I develop a game-theoretic model of an interaction between an antiterrorist agency and a terrorist organization to analyze how the probability of a terrorist attack varies when the level of privacy protections changes. I derive two implications. First, privacy and security from terrorism need not be in conflict: when accounting for strategic interactions, reducing privacy protections does not necessarily increase security from terrorism. Second, and more important, the antiterrorist agency will always want less privacy. The very agency whose expertise affords it disproportionate influence on policy making will prefer a reduction in privacy protections even when that reduction harms security from terrorism. The analysis has implications for understanding the relationship between government powers and civil liberties in the context of terrorism prevention and times of emergencies more generally.

Political observers, campaign experts, and academics alike argue bitterly over whether it is more important for a party to capture ideologically moderate swing voters or to encourage turnout among hardcore partisans. The behavioral literature in American politics suggests that voters are not informed enough, and are too partisan, to be swing voters, while the institutional literature suggests that moderate candidates tend to perform better. We speak to this debate by examining the link between the ideology of congressional candidates and the turnout of their parties’ bases in US House races, 2006–2014. Combining a regression discontinuity design in close primary races with survey and administrative data on individual voter turnout, we find that extremist nominees—as measured by the mix of campaign contributions they receive—suffer electorally, largely because they decrease their party’s share of turnout in the general election, skewing the electorate towards their opponent’s party. The results help show how the behavioral and institutional literatures can be connected. For our sample of elections, turnout appears to be the dominant force in determining election outcomes, but it advantages ideologically moderate candidates because extremists appear to activate the opposing party’s base more than their own.

Students of democratic politics have long been concerned with the role of political participation in linking government and the people it serves. Whereas participation is generally defined in terms of voting, this article defines participation as the communication of citizen preferences to public officeholders. We show that aggregate sentencing decisions of California superior courts changed to reflect more closely prevailing public opinion after a large percentage of the populace expressed their preferences on a marijuana issue. The fact that members of California superior courts are seemingly immune from any effective electoral sanction serves both to underline the importance of this form of participation to a responsive system of government and to caution against conceiving of the participation-responsiveness relationship only in terms of punitive electoral devices.

The discussion of voting groups or blocs within the United Nations General Assembly has long been a popular pastime. It is, of course, merely a special case of a wider concern with groups and coalitions in all aspects of international politics. With the apparent loosening of the early postwar bipolarity it is increasingly important to discern the number, composition, and relative strength of whatever coalitions of nations may emerge from the present seemingly transitional period.

Voting groups in the General Assembly provide a relevant datum, though hardly the only one, for an effort to identify these groups. The United Nations gives no perfect image of broader international politics; due to the one-nation one-vote principle and to the fact that it is not a world government with authority to enforce its decisions, power relationships within the Assembly are not the same as in other arenas, such as functional or geographic ones. It might well be argued that because of the majority-rule principle the smaller and poorer states have an incentive to band together in the UN that they do not have elsewhere. Thus the discovery of a “bloc” of underdeveloped countries in the UN proves nothing about the cohesion of that “bloc” in other contexts. Yet votes in the General Assembly do provide a unique set of data where many national governments commit themselves simultaneously and publicly on a wide variety of major issues.

Fair districting requires more than compact, contiguous equal-sized districts; namely, sets of districts should also possess certain features. Specifically, they should be neutral (treat all parties alike) and responsive to changes in votes. In order to establish the extent to which these goals can be achieved, we give a precise definition to the concept of neutrality and expand the notion of responsiveness into three characteristics: the range in actual votes over which a districting plan is responsive; the degree of responsiveness in the vicinity of the “normal vote” (i.e., competitiveness); and the constancy of the swing ratio (i.e., the rate at which vote changes yield seat changes) over a range of votes. We show that while all possible values for these features are readily attainable when considered individually, certain combinations of values cannot be achieved. Finally, we identify the nature of the compromises required and the properties that the compromises possess, and show the kinds of trade-offs that result in reasonably fair districting plans.

We use cluster analysis to develop a model of political change in the Levant as reflected in the World Event Interaction Survey coded event data generated from Reuters between 1979 and 1998. A new statistical algorithm that uses the correlation between dyadic behaviors at two times identifies clusters of political activity. The transition to a new cluster occurs when a point is closer in distance to subsequent points than to preceding ones. These clusters begin to “stretch” before breaking apart, which serves as an early warning indicator. The clusters correspond well with phases of political behavior identified a priori. A Monte Carlo analysis shows that the clustering and early warning measures are not random; they perform very differently in simulated data sets with similar statistical characteristics. Our study demonstrates that the statistical analysis of newswire reports can yield systematic early warning indicators, and it provides empirical support for the theoretical concept of distinct behavioral phases in political activity.

Strong party discipline is a core feature of Westminster parliamentary systems. Parties typically compel members of Parliament (MPs) to support the party regardless of MPs’ individual preferences. Rebellion, however, does occur. Using an original dataset of MP votes and speeches in the British House of Commons from 1992 to 2015, coupled with new estimations of MPs’ ideological positions within their party, we find evidence that MPs use rebellion strategically to differentiate themselves from their party. The strategy that MPs employ is contingent upon an interaction of ideological extremity with party control of government. Extremists are loyal when their party is in the opposition, but these same extremists become more likely to rebel when their party controls government. Additionally, they emphasize their rebellion through speeches. Existing models of rebellion and party discipline do not account for government agenda control and do not explain these patterns.

Peceny, Beer, and Sanchez-Terry (2002) find that interstate dyads containing a democracy and a personalist dictatorship are more likely than other types of dyads to experience militarized disputes. They argue that this is because democracies are especially likely to challenge personalist dictatorships. Unfortunately, they do not identify which state in a conflictual dyad initiated the dispute and so cannot present data to support their claim. We improve on their research design by using “directed dyads” to identify potential initiators. We confirm their finding that democracy–personalist dictatorship dyads are particularly conflict-prone, but we also disprove their argument that democracies attack dictators, as we find that personalist dictatorships are more likely to challenge democracies, but not vice versa. We also find that other kinds of autocracies, namely, military regimes and single-party regimes, are more likely to challenge democracies than vice versa. Our findings have important implications for understanding the relationships between regime type and international conflict.The authors thank Caroline Beer very much for assistance with data.

Certain institutional changes in the advanced industrial societies are said to be leading toward postindustrial, if not postmodern, forms of sociopolitical organization. Scientific and technological developments are usually seen as the generating forces of such change, a major dimension of which is thought to be a growing pre-occupation with goods and services which are produced and/or purchased communally.

There exists a parallel phenomenon in the modern interstate system, namely, a growing incidence of joint production and joint regulation by states, much of it in scientific and technological fields. Factors both leading to and limiting such joint activities, and some consequences of different kinds of collective decision making and administrative arrangements for the interstate system, are here explored.

It is an explicit aim of this inquiry, in addition, to avoid the evolutionary or functionalist assumptions informing much of the contemporary study of international organization. Instead, I argue that the processes of international organization are generated by how and why states choose from among alternate modes of performing tasks, both national and international, under varying conditions of possibilities and constraints. The bulk of the article develops and illustrates permutations of this basic posture.

The analysis suggests a number of future modifications of the modern interstate system, and of the modern state as an actor in that system. But these modifications share little with the kinds of international arrangements and structures past theories have led us to expect.

Racial inequality in voter turnout is well-documented, but we know less about racial inequality in campaign contributions. Using new data on the racial identities of over 27 million donors, we find an unrepresentative contributor class. Black and Latino shares of contributions are smaller than their shares of the population, electorate, and elected offices. However, we argue that the presence of ethnoracial minority candidates mobilizes coethnic donors. Results from regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference designs suggest that the presence of ethnoracial minority candidates increases the share of minority contributions in US House elections. We find a reduction in white contributions to black Democrats, and to black and Latino Republicans, but little difference in overall fundraising competitiveness. Although we cannot definitively rule out alternative mechanisms that covary with candidate ethnorace, the results suggest that the nomination of minority candidates can increase the ethnoracial representativeness of campaign finance without costs to fundraising.

Why do some new representative institutions succeed and others fail? This article tests several hypotheses about the ecology of institutional performance, drawing on a ten-year study of Italian regional governments. Institutional success is greater where socioeconomic development is more advanced, where the political culture is participant and sociable, rather than passive and parochial, and where social stability is greater; these three variables alone account for more than four-fifths of the variance in institutional performance. Of particular importance is the impact of historical patterns of social solidarity and political mobilization on contemporary institutional success.

Under what circumstances do citizens in a democracy influence their leaders? This paper uses an index of citizen-leader agreement on community problems to examine the effects of political factors on linkage. This index, termed concurrence, was based on parallel questions on community problems asked of citizens, government heads, and other local leaders sampled in sixty-four smaller American communities.

Concurrence was significantly higher in communities with high levels of citizen participation, contested elections, partisan ballots, and active political parties. Regression analysis showed that while voting rates had the largest direct impact on concurrence, participation had more impact when salient electoral alternatives were available. Partisan, contested elections also were associated with higher concurrence between leaders and persons of low socioeconomic status. Political factors also affected concurrence rates in both consensual and nonconsensual communities.

Alternative explanations for these findings (popular control of leaders, leaders' efforts to influence citizens or manipulate participation) are considered. Since concurrence scores of nonelected local leaders were also higher in participant communities with contested elections, it is suggested that political factors may affect citizen-leader agreement by facilitating communication between leaders and citizens, as well as by aiding electoral accountability.

This research challenges models of democratization that claim liberal principles affirming the equality of rights-bearing individuals equably enhance the political inclusion of groups marginalized by race, class, or gender. While such explanations may suffice for race and class, this study's quantitative cross-national analysis of women's contemporary officeholding patterns establishes that gender presents a counter case whereby women's political citizenship is enhanced, first, by government institutions that paradoxically affirm both individual equality and kinship group difference and, second, by state policies that paradoxically affirm both individual equality and women's group difference. These findings challenge assumptions about the relationship between political citizenship and democratization, demonstrate how women's political inclusion as voters and officeholders is strengthened not by either a “sameness” principle (asserting women's equality to men as individuals) or a “difference” principle (asserting women's group difference from men) but rather by the paradoxical combination of both, and provide new views for assessing multiculturalism prospects within democratic states.

The existence of one-party systems of politics within the larger framework of the democratic society merits an increased share of the attention of students of American politics. For too long the common conception has been that one-party politics is a problem unique to the Southern states. This misconception persists even though systematic studies such as the monumental work of V. O. Key and Alexander Heard have illustrated that the politics of the so-called Solid South is in many respects the politics of the nation.

As a case in point, an examination of the composition of contemporary legislative delegations indicates that monopolistic control of elective offices is clearly not the exclusive province of the Southern Democrats. In 1955, three out of every four state legislative bodies or congressional delegations were so completely dominated by a single political party that that party controlled more than 66 per cent of the members of the group. Excluding the 15 Border and Southern states, fully half of the remaining 33 state legislatures were controlled by one party holding at least two out of every three seats; in only six states was the controlling margin below 55 per cent. Within the same group of non-Border, non-Southern states, 25 of the 33 congressional delegations were dominated by one party controlling two-thirds or more of the delegation members; only four delegations were so evenly divided as to give the majority party less than 55 per cent of the members.

Previous research on the distribution of federal aid monies has been dominated by the donor's perspective. Different distribution formulas, political influence of congressional representatives, bureaucrats, and individual aid recipients have been studied as the sole determinants of aid allocations. Each explanation, however, fails to examine the question of aid allocations from a demand-side perspective. This omission assumes that all governmental units are equally desirous of federal assistance and that any bias in the distribution of federal aid is a function of supply-side conditions. Identifying a linkage between demand-side and supply-side determinants of aid allocations, this article proposes and tests hypotheses derived from an integrated model of federal aid allocations.

In this study, I investigate the linkage between trends in key economic indicators (inflation, unemployment, and growth in gross domestic product) and government survival in 16 postwar European parliamentary democracies. The partial likelihood method, which allows for variation in indicator values over the lifetimes of individual governments, constitutes the basic analytic tool. The findings reveal overall causal roles for both inflation and unemployment, as well as important differences in these roles between socialist and bourgeois governments and between pre-oil crisis and post-oil crisis eras. Most significant, the introduction of these indicators to the analysis helps to resolve the debate between two rival explanations of governmental stability, the bargaining complexity hypothesis and the ideological diversity hypothesis, in favor of the latter.

Government programs often fail on the ground because of poor implementation by local bureaucrats. Prominent explanations for poor implementation emphasize bureaucratic rent-seeking and capture. This article documents a different pathology that we term bureaucratic overload: local bureaucrats are often heavily under-resourced relative to their responsibilities. We advance a two-step theory explaining why bureaucratic overload is detrimental to implementation as well as why politicians under-invest in local bureaucracy, emphasizing a lack of electoral incentives. Drawing on a nationwide survey of local rural development officials across India, including time-usage diaries that measure their daily behavior, we provide quantitative evidence that (i) officials with fewer resources are worse at implementing rural development programs, plausibly because they are unable to allocate enough time to managerial tasks and (ii) fewer resources are provided in administrative units where political responsibility for implementation is less clear. The findings shed light on the political economy and bureaucratic behavior underpinning weak local state capacity.

Until astonishingly recent times American national government played a marginal role in the life of the nation. Even as late as the eve of World War I, the State Department could support itself on consular fees. In most years revenues from tariffs supplied adequate financing, plus a surplus, from all other responsibilities. In 1800, there was less than one-half a federal bureaucrat per 1,000 citizens. On the eve of the Civil War there were only 1.5 federal bureaucrats per 1,000 citizens, and by 1900 that ratio had climbed to 2.7. This compares with 7 per 1,000 in 1940 and 13 per 1,000 in 1962—exclusive of military personnel.

The relatively small size of the public sphere was maintained in great part by the constitutional wall of separation between government and private life. The wall was occasionally scaled in both directions, but concern for the proper relation of private life and public order was always a serious and effective issue. Americans always talked pragmatism, in government as in all other things; but doctrine always deeply penetrated public dialogue. Power, even in the United States, needed justification.

Throughout the decades between the end of the Civil War and the Great Depression, almost every debate over a public policy became involved in the larger debate over the nature and consequences of larger and smaller spheres of government. This period was just as much a “constitutional period” as that of 1789–1820. Each period is distinguished by its effort to define (or redefine) and employ a “public philosophy.”

The role of the Supreme Court of the United States in national policy making has long been a subject of debate among students of the American legal system and of democratic theory. Both the relative influence of the Court vis-à-vis other political institutions and the implications of judicial review for principles of majority rule and democracy have been central to this discussion. Perhaps the most influential account of the role of the Court offered in recent years is Robert A. Dahl's 1957 article, “Decision-Making in a Democracy: The Role of the Supreme Court in National Policy-Making.” Dahl argues that the Court, like other political institutions, is a member of the stable ruling coalitions that dominate American politics, and that its decisions are generally supportive of the policies emerging from other political institutions.

Consideration of the way Dahl interprets his own evidence, of Court decisions since 1957, and of other relevant evidence that is excluded from his analysis (particularly the activities of the Court in statutory construction and in cases arising out of states and localities) suggests that the Court participates more significantly in national policy making than Dahl's argument admits.