bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Presidential Action and Public Opinion about U.S. Nicaraguan Policy: Limits to the “Rally ‘Round the Flag” Syndrome
Authors: Bowen Gordon L.
Published: May 2006

The Reagan-Bush Administration vigorously pursued a “Reagan Doctrine” of aiding anti-communist freedom fighters worldwide, in no place with more controversy than toward the anti-US Sandinista Government of Nicaragua. Why, then, would the new presidency of George Bush quickly have agreed to defer asking Congress for military aid to the Contras, have agreed to send only humanitarian aid instead, and have agreed to permit four separate congressional committees each to determine whether any aid at all should be continued? Unravelling this odd turn of events can help us better to understand the under-rated influence of public opinion on American foreign policy.

Most of us assume the public usually to follow presidential leadership when it comes to foreign affairs. Indeed, though very few truths are undisputed when political scientists discuss Americans' opinions on questions of public importance, one accepted inference—borne out by much scientifically-verified evidence—is the “rally ‘round the flag” syndrome. The syndrome is simple: presidential popularity in public opinion polls rises when a president acts decisively toward an international crisis. These changes in Americans' stated opinions have been measured in international crises for several decades.

“Rallies” occur only when special “crisis” conditions are met. These crisis situations usually involve threats to America which are (1) remote from the everyday experience of Americans, and (2) involve threats about which the president personally informs the public, usually over the dramatically effective medium of television, and (3) involve decisive—and usually military—response at the president's direction.
The Significance of the 1992 Election
Authors: Lipset Seymour Martin
Published: May 2006

The 1992 election was influenced by a number of factors. The personalities, or characteristics, of the candidates clearly played a role, as did the kind of campaign they ran. Economic conditions were particularly important. However, it is interesting to note that statistical models by economists predicting election results, which emphasize economic trends, were less successful in 1992 than in previous years. Political scientists were more successful.

Models and Perceptions

Four years ago, Ray Fair, an economist at Yale, was hailed for an incredibly accurate prediction. Applying a model that did not include data more recent than six months before the election, he anticipated the outcome of the 1988 contest within .3 of 1%. This model did not include Willie Horton or even Dukakis. It simply analyzed the way in which parameter data anticipated support for the incumbent and the opposition. Other economically based models were also quite accurate.

Successfully applying such models is enough to make journalists and politicians ill, as it suggests that everything they do or write about is useless—that the outcome of elections is determined by pre-existing structural factors, not by candidates, campaign tactics, or ideology. This time Fair was wrong! He predicted that Bush was going to win, since the economy was really not that bad. The 1991-92 downturn was more moderate than the Reagan 1981-82 recession, or the Carter 1977 decline, while the misery index—unemployment plus the inflation rate—was much worse in 1979-80. But Bush was never able to get this message across.
The End of Mega Constitutional Politics in Canada?
Authors: Russell Peter H.
Published: May 2006

On October 26, 1992, the Canadian people, for the first time in their history as a political community, acted as Canada's ultimate constitutional authority—in effect, as a sovereign people. In the referendum conducted on that day, a majority of Canadians in a majority of provinces, said “No” to the Charlottetown Accord proposals for constitutional change.

Though the referendum was only consultative and not legally binding, nonetheless the governments that supported the Accord—and these include the federal government, all ten provincial governments and the two territorial governments, plus organizations representing the four groupings of aboriginal peoples (status and non-status Indians, Inuit, and Metis)—will not proceed with ratification of the Accord in their legislative assemblies. The politicians will respect the vox populi.

The referendum may have killed more than the Accord. It may very well be the last time this generation of Canadians attempts a grand resolution of constitutional issues in order to prevent a national unity crisis. If in the next few years Canada plunges once again into the constitutional maelstrom, it will be because it is confronted with an actual, not an apprehended, crisis of national unity.
A Review of Herbert Simon's Review of My View of the Discipline
Authors: Lowi Theodore J.
Published: May 2006

Dear Professor Simon:

It is an honor to be read, and read carefully, by someone of your distinction. But since you missed the major premise of my March 1992 essay, it is virtually impossible to engage in a point-by-point rebuttal. In fact, few of your propositions I'd care to rebut, not only because they are irrelevant to my argument but also because I tend to agree with you. After all, I am a product of your work of the 1940s and early 1950s, as I am of the writings of the various Chicago political scientists you singled out for praise—having read their every word, including yours, and having studied with some of them as a student and served with some as a colleague. I contributed to the revival of Gosnell's Machine Politics—Chicago Model with a foreword (1968), in which I said, among other things, “It is a masterpiece in the imaginative use of aggregate data in the study of political phenomena. A direct predecessor to the work of V. O. Key, this study is unexcelled to this day as an effort to understand political behavior in its institutional setting” (vii).
The Twenty-Seventh Amendment and Constitutional Change by Stealth
Authors: Strickland Ruth Ann
Published: May 2006

The process of how to amend the U.S. Constitution is the least discussed and least examined aspect of the Constitution. The vagaries surrounding the amendment process were highlighted in 1992 as the Twenty-Seventh Amendment gained momentum and eventual ratification.

Compensation of Members of Congress: The Twenty-Seventh Amendment

As one of the original proposals accompanying the Bill of Rights, and first proposed in 1789, the congressional pay raise amendment was included in order to limit the ability of Congress to change the compensation of its members. It was proposed by James Madison and later passed by both houses of Congress. The amendment stated: “No law, varying the compensation for the services of senators and representatives, shall take effect until an election of representatives shall have intervened.” Three state conventions, concerned that members of Congress might arbitrarily grant themselves salary raises, proposed that no salary improvements should occur before the next election of representatives (Livingston 1956).
Political Parties and Representation: The Case of Japan
Authors: Pempel T. J.
Published: May 2006

Japan, the non-Western world's first country to introduce and continue a parliamentary system of government, and one of the most stable democracies in the industrialized world today, provides an excellent case for the study of political parties and representation.

—It was the first non-Western country to introduce a parliament in 1890 and mass male suffrage in 1925.

—Political parties and popular elections were an important basis for governance in the period prior to World War II, and have been the sole basis for the selection of Japan's governments since then, making Japan one of the few non-Western examples of electoral representation.

—Japan today, despite free elections and a competitive multiparty system, has had an unbroken string of governments formed exclusively by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party since that party's formation in 1955, making Japan the best example of uninterrupted conservative rule among the advanced industrialized democracies.

—There are enough similarities and differences in Japan's electoral and party systems to make it an informative, but not totally anomalous, comparative case study for those generally interested in these phenomena.
Reforming Campaign Ads
Authors: West Darrell M.
Published: May 2006

Dissatisfaction with paid campaign advertisements in recent elections has generated heartfelt pleas for fundamental change in the ways elections are conducted. Following the example of Australia and until recently West Germany, some have called for an outright ban on television campaign ads in the United States. Others more worried about the effect on last-minute deciders have suggested the application of the French model, where ads are banned during the closing weeks of the campaign (Schoenbach, 1987: Penniman and Ranney, undated).

These calls undoubtably reflect the deep frustration felt by viewers over the poor educational quality of advertisements in the United States. But it is far too simple to blame ads for these deficiencies. The problem of political commercials is as much a function of campaign structure and voter reactions as candidate behavior. Structural and attitudinal changes in the nature of campaigns have loosened the forces which used to restrain elite strategies. The rise of a mass-based campaign system at a time when candidates have powerful means of influencing viewers creates big incentives for media campaigns. Voters are bombarded with spot ads precisely because of the short-term possibilities evident in recent races (West, 1991a; 1991b).

Since the problem of advertisements goes much deeper than ads themselves, it is unlikely that the elimination of television ads would solve the problems which plague American elections. After all, nonsubstantive appeals by candidates did not originate with television ads in 1952. Fluffy rhetoric has a long tradition in American politics (Jamieson and Campbell, 1988).
New Thinking and New Foreign Policy Under Gorbachev
Authors: Zwick Peter
Published: May 2006

New thinking (novoye myshleniye) is the foreign policy component of Gorbachev's systemic reforms, which include the more familiar perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). These three elements of reform are integral and mutually supportive: new thinking in foreign policy contributes to the restructuring of the Soviet economy, and domestic economic reform and political openness influence the implementation and direction of Soviet foreign policy. Therefore, new thinking in foreign policy must be understood in the larger context of Mikhail Gorbachev's vision of the Soviet future, rather than merely as a revision of certain aspects of Soviet international behavior.

As with perestroika and glasnost, Gorbachev has had a difficult time translating “new thinking” into new policy. Internal political resistance, systemic inertia, and ideological obstacles have hampered the implementation of all Gorbachev's reforms, but the implementation of “new thinking” in foreign policy has encountered the additional obstacle of a skeptical international audience that must be convinced by Soviet deeds that new thinking is more than declaratory policy. The problem for Gorbachev is that he must simultaneously convince the world that his new thinking is, in fact, “new,” and his comrades that new thinking is consistent with the fundamental principles of Marxism-Leninism.

After four years in power, Gorbachev is beginning to face the ideological, political, and economic inconsistencies and contradictions of perestroika, glasnost, and new thinking. It is now clear, for example, that perestroika of the economy will not result from bureaucratic restructuring but must include a fundamental change in the role of the market in pricing, allocation, and production decisions.
A China Witness
Authors: Elkin Stephen L.
Published: May 2006

In the seven weeks from later April to early June China has displayed to the world—and to itself—politics at its best and worst. It is in the comparison of the two that the true horror of what has occurred can be seen. The worst is easy to specify. It is the massacre of unarmed civilians by soldiers who have been called on to defend those reluctant to give up power, and to aid them in a struggle with other leaders who would displace them.

Politics at its best can perhaps be suggested by describing some scenes that I witnessed during my stay in Beijing throughout the month of May. In one of the many peaceful demonstrations, journalists marched under a banner saying “We don't believe what we write.” In a different demonstration, school teachers proudly marched at the head of a column of their junior high school students, all of whom were dressed up in school uniforms. Perhaps most suggestive and poignant of all were the parents holding up their babies to the marchers as if to say, you are the future and I show you my allegiance by displaying those who have the most to gain from your courage.

All of these moments were embedded in an outpouring of good will, good humour, discipline and inventiveness the likes of which the world has rarely if ever seen. It was as if the students wished to prod the political leadership by the sheer force of their example of restraint and courage.
‘Exceptionalism’ in American Politics?
Authors: Shafer Byron E.
Published: May 2006

American politics seems constantly surprising even to many of its most attentive domestic observers. It seems nearly unfathomable to many of their foreign counterparts. Is there something about American politics which really is distinct, even unique, in world perspective? Something which implies that this politics can be understood only in terms of the peculiar characteristics of the larger political system in which it occurs? Something which justifies the old term for such nearly untranslatable peculiarity—something “exceptional”?

If there is an exceptionalism to American politics, it must by definition be found in one or more of three areas. It must be found in the public attitudes at the base of that politics, especially in what people want from politics or in how they think about the process of politicking. It must be found in the key organizations in the middle of that politics, those which link individual citizens to the institutions of government, especially political parties and interest groups. And/or it must be found at the very top in those institutions of government themselves, in distinctive conformations or distinctive operation.

To anticipate the analysis here: I believe that the array of American national institutions of government qualifies as exceptional. I am sure that the key arrangement structuring the nature and behavior of our parties qualifies. And I suspect that a peculiar and wide-spread attitude toward politics is additionally distinctive, though I am least confident about this.
Climbing Down from the Hill: The Decline of America and the National Crisis in Economic Policymaking
Authors: Richter Stephan-Gotz
Published: May 2006

For a period of more than three years, from spring 1985 through the summer of 1988, the U.S. Congress labored hard to come to terms with the nation's staggering trade deficit. Since the voluminous ‘Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988’ was passed into the law, much of the ensuing policy debate has focused on whether or not this legislation is protectionist in nature. Far less attention has been given to an issue which deserves at least as much attention: What lessons regarding the future of economic policy making can be drawn from this lawmaking experience?

A Major Case of Legislative Miscarriage?

An argument can be made that, after all the agitation, commotion, and self-flagellation which went into the legislative exercise, the one tangible result of the 1988 Trade Act was the preservation of the status quo ante. Viewed in a critical light, one could go further and argue that what really happened was the performance of a national rite. This rite involved a large group of players who each invested vast amounts of political energies into the effort of making a new trade law. The problem was that their inputs traveled along largely predetermined paths and primarily satisfied the actors' symbolic needs, while it only obscured a national policy issue urgently awaiting resolution.

As the standard textbook of American politics has it, Congress is to respond to every pressure group knocking at its door. Members indeed introduced a myriad of provisions which covered every angle of trade policy, from the regulation of imports of aluminum, titanium, sugar and photo albums down to the outright prescription of world market shares as well as of interest and exchange rate policies abroad.
Institutional Conflict Over Presidential Appointments: The Case of Clarence Thomas
Authors: Shefter Martin
Published: May 2006

The fight over the confirmation of Clarence Thomas for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court was another round in a struggle between Congress and the White House for control over the government of the United States. The intensity of the battle over the Thomas nomination reflected the Republican determination to counter the attacks upon presidential appointees that Democrats in Congress staged in the course of this struggle.

The conflict over the Thomas confirmation became so fierce largely because it turned into a two-way battle. The Democratic attack upon Thomas was met by a Republican counterattack upon Anita Hill, who accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Republican senators evidently decided that the time had come to fight efforts by Democratic Congresses to curtail the power of Republican presidents.

Battles between Congress and the presidency have become central to American politics in recent years. As the Republicans tightened their hold on the White House and the Democrats their grip on Congress, each party came to despair of gaining control of the opposition's bastion by defeating it in the electoral arena. Instead, each party sought to strengthen the institution it normally controls while weakening the one it regarded as beyond its reach electorally (Ginsberg and Shefter 1990).

In particular, Congress attempted to reduce the president's ability to gain power from his control over the national security apparatus by sponsoring a number of legislative restrictions on the foreign policy powers of the president—the War Powers Act, the Arms Export Control Act, and the Foreign Commitments Resolution.
On the Unpredictability of the Supreme Court
Authors: Baum Lawrence
Published: May 2006

The United States Supreme Court today is an object of intense speculation. After two decades of anticipation by Court watchers, the Court may be ready to enter a new era in its history. Commentators debate what the new era will look like, if it does indeed develop. Will the Court reject altogether its mission of protecting individual liberties? If so, what new role will it adopt?

Because the Supreme Court is an important and intriguing institution, such speculation is understandable. But ultimately, even the most perceptive observers have a limited capacity to predict the Court's direction as a policy maker. These difficulties in prediction reflect a fundamental reality about the Court: its path is not the inevitable product of the political and social forces that shape its behavior. Rather, less systematic factors can influence the Court's path, making the Court's role as a policy maker largely upredictable.
Coalitions, Cues, Strategic Politics, and the Staying Power of the Religious Right, or Why Political Scientists Ought to Pay Attention to Cultural Politics
Authors: Leege David C.
Published: May 2006

The decade of the 1980s began with a former naval officer and Southern peanut farmer, a deeply religious, Sunday-school teaching president being unseated by a former sportscaster and union leader, a divorced and remarried Hollywood movie star-turned-politician. The religious right claimed credit for the defeat of that born-again Baptist, convinced that Ronald Reagan and his Republican party would restore the social and moral values that had crumbled, especially under liberal Democratic administrations. It was a heady period for evangelical leaders, quiescent on the public scene, some say since the 1920s, others say the 1950s. They were concerned again not simply with the salvation of souls but the transformation of society. Mastering the new instruments of television and direct marketing appeals, evangelical leaders had money, organizational moxie, and mass followings. They put their moral agenda into the national legislative arena—and came up with few victories.

The decade ended as ironically as it began. First, “The Fall”: televangelists Bakker and Swaggart were discredited for their moral peccadillos; faith-healer Oral Roberts, for his lack of business acumen. Televangelist Pat Robertson tried for the presidency but discovered that he could not even gain the support of evangelical leaders. Jerry Falwell, who endorsed George Bush rather than pentecostalist Robertson, chose to disband his Moral Majority and emerged with a much weaker, seldom noticed organization.
The 1990 Congressional Election Results and the Fallacy That They Embodied an Anti-Incumbent Mood
Authors: Alford John R. , Hibbing John R.
Published: May 2006

Given all the hype in 1990 about an “anti-incumbent” mood that was supposed to have swept the electorate, it is not too surprising that immediately after the congressional elections of that year most pundits claimed to see clear evidence of this mood in the results. But it is surprising that now, as we approach the next election day, more relaxed and objective analysis has not corrected this erroneous view of what actually transpired in 1990. Thus, before this misconception becomes an indelible part of conventional wisdom, and before the events of 1992, which may include something closer to an authentic anti-incumbent mood, are compared to a mistaken view of the events of 1990, we would like to offer an alternative and, we would argue, more accurate interpretation of the 1990 congressional elections.

November 6, 1990 was to have been the day the fortifications of entrenched incumbents—relentless constituency service, massive warchests, and intimidation of prospective quality challengers—were overwhelmed by the poorly-armed but righteously indignant masses. These masses were incited by brave challengers who concocted clever taunts about the insular and haughty denizens of Washington castle life. These hated insiders, it was said, were surrounded by doting courtiers, undeserved privileges, and unbelievable treasures, and the outsiders were finally going to have their revenge.
The ‘Minimax Blame' Rule for Voter Choice: Help for the Undecided Voter on Novembere, 1988
Authors: Wuffle A.
Published: May 2006

Consider an election in which all the choices are dismal, albeit some perhaps even more dismal than others. How should voters in such an election choose whom to vote for or whether or not to vote?

It has been suggested (Riker and Ordeshook, 1973; cf. Weisberg and Grofman, 1981) that a voter is unlikely to vote if no choice exists whose election would yield him any appreciable degree of delight. Such a voter is alienated from the system. Consider, now, an election whose outcome is virtually certain. The conventional wisdom is that such certainty as to outcome should depress turnout, since ceteris paribus, voters who come to see their vote as making no difference should be less likely to vote than when they saw themselves as having a chance, however remote, to influence the outcome.
Ronald Reagan—Another Hidden-Hand Ike?
Authors: Greenstein Fred I.
Published: May 2006

Name the president.

He was enormously popular during his eight years in the White House. In contrast to Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Carter, he not only entered but also left office riding high in the polls. Yet when he stepped down the experts who make it their business to observe presidents closely did not join in the public adulation. The verdict of the Washington watchers was that he had been a passive participant in his own presidency, remaining disconnected from day-to-day politics and policy.

For the young this can have been only one president—Ronald Reagan. But those whose political memories reach back to the 1950s may recognize that he could also have been the only other two-term president in the post-New Deal era—Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The description of Ike as out of the loop in his own presidency was unquestioned at the time that Eisenhower left office. When Arthur Schlesinger asked a panel of distinguished students of the presidency to rank 31 American presidents in terms of greatness, they placed Eisenhower 21st—a tie with Chester A. Arthur (Schlesinger, 1962).
Toward a Stupidity-Ugliness Theory of Democratic Electoral Debacles
Authors: Sigelman Lee
Published: May 2006

For the fifth time in its last six tries, the Democratic Party has managed to parlay its massive lead in party identifiers into another presidential election debacle. One shameless Democratic apologist, groping for a face-saving excuse, has hit upon the bizarre idea that the Democrats lose presidential elections time after time because, being rational political calculators, they find it in their partisan self-interest to do so (Erikson, 1988). This tortured theory overlooks the obvious: Democrats are too stupid to calculate their self-interest.

Although this conclusion may seem unduly harsh, science has proven that Democrats are significantly dumber than Republicans, even when the differing social bases of the two parties are held constant (Sigelman, 1988). This intellectual deficit helps explain why, time and time again, the Democrats find themselves hopelessly out-organized, out-strategized, and out-maneuvered—in short, out-thought—by the wilier Republicans.
A Post-Electoral Era?
Authors: Ginsberg Benjamin
Published: May 2006

We frequently discuss consultants, in what we might call their “causal role” in the political process—the consequences or effects of political consulting. I would like to turn to the other side, that is to look at consultants as an effect rather than a cause. This connects the rise of political consultants with the decline of the political party.

If you think about the role of consultants in contemporary politics you can't separate consultants from the other pieces of the new politics in the United States: media, polling, direct mail and all the other factors that have formed and transformed American politics. This is part of the on-going transformation of American politics that is related, in turn, to the long-term decay, decline, and collapse of party organization in much of the United States. Political consultants have penetrated all of American politics. In upstate New York where I live there are towns that I haven't even heard of where consultants are working. They may be in the dairy business in off years. Why have consultants penetrated even the political boondocks in America? The obvious reason is that party organization throughout the United States has reached a state of total decay and collapse.
Juridical Democracy versus American Democracy
Authors: Wilson James Q.
Published: May 2006

The End of Liberalism by Theodore Lowi was and is an important book, large in conception, bold in execution, and substantial in influence. It is a provocative and influential statement of some of the problems of pluralism, or “interest-group liberalism.” One of those problems is the inadequately constrained delegation of legislative problems to administrative agencies, leading to “the atrophy of institutions of popular control” (p. 86). The atrophy occurs because administrators exercise their discretion in ways set by agency-group relationships rather than by popular choice (p. 90). To solve this problem, Lowi calls for a return to “juridical democracy,” which means, in part, limiting federal action “to those practices for which it is possible to develop a clear and authoritative rule of law, enacted democratically and implemented absolutely” (p. 271). One way of achieving that limit is by asking the Supreme Court to declare “invalid and unconstitutional any delegation of power to an administrative agency that is not accompanied by clear standards of implementation” (p. 298).

Earlier this had been the view of Albert V. Dicey, the great British legal scholar. Dicey argued against the emerging administrative law on grounds that, by removing the defense of individual rights from the common courts, it would permit the growth of the welfare state. Lowi does not mention Dicey, and there is no indication that he is opposed to the substance of the welfare state.
Socialism, Capitalism, and Militarism: A Reply to Dye and Zeigler
Authors: Parenti Michael
Published: May 2006

In the December 1989 issue of PS, Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler argue that socialist nations are inherently more militaristic than capitalist ones because they are “driven by the bureaucratic imperatives of a society organized on collective coercive principles.” In contrast, “capitalist states, whether authoritarian or democratic, rely principally upon markets to organize societal activity. Markets organize people for private enterprise and rely upon voluntary exchange to carry on these enterprises” therefore, capitalist nations are inherently less militaristic (Dye and Zeigler 1989: 812). Below are some major differences I have with their position.
Alternative Theories of the Policy Process: Reflections on Research Strategy for the Study of Nuclear Waste Policy
Authors: Jenkins-Smith Hank C.
Published: May 2006

The contribution of multiple theories of the policy process stems, in part, from the identification of alternative concepts and relations that provide distinct—though often partially overlapping—explanations of (and predictions about) policy development. Thus the competing theories single out alternative concepts as critical to the policy process, and specify widely different hypotheses for test. When theory-building is at a rudimentary level, as is generally the case for the study of the policy process, the alternative theories may provide enriching supplemental insights and hypotheses that, if confirmed, lead to better theory. In that spirit, this article provides some illustrations of the application of alternative theories to an ongoing policy dispute over adoption and development of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) as a testing and storage facility for defense nuclear wastes. My focus is on how the alternative theories emphasize different sets of concepts (and therefore data) and hypotheses, and on some of the implications for research design. These comments are based on my own preliminary research on the WIPP issue, and are meant to be illustrations and suggestions, rather than conclusions, about the policy process regarding the WIPP.
The Market as Censor
Authors: Paul Diane B.
Published: May 2006

In 1920, John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner reported the results of an experiment with an eleven-month old infant, “Albert B” (Watson and Rayner, 1920). Their study of this single subject was methodologically flawed and produced ambiguous results. Nevertheless, it became the psychology textbook classic case of conditioned emotional responses. With the exception of Pavlov's dogs, probably no story has been cited more often than that of “Little Albert.”

I was led to the Little Albert story as the result of an earlier study of genetics textbooks. Some years ago, I began work on a history of the “nature-nurture” controversy. One aspect of this project involved an analysis of textbook treatments of the genetics of intelligence. I had expected to find a rough continuity of views from the 1920s until the late 1970s, when the effects of the Cyril Burt scandal should have been fully felt in genetics texts. (The claim of a high heritability for I.Q. was supported primarily by Burt's [fabricated] studies of separated identical twins. Leon Kamin identified serious problems with Burt's results in 1974, although actual fraud was not proved until 1979 [see Kamin, 1974; Hearnshaw, 1979].)
Realism Ancient and Modern: Thucydides and International Relations
Authors: Clark Michael T.
Published: May 2006

When you're stymied on the measurement of one of your critical variables, put that project aside and write another essay on what Thucydides really meant (Singer 1975).

The trouble with Classical Realism is that it is difficult to distinguish … dialectical insight from a refusal to define concepts clearly and consistently, or to develop a systematic set of propositions that could be subjected to empirical tests (Keohane 1983).

In the study of ancient Greek democracy, Thucydides' account of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians surely deserves a privileged place. As a cardinal instance of the genre Hegel (1975, 14) called original history, Thucydides' work provides a uniquely direct point of contact with Athenian democracy in its most radical and imperial—phase: the chief figures of that work “express the maxims of their nation and of their own personality, their consciousness of their political position and of their moral and spiritual nature, and the principles that underlie their designs and conduct.” Thus, from Thucydides we get much more than a reconstruction of events. We also get access to the ancient Greeks' own understanding of the world they made and destroyed.
Decolonization in the Former Soviet Borderlands: Politics in Search of Principles
Authors: Gleason Gregory W. , Buck Susan J.
Published: May 2006

Marx is reputed to have said that “there is nothing so practical as a good theory.” Seventy-odd years of Soviet theorizing have left little useful practical theory behind, as demonstrated by the transformations currently taking place in Russia's borderlands. As the Soviet Union crumbles, the successor states face a unique and troubling situation. For over 70 years, their administrative structures have been centralized; their economies, transportation and communications systems, and the physical infrastructure all controlled from Moscow under a coherent ideological regime. The successor states find themselves adrift ideologically and administratively, but the centralized physical infrastructure remains.

How are these states to design new administrative structures? How are they to cope with the utter failure of their theoretical principles? How may they cooperate in the use of the physical systems while establishing their political independence? Soviet administrative theory—the “scientific theory of socialism” as it was called—has been unable to provide even the most basic guidance for the process, and western administrative theory is not equipped to address the special problems of the new states. The insights of the neo-institutionalists can provide guidelines for these urgent problems.
Why Not Swing? Measuring Electoral Change
Authors: Butler David , Van Beek Stephen D.
Published: May 2006

Over the last forty years the concept of swing has transformed the interpretation of elections, first in Britain and later in Australia, India and other countries. But Americans have been oddly reluctant to apply this most useful of simplifying formulas to election reporting or to the analysis of voting trends.

Swing is a device for reducing to a single statistic all the complex movements in party support between one election and another. It offers a quick and easily comprehended indication of trends and of the extent to which voting behavior differs from one area to another.

On election night in Britain, as soon as the broadcasters announce the first constituency counts, they also report the local swing, the net percentage movement between Conservative and Labour since the previous election, and on this basis they suggest what will be the final outcome ‘if the swing in the remaining seats resembles those already declared.’ Although this health warning is dutifully repeated, in fact the projection from the early results has always given a remarkably accurate pointer to the overall division of seats.
The Perestroika of Soviet Studies: Thinking and Teaching About the Soviet Union in Comparative Perspective
Authors: Zwick Peter
Published: May 2006

President Gorbachev has fundamentally changed the Soviet political system. Whether Gorbachev survives another month, year, or decade, the Soviet system will not return to the party-state command economy that preceded his tenure. Although the Soviet changes have not yet resulted in the total repudiation of the communist system, as in Eastern Europe, and a neoconservative retrenchment is possible, those of us who study and teach Soviet politics must respond to these developments with a perestroika of Soviet studies and “new thinking” about the Soviet Union.

Concepts and techniques formerly alien to Soviet studies must become integral components of our analysis. Even if we cannot completely discard such concepts as totalitarianism, Marxism-Leninism, and democratic centralism, we must begin to include theories of pluralism, constitutionalism, and federalism. Patently, oldstyle Kremlinology and “black box” analysis must be supplemented if not replaced by public opinion polling, studies of electoral behavior, and legislative roll-call analysis. Rather than thinking and teaching about the USSR in isolation or in the narrow context of comparative communism, we should look at Soviet politics from a broader comparative perspective that draws on theories and examples from Western and Third World systems. Quite simply, the restructuring of how we teach and study Soviet politics must be as fundamental and as sweeping as Gorbachev's perestroika of the Soviet system.
Building Democracy in Estonia
Authors: Taagepera Rein
Published: May 2006

“How to Recognize Democracy” and “How to Recognize Political Parties”—such were some of the newspaper articles I published after arriving in Estonia in November 1990. People expected the new freely elected Supreme Council (parliament) to pass laws quickly and with large majorities, and parties to have card-carrying mass memberships. Besides the ever-present threat of suppression by the Kremlin, democracy in Estonia was challenged internally by such superdemocratic expectations, rooted both in the earlier Soviet fake democracy and a reaction against its actual concentration of power.

Parliamentary democracy had been introduced, but parliament members were prohibited from becoming cabinet ministers. Unrealistically high quorum and majority requirements risked paralyzing legislative action, now that disagreement and absence had become possible. Perfectly sound democratic practices were denounced as dictatorial. The parliament produced major legislation at a breakneck pace, compared to its Western counterparts, yet was widely seen as too slow. Newly formed centrist parties were thought to be deficient because they lacked mass membership in the Marxist image.

While relentlessly knocking down Soviet-style authoritarian patterns, especially in attitudes toward women, I increasingly found myself reassuring Estonians that they were further along in building democracy than they dared to believe.
Interactive Problem Solving: An Approach to Conflict Resolution and Its Application in the Middle East
Authors: Kelman Herbert C.
Published: May 2006

For more than 25 years, my colleagues and I have been developing and applying an unofficial, academically based, third-party approach to the analysis and resolution of international and ethnic conflicts, which I have come to call interactive problem solving. The approach is derived from the seminal work of John Burton (see Burton 1969, 1979, 1984; Kelman 1972). It is anchored in social-psychological principles and follows a scholar/practitioner model. Our practice is informed by theoretical analyses and empirical studies of international conflict, social influence, and group interaction. The experience gained in practice, in turn, contributes to theory building and to the evaluation and refinement of our intervention model. The work thus represents an integration and continuing interaction between practice, research, and theory building.

The fullest—in a sense, the paradigmatic—application of the approach is represented by problem-solving workshops, which bring together politically influential members of conflicting parties in a private, confidential setting for direct, noncommittal communication. Workshops are designed to enable the parties to explore each other's perspective and, through a joint process of creative problem solving, to generate new ideas for mutually satisfactory solutions to their conflict. The ultimate goal is to transfer the insights and ideas gained from these interactions into the political debate and decision-making processes in the two communities.

Problem-solving workshops are not negotiating sessions and they are not intended to simulate and certainly not to substitute for official negotiations.
Budget Blues
Authors: White Joseph
Published: May 2006

Budget politics has always been an obstacle to adopting national health insurance. The questions of budget politics—the risk or size of deficits and the size of government—have a conservative effect. In any country, very few people would endorse deficits for their own sake. In America, support for larger government on principle, displacing the market, has rarely had close to majority support and has surely been diminishing. Defining social policy expansion as a budget issue is a standard tactic for persons opposed to the policy.

The events of the 1980s have in many ways made budget politics more of an obstacle to sensible health care reform—which I define as reform that insures all Americans, yet keeps this country from opening an even wider lead on the international field in the race to spend on health care.

During the 1960s a portion of elites such as economists, the press, and politicians would at least defend deficits in principle under some circumstances. Misinterpretation of the events of the 1970s, exaggerated arguments by economists who think that hyperbole is required in the political arena, the possibility that the 1980s deficits favored Republican constituencies, the fact that a Republican president was in office for those deficits, and the unprecedented scale of the deficit in full-employment terms during peacetime, combined in the 1980s to commit Democratic politicians, economists, and opinion leaders to at least the rhetoric of deficit-reduction. President Clinton has continued the process.
Information at Your Fingertips: Online Services for the New User
Authors: Permaloff Anne , Grafton Carl
Published: May 2006

It is now possible while located in an office or home to search large journal collections, a Central Intelligence Agency world map database and world fact book, federal grant programs, law library catalogs, United States Supreme Court decisions, public opinion poll data, hundreds of general and specialized library catalogs, and many other information sources via computer. This article is intended for those who presently make little use of computers but who want to become familiar with the advantages and likely problems associated with performing such searches using one of the databases available online (by telephone line) on the Internet and five commercial online services. The article also discusses other uses for telephone-computer combinations such as electronic mail (e-mail).
Replication as Regulation
Authors: Fowler Linda L.
Published: May 2006

over replication is comparable in many respects to controversy among policy analysts about the ends and means of regulation. Proponents of replication seek to provide the collective good of free-flowing information and to sanction the negative externality of sloppy scholarship. Similarly, opponents of replication claim property rights in the data and variables they have created through hard work and ingenuity. As with disputes over regulatory policy, the fundamental sticking point is whether the benefits of mandatory replication to the community of political scientists outweigh the costs of compliance to individuals.
Replication and Non-Quantitative Research
Authors: Golden Miriam A.
Published: May 2006

In “Replication, Replication,” Gary King convincingly argues that publications by political scientists should adhere to what he calls a replication standard. Although King's article explicitly embraces qualitative as well as quantitative research, the policy statement that he suggests editors and reviewers of books and journals endorse exclusively imposes standards on studies based on quantitative research. Qualitative work is treated in a simple sentence and one that enforces no standards: “Authors of works relying upon qualitative data are encouraged (but not required) to submit a comparable footnote that would facilitate replication where feasible.”
Coding Style and Good Computing Practices
Authors: Nagler Jonathan
Published: May 2006

Replication of scholarly analysis depends on individual researchers being able to explain exactly what they have done. And being able to explain exactly what one has done requires keeping good records of it. This article describes basic good computing practices and offers advice for writing clear code that facilitates the task of replicating the research. The goals are simple. First, the researcher should be able to replicate his or her own work six hours later, six months later, and even six years later.
Is Clinton Doomed? An Early Forecast for 1996
Authors: Norpoth Helmut
Published: May 2006

Forecasting elections may be impossible, but no more so than resisting the temptation to try. As citizens following a campaign, we all indulge in private guesses about who is going to win electoral contests. Some go further and engage in illegal acts—unless done through the services of the Iowa Electronic Market—and bet money on election outcomes. Numerous political scientists have invited fame, but also ridicule, by designing sophisticated models to forecast elections; readers of PS are no strangers to those efforts. Students of elections can hardly escape this tempting opportunity any more than they can escape elections themselves. No phenomenon in our discipline comes in such a regular, precise, and verifiable form as an election.

As Republican hopefuls announce bids to run for president in 1996, while Bill Clinton is pondering his strategy for reelection, political scientists resume their tinkering with models to predict the outcome of the 1996 presidential election. Those forecasts, however, will not arrive until two or three months before election day, when the most up-to-date readings for the various predictors are available. Some would argue that such early forecasting is presumptuous any-how, since it ignores the whole general election campaign. Others will complain that those forecasts arrive too late to have more than curiosity value.
The Voting Rights Act: Disfranchisement, Dilution, and Alternative Election Systems
Authors: Engstrom Richard L.
Published: May 2006

The Voting Rights Act (VRA) (79 Stat. 667) is widely regarded as the most effective piece of civil rights legislation enacted in the United States. Adopted initially in 1965 to protect the voting rights of African Americans, it was expanded in 1975 to protect the voting rights of specified language minorities: Hispanice, Native Americans, Native Alaskans, and Asian Americans.

A number of important changes in American politics can be traced directly to the VRA. The first is the dramatic increase in the number of minority voters. The major barriers to minority group members registering to vote and casting ballots have been removed as a result of the Act; consequently, minority disfranchisement is only rarely an issue today.

The expansion of the minority electorate was critical to another important change, the increase in the number of minority elected officials. Minority voter support has usually been essential to the electoral success of minority candidates. Growth in the minority electorate in the United States was followed by an increase in minority officeholders. The magnitude of this increase, however, has been dependent on additional VRA provisions.