bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Local Politics and Decision-Making: a Hypothesis-Generating Case Study
Authors: Alexander Allan
Published: January 2009

In a recent article on the comparative method in the study of politics,1Arend Lijphart discusses the place of the case study and suggests that there are six types of case study, four of which may be characterized as theoretical, two as atheoretical. The first of the theoretical types is the hypothesis-generating case study. Of studies of this type, Lijphart says: ‘They start out with a more or less vague notion of possible hypotheses, and attempt to formulate definite hypotheses to be tested subsequently among a large number of cases.2The study upon which this paper is based satisfies entirely the first part of this description in that it began with a ‘more or less vague notion of possible hypotheses’ and it is hoped that the more definite hypotheses which were generated will be worthy of the large-scale testing that will eventually lead to the construction of a general theory of non-partisan civic government in Canada.
‘American Democracy Reconsidered’ - Some Comments
Authors: Newton K.
Published: January 2009

L. J. Sharpe's two-part article ('American Democracy Reconsidered’ in this Journal, III [1973], 1–28,129–68) is an important and controversial one. He questions many of the orthodox interpretations of American urban politics, suggests that some of the supposedly well-established observations about British and American contrasts may boil down to bits of conventional wisdom, and raises many points about social justice and democracy, which are at the centre of everyday practical politics but which sometimes slide from view in modern ‘value free‘ social science. The article will hopefully attract the critical attention of American writers, but meanwhile here are some reflections from a slightly different point of view on some of the themes of the article.
Political Cleavage: A Conceptual and Theoretical Analysis
Authors: Zuckerman Alan
Published: January 2009

Abraham Kaplan in his ‘paradox of conceptualization’ draws attention to the fundamental problem of concept-formation: ‘The proper concepts are needed to formulate good theory, but we need a good theory to arrive at the proper concepts’. On this view, concepts are neither right nor wrong but are more or less useful; their utility is determined by the twin and mutually dependent requirements of empirical precision and theoretical importance. ‘Empirical precision’ has to do with a concept's ability to ‘carve up’ the world of phenomena without unnecessary ambiguities; ‘theoretical importance’ has to do with the utility of a concept in the development of statements of wide explanatory and predictive power.
Voting Structures and the Square Root Law
Authors: Fielding Geoff , Liebeck Hans
Published: January 2009

This Note is concerned with the problem of how to distribute votes in an assembly so that all interested groups are ‘fairly’ represented. It is clear that in many cases present arrangements are open to criticism. For example, in the United Nations General Assembly both China (population 732 million) and Norway (4 million) are represented by one vote. The situation at the British Labour Party annual conference is in direct contrast to this. Here votes are allocated to the individual unions and constituency Labour parties in proportion to their membership (rounded up to the nearest thousand), so that the Transport and General Workers' Union (membership 1,000,000) exercises 1,000 votes, whereas the 25,000 members of the National Union of Seamen are represented by only twenty-five votes. Since the total number of votes at the conference is about 6,000, it might be felt that the large unions exercise a disproportionate amount of influence.
Crewe's Test of the Embourgeoisement Thesis
Authors: Hope Keith
Published: January 2009

Ivor Crewe begins his paper on the affluent worker research by giving clear expression to a number of objections which may be brought against that work. He then goes on to make two tests of the embourgeoisement thesis which Goldthorpe, Lockwood and their colleagues called into question. This Note concerns itself with only one of the two tests, namely that based on correlations of residuals.
Representation in the American National Conventions: the Case of 1972
Authors: Kirkpatrick Jeane
Published: January 2009

This paper is concerned with representation. More specifically, it is concerned with the theory and practice of representation in the American national conventions of 1972 – with how the conceptions of representation that dominated the parties in 1972 are related to older views and institutions. In what ways was the Democratic convention of 1972 representative, and of whom? In what ways was the Republican convention representative, and of whom? How is the representation of biological traits related to the representation of opinion? Why is it so difficult to construct a representative national convention? These are the questions discussed in this paper.
European Elite Attitudes Revisited: The Future of the European Community and European-American Relations
Authors: Lieber Robert J.
Published: January 2009

‘I don’t give a s— about the lira.‘These, as well as comparable sentiments about the pound sterling expressed by a recent U.S. President and preserved on tape for posterity, may symbolize a growing American lack of interest in Western Europe. In turn, European views of the United States may now be less exalted than at any time in the past three decades. In a period when misunderstandings, apocalyptic visions and contradictory judgements abound regarding the future of European unity and European-American relations, it is worth examining some evidence of recent European elite attitudes in order to facilitate more reliable judgementsor at least less impressionistic ones.
The Pluralist Case Not Proven: Hewitt on Britain
Authors: Morriss Peter
Published: January 2009

It is some fifteen years since Dahl and his associates inaugurated the ‘issue’ approach to studying power; it is therefore somewhat surprising that two recent articles by Christopher Hewitt1comprise the first attempt at applying this method to Britain. But over the past decade and a half Dahl's approach has come in for some severe criticisms; it is unfortunate that Hewitt does not update the method to meet some of these criticisms - indeed his articles are, in some respects, a step backwards from Dahl.
Policy Analysis: A Note of Disbelief
Authors: Minns Richard
Published: January 2009

In his review article on policy analysis [Hugh Heclo, ‘Policy Analysis’, this Journal, II (1972), 83–108], Heclo describes public policy as ‘necessarily at the heart of the political scientist’s concern’. But because public policy ‘is concerned with metachoices’ – ‘choices as to how others shall make choices in whatever sphere public authority is intervening’ – ‘the study of policy therefore necessarily straddles a number of previously distinct academic disciplines’.‘However, I wonder to what extent political scientists are willing to take part in a ‘coherent “interdiscipline” of policy studies’. Heclo quotes Vernon Van Dyke’s warning that the prospect of this for political scientists is ‘appalling’.2 If we examine firstly what political science has to offer in policy analysis and secondly what policy analysis itself has to offer, I feel that Van Dyke will suddenly find himself with massive support.
A Remark on Similarity Conditions
Authors: Wagstaff Peter
Published: January 2009

Kramer has shown how singularly restrictive are all ‘similarity’ conditions which guarantee transitivity of majority rule by limiting the family of admissible preference orderings (so-called exclusion restrictions). For suppose, plausibly, that social alternatives are points in an open convex policy space S ⊂ Rn, n ≥ 2, and that voters' preferences, {Rl)1=1…‥ l, are representable by continuously differentiable semi-strictly quasi-concave utility functions ul,. Suppose further that at a single point x ε S, any three voters' utility functions have gradients ∇ul(x), ∇uf(X), ∇uk(x), no one of which can be expressed as a positive linear combination of the other two, and no two of which are linearly dependent. Then all exclusion conditions must fail on S.
Political Socialization and Intergenerational Stability in
Political Attitudes
Authors: Marsh David
Published: January 2009

Political socialization research has been characterized by a number of poorly documented but widely accepted generalizations. In particular, it has been assumed that indetgenarational consistency in political attitudes is the usual, if not the inevitable, outcome of the political socialization process in Western democracies.
A Model of the ‘permanent Revolution’
Authors: Enos J. L.
Published: January 2009

This paper presents a theory of the competition of forces and the resolution of conflict over what system of government a country is to adopt. In scope it extends from the prospect of a novel system within a single state to the distribution of this system among all states; in method it considers political events as elements in a single continuous process, the culmination of which provides the resolution of the conflict. The process described in the paper — the sweep of a revolutionary ideology through resisting countries — is the analogue of the epidemic spread of a disease among a human population, a model which has been thoroughly studied.
Party Identification and Party Stability
Authors: Goot Murray
Published: January 2009

'Party identification’ has been variously described: as an anchor; as constituting ‘psychological membership’ of, or ‘psychological identification’ with the party; and so on. The compilers of a recent collection of political attitude measures, published under the auspices of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center (where most of the election analyses since 1952 have pivoted about the concept), even describe party identification as ‘probably the most important attitude variable in the field of political behavior’.² But the term itself and its connotations are misleading. Even where they do not suggest a borrowing from the technical vocabulary of psychoanalysisγ they tend to define away a set of questions that need to be answered: a preference for one party compared to what?; an intense preference, in what sense and compared to whom?4

In 1955 Professor H. L. A. Hart put forward the claim that ‘if there are any moral rights at all, it follows that there is at least one natural right, the equal right of all men to be free’, and this thesis and the arguments he adduces in its support have been thought sufficiently important for the article to be reprinted in a recent book of readings on political philosophy for students and general readers. The truth of Hart's thesis as stated is clearly meant to be independent of the moral stance of the asserter. Yet to my mind it is untenable as it stands, and could be modified only at the expense of taking up a particular moral position.
Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures: A Comment
Authors: Brown Jonnathan F.
Published: January 2009

James E. Alt ('Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures’ in British Journal of Political Science No. I, pp. 49–62) gives as his reasons for choosing to study county boroughs, ‘not only because of the fact that they are urban centres, the uniformity of their electoral procedure, the high level of competition (on terms of contested seats), their financial independence from other local authorities, and their service omnicompetence’. This is a standard explanation for the predominance in research on local government of the county borough to the neglect of other authorities. One positive gain of re-organization may be that future research will give a more rounded picture of local government performance and practice.

I am grateful to Mr. Brown for quoting enough of my correspondence to necessitate my writing rather little at this point. A great deal of research done on the American states suggests that such variables as party control of legislatures do not explain variations in spending very well. In Britain the assumption is frequently made that each local authority has so many unique features that to attempt to make broad-scale comparisons is either useless or impossible. My article was written to suggest that neither of these notions should be applied uncritically, at least to some services provided by English and Welsh county boroughs.
Rejoinder
Authors: Alt James E.
Published: January 2009

I am grateful to Mr. Brown for quoting enough of my correspondence to necessitate my writing rather little at this point. A great deal of research done on the American states suggests that such variables as party control of legislatures do not explain variations in spending very well. In Britain the assumption is frequently made that each local authority has so many unique features that to attempt to make broad-scale comparisons is either useless or impossible. My article was written to suggest that neither of these notions should be applied uncritically, at least to some services provided by English and Welsh county boroughs.
Strategic Tensions in the Scale of Political Analysis: an Essay for Philomphalasceptics
Authors: Sproule-jones Mark
Published: January 2009

Tucked inside Thomas Kuhn's masterly little book is a statement to the effect that scholarly endeavours, that have yet to fix upon an accepted paradigm, display continual and often exacerbatic confrontations between rival wings each trying to press upon the other the virtues of their particular mode of scientific procedure. In Kuhn's own words: ‘Because it [the awareness of anomaly] demands large scale paradigm destruction and major shifts in the problems and techniques of normal science, the emergence of new theories is generally preceded by a period of pronounced professional insecurity.’ It seems as if political scientists have taken this point to heart. Rarely does an issue of a journal appear without some restatement or reappraisal of the ‘State of the Discipline’ and related problems.² Apart from the obvious point that political scientists must be spending inordinate amounts of time in such debates, and so perhaps neglecting other fruitful activities — a point which my economist friends would characterize as opportunity costly — there is a concomitant danger that the political world may begin to appear only analyzable with the aid of abstruse, esoteric and above all novel paradigms. Theoretical reasoning may be sustained on the basis of novelty rather than perspicuity.
The Impact of the Campaign on the Results of Local Government Elections
Authors: Bochel J. M. , Denver D. T.
Published: January 2009

In a recent article in this journal1 we reported the results of an experiment designed to investigate, amongst other things, the effect of canvassing and polling-day activity upon the results of local government elections. On the basis of our data we argued that thorough canvassing before polling day and ‘knocking up’ on the day produced an appreciable increase in turnout. We also showed that, in a situation in which only one party organized the election thoroughly, this party would benefit disproportionately from the higher turnout; that is, it would receive an increased share of the vote.
The Measurement of Political Deference — Some Australian Data
Authors: Ray John
Published: January 2009

The concept of political deference as an explanation for English voting behaviour has been both a popular one and one that has recently come under attack. Writers who have found it useful in explanation include McKenzie and Silver and Nordlinger. Writers who have attacked it include Parkin and Kavanagh. A somewhat intermediate position is taken by Jessop.
Beliefs About Democracy Among English Adolescents: What Significance Have They?
Authors: Marsh David
Published: January 2009

In the last decade, a large volume of research and speculation concerned with the beliefs and attitudes of the mass and the elite about democracy, has been published.1 Parallel with this trend has been a growing interest in political socialization. It is not surprising, therefore, that some work has concentrated on the attitudes of adolescents towards democracy and the patterns of development of such attitudes.2 The genesis of this interest can be found in the belief that a knowledge of what people in a democracy think about democracy can help us understand its operation and predict its future development. My aim in this Note is to look briefly at two pieces of work which are concerned with English adolescents in order to discuss the intellectual limitations of frameworks devoted to exploring this interest.
The Impact of British Domestic Air Pollution Legislation
Authors: Scarrow Howard A.
Published: January 2009

Fifteen years have elapsed since the British Parliament enacted legislation designed to curb air pollution. The 1956 Clean Air Act appeared seven years in advance of comparable American legislation and well before the quality of the environment became a matter of world-wide concern. In view of the fact that Queen Elizabeth I had complained about smoke pollution in London, or that nineteenth-century novelists had penned vivid portraits of London's smoke and fog, the 1956 Act should perhaps be viewed as being at least a century late in appearing. Nevertheless, the Act did mark a distinctive policy innovation, particularly with regard to those provisions relating to smoke pollution from domestic sources. An analysis of the impact of those provisions will be the subject of this paper.
Fiction as Political Theory: Joseph Conrad's ‘heart of Darkness’
Authors: Spegele Roger D.
Published: January 2009

Do novelists have something to say about politics? By raising the question in such a starkly rhetorical way it is tempting to respond, ‘Yes, of course, novelists (at least some of them) do have something to say on a wide variety of subjects which traditionally fall under the rubric of political thought’. One could quickly give examples: Tolstoy's devastating critique of military leadership in War and Peace, George Orwell's penetrating analysis of the reality of totalitarianism in 1984 and Jean Paul Sartre's portrait of a whole society in a state of imminent collapse in Le Sursis. With a little time for reflection it would surely not be difficult to expand this list to several hundred titles. But if the novelist is credited with having political thoughts or ideas it is rather odd to find so little systematic analysis and interpretation of those ideas by political scientists.² Why is this the case? For some political scientists perhaps the reason lies in their explicit acceptance of models of explanation which approximate those of the physical sciences. They wish to constrict their range of inquiry into politics in the interest of developing better models for explaining and predicting political phenomena. There is no need to quarrel with this perfectly sound approach, except where it leads its proponents into a dogmatic rejection of other modes of inquiry.
On The Theory of Government Coalition Formation
Authors: Taylor Michael
Published: January 2009

Several attempts have been made recently to explain the formation of coalitions, especially government coalitions. Most of these theories assume that each of the actors involved (political parties in the case of government coalitions) uses only one criterion — such as the ‘size’ of the coalition or its ‘ideological diversity’ — in choosing between alternative coalitions. The criterion yields for each actor a preference ranking of all the possible coalitions. It is then assumed that the coalitions which are most likely to form are those which are ‘in equilibrium’ or ‘undominated’, a coalition T being undominated if there is no other coalition which is preferred by all its members to T.
Party Bureaucracy in Britain: Regional and Area Organization
Authors: Wilson David J.
Published: January 2009

In recent years the discipline of political science has focused much of its attention on political parties. In 1967 Professor L. D. Epstein noted ‘Writing about Political Parties in Western democracies is not a novel enterprise. It is several decades since political scientists, once preoccupied with constitutional forms, ceased to neglect parties’. In Britain, however, there remains much uncharted territory which requires detailed exploration by the political scientist. Much of the research carried out in Britain has concentrated on one of two levels of analysis, either national or local. Basic information about the intermediate branch of party organization, the regional and area structures, is lacking. As Professor J. Blondel has noted: ‘The eleven regions of the Labour Party and the twelve areas of the Conservative Party are rarely examined’. There is, therefore, a gap in our knowledge of political parties in Britain, a gap which Professor R. T. McKenzie readily acknowledged in his own study of British parties.
Does Local Party Organization Matter?
Authors: Pimlott Ben
Published: January 2009

Are local election campaigns just periodic acts of renewal, seasonal rites, or do they gain extra votes? Whatever may be true at general elections, low turnout is a reason for thinking that the scope for organization at local elections may be considerable.
'The Scientific Status of Political Science’ — Two Comments
Authors: Mclean Iain
Published: January 2009

Mr Ake is not the first mechanical determinist to argue for the possibility of a political science analogous to natural science. He is aware that there are objections to this position, but he scarcely meets them.
The Scientific Status of Political Science—another Comment
Authors: Postbrief Samuel
Published: January 2009

It seems odd that in 1972, political scientists still find it necessary to take the scientific pulse of their discipline, to exhort, cajole, and recommend, in the manner of a reproving family physician, their colleagues to ‘pay more serious attention to what the scientific study of a phenomenon entails’. Such an injunction is doubly regrettable when accompanied by a naive and confusing analysis of concept formation and confirmation in science, an account sure to encourage a dogmatic epistemology among social scientists who, in other circumstances (specifically, the opportunity to devote scarce time to careful study of the voluminous literature in the philosophy of science), would likely identify themselves with a more catholic epistemology and methodology. Mr Ake, in his account of the logic of scientific inquiry, glosses major issues in the philosophy of science, and, as a result, tacitly represents the community of scholars in the latter discipline as univocal with regard to fundamental issues of language, logic, and epistemology. I shall briefly try to state more of the case than Mr Ake has done, in a manner so that I might not too be accused of glossing (or, at least, of glossing with a minimum of distortion) the major issues he has raised in his note.
Elections and Politics in Single-party Systems: the Case of Kenya and Tanzania
Authors: Hyden Goran , Leys Colin
Published: January 2009

This paper sets out to consider two related questions: the significance of elections in single-party systems in underdeveloped countries, and the kind of study which political scientists have made of such elections.1
Doctors, Politics and Pay Disputes: ‘pressure Group Politics’ Revisited
Authors: Marmor Theodore R. , Thomas David
Published: January 2009

Studies of medical politics usually emphasize one of the following types of inquiries: (a) analyzing the internal politics of medical organizations, as with Oliver Garceau's classic study of the American Medical Association; (b) describing and explaining the roles individual physicians play in the political life of the community as voters, officials, or citizen participants in civic life; or, (c) assessing the impact of medical groups and organizations on public policy, particularly health policy. Harry Eckstein's widely known study of the British Medical Association is primarily a study of the third type, a discussion of the channels of influence, the tactics, and the effectiveness of the BMA in shaping public policy to its ends.
Cleavage, Aggregation, and Change in French Politics
Authors: Cerny P. G.
Published: January 2009

French politics have been undergoing a process of restructuring since the coming of the Fifth Republic in 1958. This process, like any process of political change, has been a complex one involving many factors and variables. The most obvious of these factors has been the one most commented upon by journalists and contemporary historians – the influence of General de Gaulle and his policies (the new constitution, foreign policy, etc.). What is only beginning to emerge from the academic debate is the relationship between Gaullist politics and the other variables.
Power in New Haven: A Reassessment of ‘Who Governs?’
Authors: Morriss Peter
Published: January 2009

One of the issues that has dominated American political science in the last twenty years has been the debate between those who assert that America is ruled by an elite, and those who believe that the pluralist model is a more accurate description. Robert Dahl, who is the most influential of the pluralists, has attacked ‘elitists’ on two fronts: negatively, he has argued that they misperceive the nature of power and are sloppy in their criteria for determining a ruling elite; positively, in Who Governs?,he has attempted to apply his own conceptualization of power to an American community and thus give empirical backing to the pluralist model.
Theory and the Study of Politics
Authors: Greenleaf W. H.
Published: January 2009

Political science or political studies or government is a rather odd subject, something of a mixture, as indicated by its diverse origins and the various influences which have moulded it. In our universities it was affected by and grew out of the study of the classics, philosophy, law and jurisprudence, economics, history, geography, literature, and so on. The list of pre-existing and established academic subjects which acted as a sort of hydra-headed godfather is considerable. An important impulse in its development was provided, too, by ideology and practical purpose. I have in mind here the ethos represented, for instance, by the Webbs and the foundation of the LSE, by the teaching of people such as Cole, Laski, Hobhouse, Tawney and, more remotely, Green and Jowett. The idea was that the subject was one of considerable pragmatic value and offered practical advantages to be achieved, perhaps, by some sort of reforming doctrinal emphasis. But the general effect of this variety of influences and stress is that there is no obvious or uniform academic focus: the subject seems (in terms of the intellectual and other forces at work) essentially eclectic. Nevertheless something like a traditional form did emerge. Generally there was a distinction between ‘institutions’ and ‘theory’, though naturally, given the dissimilar sources and influences mentioned, what has been comprised by these titles has varied somewhat. ‘Institutions’, for example, could cover a concentration on the formal machinery of government simply or it might expand to embrace parties, groups, the formation of opinion and so on.
Melting an Iceberg: The Struggle to Reform Communal Government in France
Authors: Mawhood Philip
Published: January 2009

National stereotypes have an understandable attraction, but are often a snare and a delusion. There has been no lack of commentators, in recent years, to remind the French that their structures of local administration were laid down at the Revolution, and have been little changed since. Fragmented into nearly 38,000 urban and rural communes, which vary enormously in population and wealth, the country has more local authorities than the other five states of the EEC and Britain put together. Most people, on both sides of the Channel, accept the idea of reform, but we find something of a contrast when we look at what has happened in practice. President Pompidou said at Lyon on 31 October 1970:
The Conservative Intervention in Doncaster Borough Politics
Authors: Robbins J. H. R.
Published: January 2009

Local government politics, particularly in urban areas, is now dominated by the major national parties though the process and causes of the take-over are not well documented. These notes, based on research in Doncaster, relate the process of the take-over of the anti-Labour position by the Conservative party and draw some possible conclusions.
Rejoinder
Authors: Newton K.
Published: January 2009

I shall deal with the points made by Denver and Hands in the order in which they raise them.

(1) Since my article tries to show that the relationship between marginality and both turnout and changes in turnout is, at best, a faint one, the assumption that ‘parties are more efficient in, or put greater effort into, marginal wards’ is in no way necessary to the argument. On the contrary, the assumption seems to be characteristic of those who claim a relationship between marginality and high turnout.

Denver and Hands point to accumulated evidence that concentrated efforts can have a dramatic effect on turnout. It would be foolish to deny that this can be the case or has, indeed, been the case, but the figures seem to suggest that the effect is usually small to insignificant. Most of their British evidence is based upon general not local election results. While there is clear evidence to show that turnout increases when a constituency becomes marginal (Brighton, Kemptown in 1966 is the classic case), the evidence about local elections is muddled and inconclusive, and has often been used to support conclusions which do not follow.
Support for Nation and Government Among English Children
Authors: Mccrone Donald
Published: January 2009

Political socialization refers to the developmental process through which political orientations and patterns of behavior are acquired by members of a society. Some persons acquire only limited political dispositions as they mature while others continuously elaborate and revise personal systems of political belief, value, motivation and activity as they pass through childhood arid adult life. In some part socialization of political orientations is conscious self-adaptation to an otherwise confusing social environment. More often, perhaps, it is the result of taking unconscious cues and examples from such convenient sources as family, school, peers and mass media of communication.
Some Social and Political Correlates of County Borough Expenditures
Authors: Alt James E.
Published: January 2009

In this article it is proposed to take another look at what have elsewhere been called ‘sources of diversity’ in British local government. The purpose is to show that across a sample of English and Welsh county boroughs, significant associations can be found between levels of expenditure in certain public service areas and both socio-economic and political variables. In particular, it will be shown that the presence of greater Labour representation on councils is associated in such areas as housing, education, and local health with higher levels and in the case of the police service with lower levels of expenditure.
The Principles of Majority and Proportionality
Authors: Steiner Jürg
Published: January 2009

It is only in connection with electoral law that the terms ‘majority principle’ and ‘proportionality’ are widely used. It seems to us meaningful to apply the two concepts also to the political decision-making process as a whole. In this broadened sense ‘majority principle’ and ‘proportionality’ denote certain models of conflict regulation. The majority model then denotes the regulation of conflict through majority decisions. The proportional model is much more difficult to describe: its basic characteristic is that all groups influence a decision in proportion to their numerical strength. Proportional conflict regulation is easiest to apply when a decision is concerned with several units, all of which are perceived as equivalent to one another. The classical case of this is the parliamentary election, for the parliamentary seats are perceived as equivalent to one another, so that by means of an appropriate electoral law they can relatively easily be distributed on a proportional basis among the different political groups. In Switzerland the election of the government by the parliament gives rise to an analogous situation, in that the seven seats in the Bundesrat (Federal Council) are perceived as equivalent to one another, so that they can likewise be relatively easily distributed on a proportional basis. In most other political systems the application of the rules of proportionality at the level of the government would entail greater difficulties, since the individual governmental posts are perceived as being of different value. The greatest difficulty presents itself when only a single office is to be filled, for example that of President. Here the application of proportional rules is only possible if rotation of office (i.e. proportionality in the temporal dimension) is brought into the reckoning, or if the disadvantage imposed on one group can be compensated by preference given to it in another decision.
Socialization of Support for Political Authority in Britain: A Long-term View
Authors: Stradling Robert
Published: January 2009

As Richard Rose has emphasized, the stabilizing factors in the British political system are many and strong. The political institutions and procedures have gradually adapted to changing circumstances; the society is homogeneous and integrated; and supportive attitudes have been successfully transmitted from generation to generation.
Councillors and Interest Groups in Kensington and Chelsea
Authors: Dearlove John
Published: January 2009

The majority of studies of local government in England have tended to be either detailed summaries of the statutes that have shaped the structures and functions of local authorities, or else they have been essays upon debatable problems of local government. The heavy stress placed upon the importance of law, and upon the extent of central control, has meant that there have not been systematic attempts to look at local authorities as policy-making bodies in their own right. Instead it has been argued that local authorities act as ‘agents’ administering and executing policies the broad lines of which have been worked out by the Central Government.
The CPSU Obkom First Secretary: A Profile
Authors: Frank Peter
Published: January 2009

The ‘average’ obkom first secretary is likely to be Russian or Ukrainian by nationality and will certainly have a higher education, with a reasonable chance that this has been acquired through, or supplemented by, the Party's own educational system. He34 will be (1966) about fifty years old, having joined the Party around the age of twenty-five in the period 1939 to 1945. First secretary status is likely to have come to him in 1961 or since 1963 and there is a 6:4 chance that he is a full or candidate member of the Central Committee (with the likelihood greatly enhanced if he is first secretary of a Russian obkom in the RSFSR).
Conflict in Western Perceptions of Change: Two Profiles of China
Authors: Boardman Robert
Published: January 2009

This paper is a preliminary exploration of a comparatively under-developed area of international relations. An inventory will be sketched which, it is suggested, includes beliefs about the modern Chinese political system that have been held in Britain in recent years. It is hoped that the provisional findings may help to inform future research strategies into perception and foreign policy.
On Being Unfair to Rawls, Rousseau and Williams or John Charvet and the Incoherence of Inequality
Authors: Masterson M. P.
Published: January 2009

John Charvet, in a recent article, charges various ‘attempts to make of equality a substantive principle of society’ with being ‘incoherent and self contradictory’ (p. 13). The unifying theme of Charvet's article is that certain contenders for equality do so in a manner that logically presupposes the assuming away of those elements of social life which entitle us to talk about individuals as ‘human beings at all, i.e. as beings possessing the attributes of humanity’ (p. 2). I wish to show how little justified these charges are.
Local Councils, Conflict and ‘Rules of the Game’
Authors: Grant W. P.
Published: January 2009

The concept of ‘rules of the game’ which regulate behaviour in a variety of political situations is one which has only been fully elaborated in recent years. As yet, ‘there has been little research systematically investigating the character and consequences of rules of the game’, particularly in relation to the operation of local political systems.
Political Culture, Political Structure and Political Change
Authors: Pateman Carole
Published: January 2009

InThe Civic Culture, perhaps the best known study of political culture, Almond and Verba say that ‘the relationship between political culture and political structure [is] one of the most significant researchable aspects of the problem of political stability and change’. I want to look at the way this relationship has been treated in one particular area, an area very relevant to questions of political stability and change in our own society; that is, in studies of political participation and apathy, especially research into the sense of political efficacy or competence. This is the area with whichThe Civic Cultureitself is largely concerned, and it is now well established that individuals low in a sense of political efficacy tend to be apathetic about politics; indeed, Almond and Verba consider the sense of efficacy or competence to be a ‘key political attitude’.
Politics in Kenya: The Development of Peasant Society
Authors: Leys Colin
Published: January 2009

The central question which this article attempts to raise is how we should understand the social structure that is emerging from the neo-colonial pattern of change in Africa, and what implications it has for politics. In its simplest form, the question is how far a stratification system is developing which is likely to make for class formation, class consciousness, and a politics of class struggle; or how far stratification can be contained within a predominantly peasant society, expressed politically in patron-client relationships.
Support for Nation and Government Among English Children: A Comment
Authors: Budge Ian
Published: January 2009

In ‘Support for Nation and Government among English Children’ (this Journal, Volume 1, pp. 25–48) Dennis, Lindberg and McCrone present extensive new evidence on British political socialization, which they associate with a general decline in support for the British system. So powerful is their interpretation of the evidence in relation to British stability, that there is a temptation to take it as the only logical consequence of the data reviewed. This Comment is intended to suggest that another interpretation is possible, that Britain may remain stable in spite of somewhat more critical attitudes among the young and indeed that such critical attitudes may contribute positively to stability.
Politics, Welfare, and Conservation: A Survey of Meta-planning
Authors: Allison Lincoln
Published: January 2009

A survey of the printed word, including local and national papers as well as weekly journals over the past ten years, would show an increasing proportion of column inches devoted to issues arising out of physical planning — those issues involving such concepts as ‘environment’, ‘conservation’, ‘amenity’ and ‘leisure space’. As a society, we are becoming increasingly preoccupied with our physical environment and on the whole this preoccupation takes the form of fears for the future. Such fears must begin with two propositions: that the environment (or at least some of its important aspects) is changing rapidly and that this is a matter which affects our general well-being.
A ‘Non-election’ in America? Predicting the Results of the 1970 Mid-term Election for the U.S. House of Representatives
Authors: Franklin Mark N.
Published: January 2009

One of the reasons for paying attention to the results of American mid-term elections is the hope that they will tell us something about the standing of the President's party with the electorate. But the electoral verdict is notoriously hard to interpret. Since the President is not himself standing for re-election, the verdict has to be inferred from the results of House and Senate races in which the national mood of the electorate may be obscured by local and temporary factors. This will be especially true in Senate races, with only some 33 seats at risk; but even in House elections, with some 435 seats at risk, a grave problem arises when one comes to compare the results with those of the preceding Presidential election. In every mid-term election since that of 1934, the party of the President, whether it be Republican or Democratic, has lost some of the seats it had won at the previous Presidential election. The net loss has been as low as four seats in 1962 and as high as seventy-one seats in 1938, but it has always occurred. Some loss to the President's party is considered to be ‘normal’ at mid term, and it is only to the extent that the actual loss diverges from the normal loss that implications can be drawn to the President's standing with the electorate.
Humanity before Justice
Authors: Campbell T. D.
Published: January 2009

Advocates of the welfare state often appeal to social justice as the moral basis of their claim that distribution of scarce resources ought to be made in proportion to the needs of potential recipients, at least to a certain minimum level of satisfaction. More generally, it is commonly assumed that need is certainly one and perhaps the main factor which ought to determine any just distribution of benefits and burdens. Thus, when the Labour Government abolished medical prescription charges under the National Health Service in 1964 the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, defended this step in the House of Commons by saying that it was ‘unjust’ to put such ‘burdens on the old and sick’ and he went on to cite the principle ‘from each according to his means, to each according to his needs’.
Marginality and Turnout in British General Elections
Authors: Denver D. T. , Hands H. T. G.
Published: January 2009

One of the most striking features of British general election results is the large variation in turnout from one constituency to another. In the 1970 election, for instance, turnout in Britain ranged from 44–9 per cent in Stepney to 85–3 per cent in Cornwall North. Moreover, the variation in turnout has become greater in recent years. While the mean turnout in general elections has tended to fall, the standard deviation of turnout has increased steadily from 5–3 in the 1955 election to 6–9 in the 1970 election. With the exception of the Nuffield studies, however, there have been few attempts to investigate this variation. Political scientists have concentrated instead on describing and attempting to explain differences in turnout between different social and demographic groups.
The First Proletarian Government
Authors: Rigby T. H.
Published: January 2009

My title is plagiarized from an article written by Trotsky's friend Adolf Ioffe for the second anniversary of the October Revolution.The ‘first proletarian government’ was not the Council of People's Commissars, approved by the Second Congress of Soviets at the time of the seizure of power ‘for the administration of the country up to the convening of the Constituent Assembly’, and described in the enabling decree as ‘the Temporary Worker and Peasant Government’. Before long the Council of People's Commissars (CPC), under Lenin's chairmanship, was indeed to become the key executive body in the Soviet regime, but some weeks were needed to acquire the necessary staff and procedures and even longer to establish effective control over the inherited machinery of administration and to convert it to the CPC's own purposes.
Nation Versus Region in Kenya: a Note on Political Learning
Authors: Court David , Prewitt Kenneth
Published: January 2009

In the literature on new nations, much attention has been given to the threat to nationhood posed by cultural and linguistic variations, rather less to the political repercussions of the regional inequality with which such variations are often associated. Regional disparities in resources and services inherited at independence tend to be compounded by policies which stress growth rather than equity. Given that such imbalances are not easily or speedily corrected by means of compensatory economic policies – even if the will exists – the political vulnerability of governments to regional disaffection is bound up with the question of whether it is possible for a common national outlook to be superimposed upon regional variation. The purpose of this brief Note is to test two hypotheses which relate to this question against Kenyan data and experience.
The Non-paradox of Swing
Authors: Gershuny J. I.
Published: January 2009

The ‘paradox’ of swing resides in the expectation that ‘if national influences were completely paramount,. swings would not involve identical fractions of the total vote or electorate in each constituency, but a fraction proportional to the prior strength of the party that was losing ground’. The mass of the evidence is however that swings are virtually equal across constituencies. The intention here is to demonstrate that the ‘prior proportional’ expectation is a mistaken one since it leads to a logical contradiction, and therefore that the phenomenon of equal swing is not paradoxical.
'American Democracy Reconsidered': a Note
Authors: Sharpe L. J.
Published: January 2009

Professor Greenstein has asked me to point out that his article, which I criticized in this Journal ('American Democracy Reconsidered, Part II and Conclusion’, III (1973), 129–67, p. 152), was a slightly condensed version of the original taken from P. Coulter, ed., The Politics of Metropolitan Areas. The original article appeared in The Annals of th American Academy of Political and Social Science, 353 (1964), and included the following
Political Community, Legitimacy and Discrimination
Authors: Laponce J. A.
Published: January 2009

Relating the notion of political community to those of discrimination and legitimacy — and, consequently, setting up a typology which will contrast communities by the criteria they use to distinguish members from non-members and by the location they give to legitimacy, placed either in a ruler or in a process — will be made easier if we consider first of all certain striking similarities which exist between the most private of social groups, the family, and the most public, the state, similarities which probably facilitate the transfer of the ideological constructs formed in infancy and childhood into the political expectancies and assumptions of adulthood. Let us distinguish communities defined through the brothers from communities defined through the father: communities centered around a leader from those centered on themselves. These contrasts will suggest to us a natural/ artificial continuum along which political communities can be ranked, those most resembling the family in their ideas about legitimate authority and legitimate membership being closer to the ‘natural’ end of the continuum. I will explain later the reasons for this distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, but I must at the outset make it absolutely clear that the use of these terms does not in any way imply an evaluative preference on my part.
Influence As Power: French Local Government Reconsidered
Authors: Milch Jerome E.
Published: January 2009

Administrative centralization has been a fact of life in France since Louis XIV. Political analysts have alternately praised the system as ‘the envy of all Europe’ and condemned it as ‘a glittering example of “blockage” in our society’. Very few of them have, however, made any serious effort to study the impact of centralized structures on local governments. The literature is remarkable for the absence of empirical research on the exercise of power by elected local officials in France.