The paper argues that while the state of mind of an agent exercising power is relevant in analyzing the concept of power, much of the discussion about whether an intention must be complied with for there to be an exercise of power misconceives the issue at stake because it overrates the extent to which human behavior is ratiocinative. The argument is developed in the course of a discussion of several hypothetical examples. One conclusion is that for a person to exercise power it is normally necessary that he should have a favorable attitude to the effects in question, the word “favorable” being used because it is highly general and hence relatively non-restrictive. The final conclusion is that the very generality of this criterion makes a precise conceptual analysis of power impossible.

In the spring of 1953, with the approach of the regular parliamentary elections, the West German Bundestag began its deliberations on a new electoral law. The original law of 1949 had been enacted for the sole purpose of electing the first Parliament under the new Bonn Constitution. It was therefore necessary for the expiring Parliament to re-enact the old law, to modify it, or to supersede it with an entirely new system.

It soon became apparent that there were wide differences of opinion among the various parties represented in the Bundestag. The Chancellor's party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), presented proposals to establish a single member district system, eliminating proportional representation. The Social Democrats (SPD) presented a draft which largely re-enacted the 1949 law. The official government proposal, which was something of a compromise, leaned very heavily in the direction of the so-called Mehrheitswahl but also had provisions permitting a combination of party lists and additional votes (Hilfsstimmen). It bore some similarity to the law which de Gasperi had pushed through the Italian Parliament shortly before this time, but without the same justification. The various proposals were discussed on first reading on March 5, 1953, and again on March 18. After the report by the Election Law Committee, amended proposals were again discussed on second and third reading on June 17 and 19 and passed on third reading June 25.

Domination, understood as the abusive or capricious employment of power over others for the sake of one's own ends, is among the gravest threats to human freedom. Solving the problem of domination is a crucial normative challenge, and this article identifies in the work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau a promising and overlooked avenue for addressing it. I propose an interpretation of Rousseau's Emile in which preventing domination requires moral education in the practice and value of care. This interpretation gives Rousseau new relevance as a theorist of domination. In connecting non-dominative to educative care, Rousseau's approach has the potential to forge new connections between neo-republican theories of domination and feminist care ethics, even suggesting new routes by which public policy might foster a non-dominative society.

This article explains why previous empirical tests of the size principle have failed to produce conclusive results. Particular stress is given to seldom considered aspects of constitutional choice; their implications are explored by means of a simple simulation. Then I propose a test of the size principle and report some initial empirical findings based upon this test.

Scholarly analysis of contemporary Soviet realities has faced increasing difficulties in recent years. Direct access to the Soviet Union is denied to all except a handful of diplomats, journalists, and business men on special missions, and even the very few who gain access find themselves largely cut off from all except carefully controlled official contacts. There is still a substantial quantitative flow of books and periodicals from the Soviet Union, but compared with the rich and revealing documentation of the first decade of the Soviet period, the current output appears arid, formalistic, and deliberately designed to confine the circulation of data and ideas to the bare minimum required by the regime's internal communication needs. Given skill, insight, and background, there is still much to be learned from official publications and the samo-kritika (self-criticism) which they contain, but the obstacles are formidable, and the search for meaningful patterns of fact and motivation is at the best an elusive and tantalizing adventure.

John C. Calhoun's Disquisition on Government is that rarity in American political thought-a work that explicitly declares itself a theoretical study of politics. By purporting to give a comprehensive and systematic account, by claiming to have explored new territory beyond the range of American discoveries, Calhoun in effect put his Disquisition in a class of which it is almost the sole example: an American political theory. But this claim to esteem and originality has been disputed; and in the subsequent debates among his interpreters, we have yet to find a satisfactory solution to the problem that Calhoun represented in such clear shape. Those who have rated him as a statesman and thinker—be that assessment high or low—and those who have accepted or denied his claim to originality have all failed to solve the peculiar problem of how to study and interpret the writing of a man of theory-and-practice. Until that problem is met, our understanding of the Disquisition is not clear and we remain without a way of evaluating Calhoun's merits and originality.

How, then, ought Calhoun's Disquisition, or his high theoretical pretensions in general, best to be understood? Reducing his theory to practice, or saying in effect that the Disquisition was only another string to his pro-slavery bow, forecloses the question of what Calhoun can teach us. Reducing his practice to theory places what is almost a superhuman burden upon a man who was at or near the center of the national political stage for forty tumultuous years. A more moderate procedure would seem to be indicated.

This article revisits the critique of political science outlined in Bernard Crick's (1959) The American Science of Politics. Although this work inspired a number of subsequent critics of the discipline and survives in the footnotes of many historical accounts of political science, its contents are now largely overlooked or forgotten. Having reconstructed its main arguments, I explore the mixed critical response this work elicited on publication, and then seek to explain why its influence was so short-lived. An important reason for its inability to deflect the discipline from its chosen course lies in the very distinctive republican–liberal project that guided Crick's thinking in these years. A critical reengagement with this text is worthwhile, I argue, both because it illustrates the importance of the migration of ideas and thinkers to the tradition of political science critique, and because Crick provides a strikingly different kind of argument for methodological pluralism and political relevance than that which is offered today by critics of political science.

The appropriate model of international conflict and war has been much discussed in recent years, and considerable progress has been made in modeling. Nevertheless the assumptions, conditions, and specifications for international conflict models remain eminently debatable. In the December 1986 issue of this Review, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman presented a generalized expected utility model of international conflict. Here Seif Hussein takes issue with their model in various particulars, aiming to perfect and strengthen the model. Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman respond.

Scholars usually portray institutions as stable, inviting a status quo bias in their theories. Change, when it is theorized, is frequently attributed to exogenous factors. This paper, by contrast, proposes that institutional change can occur endogenously through population loss, as institutional losers become demotivated and leave, whereas institutional winners remain. This paper provides a detailed demonstration of how this form of endogenous change occurred on the English Wikipedia. A qualitative content analysis shows that Wikipedia transformed from a dubious source of information in its early years to an increasingly reliable one over time. Process tracing shows that early outcomes of disputes over rule interpretations in different corners of the encyclopedia demobilized certain types of editors (while mobilizing others) and strengthened certain understandings of Wikipedia’s ambiguous rules (while weakening others). Over time, Wikipedians who supported fringe content departed or were ousted. Thus, population loss led to highly consequential institutional change.

That there is a general and well-grounded dissatisfaction with the administration of punitive justice in America, I shall take for granted. It is, if I may say so, a condition, not a theory. The criminologist complains that whereas the fear of punishment does not restrain crime, it is none the less the chief reliance of law for protecting society; that whereas his science has shown the necessity of special institutions with expert management for many classes of delinquents, the legal theory of ideal equality before the law leads criminal law to consign all offenders to a common prison; that whereas he has “demonstrated positively that crime is a disease,” the law persistently deals with the criminal as a normal person. The sociologist complains that whereas the true purpose of punishment is protection of society, the basis of judicial punishment is revenge; that whereas the rights of society ought to be borne in mind continually, the law looks chiefly at individual rights; that whereas sociology has shown the necessity of study of the actual criminal, the law deals with him in the abstract and speculates over responsibility; that whereas the certainty, not the severity of punishment operates as a deterrent and protects society, the law provides for the latter and takes scant account of the former. The plain citizen who, without scientific investigation, knows only that he pays taxes to maintain prisons, courts, sheriffs, constables, police, and public prosecutors, complains that notwithstanding the enormous cost—said to amount the world over to $400,000,000 annually—society is not protected, crimes are not punished, and lawlessness is general.

In 1890, Mr. Edward C. Mason published in his monograph, The Veto Power, the results of his investigation of presidential vetoes down to 1889. In the present note, it is proposed to supplement the earlier study by presenting a short analysis of vetoes between 1889 and 1934.

By 1889, the direct veto had been applied to 435 measures. Of this number, however, over 200 were pension bills vetoed during Cleveland's first administration. Of pocket vetoes, there had been only 16. From 1889 to the close of the Seventy-third Congress in June, 1934, the direct veto was exercised 235 times, and 292 pocket vetoes were recorded. In the hundred-year period from 1789 to 1889, 29 vetoes were overridden by Congress; in the 45 years from 1889 to 1934, 22 met reversal. This increase in the number and proportion of vetoes is attributable to the increased amount and broadened scope of legislation resulting from the complexity of our social and political life.

Both liberal theorists and their critics have been unable to reconcile successfully respect for individual freedom and autonomy with a system of legitimate political authority. Liberal theory fails because its system of rights and representative institutions is particularistic, favoring the interests of restricted individuals and groups. Nonliberal theory threatens individuals' freedom by having political authority exercised in the name of a dubious, real will. Present liberal and nonliberal theory continues to reflect these problems.

This article is an effort to present a view of political authority that respects individual freedom and is legitimate, supporting the interests of all citizens. The failure of liberal and nonliberal theory to achieve this reconciliation is believed to result from their excessively ambiguous, incomplete views of central issues—freedom, authority, and normative reasoning—and a related tendency to examine these problems in isolation. The analysis presented here proposes a more complete view of their meaning and integrates this understanding into a conception of legitimate political authority. The conclusion seriously challenges the view of political legitimacy presented by liberal theory and suggests that a different set of problems must be addressed if political authority is to be legitimate and support individuals' freedom.

A majority of Americans spend a substantial amount of time at work where they have little to no say over many issues—a phenomenon that philosophers have likened to a “private government” that resembles a dictatorship. Is this because Americans are indifferent to or even prefer to work for firms that resemble dictatorships? To answer this question, we field a conjoint experiment on a nationally-representative sample of Americans to isolate public preferences over “corporate regime type.” We find that Americans prefer workplace democracy. In a second experiment, we find that most Americans support workplace democracy even after being exposed to framing emphasizing democratization’s costs. The results suggest that social scientists must look beyond public opinion to understand the lack of workplace democracy in the United States. This article forges new ground by applying a political science lens to corporate governance—a field ripe with politics but bereft of political science.

Public reason liberals appeal to public deliberation to ensure that a legal order can be publicly justified to its citizens. I argue that this voice mechanism should be supplemented by exit mechanisms. By allowing citizens to exit legal orders they believe cannot be publicly justified, citizens can pressure states to change their laws. This exit pressure is sometimes more effective than deliberation. I explore federalism as an exit mechanism that can help public deliberation establish a publicly justified polity.

In Chapter 13 of the Leviathan on “The Natural Condition, of Mankind” is found Hobbes' doctrine of the state of nature as it is generally known. This may be briefly summed up as follows: In faculties of mind and body, men are, on the whole, so nearly equal that one cannot claim for himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. From this equality of ability arises equality of hope in attaining ends desired. “And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies.” There are three principal causes of quarrel among men; first, the desire for gain; second, for safety, and third, for glory. Hence where there is no common power to keep men in awe, “they are in that condition called war, and such a war as is of every man against every man.” This war need not be constant conflict, since “the nature of war consists not in actual fighting, but in the known disposition thereto during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary.” In such a state of war, actual or potential, the condition of man is most unfortunate and deplorable. “The life of man in such a state,” says Hobbes, “is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”