bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Party Systems and Political System Performance: Voting Participation, Government Stability and Mass Violence in Contemporary Democracies
Authors: Powell G. Bingham
Published: May 2006

This article examines alternative visions of “strong” party systems by analyzing relationships between party systems and several dimensions of performance of the political process in 28 democracies of the 1967-1976 decade. Party system theorists agree that voting support for extremist parties manifests a weakness in the party system. They disagree, however, about the virtues or vices of party majorities and close linkages between social groups and parties. The evidence, including multivariate analysis of party system types and characteristics, with controls for environmental conditions, indicates that during this period extremist party support was associated with executive instability and mass rioting. Scholarly concern about other aspects of party system strength or weakness should focus on the desired feature of political performance. The representational, multiparty systems were most successful in limiting rioting.Aggregative majorities,responsible majorities, andrepresentationalparty systems all had good executive stability in the short run, although the first two types seemed somewhat more stable over the decade.Aggregative majorityparty systems were associated with low citizen voting participation.
The Paradoxical Nature of State Making: The Violent Creation of Order
Authors: Cohen Youssef , Brown Brian R. , Organski A. F. K.
Published: May 2006

The central argument of this paper is developed as a criticism of a widely accepted interpretation of collective violence in new states. It is shown that instead of indicating political decay, violence in these states is an integral part of the process of accumulation of power by the national state. To the degree that this power accumulation is necessary for the imposition or maintenance of order, collective violence also indicates movement towards political order on a new scale. Admittedly, our evidence is far from definitive. Nevertheless, it consistently contradicts the interpretation of violence as political decay and supports our interpretation of violence as a usual feature of the process of primitive accumulation of power.
The Decline of Political Partisanship in the United States: Negativity or Neutrality?
Authors: Wattenberg Martin P.
Published: May 2006

This article examines attitudes towards the two major political parties in the United States from 1952 to 1980, using national election study data from open-ended likes/dislikes questions. The major trend which is found is a shift toward neutral evaluations of the parties. A reinterpretation of party decline in the electorate is offered, in which the much-discussed alienation from parties is largely rejected as an explanation. Rather, it is argued that the link between parties and candidates has been substantially weakened over the years and hence that political parties have become increasingly meaningless to the electorate.
Economic Conditions and the Presidential Vote
Authors: Erikson Robert S.
Published: May 2006

This analysis demonstrates that the relative growth of per capita income change is an important determinant of post-World War II presidential election outcomes. Per capita income change is even a better predictor of presidential election outcomes than the electorate's relative attraction to the Democratic and Republican candidates as calibrated in National Election Study surveys. The significance of this finding is discussed.
The Structure of Emotional Response: 1984 Presidential Candidates
Authors: Marcus George E.
Published: May 2006

Over the past two decades psychological models of affect have changed from valence (one-dimensional) models to multiple-dimensional models. The most recent models, circumplex models, are two-dimensional. Feeling thermometer measures, which derive their theoretical logic from earlier (valence) models of emotional appraisal, are shown to be confounded. Underlying the variation obtained using feeling thermometer measures are two dimensions of emotional response, mastery (positive emotionality) and threat (negative emotionality). Analysis of the 1984 NES survey suggests that positive emotional response is twice as influential as negative emotional response in predicting presidential candidate vote disposition to the presidential candidates. Reliance on emotional response is shown to be uniformly influential across various strata of the electorate.

Policy considerations have little direct influence on vote disposition, though policy considerations are indirectly related to vote disposition through the influence of issues on the degree of feelings of threat evoked by the candidates.
Age and Active-Passive Leadership Style
Authors: Schubert James N.
Published: May 2006

The relationship between age and active-passive leadership style is analyzed with direct observational data describing the behavior of a sample of 24 mayors during issue discussion and debate on their councils over a one-year period of meetings. Activity, measured as a time-based rate of verbal participation, was found to increase with the age of leaders to a high in the midfifties, and to decline for older mayors in their sixties and seventies. Political experience interacted with age to affect activity. Inexperienced mayors displayed a less active style, regardless of age; but experienced mayors in their sixties and seventies had the least active style of all. These findings held up under control f or group size, political structure on the councils, and community characteristics.
Networks in Context: The Social Flow of Political Information
Authors: Huckfeldt Robert , Sprague John
Published: May 2006

We examine the effects of individual political preferences and the distribution of such preferences on the social transmission of political information. Our data base combines a 1984 election survey of citizens in South Bend, Indiana with a subsequent survey of people with whom these citizens discuss politics. Several findings emerge from the effort. First, individuals do purposefully construct informational networks corresponding to their own political preferences, and they also selectively misperceive socially supplied political information. More important, both of these individual-level processes are shown to be conditioned by constraints imposed due to the distribution of political preferences in the social context. Thus, individual control over socially supplied political information is partial and incomplete. Finally, these information-transmitting processes interact with the social context in a manner that favors partisan majorities while undermining political minorities.
War Cues and Foreign Policy Acts
Authors: Beer Francis A. , Healy Alice F. , Sinclair Grant P. , Bourne Lyle E.
Published: May 2006

Cognitive psychological theory and research suggest that specific actions are primed or potentiated by prior related cues. Thus violent cues should influence subsequent conflictual action choices. Laboratory subjects were given one of two written vignettes recalling either the slaughter of World War I or Allied weakness before World War II. A control group received no vignette. Subjects were then asked to specify foreign-policy choices from an inventory of possible cooperative-conflictual acts, relevant to a dispute between two fictional countries, in five sequential rounds. Both war vignettes produced more subsequent conflictual choices for subjects with dominant (i.e., aggressive) personality traits, and less conflictual choices for subjects with submissive personality traits. The findings suggest that priming activates underlying personality predispositions that enhance cooperative or conflictual action choices. The results also point to the potential importance of prior cues in shaping foreign-policy decision makers' and mass-public responses to international events.
Television News and Citizens' Explanations of National Affairs
Authors: Iyengar Shanto
Published: May 2006

Causal beliefs are important ingredients of public opinion. Citizens are able to identify the causes of complex national issues and do so spontaneously. Evidence is presented that individuals' explanations of political issues are significantly influenced by the manner in which television news presentations “frame” these issues. These results are politically consequential, for individuals' explanations of national issues independently affect their assessments of presidential performance.
Liberalism, Human Rights, and Human Dignity
Authors: Mitchell Neil , Howard Rhoda E. , Donnelly Jack
Published: May 2006

Do international standards regarding human rights require the existence of a liberal regime? This was the thrust of Rhoda Howard and Jack Donnelly's essay in the September 1986 issue of this Review. Neil Mitchell takes vigorous issue with this contention, arguing first and foremost that Howard and Donnelly have not defined liberalism satisfactorily. Howard and Donnelly present a spirited rejoinder.
Domestic Opposition and Foreign War
Authors: Mesquita Bruce Bueno De , Lalman David
Published: May 2006

Domestic opposition to violent, escalatory national policies during international crises has long been considered an important factor influencing the foreign policy behavior of nations. Yet the explicit theoretical linkages between domestic opposition and crisis choices have not been investigated. To provide these linkages, we set out an extensive form game of sequential decisions leading to the various consequences of crises together with their attendant costs and benefits. Our findings indicate that an antagonist's beliefs about domestic opposition are not particularly effective levers to manipulate in crises when a peaceful resolution is the goal.
The Tinpot and the Totalitarian: An Economic Theory of Dictatorship
Authors: Wintrobe Ronald
Published: May 2006

I use basic tools of economic theory to construct a simple model of the behavior of dictatorships. Two extreme cases are considered: a “tin-pot” dictatorship, in which the dictator wishes only to minimize the costs of remaining in power in order to collect the fruits of office (palaces, Mercedes-Benzes, Swiss bank accounts), and a “totalitarian” dictatorship, whose leader maximizes power over the population. I show that the two differ in their responses to economic change. For example, a decline in economic performance will lead a tin-pot regime to increase its repression of the population, whereas it will lead a totalitarian government to reduce repression. The model also shows why military dictatorships (a subspecies of tin-pots) tend to be short-lived and often voluntarily hand power over to a civilian regime; explains numerous features of totalitarian regimes; and suggests what policies will enable democratic regimes to deal with dictatorships effectively.
U.S.-Soviet-Chinese Relations: Routine, Reciprocity, or Rational Expectations?
Authors: Goldstein Joshua S. , Freeman John R.
Published: May 2006

International relations theorists disagree about whether great power behaviors reflect bureaucratic routine or reciprocity. Recently, some have suggested that these behaviors result from great powers' rational expectations rather than from simple routine or reciprocity. The debate is flawed in several respects. The quasi-experimental studies of great power behavior suffer from specification and measurement errors. Furthermore, most studies of great power behavior focus exclusively on the superpowers, without adequately appreciating China's role in world politics. We present an improved analysis that recognizes the potential effects of Chinese behavior and ameliorates the methodological flaws in existing work. The results indicate that the behaviors of the United States, the Soviet Union, and China are a relatively stable mix of bureaucratic routine and reciprocity. The results also indicate complex, asymmetrical connections among U.S.-Soviet, U.S.-Chinese, and Soviet-Chinese relations, consistent with the notion of a strategic triangle.
Debunking the Myth of Interest Group Invincibility in the Courts
Authors: Epstein Lee , Rowland C. K.
Published: May 2006

Research on interest group litigation has provoked a reevaluation of the conventional wisdom about the study of pressure group activity and judicial politics. Nevertheless, the notion that interest groups are intrepid litigators that rarely lose to nongroup adversaries persists unchallenged and unscathed. We seek to determine if groups are, in fact, as invincible as the literature suggests. Several findings emerge that may undermine conventional wisdom about the relative efficacy of group-sponsored litigation. Most important is that groups are no more likely than nongroups to win, at least in U.S. District Courts. Based on this and other results, we draw a number of conclusions about interest group litigation and the direction into which future study might head.
Poliatrics: Physicians and the Physician Analogy within Fourth-century Athens
Authors: Campbell Blair
Published: May 2006

The physician analogy in politics is not inherently elitist or antithetical to constitutional government, as modern critics have claimed. On the contrary, in its original development among the orators of fourth-century Athens, it epitomized the aims of conservative democrats, offering both a perspective that reinforced the ideal of a prescriptive constitution grounded in tradition and a conception of leadership compatible with the egalitarian animus of the restored democracy. Moreover, this conception of the political physician enjoyed the full sanction of Greek medicine. The norms, concepts, and techniques adduced in the Hippocratic writings closely parallel those of conservative democrats.
Love of Glory and the Common Good
Authors: Palmer Michael
Published: May 2006

How the city, the political community, may ask its citizens to sacrifice their lives for the sake of its preservation has plagued us since the birth of political philosophy. This article examines Thucydides' presentation of Pericles' attempt to solve this problem by reconciling the highest good of the individual and the good of the city by means of the love of glory. I contrast the central themes of Pericles' speeches in Thucydides, especially his renowned funeral oration, with other parts of Thucydides' presentation of Periclean Athens, in particular his famous account of the plague, to demonstrate his doubts about the efficacy of the Periclean solution to the political problem.
The Political Economy of Pork: Project Selection at The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Authors: Hird John A.
Published: May 2006

In previous studies of distributive politics scholars have investigated legislative influence without accounting for the policies' independent merits. As a result, they have failed to include a plausible explanation of the counterfactual (i.e., which projects would have been funded in the absence of congressional committee influence), which has led to invalid inferences regarding legislative influence. The model of distributive politics is reformulated to account for an assumed efficient and/or equitable project allocation in the absence of legislative influence. Using data from proposed Army Corps of Engineers' projects and the funding recommendations of three institutions, the findings indicate that pork barrel politics indeed exists and imposes significant efficiency costs but that both equity and economic efficiency play prominent roles in the decision-making process as well. Cost-benefit analysis is seen to play a constructive role by improving the efficiency of project choice; and the corps's cost-benefit analysis guidelines are beneficial from the agency's organizational perspective, as well.
The Official Language Problem
Authors: Pool Jonathan
Published: May 2006

Polities and organizations use and require particular languages for official business. The choice of official languages is a vexing issue. Theorists, convinced that a fair language policy cannot be efficient, have despaired of an elegant solution. To investigate this apparent dilemma, I mathematically model the problem of choosing an efficient and fair language policy for a plurilingual polity. The policy designates official languages and taxes the language groups to pay for translation among the official languages. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, this model implies that a fair language policy can be efficient. But what if language groups rationally misrepresent the costs of using a nonnative official language? Even then, the policy maker can discover a fair language policy and, under some conditions, can use a cost-revelation procedure that discovers a fair and efficient language policy. The results challenge the claim that efficiency and practicality excuse the inferior treatment of language minorities.
Political Solutions to Market Problems
Authors: Shepsle Kenneth A. , Weingast Barry R.
Published: May 2006

For some, market failures serve as a rationale for public intervention. However, the fact that self-interested market behavior does not always produce felicitous social consequences is not sufficient reason to draw this conclusion. It is necessary to assess public performance under comparable conditions, and hence to analyze self-interested political behavior in the institutional structures of the public sector. Our approach emphasizes this institutional structure—warts and all—and thereby provides specific cautionary warnings about optimistic reliance on political institutions to improve upon market performance.
State Lottery Adoptions as Policy Innovations: An Event History Analysis
Authors: Berry Frances Stokes , Berry William D.
Published: May 2006

Two types of explanations of state government innovation have been proposed:internal determinantsmodels (which posit that the factors causing a state government to innovate are political, economic, and social characteristics of a state) andregional diffusionmodels (which point toward the role of policy adoptions by neighboring states in prompting a state to adopt). We show that the two are conceptually compatible, relying on Mohr's theory of organizational innovation. Then we develop and test a unified explanation of state lottery adoptions reflecting both internal and regional influences. The empirical results provide a great degree of support for Mohr's theory. For the empirical analysis, we rely onevent history analysis, a form of pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, which we believe may be useful in a wide variety of subfields of political science. Event history analysis may be able to explain important forms of political behavior (by individuals, organizations, or governments) even if they occur only rarely.
Choosing Justice in Experimental Democracies with Production
Authors: Frohlich Norman , Oppenheimer Joe A.
Published: May 2006

We examine in a laboratory setting how direct participation in choosing a principle of distributive justice and a tax system impinges on subjects' attitudes and subsequent productivity when they participate in a task, produce income, and then experience losses or gains according to the tax system. Experience with a redistributive principle and its associated taxation system in a production environment does not detract from overall acceptance of the distributive principle, particularly for subjects who participate in choosing the principle. Participation in discussion, choice, and production increases subjects' convictions regarding their preferences. For these subjects (especially recipients of transfers) productivity rises significantly over the course of the experiments. No such effect is evident for subjects who do not participate in setting the regime under which they are to labor. The results' implications for questions of democratic participation and the stability of income support programs are drawn.
Senate Voting on Supreme Court Nominees: A Neoinstitutional Model
Authors: Cameron Charles M. , Cover Albert D. , Segal Jeffrey A.
Published: May 2006

We develop and test a neoinstitutional model of Senate roll call voting on nominees to the Supreme Court. The statistical model assumes that Senators examine the characteristics of nominees and use their roll call votes to establish an electorally attractive position on the nominees. The model is tested with probit estimates on the 2,054 confirmation votes from Earl Warren to Anthony Kennedy. The model performs remarkably well in predicting the individual votes of Senators to confirm or reject nominees. Senators routinely vote to confirm nominees who are perceived as well qualified and ideologically proximate to Senators' constituents. When nominees are less well qualified and are relatively distant, however, Senators' votes depend to a large degree on the political environment, especially the status of the president.
The Electoral Relevance of Local Party Organizations
Authors: Frendreis John P. , Gibson James L. , Vertz Laura L.
Published: May 2006

We examine the role that one group of party units—county party organizations—play in electoral politics, based on electoral and county party organizational data collected during 1980–84. Local party chairs report their organizations are involved in a number of electorally relevant activities, including candidate recruitment, joint planning with candidate organizations, and various independent campaign activities. The data demonstrate that county party organizations are indeed effective. The probability of a minority party's running candidates for lower-level offices, which appears to contribute to higher vote totals for higher-level offices, is a function of the local strength and activity level of the party; whereas direct effects are seen to be small. These data suggest that even if mainly at the candidate recruitment stage of the process, party organizations play an important role in local electoral politics.
Political Culture and Political Change
Authors: Werlin Herbert H. , Harry Eckstein
Published: May 2006

In “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change” in the September 1988 issue of thisReview,Harry Eckstein argued that “a cogent, potentially powerful theory of political change can be derived from culturalist premises.” But Herbert Werlin finds Eckstein's effort to accommodate culture theory to political change unsatisfactory. Werlin argues that politics in the sense of political engineering, rather than cultural changes, mainly accounts for transformations in political life. Eckstein responds, arguing that the political methods for inducing change are themselves culturally conditioned.
Universalism in Experimental Committees
Authors: Miller Gary J. , Oppenheimer Joe A.
Published: May 2006

Most rational choice theories of committee decision making predict a process of competitive coalition formation leading to a minimum winning coalition. Committee experiments reported to date tend to support these theories. However, both theories and committee experiments are contradicted by the evidence of real-world legislatures making distributive decisions; these decisions are characterized by coalitions of the whole providing virtually all members with a share of distributive benefits. The results in this article help to resolve this contradiction by showing that if the committee experimental design includes a universalistic alternative which provides a high level of expected benefits for committee members, it will be selected. Competitive coalition formation occurs in experimental settings which do not include such an alternative. The results call into question the generality of ordinalist theories of competitive coalition formation.
Dante and the Setting for Machiavellianism
Authors: Peterman Larry
Published: May 2006

Although Dante and Machiavelli are generally considered exemplars of opposed medieval and modern ways of thinking, there are various points of resemblance in their political arguments. In Dante's Banquet, there is a presentimento machiavellico that illuminates the ideas that form the basis for Machiavellianism. These ideas, in turn, may be seen as extensions of scriptural positions and as Christian modifications of classical attitudes toward hope, certainty, and philosophy.
The Political Impact of Economic Crisis in Latin America in the 1980s
Authors: Remmer Karen L.
Published: May 2006

Research on the political implications of economic conditions is separated into two relatively distinct bodies of literature. I bridge the theoretical gap between them by examining the effects of economic crisis on electoral outcomes in Latin America from 1982 to 1990. An analysis of 21 competitive elections indicates that crisis conditions undermine support for incumbents and provoke high levels of electoral volatility but without necessarily fostering the growth of political extremism or the exhaustion of elite consensus associated with the breakdown of democracy. The results also suggest that the relationship between economic conditions and electoral instability is mediated by party system structure rather than democratic age. Paradoxically, the findings buttress prior research on electoral outcomes in the comparatively stable and homogeneous Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations while undercutting theoretical frameworks elaborated with specific reference to the breakdown and consolidation of Third World democracy.
The President, Referendum Voting, and Subnational Elections in the United States
Authors: Simon Dennis M. , Ostrom Charles W. , Marra Robin F.
Published: May 2006

This research is designed to generalize a referendum voting model and investigate its ability to account for the aggregate outcomes of elections for the House, Senate, governorships, and upper and lower chambers of state legislatures. Our analysis shows that these outcomes are influenced by the same systematic short- and long-term forces. In addition to this common referendum structure, the analysis reveals that there is a common response to random shocks, a subtle form of interdependence found in systems of seemingly unrelated regressions.
Information, Values, and Opinion
Authors: Zaller John
Published: May 2006

Past research has modeled mass opinion change as a two-step process involving reception of political communication and acceptance or rejection of that communication. I propose a two-message version of the reception-acceptance model, in which citizens are exposed to two opposing communication flows, either or both of which may affect their opinions. Variation over time in the relative intensity of the opposing communications, along with citizen differences in attention to politics and in political values, interact in the model to explain both cross-sectional patterns of mass opinion and opinion change across surveys. The model, which is applied to data on the Vietnam War, illuminates two research problems: how complex information flows diffuse through a mass audience and how this information shapes mass belief systems.
Transitions by Agreement: Modeling the Spanish Way
Authors: Colomer Josep M.
Published: May 2006

Several nonrevolutionary cases of transition to democracy are modeled. Different preferences and strategic choices between the alternatives of continuity, reform, and rupture of the authoritarian regime are used to define conventional distinctions between hard-liners, soft-liners, and opposition more precisely. Six groups of actors emerge. Using game theory, the interactions among these actors are formally analyzed. The possibility of political pact in the first phase of change is identified with the possibility of cooperation between players in games in which the equilibrium is a deficient outcome. Three models of transition by agreement are established: agreed reform within the ruling bloc, controlled opening to the opposition, and sudden collapse of the authoritarian regime. Each of these models entails differences in the pace of change and in the limits of the pact and can be associated with different cases of transition in Southern Europe, Latin America, and Eastern Europe.
Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory
Authors: Powell Robert
Published: May 2006

The problem of absolute and relative gains divides neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism. The former assumes states focus primarily on their absolute gains and emphasizes the prospects for cooperation. The latter supposes states are largely concerned with relative gains and emphasizes the prospects for conflict. Existing work in international relations theory generally traces the differences between these two theories to different assumptions about states' preferences. Using a simple game-theoretic model, this essay offers a reformulation of the problem of absolute and relative gains that links changes in the states' behavior, the feasibility of cooperation, and especially the states' concern for relative versus absolute gains explicitly to changes in the constraints facing the states. Many of the differences between neoliberal institutionalism and structural realism appear as special cases of the model.
Measuring Internal Political Efficacy in the 1988 National Election Study
Authors: Niemi Richard G. , Craig Stephen C. , Mattei Franco
Published: May 2006

Political efficacy has been studied extensively since the 1950s, hut analysts have never been fully satisfied with its measurement. After considerable testing, four new questions tapping internal political efficacy were added to the 1988 National Election Study. Our investigation shows that inter-item correlations among these questions indicate high internal consistency, that by both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis the items measure a single concept distinct from external efficacy and political trust, that the measurement model is robust across major subgroups, and that the overall scale is externally valid and provides a good distribution of efficacy scores across the population. Further, the results of an order experiment in the survey suggest that responses are unaffected by mode of presentation. In short, the four new questions constitute the most satisfactory measure of internal political efficacy to date.
The State in Political Science: How We Became What We Study
Authors: Lowi Theodore J.
Published: May 2006

American political science is a product of the American state. There are political reasons why particular subdisciplines became hegemonic with the emergence of the “Second Republic” after World War II. The three hegemonic subdisciplines of our time are public opinion, public policy, and public choice. Each is a case study of consonance with the thought-ways and methods of a modern bureaucratized government committed to scientific decision making. Following Leviathan too closely results in three principal consequences: (1) failure to catch and evaluate the replacement of law by economics as the language of the state, (2) the loss of passion in political science discourse, and (3) the failure of political science to appreciate the significance of ideological sea changes accompanying regime changes.
Measuring Political Legitimacy
Authors: Weatherford M. Stephen
Published: May 2006

Political legitimacy is a key concept in both macro and micro theories. Pioneers in survey-based research on alienation and system support envisioned addressing macro questions about legitimacy with the sophisticated empiricism of individual-level methodology but failed; and a succession of innovations in item wording and questionnaire construction only led to an excessive concern with measurement issues at the individual level. I return to an enumeration of the informational requirements for assessing legitimacy in hopes of finding a conceptualization that better utilizes available survey indicators to tap relevant macro dimensions. I specify formal measurement models for both conventional and revised conceptualizations of legitimacy orientations and compare the fit of the two models systematically on data from the U.S. electorate. The revised model appears preferable on both theoretical and empirical grounds.
Toward a Theory of the Political Entrepreneur: Evidence from Local Government
Authors: Schneider Mark , Teske Paul
Published: May 2006

Political scientists have been increasingly interested in entrepreneurs—individuals who change the direction and flow of politics. In this research note, we synthesize aspects of an economic approach to entrepreneurship with concepts used in political science. We then tie these theoretical observations to the emergence of entrepreneurs in local governments and test components of our theory using observations from a large set of suburban municipal governments. Empirically, we identify several conditions that affect the probability that an entrepreneur will emerge in a local government, especially slack budgetary resources that the political entrepreneur can reallocate. We also find that the probability with which an entrepreneur is found in local government is a function of the difficulty of overcoming collective action problems in a community.
Sizing up the Peace Dividend: Economic Growth and Military Spending in the United States, 1948–1996
Authors: Ward Michael D. , Davis David R.
Published: May 2006

We examine the relationship between military expenditures and economic growth in the United States from 1948 to 1990, in order to gauge the potential peace dividend. Our main results suggest that military spending is a significant drain on the economy. We then examine the implications of a restructured international system for U.S. military expenditures and their resultant impact on economic growth in the 1990s. Simulations of Democratic and Republican proposals for cuts in defense spending suggest increases in economic output of between 2.5% and 4.5% over the period 1993–96.
The Political Consequences of Intolerance: Cultural Conformity and Political Freedom
Authors: Gibson James L.
Published: May 2006

I demonstrate that the intolerance of ordinary citizens matters for real politics even if strong linkages to policy outputs do not exist. In particular, the model I test posits that cultural intolerance constrains the liberty of individual citizens. Focusing on how people perceive political freedom, several hypotheses coupling tolerance and freedom are explored. Data from a national survey show that tolerance and freedom are connected. Those who do not feel free to express themselves politically are more likely to be intolerant of others, to have less heterogeneous peer groups and less tolerant spouses, and to live in less tolerant communities. Ultimately, the importance of mass political intolerance in the United States is that it establishes a culture of conformity that seems to constrain individual political liberty in many important ways.
Economic Trends and Government Survival in West European Parliamentary Democracies
Authors: Warwick Paul
Published: May 2006

In this study, I investigate the linkage between trends in key economic indicators (inflation, unemployment, and growth in gross domestic product) and government survival in 16 postwar European parliamentary democracies. The partial likelihood method, which allows for variation in indicator values over the lifetimes of individual governments, constitutes the basic analytic tool. The findings reveal overall causal roles for both inflation and unemployment, as well as important differences in these roles between socialist and bourgeois governments and between pre-oil crisis and post-oil crisis eras. Most significant, the introduction of these indicators to the analysis helps to resolve the debate between two rival explanations of governmental stability, the bargaining complexity hypothesis and the ideological diversity hypothesis, in favor of the latter.
Courting Constituents? An Analysis of the Senate Confirmation Vote on Justice Clarence Thomas
Authors: Overby L. Marvin , Henschen Beth M. , Walsh Michael H. , Strauss Julie
Published: May 2006

The increasing public attention paid to Supreme Court nominations has elevated the salience of Senate confirmation battles, raising interesting questions about the impact of constituency preferences on senators' voting behavior. In this article, we explore this relationship using a logistical regression model to examine the impacts of African-American constituency size and the proximity of reelection on the roll call behavior of senators on the Clarence Thomas confirmation vote. Our analyses indicate that these factors were both statistically and substantively significant in the Thomas case. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of such findings.
Going Beyond the State?
Authors: Bendix John , Sparrow Bartholomew H. , Ollman Bertell , Mitchell Timothy
Published: May 2006

Timothy Mitchell's article “The Limits of the State” in the March 1991 issue of thisReviewstimulated an unusual variety of interested comments. John Bendix, Bartholomew Sparrow, and Bertell Ollman offer critiques and suggestions from quite different points of view. In response, Mitchell clarifies further the distinctiveness of his own approach and its implications.
Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of the Armed Services
Authors: Huntington Samuel P.
Published: May 2006

“Conventional wisdom” (to purloin a phrase from Galbraith) holds that interservice competition necessarily undermines economy, efficiency, and effective central control in the military establishment. The remedy is further unification, possibly even the merger of the services into a single uniform. The conventional wisdom also holds that political action by military groups necessarily threatens civilian control. The remedy is to “keep the military out of politics.” The pattern of American military politics and interservice rivalry since World War II, however, suggests that the conventional wisdom may err in its analysis of their results and falter in its prescription of remedies.

Service political controversy between the world wars had two distinguishing characteristics. First, on most issues, a military service, supported, perhaps, by a few satellite groups, struggled against civilian isolationists, pacifists, and economizers. The Navy and the shipbuilding industry fought a lonely battle with the dominant forces in both political parties over naval disarmament. The Army lost its fight for universal service after World War I, and throughout the Twenties clashed with educational, labor, and religious groups over ROTC and with other groups over industrial mobilization preparation. In the annual budget encounters the issue usually was clearly drawn between service supporters who stressed preparedness and their opponents who decried the necessity and the legitimacy of substantial military expenditures. To the extent that the services were in politics, they were involved in conflicts with civilian groups.
Dilemmas of Political Leadership in the Arab Middle East: The Case of The United Arab Republic
Authors: Vatikiotis P. J.
Published: May 2006

The use of traditional symbols by leaders of newly independent states to achieve consensus in their respective political communities is not unusual these days. The professed aspiration of these leaders to modernize their societies does not keep them from manipulating traditional symbols for the maintenance of order in a period of troubled transition. Often the student of politics in these states finds that formal changes in the institutions and functions of the state and government do not necessarily reflect or imply serious structural and conceptual changes. Nor do they necessarily affect appreciably the concept, use, or allocation of power.

When members of the military establishment acceded to political power in some Middle Eastern states in the past decade, they announced their intention to “modernize” their societies. This aspiration raises a variety of questions for the student of Middle Eastern politics. What political ideology, order, and system was the new leadership proposing? The desire to “modernize” implied that their societies were still bound in a complex of traditional relationships and structures. The attitudes of the new military leaders, who claim to desire a departure from the past in national development, toward the Islamic religious-traditional background of society should be a primary factor in any analysis of the orientation of this new leadership.
The Impact of Personality on Politics: An Attempt to Clear Away Underbrush
Authors: Greenstein Fred I.
Published: May 2006

There is a great deal of political activity which can be explained adequately only by taking account of the personal characteristics of the actors involved. The more intimate the vantage, the more detailed the perspective, the greater the likelihood that political actors will loom as full-blown individuals influenced by all of the peculiar strengths and weaknesses to which the species homo sapiens is subject, in addition to being role-players, creatures of situation, members of a culture, and possessors of social characteristics such as occupation, class, sex, and age.

To a non-social scientist the observation that individuals are important in politics would seem trite. Undergraduates, until they have been trained to think in terms of impersonal categories of explanation, readily make assertions about the psychology of political actors in their explanations of politics. So do journalists. Why is it that most political scientists are reluctant to deal explicitly with psychological matters (apart from using a variety of rather impersonal psychological constructs such as “party identification,” “sense of political efficacy,” and the like)? Why is political psychology not a systematically developed subdivision of political science, occupying the skill and energy of a substantial number of scholars?
Interpreting House Midterm Elections: Toward a Measurement of the In-Party's “Expected” Loss of Seats
Authors: Hinckley Barbara
Published: May 2006

Midterm congressional elections have been subjected to relatively little analysis. This is surprising because these elections exhibit three quite striking features which, when taken together, call for further explanation. First, every midterm House election since the Civil War, with the exception of 1934, has brought a net loss of seats to the President's party. Second, in the large majority of elections the net loss has approximated the gross loss. The in-party (i.e., the President's party) seldom has captured seats from the other party to offset its own loss. And third, although the in-party's loss has been persistent, the number of seats lost has varied widely.

Attempts to incorporate midterm elections into a broader interpretive framework of American election studies usually stress one of the first two features outlined above. The fact that only the in-party loses—and that its losses are mainly in marginal districts—has led commentators such as V. O. Key Jr. and the authors of The American Voter to interpret these midterm elections as part of the stable, long-term trends in voters' party allegiance.
Contextual Models of Electoral Behavior: The Southern Wallace Vote
Authors: Wright Gerald C.
Published: May 2006

Many studies have sought to investigate contextual influences on individual electoral behavior using aggregate data. The shortcomings of this approach are discussed, focusing on the relationship between black concentration and southern white support for George Wallace for president in 1968. Through combining aggregate and individual-level data and comparing a series of models, black concentration is found to increase white support for Wallace. Intraregional differences in the relationship between white support for Wallace and local black concentration are equalized when contextual influences at the state level are brought into the analysis. Black concentration contextual effects are independent of those of urbanization, education, or residence in Wallace's home state of Alabama. Relative primary group support for Wallace and relative issue proximity to Wallace are then shown to be the intervening variables linking contextual characteristics and electoral choice.
The Philippines before Martial Law: A Study in Politics and Administration
Authors: Nowak Thomas C.
Published: May 2006

In the period following World War II before the declaration of martial law in the Philippines, politics and heavy demands for patronage affected the allocation of resources, the administrative process, and personnel policies in ways inimical to the interests of businessmen and technocrats. When faced with intense competition, politicians pressed to employ growing numbers of clients and protégés in local administration. Strong political machines were better able than weak machines to ignore pressures for social services benefitting largely the lower class. The level of political mobilization and size of the lower class increased expenditures on primary education, and expenditures on intermediate and secondary education grew as the percentage of the electorate that was lower class increased. To the dismay of business interests and technocrats, “wasteful” expenditures on local administration and social services were most institutionalized and difficult to cut, while expenditures on economic improvements proved more elastic.
Divisive Primaries Do Hurt: U.S. Senate Races, 1956—1972
Authors: Bernstein Robert A.
Published: May 2006

This analysis shows, in contrast to previously published work, that a divisive primary hurts a senatorial candidate's chances for success in the general election. The relationship between divisiveness and lack of success continues to hold when incumbency and state party orientations are controlled. This relationship has an important implication regarding representation. The fact that divisive primaries do hurt strengthens the representation of weak and minor state parties in the U.S. Senate.
The Legitimacy of the Court of Justice in the European Union: Models of Institutional Support
Authors: Caldeira Gregory A. , Gibson James L.
Published: May 2006

Using a survey of mass publics, we investigate the political legitimacy of the Court of Justice of the European Communities. To what degree does the Court have the visibility and diffuse support necessary for legitimacy? What accounts for variability in support for the Court? Are theories developed largely in the American context generalizable in Western Europe to a transnational legal institution? Do the sources of the Court's legitimacy vary across nations, and how? Our analysis indicates that relatively obscure institutions such as the Court of Justice are unlikely to build support through satisfying their constituencies' demands. Without information about the Court of Justice, ordinary citizens form their views based on its connection with the European Union and its association with broad political and legal values. As the Court moves into the limelight of European law and politics, the decisions the judges make may increasingly shape citizens' perceptions of its legitimacy.
Separating Partisanship from Party in Judicial Research: Reapportionment in the U.S. District Courts
Authors: Lloyd Randall D.
Published: May 2006

Previous judicial decision-making studies have used party labels as surrogates for ideological orientation. In this study of state-level reapportionment cases before the U.S. district courts, I investigate the partisan reference-group identification of judges as a nonlegal influence on decisions. The partisan identification of judges is juxtaposed with the political orientations of the legislatures passing reapportionment plans. The results suggest that partisan effects are included in the pattern of decisions in cases related to the state-level district plans. While judges tend to vote against plans submitted to them from legislatures where one political party has numerical control of the reapportionment process, they vote against plans presented from legislatures of their own party at a much lower rate than in cases where the party opposite their own controls the district drawing process. The logit model correctly predicts 89.3% of the cases and produces a 60.3% reduction of error.