Interpretations of electoral campaigns have pointed to two mutually exclusive strategies: candidates are expected to focus either on policy issues or on personal image. We argue, however, that social psychologists' notion of priming offers an empirically grounded and theoretically plausible campaign strategy for treating image and issues as interconnected strategic concerns. Based on both quantitative and historical analysis of John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign, we find that the candidate's policy positions were related to results from his private public opinion polls. Archival and interview evidence suggests that Kennedy deliberately used these popular issues to shape the electorate's standards for evaluating his personal attributes (rather than to win over utility-maximizing voters). We conclude that the study of priming offers one important approach to reintegrating research on candidate strategy and voter behavior.

We demonstrate the surprising benefits of legislative redistricting (including partisan gerrymandering) for American representative democracy. In so doing, our analysis resolves two long-standing controversies in American politics. First, whereas some scholars believe that redistricting reduces electoral responsiveness by protecting incumbents, others, that the relationship is spurious, we demonstrate that both sides are wrong: redistricting increases responsiveness. Second, while some researchers believe that gerrymandering dramatically increases partisan bias and others deny this effect, we show both sides are in a sense correct. Gerrymandering biases electoral systems in favor of the party that controls the redistricting as compared to what would have happened if the other party controlled it, but any type of redistricting reduces partisan bias as compared to an electoral system without redistricting. Incorrect conclusions in both literatures resulted from misjudging the enormous uncertainties present during redistricting periods, making simplified assumptions about the redistricters' goals, and using inferior statistical methods.

There is an implicit assumption behind advocating for more minorities or women in elected office, namely, that these officials will bring a new power and influence to their underrepresented groups. However, for women, this idealized viewpoint ignores the social dynamics that subordinate women's words and actions even in “well-balanced” male and female group interactions. Using transcribed verbatim transcripts of 12 state legislative committee hearings, this research analyzes the conversational dynamics of committee members, witnesses, chairs, and sponsors. Sex differences among committee members are highly significant, even after accounting for political factors and structural features of the hearing. In addition, male and female chairs do not conduct hearings in the same way, and these differences affect the behavior of witnesses and committee members. The findings suggest that as the proportion of women increases in a legislative body, men become more verbally aggressive and controlling of the hearing. Women legislators may be seriously disadvantaged and unable to participate equally in legislative policymaking in committee hearings.

International crises are modeled as a political “war of attrition” in which state leaders choose at each moment whether to attack, back down, or escalate. A leader who backs down suffers audience costs that increase as the public confrontation proceeds. Equilibrium analysis shows how audience costs enable leaders to learn an adversary's true preferences concerning settlement versus war and thus whether and when attack is rational. The model also generates strong comparative statics results, mainly on the question of which side is most likely to back down. Publicly observable measures of relative military capabilities and relative interests prove to have no direct effect once a crisis begins. Instead, relative audience costs matter: the side with a stronger domestic audience (e.g., a democracy) is always less likely to back down than the side less able to generate audience costs (a nondemocracy). More broadly, the analysis suggests that democracies should be able to signal their intentions to other states more credibly and clearly than authoritarian states can, perhaps ameliorating the security dilemma between democratic states.

Every possible relation between the distribution of power and the likelihood of war has been defended somewhere in the literature on international politics: war is least likely if power is distributed equally, war is least likely if power is distributed unequally, and the distribution of power has no effect on the likelihood of war. I try to settle this dispute by examining the effect of expectations about the outcome of war on the choice between war and negotiation. I argue that each of these mutually contradictory propositions can be derived from some plausible set of premises and thus that which one is correct depends on which set of premises best describes a situation. The most important factors affecting the relation between the distribution of power and the likelihood of war are (1) whether the terms of a compromise agreement that might be accepted in lieu of war affect the distribution of power between the antagonists and therefore the probability that the agreement will be enforced and (2) how many states' interests will be affected by the outcome.

Previous investigations of strategic voting equilibria in mass electorates have looked only at single-member districts. I shall investigate such equilibria in multimember districts operating under the single nontransferable vote system. What appear to be the most natural equilibria conform to the M + 1 rule, according to which strategic voting in M-seat districts produces exactly M + 1 vote-getting candidates in equilibrium, any others having their support totally undercut. This result provides the beginnings of a formal underpinning for Reed's recent extension of Duverger's Law to the Japanese case. The model also generates specific and empirically testable hypotheses concerning the exceptions to the M + 1 rule that one ought to expect in equilibrium. I test these hypotheses with Japanese data. Finally, the model also reveals a type of strategic voting that is specific to multimember districts. I use Japanese data again to explore the empirical importance of this kind of strategic voting.

The problem of choosing an indigenous official language for multilingual states in general and for Ghana in particular is treated as one of coordination in an n-person tipping game. Even with an assumption that the equilibrium outcome of all-English is deficient, the mechanisms for reaching an indigenous language solution are difficult to find. A lottery (a theoretically attractive approach to the solution of coordination games) is less attractive when applied to the issue of language coordination. Empirical data based on interviews from six different regions of Ghana show the limits and possibilities of the theoretic solution. Going back to theory, a mechanism for the successful promotion of an indigenous language outcome is proposed.

A causal model of relationships between structural properties of states, civic culture attitudes of the general public, and change in level of democracy is tested with cross-national data. The model permits inferences about the possibility of unidirectional or reciprocal causation between civic culture attitudes and democracy, controlling for macrosocietal variables such as economic development, income inequality, and subcultural pluralism. Most civic culture attitudes do not have any significant impact on change in democracy. One of them, interpersonal trust, appears clearly to be an effect rather than a cause of democracy. The exception is the percentage of the general public that prefers gradual reform of society instead of revolutionary change or intransigent defense of the status quo. Support for gradual reform has a positive impact on change in democracy, and it is unrelated to a country's years of continuous democracy—findings that support the hypothesis of a unidirectional civic culture effect on democracy.

The moral economic school, which has flourished among anthropologists, economic historians, and classicists, has received only limited attention from political scientists. This is perplexing, since at its core is to be found an intersection of debates over rational choice theory, the character of modern and premarket societies, and the normative standing of the market—in other words, over issues of formidable importance to our discipline. I seek to correct that neglect by mapping out and critically analyzing the moral economists' conception of modernity, their critique of the economic approach to human behavior and institutions, and their attempt to formulate an Aristotelian theory of the economy. These projects, though flawed, together are more than rich enough to provide fertile ground for political scientists and philosophers. I conclude with a discussion of the moral economists' effort to develop a normative theory of the economy together with a related critique of the market.

In the opening sentence of the Republic, Socrates recounts his intention to combine the operations of piety and theoretical speculation. Nevertheless, many readers regard Cephalus' subsequent abandonment of rational inquiry to perform certain sacred rites as a definitive indication of Plato's opinion that piety and philosophy are fundamentally incompatible. I find this interpretation untenable inasmuch as it depends upon the misidentification of Cephalus as the dialogue's representative of piety. I suggest that the true nature and philosophical significance of piety are indicated instead in Socrates' conversation with Cephalus' son, Polemarchus. As this conversation unfolds, Polemarchus' pious inclinations culminate in a perception of the dearness of the unknown good. Inspired by this piety, Socrates and Polemarchus defend the conventional paragon Simonides and, at the same time, launch a truly philosophical inquiry into justice.

Predominant views of political deliberation represent it as a matter either of “contemplation without interest” or of interest without contemplation. Whether we claim that political thinking can transcend power or that it is simply a vehicle for it, we abet a nihilistic political culture and authorize the thoughtless exercise of power. What each view denies—or insufficiently explores—is thinking's capacity to transfigure “interest” and power without pretending to transcend them. By contrast, political perspectivism incorporates multiple perspectives in an effort thoughtfully to respond to the will-to-power that attends our location in the world. We need political spaces if we are to become responsive agents of power, because we often can neither recognize the effects of our activities without the benefit of others' perspectives nor alter those effects by our efforts alone.

We shall address questions concerning the impact of candidate spending in congressional elections in a new way. We develop a multiequation model of congressional vote choice that takes the endogeneity of expenditures into account. We then estimate both this model and the more traditional single-equation model using individual level survey data. The substantial differences we find between the two models indicates that the simultaneity bias present in the single-equation model is not trivial. The challenger and incumbent expenditure terms are each significant (whereas only challenger expenditures are in the single-equation setup) and of much greater magnitude in the multiequation case. In addition, we evaluate hypotheses grounded in persuasive communications theory concerning the type of individuals most affected by the messages emanating from the campaigns. We find that individuals with higher education, those with greater interest in campaigns, and those with strongly held convictions are unaffected by candidate spending, whereas individuals lacking each of these attributes are greatly influenced by campaign expenditures.

In their 1993 article in this Review, William Mishler and Reginald Sheehan reported evidence of both direct and indirect impacts of public opinion on Supreme Court decisions. Helmut Norpoth and Jeffrey Segal offer a methodological critique and in their own reanalysis of the data find, contrary to Mishler and Sheehan, no evidence for a direct path of influence from public opinion to Court decisions. Instead, they find an abrupt-permanent shift of judicial behavior consistent with an indirect model of influence whereby popularly elected presidents, through new appointments, affect the ideological complexion of the Court. In response, Mishler and Sheehan defend the direct public opinion linkage originally noted, at both individual and aggregate level; respond to the methodological critique; and offer further statistical analysis to support the aggregate linkages.