress, President Truman and the First National Public African-American Holiday: National Freedom Day
Authors: Walton Hanes , Green Roosevelt , Johnson Willie E. , Jordan Kenneth A. , McLemore Leslie Burl , Gray C. Vernon , Orr Marion
Published: May 2006

In the first year of the 80th Congress, 1947, sundry pieces of legislation were introduced regarding the commemoration of a variety of cultural, social, and political events, groups, or individuals. The House of Representatives saw bills to recognize Grandmother's day (H.J. Res. 35) (Elliot and Ali 1984), Patriot's Day (H.J. Res. 46), Thomas Alva Edison Day (H.J. Res. 64), National Loyalty Day (H.J. Res. 174), National Purple Heart Day (H.J. Res. 189), American Heroes' Day (H.J. Res. 212), Nation-Wide Bible Reading Month (H.J. Res. 20, 169), General Pulaski Memorial Day (H.J. Res. 204), and National Freedom Day (S.J. Res. 37). The bills for National Freedom Day sought to establish a national public holiday to commemorate the moment that African-Americans received their freedom in America. Unlike most of these other bills, S.J. Res. 37 would become law (Public Law 842), and the first National African-American public holiday was established—predating the King Holiday by more than three decades. The passage of this early African-American public holiday bill would in many ways parallel its better-known successor, the King Holiday bill.
Public Opinion and the Thomas Nomination
Authors: Frankovic Kathleen , Gelb Joyce
Published: May 2006

Until recently, the nomination of a justice to the U.S. Supreme Court had little public opinion relevance. Questions might be raised about the nominee's qualifications, perhaps including his or her liberalism or conservatism, but the American people tended to acquiesce in Court appointments. That changed during the Reagan administration, when opponents of the president's choice of Robert Bork decided that public opinion did matter and effectively campaigned to turn the public against Bork.

The Thomas nomination, however, raised even more questions about public opinion. Race and the role it should play in Court nominations was as important as Clarence Thomas's legal opinions. And, as soon as Anita Hill's charges of sexual harassment became public, other aspects of public opinion came into prominence.
Divisions in the Civil Rights Community
Authors: Pinderhughes Dianne M.
Published: May 2006

Associate Justice Thurgood Marshall was the first African American to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. He helped produce and was also a product of the 20th-century civil rights movement. President George Bush nominated Clarence Thomas to succeed him, a man who had made his professional career in a rapid succession of civil rights appointments in the same Republican administrations that were attempting to reconstruct the policies that Marshall and his successors in national civil rights organizations had created and interpreted.

That Bush nominated Thomas, whose policy positions were so opposed to civil rights law as it had been legislated and implemented, did not prevent these organizations from being riven by disagreement over Thomas's fitness. When Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment became public, these organizations' opinions of the Thomas nomination became even more problematic.

The nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court offers an opportunity to observe the influence and effectiveness of the civil rights lobby on an important policy question.
Conditional Surrender: Charles de Gaulle and American Opinion
Authors: Lowi Theodore J. , Schain Martin A.
Published: May 2006

It is an enduring myth that heads of state and other international leaders are often more admired abroad than at home. The prophet is not without honor, save in his own country. It has been argued, for example, that Richard Nixon's popularity in other countries continued to grow during the Watergate crisis almost in inverse proportion to its decline in the United States. In fact, there has been no systematic study of the popularity of political leaders outside of their own countries. The little evidence that exists suggests that, although important leaders are often admired by foreign political elites when they are unpopular at home, the reaction of mass publics is less clear. Thus, European political leaders were often sympathetic to the plight of Richard Nixon as the Watergate affair evolved between 1973 and 1975, but mass public opinion was far more negative.

Charles de Gaulle did not fit the pattern, at least not in the United States. His 30 years of world prominence, 1940-70, may have produced a roller-coaster pattern of popularity in France, but the limited data we have indicate that in the United States, he became increasingly unpopular as he consolidated his power during the Fifth Republic, and, in the process, challenged the “hegemony” of the United States. Among American political elites, he seems to have been consistently unpopular, and revisions in that assessment were not to come before his second retreat to Colombey in 1969.

On the centenary of de Gaulle's birth (and the 20th anniversary of his death), we undertook a reevaluation of the current public status of de Gaulle in America through a survey of a select group of opinion leaders whose preoccupations would enable them to form considered judgments about him as a political leader, and whose judgments would be transmitted to succeeding generations of university students.
Reflections on Democratization
Authors: Boyer William W.
Published: May 2006

Humankind is in the midst of largescale transition marked by telling differences but profound similarities. Throughout this world, political systems are becoming more participatory and less authoritarian. For want of better or more accurate terminology, this worldwide phenomenon generally is termed the process of “democratization,” which may be defined as the process of moving from an authoritarian to a democratic political system.

We political scientists in the United States have taken U.S. democracy for granted. We have also observed the difficulties and many failed attempts over time in achieving democracy in other parts of the world. Now, given the worldwide democratization movement, we are increasingly being asked—rightly or wrongly—for our advice. And so we are called upon to be reflective, analytical, and introspective about democracy.
Socialism and Militarism
Authors: Dye Thomas R. , Zeigler Harmon
Published: May 2006

“National wars against the imperial powers are not only possible and probable; they are inevitable, progressive, and revolutionary”

V. I. Lenin.

“It is obvious that the use or threat of force no longer can or must be an instrument of foreign policy”

M. S. Gorbachev.

The rhetoric of the leadership of the world's most powerful Marxist state has changed over the last seventy years. The more recent oratory is warmly welcomed in Western circles, especially when accompanied by specific pledges of unilateral military force reductions. But what if Marxist nations, irrespective of particular leaders or styles of leadership, possess a political culture and bureaucratic organization which mandates a persistent militarism? Perhaps there are limits to the demilitarization of socialist nations—limits which are not reciprocal to any behavior of Western capitalist nations, but which arise from the structure of socialist institutions. Put more broadly, do political, economic, and social systems change because leaders want them to?

Marxists typically argue exactly this point, using capitalism as their example. The maintenance of a large military establishment undergirds the modern capitalist economy. According to this argument, if it were not for the prop provided by military spending, advanced capitalism would fall victim to its most pervasive internal “contradiction”—underconsumption. In order to absorb “surplus capital” capitalist governments must increase spending; they cannot spend on welfare functions without undermining work incentive, so they spend on the military instead (Baran and Sweezy, 1968;Melman, 1972). This spending not only uses up surplus capital, but also provides capitalist states with the wherewithal to support imperialism.
Student Statistical Packages
Authors: Permaloff Anne , Grafton Carl
Published: May 2006

University courses that include statistics and computers intimidate many students. Fear diminished somewhat with the advent of the microcomputer, a physically unimposing box over which users feel they have a fighting chance compared to large and distant mainframes. Now that increasing numbers of students own microcomputers, their sense of control and familiarity is even greater.

The proliferation of computers has been accompanied by the development of low cost student oriented versions of word processing packages, spreadsheets, data base management programs, and statistics packages. There are probably a greater number of student statistics packages than any other category of software. For approximately the cost of a text book (or less) students can purchase functional tools complete with manuals. The sense of student mastery of computing encouraged by the micro is further enhanced by student ownership of the software being used.

Often student computer programs are partially disabled versions of commercially available software. In the case of statistics packages this may mean that the numbers of variables and/or observations that can be handled have been lessened, the variety of statistical techniques reduced, or the manual made less complete. For many uses, especially education, such restrictions are not severe. Some of the packages discussed below would have been considered powerful and full featured programs only a few years ago, and several are better than packages currently sold as full featured software for $200. Nearly all offer standard descriptive statistics, ANOVA, correlation and multiple regression, scatter plots, crosstabs, and rich varieties of transform tools.
Forewarned Before Forecast: Presidential Election Forecasting Models and the 1992 Election
Authors: Greene Jay P.
Published: May 2006

Forecasting presidential elections has become a growth industry in political science. Econometric models used to predict the presidential election that were once viewed as part of “recreational political science” are now being taken seriously. The widespread belief that these models have been highly successful at predicting election outcomes has enticed a score of political scientists to propose new models hoping to share in the triumph of political science over the pundits and polls. Unfortunately, there has been very little critical examination of the models used to forecast presidential elections. A close review reveals that existing quantitative models are not useful predictors of presidential races. In addition, most of the new proposed models have adopted an approach that is unlikely to lead to better forecasts.
Feminism vs. Family Values: Women at the 1992 Democratic and Republican Conventions
Authors: Freeman Jo
Published: May 2006

The 1992 conventions of the Democratic and Republican Parties saw the culmination of trends that have been developing for 20 years. The two major political parties have now completely polarized around feminism and the reaction to it. Each party's position has become institutionalized to the point where it is not seriously questioned within the national party and where the differences are clearly evident to the voting public. On feminist issues and concerns the parties are not following the traditional pattern of presenting different versions of the same thing, or following each other's lead into new territory. They are presenting two different and conflicting visions of how Americans should engage in everyday life.

Although the party platforms and the speeches at the conventions devoted many words to many issues, each party's vision can be summed up in a slogan. The Republicans articulated theirs clearly in the phrase “family values.” While their platform does not define this slogan, both the document and the speeches indicate that it stands for programs and policies that strengthen the traditional two-parent, patriarchal family in which the husband is the bread-winner, the wife is the caretaker, and children are completely subject to parental authority. The Democrats attempted their usual strategy of pre-emption and co-optation by borrowing the Republican's phrase to use in a different context, but their very use of it belied its content. In reality the Democrats have incorporated the feminist demand that “the personal is political” and have put on the public agenda issues that were once deemed to be purely personal.
The Quebec Challenge to Canadian Unity
Authors: Dion Stéphane
Published: May 2006

The current Canadian constitutional crisis has many roots: the alienation of the western provinces, the increasing difficulties of the federal government in funding poorer provinces, aboriginal renewal, the intrusion of a Charter of Rights and of a powerful Supreme Court into a parliamentary Westminster system. But only one factor challenges the unity of the country: Quebec secessionism.

Quebecers have freely elected pro-Canada politicians since the beginning of the federation in 1867. Their situation cannot be compared with new democracies issued from decaying totalitarian regimes, like the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, or Czechoslovakia. The Quebec question bears more similarity with the re-emergence of pro-autonomy movements in some West-European countries. But neither Scotland, Catalonia, nor any other region in Western Europe is as likely as Quebec to become an independent country in the near future. Quebec is a striking case that may have important leading effects on what will happen in Europe.

Why in this era are many Quebecers so nationalistic that they wish to exit from a country that is envied around the world? Secessionist movements are rooted in two antithetical feelings or incentives shared by any linguistic, religious, or ethnic group looking to leave a union. First, is a fear of being weakened or even of disappearing as a distinct people if the group stays in the union. Second, is a confidence among the group that it can perform as well, or even better, on its own and that the secession is not too risky. A third feeling of rejection, the sensation of no longer being welcomed in the union, may also occur. Secession is most likely to take place when these feelings are all at high levels.
The State of American Political Science: Professor Lowi's View of Our Discipline
Authors: Simon Herbert A.
Published: May 2006

This note questions both some of the premises and some of the conclusions of Theodore J. Lowi's diagnosis, in the March 1992 American Political Science Review, of the state of the political science discipline. Since I am given a prominent, if undeserved role, in his analysis of historical trends, perhaps I may be pardoned if it begins by refuting that part of his argument.

Surely one should feel great (and devilish) delight at learning that one has exercised diabolical influence over the shaping of political science. Alas, I am wholly lacking in the power that Professor Lowi attributes to me in his paper. Alas also, if I were armed, my gun was not aimed in the direction he supposes it was. I am not at all in sympathy with the Third American Government whose (confused) economics-based ideology he presumes I created, as anyone will recognize who has read the foreword to the recent re-issue of the Simon-Smithburg-Thompson textbook, Public Administration, or the earlier work, Administrative Behavior (AB), or the more recent Reason in Human Affairs. Are these books written so obscurely that Professor Lowi could not see that the rationality celebrated in them (if any rationality is celebrated at all) is a weak, muddled, bounded rationality that is rejected out of hand by the economists who espouse public choice and neoclassical laissez-faire theory?
The Friends of Bill and Hillary
Authors: Dye Thomas R.
Published: May 2006

If the Clinton administration “looks like America,” then we have become a nation of lawyers and lobbyists.

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that almost all of the top jobs in the Clinton administration are filled by lawyers, lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats. Unlike his predecessors in the White House, Bill Clinton never had any experience outside of politics and government. Among Clinton's top advisors only his Chief of Staff, home-town friend Thomas McLarty, was recruited from the business world. (Secretary of Energy, Hazel O'Leary, was a power company executive at the time of her appointment but most of her career was spent as a Washington-based lobbyist for the power industry.) Nor is there any significant military experience represented on Clinton's top team, although several members are veterans.

Clinton's pledge to bring to Washington an administration that “looks like America” presumably meant more minorities and women appointed to cabinet-level positions. Clinton's initial cabinet team includes three women—Attorney General Janet Reno, HHS Secretary Donna Shalala, and Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary. Three African Americans serve in the Clinton cabinet—Commerce Secretary Ron Brown, Agricultural Secretary Mike Espy, and Veterans Affairs Secretary Jesse Brown; and two Hispanics head departments—HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros and Transportation Secretary Frederico Pena. Comparisons across administrations depend in part on the definition given to “cabinet-level” post in each administration. It appears that the Clinton administration is slightly more “diverse” than that of his immediate predecessor.
A New Defense of State-Imposed Congressional Term Limits
Authors: Petracca Mark P.
Published: May 2006

Do states have the authority to limit the legislative terms of their members of Congress? Up until very recently this question was merely hypothetical, pondered by those with the luxury to ask and develop answers to an assortment of constitutional “what if's.” However, the success of the term limitation movement across the nation has moved this hypothetical question to the center stage of relevant constitutional debate.

Voters in fifteen states, including California, Florida, Michigan, Oregon, and Washington, have now approved initiatives to limit the number of terms served by their members of Congress. In nine other states term limit advocates are actively gathering signatures to place similar initiatives on the ballot in 1994, some for the second time. By 1995, as many as 24 states could have adopted initiatives to limit congressional terms. In the remaining states activists continue to lobby for legislation to limit the terms of state and federal legislators.

Since a state's authority to impose term limits on members of Congress is of questionable constitutionality, it is likely many of these initiatives will end up in litigation (see Barnicle 1992; Corwin 1991; Greenberger 1991; and Kovacevich 1992). Lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of state-imposed term limits on members of Congress have already been filed and dismissed in Missouri and Florida. Legal action is pending in Nebraska and in the state of Washington where House Speaker Tom Foley has teamed up with the League of Women Voters to challenge the constitutionality of that state's term limitation initiative. The legal strategy against term limits has succeeded in overturning one initiative.
A Community's Public Talk
Authors: Jack Elkin Terry
Published: May 2006

One of the most important responsibilities that I have as an American National Government teacher is convincing my students that the rudimentary characteristics of civitates (the art of government) may be found in virtually all levels of community life, and that the health of our democracy depends on an educated public which can be depended upon to act with civic responsibility. But it is obvious to me that my students are torn between the appreciation and pursuit of democratic ideals—individual rights, liberty, justice, equality—and a burning conviction that politics has about as much to offer as the plague.

Substantively, the American Government course begins with a suggestion on my part that as we approach the 21st century many Americans find contemporary life to be complex and hostile. It does not take much effort to convince a class that we face many serious problems: economic uncertainties; never-ending international crises; social divisiveness that splits us into different factions hostile to one another; and, perhaps most disturbing, the distinct possibility that as our leaders, our political parties, and even our constitutional system fail to cope with these problems, the United States is becoming ungovernable.
The Early Years of the Freedom of Information Act—1955 to 1974
Authors: Archibald Sam
Published: May 2006

The Freedom of Information Act was conceived in partisan planning, went through its gestation period immersed in public relations and saw the light of day in 1966 because of a political deal. But that's all right. The same process 200 years ago developed the Bill of Rights with its First Amendment guarantee of freedom of expression—a freedom which becomes an effective tool of democracy when citizens, using the Freedom of Information Act, can find out what their government is doing.

A bill of rights to protect citizens against government excesses was proposed in the closing days of the Constitutional Convention but was voted down by those delegates, including James Madison, who saw the move as a political ploy to block the plan for a strong federal government (Madison 1987, 630).

Madison almost lost his race for a House of Representatives seat in the 1st Congress because his opponent, James Monroe, raised the issue of Madison's vote against a bill of rights in the Constitutional Convention (Rutland 1987, 308). Madison promised to work for a bill of rights if he was elected; he kept his promise, demanding that the 1st Congress give as much attention to protecting citizens' rights as to creating the agencies of the new government and solving its monetary problems.
Bureaucracy in Japan
Authors: Pempel T. J.
Published: May 2006

Japan, the first Asian country to enter the ranks of the industrialized democracies, provides an excellent case study of a non-Western, but highly modern, national bureaucracy. As such, it provides a useful, informative, but culturally different, country for comparative purposes, whether with the United States specifically or with other industrialized democracies more generally.

—Because of the central role that the Japanese bureaucracy has played in planning and implementing so many of the major changes in Japan, it is a good example of bureaucracy as planner and agent of change.

—Because the Japanese bureaucracy has been so closely linked to political leadership, it provides an important contrast to countries where bureaucrats and politicians are presumed to have rather separate and antagonistic roles.

—Because Japan has selfconsciously limited the size of its governmental bureaucracy, the Japanese case provides an excellent counter-case to presumptions that bureaucratic expansion is inevitable. Japan instead offers a most important case of systematic downscaling of bureaucracy.

—Because the Japanese bureaucracy has gone through several conscious historical reformulations, including explicit imitation of the Prussian model, and systematic reformulation by American bureaucrats, it is an excellent case for examining the interaction of competing bureaucratic traditions.
Japan's Foreign Policy
Authors: Bowen Roger
Published: May 2006

Japan serves as an excellent case of the anomaly of the economic giant-political pygmy whose ability to influence international events is severely limited despite a manifest desire to play a larger role. Japan's attempts to achieve political standing commensurate with its economic clout internationally have enjoyed only minimal success.

Historical factors, especially its defeat in World War II and the Occupation of Japan by the United States, continue to influence Japan's postwar foreign policy. So too does the so-called “peace clause” of the U.S.-imposed Constitution and the pacifist public consensus that has grown around it.

Since the war Japan's defense alliance with the United States has had an enormous impact on foreign policy, both inhibiting and aiding Japan's relations with other states. Japanese dependence on American defense guarantees sometimes conflicts with Japan's attempts to strike a more independent foreign policy.
Mobilization and Reform: Political Communication Policy Under Gorbachev
Authors: Mickiewicz Ellen
Published: May 2006

Mikhail Gorbachev's program for the renovation of the Soviet political system is a reform of considerable magnitude. The sequencing of policies provides important information about the nature of the Soviet system and the dynamics of change, and in that sequence, communications policies shifted earliest and most radically. Virtually from the beginning of Gorbachev's tenure in power, an observer of Soviet politics could detect in the use of the media the operation of a key mechanism in effecting major change. Glasnost, the new openness and public discussion, is a media phenomenon. The new role accorded the media is in many ways a revolutionary one. The expanded functions of the media in the Gorbachev administration require them to precipitate institutional change in the Soviet political system. Mobilization will be temporary if there is insufficient structural change to support it, and the media system itself has become a principal factor in breaking down dysfunctional institutions inherited from previous regimes, strengthening weak institutions (such as the Soviets) and developing new types of institutions. As a consequence of this dynamic, systemic change in the media system precedes other large-scale change, and, in fact, before any major economic and political reforms of the Gorbachev administration were launched, extensive changes in the system of political communication had been made.
Eastern Europe: Is the Party Over?
Authors: Bunce Valerie
Published: May 2006

Absolute systems are strong as long as they are absolute. When they begin to reform, they are lost. Yet they cannot avoid reform, or they will explode.

Milovan Djilas

It is easy to make a strong case for economic and political reforms in Eastern Europe. First, this is what Mikhail Gorbachev wants, and what a Soviet leader wants carries special weight in the bloc. Second, it is clear that socialist economics does not work, especially in Eastern Europe. It is not just that four of these states—Romania, Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia—have suffered an actual decline in their standard of living since 1980; it is also that there has been a longterm decline throughout the region in capital and labor productivity. Finally, the political future of the region is mortgaged as well. Many of these parties, most notably in Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia, can be termed mere shadows of their former Leninist selves. What is a communist party, after all, if it cannot manage the economy, agree on policies or control the public?

If the pressures for reform are great, however, so are the pressures against reform, and for many of the same reasons. Faltering economies, divided parties, nervous privileged interests and angry, impatient publics are hardly the stuff out of which a reform coalition can be cobbled. This is the lesson of Poland from 1956 to the present (Bunce, 1989b). Second, even if such a coalition could somehow be constructed, there is no guarantee that reforms would solve the problems of socialism. Indeed, they could make matters worse.
Countdown for Pinochet: A Chilean Diary
Authors: Heine Jorge
Published: May 2006

I am the first passenger of LAN flight #145 from Miami to Santiago to go through immigration. My brother Andrés is waiting for me in his car just outside the terminal. Two carabineros berate him for illegal parking. I try to argue with them, but Andrés quietly tells me to shut up. “It will be all over by Wednesday,” he tells me, as he hands over his driver's license to the stern officers in green uniforms. They let him go with a warning, and we're off to the new highway that links the airport with Santiago's Barrio Alto. It is one of a number of public works inaugurated in the past few months in a frantic effort to bolster support for the government in the upcoming October 5 plebiscite.

At my brother's home I unpack, and we quickly sit down to look at the tapes of the franja publicitaria, the 15-minute TV programs for the “Yes” and “No” options aired since September 5. They have provided the opposition access to television for the first time in 15 years. Despite the absurd time slot allocated to it (10:45 to 11:15 p.m.), the franja has commanded huge audiences. Between 80 and 90% of all Chileans in urban areas have seen it; about a third watch it every day and another third occasionally. Andres believes the opposition is in good shape for the plebiscite, but he is worried about the negative impact of Volodia Toitelboim's statement.
Government Statistics and Conflicting Explanations of Nonvoting
Authors: Piven Frances Fox , Cloward Richard A.
Published: May 2006

When turnout fell to a near-historic low in 1988, the two sources of government statistics suggested opposite reasons. One is that fewer and fewer people are registered to vote, and the other that registered voters are going to the polls less and less.

According to the figures supplied by state election officials who tally up county registration totals and record election returns, voting by registered voters is down 15 percentage points since 1960: 85.4% voted that year, but only 70.5% in 1988. By contrast, the U.S. Census reported that 86.2% of registered voters cast ballots in 1988, down only 4.8 percentage points since 1968 (when the Census postelection sample surveys of both registration and voting were first undertaken) (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1989). The 1988 result confirmed the earlier Census summary conclusion for the presidential elections between 1968-80 that registered voters “overwhelmingly go to the polls” (U.S. Bureau of Census, 1984a).

The Census surveys show that falling registration is the more important cause of declining turnout: the level slipped from 74.3% in 1968 to 66.6% in 1988, or 7.7 percentage points. Adjusting that result downward by about 10% to correct for the tendency by some respondents to tell the Census interviewers they are registered when they are not, the 1988 level of registration was 59%. State data, by contrast, show a much higher registration level: 70.9% in 1988, off only 4.5 percentage points since 1960.
Sizing Up Candidates
Authors: Buchanan Bruce
Published: May 2006

Europeans, says the New York Times, are “amused” at the “exacting moral yardsticks” applied to Americans seeking high public office (Markham, 1987). The American people, a Times-Mirror poll reports, are not amused but irritated—at what they regard as media overkill on candidate character (Rosenstiel, 1987). Influential Washington Post columnist David Broder deplores the tendency of political reporters to “swoop down” on presidential candidates with embarrassing questions about “the sin of the week,” and calls for guidelines to help reporters stay on course (Broder, 1987). Another Times-Mirror poll finds that only 14 percent of Americans give top priority to candidate character. Instead, a whopping 49 percent felt a candidate's “ability to accomplish things” was most important, while 33 percent gave the highest priority to “stand on issues” (Skelton, 1987).

These reactions, though skewed by media treatment of 1988 presidential candidates like Hart, Biden, and Robertson, nonetheless raise important questions about how Americans take the measure of would-be leaders. How reasonable, for example, are the priorities assigned by the Times-Mirror poll respondents to the various qualifications for office? Which among the evaluated categories (character, competence and issue position) affords the surest forecast of eventual presidential performance? Whatever its evaluative priority, what dimensions of character are relevant to the presidency and measurable in candidates? How can presidential competence be defined, and the extent of its presence in candidates assessed? When is the most appropriate time during the campaign to examine character, competence and issue position? Below are some answers offered as food for thought.
Public Lives and the Limits of Privacy
Authors: Levinson Sanford
Published: May 2006

The general topic of this symposium—the interplay between public careers and private lives in the selection of presidential candidates—is important. Many debates around dinner tables undoubtedly followed the disclosure by the Miami Herald of Gary Hart's time spent with Donna Rice. In the United States especially, as Tocqueville pointed out 150 years ago, we tend to believe that the law speaks with insight, even if not necessarily with finality, on issues of public importance. This explains, I suspect, my presence in this forum. The embarrassing reality, though, is that the law of privacy is at best tangential to the concerns behind the symposium.

I might best fulfill my task—to comment on the legal regulation of disclosures of private facts regarding public figures—in a sentence: The very fact that public figures are by definition “newsworthy” means that in fact they forego any legal protection against the publication of true facts about them, however embarrassing or offensive such publication might be. There is simply no case law supporting the claim of a public figure seeking political office to enjoy a “right of privacy.” The courts rightly have held that the recognition of any such right would disserve the democratic process itself, for it would inevitably deprive the public of truthful information relevant to deciding who should exercise public responsibilities.
Reflections on the New Hampshire Primary
Authors: Rueter Theodore
Published: May 2006

This past January, I conducted a class on “Presidential Elections: The New Hampshire Primary” with 13 students from Middlebury College. We spent one week in Middlebury, primarily watching presidential debates held this summer and fall. On January 11, we headed to New Hampshire. I have ten strong impressions of the New Hampshire presidential primary:

Penetration: The political process in New Hampshire is open and accessible. Each student had at least one “brush with greatness.” A Dole volunteer was the lead driver in Dole's motorcade before and after the January 15 Dartmouth debate, and was in Dole's holding room before and after the debate. A Bush volunteer drove George Bush's truck, went to Bush's estate in Maine, and was within 10 feet of Air Force Two her first night on the job. A Kemp volunteer met Kemp and Hart her first night in New Hampshire.
Does Approval Voting Elect the Lowest Common Denominator?
Authors: Brams Steven J. , Fishburn Peter C.
Published: May 2006

Approval voting (AV) is a voting system in which voters can vote for as many candidates as they wish in a multicandidate election—one with more than two candidates (Brams and Fishburn, 1983). Like plurality voting (PV), in which voters are restricted to casting just one vote, the candidate (or candidates) with the most votes wins, with each candidate approved of receiving one full vote.

The salient difference between AV and PV in multicandidate elections is that voters, by indicating that they approve of more than one candidate under AV, can help more than one to get elected. This feature of AV tends to prevent a relatively extreme candidate, who may be the favorite of a plurality of the electorate but is anathema to the majority, from winning. Whereas under PV an extremist can win if two or more moderate candidates split the centrist vote, under AV centrist voters can prevent the extremist's election by voting for more than one moderate. Insofar as the moderate candidates share the votes of their centrist supporters, then one will be elected—and the proverbial will of the majority will be expressed.
The Gulf War and Political Science
Authors: Maxwell Mary
Published: May 2006

Ronald Moe's lucid article, “Political Science and the Savings and Loan Crisis” (1991), considered what the political scientist's role might have been in regard to that crisis (had not our profession given up its expertise in that area). His comments led me to reflect on the role of the political scientist in relation to another national crisis—the Gulf War of 1991. During the war, and in the months preceding it, it seemed that political science—or at least my specialty, international relations (IR)—had no role to play. This strange fact results from certain paradoxes that actually encourage us to foster a separation between academic expertise in international relations, and public knowledge of how foreign policy decisions are made.

Within hours of the war's beginning, I called several IR colleagues to get their opinions as to why the United States had taken the plunge. I got appropriate, you might say textbook, answers. One colleague went right for the military rationale: “to save us from the Peace Dividend,” “to give us the chance to test new weapons,” and—one that I wouldn't have thought of myself—“to deplete inventory.” Another mentioned the more abstract balance-of-power principle, expressed in this case as “to keep our little brothers (i.e., the Third World) in their place,” while others thought of domestic factors, such as “to divert attention from the S&L crisis,” or economic advantages, such as “Saudi is footing the bill.”
E. E. Schattschneider and the Responsible Party Model
Authors: White John Kenneth
Published: May 2006

Shortly before his death in 1971 E. E. Schattschneider said, “I suppose the most important thing I have done in my field is that I have talked longer and harder and more persistently and enthusiastically about political parties than anyone else alive.” Schattschneider's claim is not boastful, but factual. Exactly fifty years ago he completed Party Government, a book that remains a “must” read for students of the U.S. party system. But Schattschneider did more than write books. As Chairman of the APSA-sanctioned Committee on Political Parties, he presided over a debate that resulted in the seminal report, Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System. Like Party Government, this also is a “must” read. Evron Kirkpatrick proclaimed it “a landmark in the history of political science as policy science” (1971). Clinton Rossiter said he would “recommend it … to all who are interested in moving toward stronger party government” (1960). Theodore J. Lowi ranked the Schattschneider committee report as “second only to the 1937 President's Committee on Administrative Management as a contribution by academics to public discourse on the fundamentals of American democracy” (1985). William Crotty believed it exercised “the most significant influence on the debate over the operation of political parties that occurred between the Progressive period and the party reform movement of the 1970s” (1980).

The responsible party model has had a long life in part because of the passionate arguments Schattschneider made on its behalf.
The Politics of E. E. Schattschneider
Authors: Mileur Jerome M.
Published: May 2006

E. E. Schattschneider was a self-proclaimed “realist.” It seems an honest label for one whose theory of politics begins with a newspaper report of a fist fight that escalated into a riot and whose ultimate criticism of democratic theory is that those who defined the term never saw a modern democracy in operation. Schattschneider made no pretense of being a political philosopher, yet his hard-boiled practicality seems well-informed by classical political thought. Indeed, his idea of politics is Aristotelian to the core, though recast rather like a Shakespearean play updated in the vernacular, setting, and dress of West Side Story. As such, Schattschneider's politics defy easy categorization in the political science of his time. Widely respected and honored within the discipline, he seems nonetheless a kind of anti-hero—a bit out of step with his peers and skeptical about much of the prevailing “wisdom” in the discipline.

Schattschneider was out of step as well with the reformist politics of his time. A child of Progressivism, he was schooled at the University of Wisconsin and shared the general optimism of Progressives—their passion for social and political engineering, their faith in a democratic politics and an informed citizenry. But unlike most Progressives, Schattschneider was concerned more with politics than with democracy. For him, politics was fundamental; it was the foundation upon which democratic government had to be built.
E. E. Schattschneider: A Bibliographic Note
Authors: Murphy Russell D.
Published: May 2006

E. E. Schattschneider spent his professional career at Wesleyan University, an institution that prides itself in being aggressively anti-bureaucratic. Given the age we live in, there is doubtless merit in this stance. But there are costs as well. I say this because when asked to provide a bibliographic listing of Schattschneider's publications, I quickly learned that the written record, so essential to any well functioning bureaucracy, was a sometime thing at the University. There was no official file, I was told, either in the central administration or in the University Archives, that contained information on Schattschneider's career at Wesleyan.

But Wesleyan was also a small place during Schattschneider's years—in 1930, the year Schattschneider joined the faculty, the University graduated 93 seniors. And being a small place, it scrutinized closely the comings and goings of its faculty. It did so, among other ways, in an annual publication with the nondescript title, The Mid-Winter Bulletin. Each bulletin listed, albeit sporadically, faculty activities for the previous year. Here one could read about who attended what professional meeting, who lectured at which university, who spoke to which civic group, and who preached at the then mandatory campus chapel services. One also could read about faculty awards and honors, and about faculty appointments to committees, on and off campus.
Redefining U.S.-West European Relations in the 1990s: West European Public Opinion in the Post-Cold War Era
Authors: Smith Steven K. , Wertman Douglas A.
Published: May 2006

Fundamental U.S.-West European security and economic relations are being subjected to a thorough re-examination—and potential redefinition—on both sides of the Atlantic. This is occurring as the Cold War is now a topic for historians and as the economies of the 12 European Community (EC) members become increasingly integrated as a result of the EC's 1992 initiative and its ambitious plan for the 1990s. The former Warsaw Pact nations are working to develop stronger economic, political and even security ties with both the United States and Western Europe. The dramatically reduced security threat coupled with strong domestic budget pressures in the United States are leading to a substantial reduction in the American military presence in Western Europe. On the economic front, the EC and the European Free Trade Area are forming a gigantic 19-country free trade area, with the potential of future expansion to include some East European nations. Meanwhile, the United States and Western Europe continue their prolonged deadlock in GATT trade negotiations primarily over the EC's large agricultural subsidies.

The attitudes of European publics toward the United States will play a critical role as European and American leaders sort out their new relationship. Therefore, it is of interest to scholars and policymakers alike to examine the trends in West European public opinion as they relate to America, its policies and its perceived role in the post-Cold War future.
Measuring Electoral Change: Look Before You Abandon Swing
Authors: Gibson John G.
Published: May 2006

Political scientists should reject Richard Rose's advice in PS (1991) to abandon the use of swing, in favor of his own alternative measures of electoral change, in three or multiparty electoral contests. Given the ubiquity of such electoral contests, this advice has a great potential influence on future election studies. However, a balanced judgment requires subjecting alternative measures to equal scrutiny. This note will do this by bringing relevant evidence to bear on the actual performance of swing and Rose's alternative, as a measure of variations in electoral movements between different areas. The findings are most revealing and in the final section of this note reasons for them will be put forward.

Rose maintains, in his critique of David Butler and Stephen D. Van Beek (1990), that swing can only be meaningfully used as a measure of electoral change between elections where virtually the entire vote is split between two parties. On this basis he claims that “swing is not applicable in nine-tenths of competitive party systems because two parties do not monopolize the vote.” As Rose shows, reliance on swing can ignore important changes in third party votes, which may often be an important determinant of the swing between the two main parties.