bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Incumbency and The Presidential Vote in Senate Elections: Defining Parameters of Subpresidential Voting
Authors: Hinckley Barbara
Published: May 2006

Compared with the recent substantial strides in presidential election analysis, research on congressional elections has only begun. The majority of studies have been cast within the presidential-election context, with the relationship between the presidential and congressional vote the phenomenon to be explained. The present attention to presidential contests is understandable because of the inherent interest in such races in a presidential-centered political system and because reliable survey data have been limited to nationwide samples, severely restricting analysis on a state or district basis. And yet without some comparable advances at the congressional level, we cannot assess bases of electoral support nor the numerous assumptions of behavior in Congress as linked to this support, nor attempt a theory of voting behavior that does not consider voting at the subpresidential level. Put simply, the state of research is such that we have only begun to identify and measure the key variables affecting congressional voting outcomes. It is this basic task to which recent research in the field has been directed.

Consider as the core phenomenon for explanation the sharp fluctuations over time in the partisan division of the vote for Senator and Representative. Since studies of voting behavior indicate the stability of party loyalties over time, evidence of sharp shifts in voting outcomes suggest factors other than party cues influencing the vote decision. Among the lines of inquiry opened, studies by Cummings, Press, and Hinckley, following the work of Key, have utilized aggregate election statistics to measure the substantial impact of the presidential vote on House election outcomes.
“Toward A More Responsible Two-Party System”: Political Science, Policy Science, or Pseudo-Science?
Authors: Kirkpatrick Evron M.
Published: May 2006

The 1950 Report of the APSA Committee on Political Parties, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System,” is relevant today to current problems of public policy and party reform and to the efforts of political scientists, as political scientists, to contribute to the resolution of these problems. This essay examines the Report from a policy science perspective.

The Report was explicitly therapeutic in aim. It defined health, diagnosed ills, and prescribed remedies for the American party system; through the remedies prescribed, the whole American political system was to be restored to health. The healthy democratic system was asserted to be one in which the two national parties were cohesive, disciplined, programmatic, and responsible; internally responsible to their members through primaries, caucuses and conventions, and externally responsible to the whole electorate for carrying out their programs. The programs of the two parties were to be clearly differentiated so as to provide the electorate a real choice. The ills of the Ameican system were said to be due to the failure of parties to have these characteristics. The prescription was recommendation for comprehensive reform.

Despite the special expertise of political scientists on such “constitutional” questions and the work of such distinguished predecessors as Wilson, Goodnow, Lowell, Ford, and Herring, the Report was both normatively and empirically deficient. Little attempt was made to clarify or justify norms or goals. Repeatedly, instrumental propositions linking proposed reforms to goals were based on inadequate evidence or no evidence at all. Even in 1950, evidence (not mentioned in the Report) was available that cast doubt on the Committee's description of the political world. Subsequent research has produced a rich body of literature making clear that much of the substance of the Report is simply mistaken.

The errors of the Report do not vitiate its goals; democratic potential is not revealed by democratic practices. But the errors drastically affect the utility of the Report as policy science. The failure of the Report as policy science is due, in part, to failures of the discipline to clarify the roles of political scientist as policy scientist, to explore adequately the problems of relating knowledge to goals, to pay appropriate attention to the development of political theory, and to develop intellectual tools more specifically suited to the tasks of policy science. The last half of the essay is devoted to an examination of these problems, concluding that the political scientist will succeed in being effective in the policy field just to the extent he succeeds at his own distinctive tasks, in sharpening his own tools, and in thoughtfully applying his special knowledge and skills.
The Electoral Impact of Congressional Roll Call Voting
Authors: Erickson Robert S.
Published: May 2006

This paper presents evidence that candidate issue positions have a measurable impact on elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. For eight election years, electoral margins of Northern incumbent congressional candidates were examined to test the proposition that “moderates” within each party are better vote getters than those whose roll call records reflect their party's ideological extreme. The effects of roll call positions on election results were estimated by examining the relationships between roll call “extremism” and vote margins with district presidential voting held constant as a control for normal constituency voting habits. Although no strong support was found for the proposition that Democratic Representatives lose electoral support when they take extremely liberal roll call positions, a clear pattern emerged for Republicans: the Republican Congressmen who are the best vote getters tend to be the relative moderates and liberals who avoid the extreme conservative end of the political spectrum. An analysis of survey data suggests that the small group of voters whose electoral decisions are influenced by their Republican Congressman's roll call performance are found within the ranks of a select group who are both free of strong partisan motivations and highly politically informed.
Rejoinder to Frey's “Comment”
Authors: Wolfinger Raymond E.
Published: May 2006

Professor Frey and I seem to be in agreement on several points: (1) The research procedures proposed by Bachrach and Baratz are unsatisfactory. (2) Worrying about criteria of issue selection is unnecessary; policy formation can usefully be studied issue by issue. Indeed, I would add that typologies of issues are one of the more promising developments in the study of politics. (3) The notion of nondecisions is not a club with which to belabor Who Governs? in particular or “pluralists” in general. Frey has performed a considerable service by rescuing the idea of nondecisions from the ideologically tinged context in which its advocates generally have discussed it. (4) Analysts of policy formation who limit their attention to overt conflict miss many exercises of power. (5) The pluralist-elitist dichotomy is not a useful distinction.

The last two points call for further discussion. I do not know of any researcher who has disputed the fourth point. In his study of New Haven, Dahl employed three indices of power, “of roughly the same strength.” One of these was: “When a proposal initiated by one or more of the participants is adopted without opposition.”
Social Cleavages and Party Choice in Israel: A Log-Linear Analysis
Authors: Burstein Paul
Published: May 2006

This article attempts to fill two gaps in the literature on individual party choice. First, it deals with hitherto unanswered questions about relationships between social cleavages and party choice in Israel. Second, the article attempts to overcome methodological problems arising in the multivariate analysis of multiparty systems by utilizing Goodman's method of log-linear contingency table analysis. In the sample, occupation is not as strongly related to party choice as is a nonhierarchical dimension of economic position, sector of the economy. Ethnicity is modestly related to party choice, but hypotheses that the relationship is affected by place of birth, age, or other variables are disconfirmed. Hypotheses that the relationship between religiosity and party choice is affected by economic position are also disconfirmed. The advantages of using log linear contingency table analysis are demonstrated.
Political Theory and Political Science
Authors: Almond Gabriel A.
Published: May 2006

Like Rachel, Jacob's beloved but still childless bride, who asked herself and the Lord each morning, “Am I?,” or “Can I?,” so presidents of this Association on these annual occasions intermittently ask, “Are we a science?,” or “Can we become one?” My predecessor, David Truman, raised this question last September applying some of the notions of Thomas Kuhn in his recent book on scientific revolutions. I shall be following in Truman's footsteps, repeating much that he said but viewing the development of the profession from a somewhat different perspective and intellectual history. My comments will be organized around three assertions.

First, there was a coherent theoretical formulation in the American political theory of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Second, the development of professional political science in the United States from the turn of the century until well into the 1950's was carried on largely in terms of this paradigm, to use Kuhn's term. The most significant and characteristic theoretical speculation and research during these decades produced anomalous findings which cumulatively shook its validity.

Third, in the last decade or two the elements of a new, more surely scientific paradigm seem to be manifesting themselves rapidly. The core concept of this new approach is that of the political system.
Discerning a Causal Pattern among Data on Voting Behavior
Authors: Goldberg Arthur S.
Published: May 2006

The present analysis is devoted to making an empirically based choice among alternate causal explanations. This entails making causal inferences from statistical correlations. While this might, at one time, have constituted a heresy, I believe that the procedure to be followed here will soon be a part of statistical orthodoxy.

This is not the place for an extended philosophical discussion of the problem of causality. Yet I would like to make my position on the problem as clear as concise presentation will permit. My basic sympathies are with that school which argues that scientifically relevant causal explanation inheres only in our theories, i.e., that the explained event takes the shape which it does because our postulates and logic preclude any other shape on pain of being themselves incorrect. However, the development of such theory, containing such postulates, is usually the product of an inspired insight on the part of one thoroughly immersed in the manifestations of the empirical phenomenon under consideration. The production and verification of such insight in a systematic and reproducible way is the goal of inductive research. Where controlled experimentation is possible, Mill's canons may apply. Where such experiments are either impossible or impracticable, statistical inference becomes necessary. It is in this situation that the present approach, based upon a model developed by Herbert Simon and others, seems justified.

Simon's model is designed to capture the asymmetry in our notions of causality. When one speaks of A as a cause of B, one usually has in mind a unidirectional forcing, and not merely a covariation, or phased covariation.
“Imperialism” in Bureaucracy
Authors: Holden Matthew
Published: May 2006

If an important part of the political scientist's mission is to anticipate and explain “the critical problems that generate turbulence” in that part of the world which attracts his attention, then, in the study of administration, bureaucratic “imperialism” must be of compelling interest. If systematic data directly assembled for the purpose are lacking, and if there are some signal problems of theory which have been little investigated, there is still enough evidence from studies of other political problems that it seems worthwhile to set out some trial-run ideas in the hope that they will elicit further discussion.

Bureaucractic imperialism seems pre-eminently a matter of inter-agency conflict in which two or more agencies try to assert permanent control over the same jurisdiction, or in which one agency actually seeks to take over another agency as well as the jurisdiction of that agency. We are thus primarily concerned with the politics of allocation and shall, except incidentally, bypass some other interesting aspects of inter-agency politics such as cooperation between agencies sharing missions, competition for favorable “one-time-only” decisions which do not involve jurisdictional reallocation, or the critical problems of the “holding company” administrative organization and its internal politics. For the moment, our concern with the politics of allocation leads to a focus on what would appear to be the likely behaviors of those decisionmakers who have both inclination and opportunity to look after the institutional well-being of agencies.
Some Dynamic Elements of Contests for the Presidency
Authors: Stokes Donald E.
Published: May 2006

Despite the measured pace of American elections, there have now been a number of presidential campaigns since the advent of survey studies of voting. However sparingly, political history slowly has added to the set of distinct configurations of men and events which comprise a contest for the Presidency. The set is still small, whatever the impression created by massed thousands of interviews or by the accompanying files of election returns. Yet it is now large enough to be pressed hard for evidence about the sources of electoral change.

A primary virtue of measurements extended over a series of elections is that they can throw light on the problem of change. So long as the earliest voting studies were confined to cross-sectional relationships, they could deal only very inadequately with changes superimposed on these relationships or with changes in the relationships themselves. In the case of Lazarsfeld's enormously influential Erie County study in 1940, the natural limitations of a single-election study were compounded by the investigators' misfortune in choosing a campaign whose dominant personality and principal issues differed little from those of preceding elections. I have often wondered whether the static social determinism of The People's Choice would have emerged from a campaign in which the tides of short-term change were more nearly at flood.

I shall examine here some sources of change which are richly evident in the presidential elections of the last two decades.
An Expository Development of a Mathematical Model of the Electoral Process
Authors: Davis Otto A. , Hinich Melvin J. , Ordeshook Peter C.
Published: May 2006

The fundamental process of politics is the aggregation of citizens' preferences into a collective—a social—choice. We develop, interpret, and explain non-technically in this expository essay the definitions, assumptions, and theorems of a mathematical model of one aggregative mechanism—the electoral process. This mechanism is conceptualized here as a multidimensional model of spatial competition in which competition consists of candidates affecting turnout and the electorate's perception of each candidate's positions, and in which the social choice is a policy package which the victorious candidate advocates.

This approach, inaugurated by Downs's An Economic Theory of Democracy, and falling under the general rubric “spatial models of party competition,” has been scrutinized, criticized, and reformulated. To clarify the accomplishments of this formulation we identify and discuss in section 2 the general democratic problem of ascertaining a social preference. We review critically in section 3 the definitions and assumptions of our model. We consider in sections 4 and 5 the logic of a competitive electoral equilibrium. We assume in section 4 that the electorate's preferences can be summarized and represented by a single function; the analysis in section 5 pertains to competition between two organizational structures or two opposed ideologies (i.e., when two functions are required to summarize and represent the electorate's preference). Finally, we suggest in section 6 a conceptualization of electoral processes which facilitates extending and empirically testing our model.
Forms of Representation: Participation of the Poor in the Community Action Program
Authors: Peterson Paul E.
Published: May 2006

Debate over representation has been a continuing part of the Western political tradition at least since the writings of Hobbes. Recently, Hanna Pitkin, using the tools of linguistic analysis, has clarified, if not resolved, the debate by examining the disparate uses of the term in both political and non-political discourse. In order to elucidate the issues, she discussed such different forms of representation as formal representation, descriptive representation, substantive representation and interest representation. In this paper I will utilize the distinctions she has developed as a framework for analyzing the process of representation within the community action program of the Office of Economic Opportunity (OEO) during its initial formative period (1964-1966) in the cities of Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City.

I will argue that 1) the manner of selecting representatives of the poor (formal representation) was a function of the political resources of competing interests in the city; 2) the orientations (interest representativeness) of the formal representatives affected their influence (actual representation); 3) the influence (actual representation) of the formal representatives affected the level of intra-neighborhood conflict, which in turn affected the representatives' orientations (interest representation); 4) the character of the actual and interest representation was affected by the type of formal representation; and 5) the social characteristics of the representatives (descriptive representation) influenced the character of actual and interest representation.
The “Mood Theory”: A Study of Public Opinion and Foreign Policy
Authors: Caspary William R.
Published: May 2006

This paper is concerned with assessing the stability of the American public's attention to foreign affairs, and the relationship of this to public support of international programs and commitments. In particular, the paper presents an empirical investigation of the evidence for the “mood theory” proposed by Gabriel Almond as one element of his classic study, The American People and Foreign Policy.

The mood theory contends, first of all, that attention to or interest in foreign policy is generally low and subject to major fluctuations in times of crisis.

The characteristic response to questions of foreign policy is one of indifference. A foreign policy crisis, short of the immediate threat of war may transform indifference to vague apprehension, to fatalism, to anger; but the reaction is still a mood.

On the basis of this premise about attention, Almond predicts that the public will not provide stable support for international commitments undertaken by the U.S. Government.

Because of the superficial character of American attitudes toward world politics … a temporary Russian tactical withdrawal may produce strong tendencies toward demobilization and the reassertion of the primacy of private and domestic values.

The acceptance of this view by scholars is evidenced by its presentation in important textbooks and treatises. As far as I have been able to determine it has not been challenged.

The empirical investigation in this paper considers evidence on both of these variables—attention=interest, and support for foreign policy commitments.
Protest as a Political Resource
Authors: Lipsky Michael
Published: May 2006

The frequent resort to protest activity by relatively powerless groups in recent American politics suggests that protest represents an important aspect of minority group and low income group politics. At the same time that Negro civil rights strategists have recognized the problem of using protest as a meaningful political instrument, groups associated with the “war on poverty” have increasingly received publicity for protest activity. Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, for example, continues to receive invitations to help organize low income communities because of its ability to mobilize poor people around the tactic of protest. The riots which dominated urban affairs in the summer of 1967 appear not to have diminished the dependence of some groups on protest as a mode of political activity.

This article provides a theoretical perspective on protest activity as a political resource. The discussion is concentrated on the limitations inherent in protest which occur because of the need of protest leaders to appeal to four constituencies at the same time. As the concept of protest is developed here, it will be argued that protest leaders must nurture and sustain an organization comprised of people with whom they may or may not share common values. They must articulate goals and choose strategies so as to maximize their public exposure through communications media. They must maximize the impact of third parties in the political conflict. Finally, they must try to maximize chances of success among those capable of granting goals.
Institutional Solutions to the N-Prisoners' Dilemma
Authors: Orbell John M. , Wilson L. A.
Published: May 2006

The existence of N-prisoners' dilemmas (conflict between individual and collective rationality) is a standard justification for collectivizing decision making through the state, but there is little theory about how different institutions operate to “solve” such dilemmas. The efficiency of majoritarian democracy, “selfish dictatorship” and uncoordinated individualism is explored using a simple nine-person game. Majoritarian democracy is found to produce equilibrium outcomes at the maximum social product available when the opportunity costs of “cooperating” are less than half the magnitude of the externalities, but to produce no such equilibrium when the opportunity costs are greater than that. Our research draws implications for the role of information in constitutional design, and of altruism.
Committee Decisions under Majority Rule: An Experimental Study
Authors: Fiorina Morris P. , Plott Charles R.
Published: May 2006

This article reports the findings of a series of experiments on committee decision making under majority rule. The committee members had relatively fixed preferences, so that the process was one of making decisions rather than one of problem solving. The predictions of a variety of models drawn from Economics, Sociology, Political Science and Game Theory were compared to the experimental results. One predictive concept, the core of the noncooperative game without side payments (equivalent to the majority rule equilibrium) consistently performed best. Significantly, however, even when such an outcome did not exist, the experimental results did not display the degree of unpredictability that some theoretical work would suggest. An important subsidiary finding concerns the difference between experiments conducted under conditions of high stakes versus those conducted under conditions of much lower stakes. The findings in the two conditions differed considerably, thus calling into question the political applicability of numerous social psychological experiments in which subjects had little or no motivation.
Aristippus in and out of Athens
Authors: Holmes Stephen Taylor
Published: May 2006

This article has two purposes. The first is to show how some of the central principles of classical Greek political theory became anachronistic as a result of massive transformations in the underlying structure of European society. These principles, it is argued, were originally dependent on an empirical premise that the polity is a “whole” encompassing individual “parts,” or (stated differently) that the polity is identical with total society. This whole/part schematization of the polity seemed plausible in the ancient city since most sectors of polis life had political connotations or overtones. The same schema, however, became an archaism in modern Europe, chiefly because of the emphatic emergence of a distinction between state and society–one aspect of a more general increase in the structural differentiation of society. The second and closely related purpose is to explore the feasibility of a claim once advanced by Benjamin Constant: that the organizational transformations involved in the modernization of European society have created a novel rhetorical opportunity, the possibility of defending tyranny in the name of freedom and democracy.
Competition, Constituencies, and Welfare Policies in American States
Authors: Jennings Edward T.
Published: May 2006

This article examines the logic underlying standard formulations of the interparty competition hypothesis in the comparative state policy literature, suggests a reformulation which provides some new insights into the conditions under which we might expect state policies to change as a result of party characteristics, and undertakes an initial test of the reformulation.

I develop two propositions. The first is that party systems which divide the electorate along economic class lines will generate more generous welfare policies than party systems which do not so organize the electorate. The second is that within states with class-based electoral systems, change in welfare policy will be positively related to the degree to which the party or faction with lower- and working-class support gains control of government.

I analyze welfare policies of selected American states for the period 1938 to 1970. My analysis suggests that (1) the class basis of electoral politics does influence state welfare policies and (2) parties and factions which differ in their constituency bases produce different types of policies when they are in control of government.
The Division of Political Labor Between Mothers and Fathers
Authors: Jennings M. Kent , Niemi Richard G.
Published: May 2006

This paper starts from the premise that traditional views of political roles among married couples emphasize role-differentiation, leading to masculine superiority; more recent perspectives stress role-sharing, leading to equality. The implications for individual political participation and political socialization vary according to the prevalence of and conditions surrounding the two patterns. Interview data from a national sample of middle-aged couples reveal substantial equality with respect to command over political resources, attention paid to politics, and manifest political participation. Levels of equality remain high under a variety of controls. When inequalities do exist, male dominance is more common, but the extent of that dominance varies across the range of political labor. Superiority of either parent in one arena tends to occur in others also, suggesting fixed modes of behavior. The relative advantage in education and personal efficacy which one partner holds over the other vitally affects the political advantage. These factors and mother's employment status operate more strongly among working class than middle class couples. Age of children has no appreciable impact. To achieve political parity or superiority mothers ordinarily need extraordinary resources to overcome the built-in constraints of culturally-defined sex roles.
Short-Term Fluctuations in U.S. Voting Behavior, 1896–1964
Authors: Kramer Gerald H.
Published: May 2006

This paper develops several simple multivariate statistical models and applies them to explain fluctuations in the aggregate vote for the United States House of Representatives, over the period 1896-1964. The basic hypothesis underlying these models is that voters are rational in at least the limited sense that their decisions as to whether to vote for an incumbent administration depend on whether its performance has been “satisfactory” according to some simple standard. Because of data limitations, the analysis focuses on measures of economic performance, treating other aspects of an incumbent's performance, such as its handling of foreign affairs, as stochastic perturbations of the underlying relationship to be estimated. (Examination of residuals suggests this assumption is not unreasonable, at least during peacetime.) Possible effects of coattails from presidential races, of incumbency, and of secular trends in the underlying partisanship of the electorate are also taken into account. The models, estimated by maximum-likelihood methods, are found to be successful. Close to two-thirds of the variance in the vote series is accounted for, and the structural coefficients of the models are of the correct signs and of quite reasonable magnitudes. Economic growth, as measured by the changes in real per capita income, is the major economic variable; unemployment or inflation have little independent effect. Presidential coattails are also found to be of some importance.
Presidential Power versus Bureaucratic Intransigence: The Influence of the Nixon Administration on Welfare Policy
Authors: Randall Ronald
Published: May 2006

Many observers routinely assert the relative weakness of presidents before the bureaucracy. The research of this study, guided by a structuralist theory of organizations, provides evidence of the Nixon administration's power to change policy, even over the opposition of the bureaucracy, concerning the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. The study demonstrates that the management tools available to the president and top officials, when used adroitly, are more powerful than are generally presumed. That presidents can affix their indelible stamps on policy by short-circuiting the legislative process and dominating the bureaucracy is more than a remote possibility.
International Subsystems: Stability and Polarity
Authors: Haas Michael
Published: May 2006

One of the current controversies within international relations deals with the “stability” of bipolar as opposed to multipolar stratifications of world power. Morton Kaplan, in codifying the views of classical balance of power theorists, advances the view that multipolar systems are more stable than bipolar systems. Kenneth Waltz, sagely pointing to the relatively peaceful international arena since World War II, argues that a bipolar distribution of power can guarantee world stability. Many a priori arguments have been presented to buttress the Kaplan and Waltz hypotheses. In one of the most elaborate such formulations, the “interaction opportunity” hypothesis of Karl Deutsch and J. David Singer, the presence of stabilizing crosscutting alliances is postulated to be most likely within multipolar systems, which in turn are a function of the number of major powers and members of a system. In an attempt to bring the two opposing strands of theory into a larger framework, Richard Rosecrance more recently has suggested that bipolarity and multipolarity may each have their peculiar costs and benefits. Bipolarity, according to Rosecrance, is distinguished by (1) an absence of “peripheries,” such as areas for colonial expansion or neutral powers to woo; (2) all international behavior is highly politicized; (3) there are many crises; (4) changes in power confrontations are either significant or trivial, with no intervening shades of gray; (5) each pole is dominated by major powers highly motivated to expand their domains, willing even to incur brinksmanlike situations and hostility spirals; (6) no detente is possible. Multipolarity, on the other hand, is hypothesized to have (1) more interaction opportunities and thus less preoccupation (or obsession) with any one set of states; (2) fewer arms races; (3) more international conflicts; (4) the outcomes of international conflicts are harder to predict in advance; (5) changes in power confrontations have ambiguous consequences for the overall distribution of power. Rosecrance, therefore, urges a “bi-multipolar” arrangement that would combine the best features of both alternatives. The empirical questions and intriguing hypotheses so eloquently raised by Kaplan, Waltz, Deutsch, Singer, and Rosecrance have remained largely unexamined, however.
Explaining Institutional Success: The Case of Italian Regional Government
Authors: Putnam Robert D. , Leonardi Robert , Nanetti Raffaella Y. , Pavoncello Franco
Published: May 2006

Why do some new representative institutions succeed and others fail? This article tests several hypotheses about the ecology of institutional performance, drawing on a ten-year study of Italian regional governments. Institutional success is greater where socioeconomic development is more advanced, where the political culture is participant and sociable, rather than passive and parochial, and where social stability is greater; these three variables alone account for more than four-fifths of the variance in institutional performance. Of particular importance is the impact of historical patterns of social solidarity and political mobilization on contemporary institutional success.
The Ecological Fallacy Revisited: Aggregate- versus Individual-level Findings on Economics and Elections, and Sociotropic Voting
Authors: Kramer Gerald H.
Published: May 2006

Several aggregate-level studies have found a relationship between macroeconomic conditions and election outcomes, operating in intuitively plausible directions. More recent survey-based studies, however, have been unable to detect any comparable relationship operating at the individual-voter level. This persistent discrepancy is puzzling. One recently proposed explanation for it is that voters actually behave in an altruistic or “sociotropic” fashion, responding to economic events only as they affect the general welfare, rather than in terms of self-interested “pocketbook” considerations.

It is argued here that the discrepancies between the macro- and microlevel studies are a statistical artifact, arising from the fact that observable changes in individual welfare actually consist of two unobservable components, a government-induced (and politically relevant) component, and an exogenous component caused by life-cycle and other politically irrelevant factors. Because of this, individual level cross-sectional estimates of the effects of welfare changes on voting are badly biased and are essentially unrelated to the true values of the behavioral parameters of interest: they will generally be considerable underestimates and may even be of the wrong sign. An aggregate-level time-series analysis, on the other hand, will often yield reasonably good (if somewhat attenuated) estimates of the underlying individual-level effects of interest. Therefore, in this case, individual behavior is best investigated with aggregate- rather than individual-level data.

It is also shown that the evidence for sociotropic voting is artifactual, in the sense that the various findings and evidence which ostensibly show sociotropic behavior are all perfectly compatible with the null hypothesis of self-interested, pocketbook voting.
The Political Bases of Citizen Contacting: A Cross-National Analysis
Authors: Zuckerman Alan S. , West Darrell M.
Published: May 2006

This article examines a mode of political participation that frequently has been overlooked—individual efforts to obtain assistance from government officials. Using the seven-nation data set of Verba, Nie, and Kim, we develop and empirically evaluate alternatiave models of citizen contacting. Our first model draws on variations in the distribution of social and economic resources to explain the likelihood of contacting. The second focuses on differences in political ties to locate those most likely to contact government officials. We find greater support for the political ties model. Persons active in political parties and election campaigns are the most likely to engage in citizen contacting. Without political ties, few poor or uneducated persons would ask officials for assistance. We conclude by noting the more general theoretical and normative implications of our study.
Foreign Affairs and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates “Waltz Before a Blind Audience?”
Authors: Aldrich John H. , Sullivan John L. , Borgida Eugene
Published: May 2006

While candidates regularly spend much time and effort campaigning on foreign and defense policies, the thrust of prevailing scholarly opinion is that voters possess little information and weak attitudes on these issues, which therefore have negligible impact on their voting behavior. We resolve this anomaly by arguing that public attitudes on foreign and defense policies are available and cognitively accessible, that the public has perceived clear differences between the candidates on these issues in recent elections, and that these issues have affected the public's vote choices. Data indicate that these conclusions are appropriate for foreign affairs issues and domestic issues.
Piety, Justice, and the Necessities of War: Thucydides' Delian Debate
Authors: Orwin Clifford
Published: May 2006

Political philosophy or science first emerged in response to certain contradictions in political life that thoughtful citizens could not but face. Nowhere is this process better portrayed than in Thucydides, who of all great students of politics remains closest to the perspective of practice, at the same time showing how practice points us toward a place of critical distance from politics. The Greek political world, like all prescientific worlds, acknowledged certain gods who, as rulers, made demands on humankind. But because these were neither the only, nor in practice the most insistent, demands made on humankind, the question necessarily arose as to the gods' status in the event of conflict—as to the relative necessity of these divine demands. From this followed the further question—crucial for the emergence of political science or philosophy—as to whether the political world was ruled indeed by the gods or by necessity.
Rights, Boundaries, and the Bonds of Community: A Qualified Defense of Moral Parochialism
Authors: Dagger Richard
Published: May 2006

One effect of the cosmopolitan turn in recent political philosophy is that widely held beliefs and intuitions are being called into question. My purpose here is to scrutinize one of these beliefs—that we should attend to the needs of our compatriots before the needs of the foreigners—from the perspective of a rights-based theory. After sketching a theory that takes the right of autonomy as its cornerstone, I consider four arguments that might support the intuition that compatriots take priority. Only one of the four is sound, I conclude, and even this argument, the argument from reciprocity, supports the intuition only in a highly qualified form.
Expectations and Preferences in Presidential Nominating Campaigns
Authors: Bartels Larry M.
Published: May 2006

Survey data from the preconvention waves of the 1980 National Election Study are used to estimate the effect of expectations about who will be nominated on respondents' own preferences. The results confirm the conventional belief that bandwagons play an important role in nominating campaigns; at the same time, they suggest that the dynamics of the nominating process may be more subtle than simple bandwagon models would indicate. First, preferences are strongly and consistently projected onto expectations, making the relationship of central interest a reciprocal one. Second, the bases of candidate choice appear to change systematically with political circumstances. In close, volatile campaigns, support for bandwagon candidates (like George Bush in early 1980) is based largely on favorable expectations and on relatively general, diffuse political evaluations (e.g., “leadership”). By comparison, when expectations about the nomination are very one-sided, their impact on preferences approaches zero, and more specific, substantive political evaluations become increasingly important.
The Power of the States in U.S. Presidential Elections
Authors: Rabinowitz George , Macdonald Stuart Elaine
Published: May 2006

The Electoral College is a uniquely American political institution, yet its impact on both the power of the American states and the relative power of citizens living in different states is not well understood. Game theorists have broached the state power problem exclusively in terms of the size of each of the states. Empirical investigators have been less systematic, basing their analyses solely on which states have been close in a single election. In this paper we present a model of state power which combines the idea of the pivotal player from game theory with an empirical model of state voting. In doing so we provide a theoretically derived and empirically meaningful assessment of state power in presidential elections. We then trace the implications of the power of the states for the relative power of individual voters, finding large disparities between voters from different states.
Explaining African Coups d'Etat
Authors: Jackman Robert W. , O'Kane Rosemary H. T. , Johnson Thomas H. , McGowan Pat , Slater Robert O.
Published: May 2006

Comparative political analysts seek empirical generalizations which will hold water across systems and over a period of time. Yet, modeling important political phenomena over more than a handful of countries is still rather unusual. One focus for substantial comparative research has been the coup d'état—an irregular change of governmental leadership by force—in African countries. Scholars who have engaged in this research find they have various conceptual and methodological differences of opinion. In thisControversy, Robert Jackman and Rosemary O'Kane raise the issues in dispute. Their contentions are answered by Thomas Johnson, Pat McGowan, and Robert Slater. The exchange highlights important research issues without necessarily resolving them.
Potential Responsiveness in the Bureaucracy: Views of Public Utility Regulation
Authors: Gormley William , Hoadley John , Williams Charles
Published: May 2006

To whom is the bureaucracy responsive? A study of public utility regulation in 12 states helps to answer that question. To assess potential responsiveness in the bureaucracy, we examine indicators of attitudinal concurrence. Whether we look at issue priorities or value priorities, public utility commissioners are more responsive to staff members and utility company executives than to governmental consumer advocates. However, bureaucratic responsiveness to citizens varies unexpectedly across stages of the policymaking process. Concurrence between commissioners and citizen activists is relatively high on issue priorities, relatively low on value priorities. Success at the agenda-setting stage does not guarantee success in policy formulation. In practice, agenda responsiveness may be little more than an exercise in symbolic politics.
Churches as Political Communities
Authors: Wald Kenneth D. , Owen Dennis E. , Hill Samuel S.
Published: May 2006

Most studies of contextual influences on political attitudes and behavior have treated geographical areas as the operative social environment. As early research on social influence processes noted, the conditions that promote consensus among inhabitants of a common environment are likely to be present in formal organizations that encourage face-to-face interaction. Churches possess many of the characteristics that should maximize behavioral contagion and are thus fertile ground for the dissemination of common political outlooks. This expectation is tested by assessing the link between theological and political conservatism in 21 Protestant congregations. The theological climate in the churches is found to contribute strongly to the members' political conservatism over and above the personal commitment of respondents to traditional Christian values and a variety of social and attitudinal variables. As churches constitute the single most widespread form of voluntary organizational affiliation in the United States, their potential political impact appears to be considerable.
Collective Goods and Future International Collaboration
Authors: Ruggie John Gerard
Published: May 2006

Certain institutional changes in the advanced industrial societies are said to be leading toward postindustrial, if not postmodern, forms of sociopolitical organization. Scientific and technological developments are usually seen as the generating forces of such change, a major dimension of which is thought to be a growing pre-occupation with goods and services which are produced and/or purchased communally.

There exists a parallel phenomenon in the modern interstate system, namely, a growing incidence of joint production and joint regulation by states, much of it in scientific and technological fields. Factors both leading to and limiting such joint activities, and some consequences of different kinds of collective decision making and administrative arrangements for the interstate system, are here explored.

It is an explicit aim of this inquiry, in addition, to avoid the evolutionary or functionalist assumptions informing much of the contemporary study of international organization. Instead, I argue that the processes of international organization are generated by how and why states choose from among alternate modes of performing tasks, both national and international, under varying conditions of possibilities and constraints. The bulk of the article develops and illustrates permutations of this basic posture.

The analysis suggests a number of future modifications of the modern interstate system, and of the modern state as an actor in that system. But these modifications share little with the kinds of international arrangements and structures past theories have led us to expect.
Hawks and Doves, Isolationism and Political Distrust: An Analysis of Public Opinion on Military Policy
Authors: Modigliani Andre
Published: May 2006

Recent studies of public opinion on Vietnam reveal a surprising positive association between socioeconomic status (SES) and support for “tougher” military policies. In an effort to extend and understand such findings, this study reanalyzes several public opinion surveys conducted during the Korean War. The demographic correlates of military policy preferences are found to be similar to those reported for the Vietnamese War, but the Korean data qualify the proposition that higher SES is associated with support for “tougher” policies in two respects: (1) policy preferences of the Korean public did not appear to be organized on a simple “soft-to-tough” dimension—those who supported escalation were only slightly more likely than average to oppose disengagement; (2) while SES was positively associated with opposing disengagement, it was not associated with supporting escalation. Factor analyses of several surveys reveal two distinct, orthogonal dimensions that underlay military policy preferences: an “isolationist-to-interventionist” dimension associated with opposition to disengagement; and a “trust-to-distrust of the Truman Administration” dimension associated with support for escalation. Respondents are subdivided into four types in accordance with their positions on these dimensions. The demographic characteristics and military preferences of the four types are analyzed, and the overall findings arc discussed with reference to Vietnam as well as public opinion on military policy more generally.