Relative nation-state capability follows a generalized nonlinear pattern over long periods. Empirical evidence indicates that between 1816–1975 nine major powers have traversed at least a segment of this relative capability cycle of political ascendancy, maturation and decline. Specific changes in a state's relative capability dynamics increase its propensity to initiate extensive war. Whether the extensiveness of a war is defined in terms of duration, intensity or magnitude, major powers are likely to initiate more extensive wars at the critical inflection and turning points on the curve of relative capability where the linear role perceptions held by government and society change pervasively. This analysis involves a new theoretical focus for examining the causes of war, shifting attention from interactions between nations to the consequences of changes in relative power and to the political evolution of the nation-state itself.

The transmission of ideas, information, and resources forms the core of many issues studied in political science, including collective action, cooperation, and development. While these processes imply dynamic connections among political actors, researchers often cannot observe such interdependence. One example is public policy diffusion, which has long been a focus of multiple subfields. In the American state politics context, diffusion is commonly conceptualized as a dyadic process whereby states adopt policies (in part) because other states have adopted them. This implies a policy diffusion network connecting the states. Using a dataset of 187 policies, we introduce and apply an algorithm that infers this network from persistent diffusion patterns. The results contribute to knowledge on state policy diffusion in several respects. Additionally, in introducing network inference to political science, we provide scholars across the discipline with a general framework for empirically recovering the latent and dynamic interdependence among political actors.

Most previous research on congressional career decisions has focused on one of two binary choices—between retiring and running for reelection, or between running for reelection and seeking higher office. But most of the time, representatives face all three choices simultaneously. Employing a “mother logit” model, we estimate the effects of relevant variables both on pairwise comparisons (conditional probabilities) and on the unconditional probabilities of choosing each one of these three alternatives. Probably most intriguing is our finding that a member's age has little or no effect upon the unconditional probability of running for reelection. The interrelatedness of career options is seen particularly clearly in the case of incumbents who had been redistricted out of their seats. When they had an opportunity to run for higher office, they were likely to take it. Only when they lacked such an opportunity were they more likely than other members to opt for retirement.

Political scientists have devoted considerable attention to the ways in which economic power can be translated into political influence. Yet there has been little empirical research capable of confirming or denying general hypotheses about the political implications of various aspects of economic structure. This article seeks to begin filling this gap by first identifying five aspects of economic structure likely to affect an industry's political influence (firm size, industry size, market concentration, profitability, arid geographic dispersion) and then testing these aspects by analyzing how well they account for variations among industries in their success at securing public policies of benefit to them, especially in two policy arenas: federal corporate income taxes and state excise taxes. What emerges most clearly from this analysis is an empirical confirmation of the popular hypothesis linking firm size to political influence with respect to both federal corporate tax policy and state excise tax policy. Beyond that, we find reasonably strong negative relationships between political influence and market concentration, profitability, and industry size – the latter lending interesting support to Mancur Olson's argument about the political disabilities of large groups. In the process, the article suggests a potentially fruitful new way to get beyond the case study approach in studying the impact of economic power on political influence, and thus a way to bring to bear more powerful methodological tools on this central issue of modern democracy.

A key premise of partisan theories of congressional organization is that majority status confers substantial procedural advantages. In this article, we take advantage of changes in party control of the House and Senate, such as that following the Republicans' historic victory in the midterm elections of 1994, to assess the value of majority status in terms of contributions from access-seeking political action committees (PACs). We estimate that majority status in the House was worth about $36,000 per member in receipts from corporate and trade PACs circa 1994—even controlling for the usual factors cited in the literature as affecting members' ability to raise money (such as committee assignments and voting record). The value of majority status in the Senate is even larger in absolute terms, although smaller in proportion to the total amount of money raised. Our results show that majority status is a valuable asset, one worth considerable collective effort to attain.

The use of survey experiments has surged in political science. The most common design is the between-subjects design in which the outcome is only measured posttreatment. This design relies heavily on recruiting a large number of subjects to precisely estimate treatment effects. Alternative designs that involve repeated measurements of the dependent variable promise greater precision, but they are rarely used out of fears that these designs will yield different results than a standard design (e.g., due to consistency pressures). Across six studies, we assess this conventional wisdom by testing experimental designs against each other. Contrary to common fears, repeated measures designs tend to yield the same results as more common designs while substantially increasing precision. These designs also offer new insights into treatment effect size and heterogeneity. We conclude by encouraging researchers to adopt repeated measures designs and providing guidelines for when and how to use them.

This article argues that the international financial consequences of immigration exert a substantial influence on the choice of exchange rate regimes in the developing world. Over the past two decades, migrant remittances have emerged as a significant source of external finance for developing countries, often exceeding conventional sources of capital such as foreign direct investment and bank lending. Remittances are unlike nearly all other capital flows in that they are stable and move countercyclically relative to the recipient country's economy. As a result, they mitigate the costs of forgone domestic monetary policy autonomy and also serve as an international risk-sharing mechanism for developing countries. The observable implication of these arguments is that remittances increase the likelihood that policy makers adopt fixed exchange rates. An analysis of data on de facto exchange rate regimes and a newly available data set on remittances for up to 74 developing countries from 1982 to 2006 provides strong support for these arguments. The results are robust to instrumental variable analysis and the inclusion of multiple economic and political variables.

Do political and fiscal decentralization make it easier or harder to control inflation? Statistical analysis of average annual inflation rates in a panel of 87 countries in the 1970s and 1980s found no clear relationship between decentralization and the level of inflation. Political decentralization, however, does appear to reduce change in countries' relative inflation rates over time. By creating additional veto players, federal structure may “lock in” existing patterns of monetary policy—whether inflationary or strict. Among the (mostly developed) countries that started with low inflation, inflation tended to increase more slowly in federations than in unitary states. Among the (mostly developing) countries that started with high inflation, inflation tended to increase faster in the federations. There is evidence that political decentralization locks in a country's degree of practical central bank independence—whether high or low—and the relative hardness or softness of budget constraints on subnational governments.

Interest-group interactions may be examined in ways comparable to the analysis of conflict and coalition in other areas of political science. We seek to measure and compare the structure of interest-group participation and conflict in four domains of U.S. domestic policy: agriculture, energy, health, and labor. Data are drawn from a survey of 806 representatives of organizations with interests in federal policy, supplemented by interviews with 301 government officials in the same four domains. Several types of data are adduced regarding the intensity and partisanship of group conflict in each domain and the range and variety of group participation. Coalitional patterns are described and the mutual positioning of different kinds of organization—peak-association groups versus more specialized trade, professional, or commodity groups, for example—are examined.

Addressing the disputed relationship between war and the expansion of governmental expenditures and revenues, Box-Tiao intervention models are applied to a number of British (1700-1980), United States (1792-1980), French (1815-1979), and Japanese (1878-1980) spending and taxation series. Distinguishing between global and interstate wars, the more intensive and extensive bouts of warfare (global wars) tend to bring about abrupt, permanent impacts in contrast to the temporary changes associated with most interstate wars. The observed displacements are reflected in both war-related and nonwar-related types of expenditure and are also observed before 1900. Although our findings are not universally applicable and are subject to various other qualifications, they may be interpreted, in general, as reinforcing the need for an appreciation of the persistent centrality of war, especially global war, in the discontinuous growth and expansion of the modern state.

No government yet established has had the loyalty and trust of all its citizens. Regardless of the popularity of its leaders or how careful they are in soliciting opinions and encouraging participation in the process of policy-making, there are always those who see inequalities and injustices in the society and harbor suspicions of the government's motives and intentions. Resentment and distrust are elements of disaffection and the first step toward resistance. Therefore, even the most dictatorial governments have usually striven to increase their credibility and popularity. For democratic governments, however, the problem of combating distrust and encouraging voluntary acceptance of its institutions and decisions is a paramount concern. One of democratic theory's distinctive characteristics is its strong emphasis on voluntary consent, both as a basis of political obligation and as a central attribute of citizenship. The concern expressed by democratic thinkers about the elements of due process and the protection of opportunities for widespread participation is directed toward the creation of citizens who voluntarily accept the society's goals; “the demand for consent is the demand that the government must be more than self-appointed and must, in some significant way, be the chosen instrument through which the body politic and community acts ….”

Democracy's guiding ideal is the substitution of mutual understanding and agreement for coerciveness and arbitrary authority in all phases of social and political life. The existence of distrustful citizens who are convinced that the government serves the interests of a few rather than the interests of all is a barrier to the realization of the democratic ideal.

Past individual-level studies of economic voting (1) have incorrectly operationalized the model they employ by using past-oriented rather than future-oriented questions and (2) have failed to examine the level of economic voting in United States Senate elections. Using the 1978 National Election Study, we show that economic voting exists in Senate but not House elections, presumably due to the differences in electoral context. Even when economic voting occurs, however, there is no guarantee that the public will influence the direction of macroeconomic policy.

American political science is a product of the American state. There are political reasons why particular subdisciplines became hegemonic with the emergence of the “Second Republic” after World War II. The three hegemonic subdisciplines of our time are public opinion, public policy, and public choice. Each is a case study of consonance with the thought-ways and methods of a modern bureaucratized government committed to scientific decision making. Following Leviathan too closely results in three principal consequences: (1) failure to catch and evaluate the replacement of law by economics as the language of the state, (2) the loss of passion in political science discourse, and (3) the failure of political science to appreciate the significance of ideological sea changes accompanying regime changes.

Writers on public administration place much emphasis upon the possibilities and importance of discovering and applying scientific principles in their field of study. But very few of them have ventured to state the basic premises upon which they seek to build that science. Many of those whose writings imply that major principles have been discovered announce, not premises, but conclusions, which, regardless of their practical merits, can hardly be called anything but opinions. On the other hand, several scholars seek to escape from errors of commission by avoiding the use of such scientific terms as “principles” or “efficiency.” If they go beyond descriptive analyses to advocate particular plans of organization or methods of procedure, they use terms which denote value judgments, thereby admitting by implication that they are expressing mere opinions. In a few published discourses, basic premises are stated and reasoning is developed therefrom. However, most of those premises—or “principles”—are referred to by name only, such as “the principle of leadership”; they are not stated in terms of precise causal relations which can be verified or which can serve adequately as bases for further reasoning.

It may be regarded as unwise to venture a statement of what one considers the basic premises upon which a science of administration may be built. But every body of theory is built upon fundamental assumptions, either expressed or implied. Moreover, a body of theory is complete, and has scientific value, only when the premises are sufficiently clear to permit objective scrutiny and verification. Erroneous hypotheses, stated precisely, may be more scientific than vague or unexpressed assumptions; for only the former will lend themselves to verification. In other words, trial and error is an essential part of scientific method.

Political theorists from Machiavelli to Huntington have denied the possibility of popular government arising out of the chaos of civil war, instead prescribing an intermediate stage of one-man rule by a Prince, Leviathan, or a military dictator. Based on recent empirical evidence of post-civil war democratization in El Salvador, Mozambique, and elsewhere, I show that democracy can arise directly from anarchy. Predatory warring factions choose the citizenry and democratic procedures over a Leviathan when (1) their economic interests depend on productive investment by the citizens, (2) citizens' political preferences ensure that power allocation will be less biased under democracy than under a Leviathan, and (3) there is an external agency (e.g., the United Nations) that mediates and supervises joint disarmament and state-building. Ultimately, I discuss the implications of this argument for the basic intuitions of classical political theory and contemporary social theory regarding democratization and authoritarianism.

Who governs? This is one of the most fundamental questions in political science. Despite its importance, there is currently no global dataset on governing elites over a long period. This article presents a novel dataset, WhoGov, which contains yearly data on members of cabinets in 177 countries during the period 1966–2016, making it the largest of its kind. We first present how the dataset was created and validate it by matching this data against existing data. We then demonstrate how the data can be used to gain new insights into diverse fields such as the study of autocracies, gender studies, the study of regime types, and government formation. We expect that this dataset will be an invaluable resource for both comparativists and country experts.

Polities and organizations use and require particular languages for official business. The choice of official languages is a vexing issue. Theorists, convinced that a fair language policy cannot be efficient, have despaired of an elegant solution. To investigate this apparent dilemma, I mathematically model the problem of choosing an efficient and fair language policy for a plurilingual polity. The policy designates official languages and taxes the language groups to pay for translation among the official languages. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, this model implies that a fair language policy can be efficient. But what if language groups rationally misrepresent the costs of using a nonnative official language? Even then, the policy maker can discover a fair language policy and, under some conditions, can use a cost-revelation procedure that discovers a fair and efficient language policy. The results challenge the claim that efficiency and practicality excuse the inferior treatment of language minorities.

Political bureaucracies make the overwhelming majority of public policy decisions in the United States. To examine the extent to which these agency actions are responsive to the preferences of elected officials, in particular, Congress, I develop a spatial model of oversight. The most important insight of this theory is that agencies make policy decisions within given regimes and may be constrained by the preferences of different political actors at different times. To test the theory, I collect and analyze data on the monitoring activities of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). I find that under certain conditions, the FDA is responsive to the preferences of committees and floors in Congress, but under other conditions the agency can act autonomously.

Although the term “ideology” is ubiquitous in modern political discourse, it is used in diverse and usually ambiguous ways which limit its value as an analytical concept. The main ambiguity arises from the fact that, as most writers use it, the concept of ideology does not provide criteria for distinguishing ideological thought from nonideological thought. Lacking this power to make concrete discriminations, the concept fails to achieve empirical relevance. This paper attempts to remedy that deficiency and save the concept of ideology for the explanation of politics.

The problem of conceptualization is approached by viewing ideology primarily as a cultural phenomenon. As such, it is argued, ideology has characteristics that distinguish it from other symbol systems. Of special importance in this regard is the identification of basic differentia between ideology on the one hand, and myth and Utopia (with which ideology is often confused) on the other. The features of ideology identified in this comparative analysis are then discussed in fuller detail with a view to understanding (1) the significance of ideology in politics, and (2) the way in which the concept of ideology can help us to understand politics, insofar as politics involves ideology.

I seek to reinvigorate the study of politicians' roles by showing how motivational role theory can be used to examine the impact of goals and incentives upon behavior and thereby integrate economic and sociological perspectives. I address three reasons for the recent neglect of politicians' roles—changes in interdisciplinary tastes, conceptual and theoretical muddles, and failures to demonstrate consequences for behavior—and find them unconvincing. I further argue that the most promising framework for the new institutionalism is one that incorporates not just formal but also informal institutional structures (like roles and norms), a framework that incorporates, rather than excludes, political behavior.