The core of a voting game is the set of undominated outcomes, that is, those that once in place cannot be overturned. For spatial voting games, a core is structurally stable if it remains in existence even if there are small perturbations in the location of voter ideal points. While for simple majority rule a core will exist in games with more than one dimension only under extremely restrictive symmetry conditions, we show that, for certain supramajorities, a core must exist. We also provide conditions under which it is possible to construct a structurally stable core. If there are only a few dimensions, our results demonstrate the stability properties of such frequently used rules as two-thirds and three-fourths. We further explore the implications of our results for the nature of political stability by looking at outcomes in experimental spatial voting games and at Belgian cabinet formation in the late 1970s.

At Philadelphia in 1787 the authors of the Constitution invented a new kind of federalism. In previous federal governments, the participating states were no more intimate than permanent allies, and citizens retained a primary loyalty to local governments. The federalism of 1787 achieved a converse effect, however, for it subordinated the member governments and created a nation. Likewise, while the earlier federalisms were notoriously prone to muddles in policy and stalemates in action, the American form turned out to give reasonably effective government, even in the short run. For both its nationalism and its effectiveness, therefore, it found favor with constitution makers elsewhere: in the larger Latin American states, in most of the new nations of the British Commonwealth, in the Germany of Weimar and Bonn, even, on paper at least, in the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. Probably the clearest demonstration of the prestige and utility of the American invention was the revision (in 1848) of the Swiss Confederation into a federalism patterned after the United States. The cantons thereby abandoned the one remaining survivor of the alliance type of federalism, represented in the middle ages by the Swabian, Rhenish, and Lombard leagues, as well as by the Swiss. And so it happens that about half the earth is presently ruled by federal governments—all of them reminiscent in one way or another of the Philadelphia invention.

How have Donald Trump’s rhetoric and policies affected Arab and Muslim American behavior? We provide evidence that the de facto effects of President Trump’s campaign rhetoric and vague policy positions extended beyond the direct effects of his executive orders. We present findings from three data sources—television news coverage, social media activity, and a survey—to evaluate whether Arab and Muslim Americans reduced their online visibility and retreated from public life. Our results provide evidence that they withdrew from public view: (1) Shared locations on Twitter dropped approximately 10 to 20% among users with Arabic-sounding names after major campaign and election events and (2) Muslim survey respondents reported increased public space avoidance.

We propose a theory in which geographic attributes explain cross-regional institutional differences in (1) the scale of the state, (2) the distribution of power within state hierarchy, and (3) property rights to land. In this theory, geography and technology affect the transparency of farming, and transparency, in turn, affects the elite’s ability to appropriate revenue from the farming sector, thus affecting institutions. We apply the theory to explain differences between the institutions of ancient Egypt, southern Mesopotamia, and northern Mesopotamia, and also discuss its relevance to modern phenomena.

The institution of elections is a significant feature of most present day political systems and is one of the most widely used of all of the political inventions of mankind. Rose and Mossawir have recently remarked that, “Elections are among the most ubiquitous of contemporary political institutions, and voting is the single act of political participation undertaken by a majority of adults in a majority of the nations in the world today.” The importance of elections is especially high in democratic systems. Both earlier and more contemporary discussions of the concept of democracy have employed elections as a primary definiendum and requisite feature of democracy. Indeed, if any single institution serves as popular democracy's sine qua non, it is that of elections.

The general argument that elections are “those most essential events in the democratic process” is often posed from the perspective of the importance of the functions they perform in the political system. The most widely remarked of these functions is to provide a mechanism by which the great mass of members of the system are able to choose their leaders—thus giving majority approval to the exercise of leadership. This is important both from the standpoint of solving the problem of legitimate leadership succession and as a means of potential relief from abuses or inadequacies of a present set of rulers. Secondly, elections may serve as an indication of public choice among government policies—although this function is probably less frequently performed than once was thought to be the case. In referenda, the function is direct; but even in the elections of candidates for public office there is on occasion a question of public decision among the broader aspects of policy programs. Furthermore, belief by future candidates in the possibility that voters may reject them at the next election because of their policies may lead them to anticipate public feeling, thus allowing indirect influence of elections upon policy formation. The latter may operate even in the absence of more direct control by the electorate. A third central function of elections is legitimation of a regime. An election serves as a device of public endorsement—or occasionally, of repudiation—of the system of government.

A considerable amount of the international politics literature attempts to explain international conflict on the basis of the distribution of power between and among nations. There are, however, divergent views of this linkage. One view argues that wars are most likely to take place between nations of similar power, while another asserts that wars are most likely when power is unequal. Research seeking to explore this phenomenon has not investigated the capability augmenting effects of alliances on power relationships and has tended to focus its attention upon the occurrence of wars. This research examines the individual and joint effects of power and alliance upon the probability of 256 conflicts to escalate to reciprocated military action. The main finding is that equality of power, supplemented by alliance with a major power for those nations that are weak, tends to restrain the likelihood that a conflict will escalate.

This paper is addressed to three tasks and the analysis operates at three levels. First, there is an attempt to specify an analytic approach to Marxist-Leninist sociopolitical systems that integrates regime and sociocultural units. This approach rests on a structural conception of political culture, a conception that stresses the informal adaptive quality of political culture, and that includes behavioral as well as attitudinal patterns. The second task consists of analyzing the paradoxical character of development in Soviet-type systems; development that simultaneously reinforces and undermines traditional-peasant political cultures at the community, regime, and elite levels. Finally, this pattern of development is examined in the context of a single Soviet-type regime and society, the Romanian.

The article presents a theory of class conflict between workers and capitalists who pursue their material interests under a form of societal organization that combines private ownership of instruments of production with representative political institutions. There exist economic and political conditions under which both classes would simultaneously choose courses of action that constitute a class compromise: workers consent to the institution of profit and capitalists to democratic institutions through which workers can effectively press claims for material gains. When these conditions hold and a compromise is in force, the role of the state consists in institutionalizing, coordinating, and enforcing the terms of a compromise that represents the preferences of workers as well as capitalists.

Taking its point of departure in the elitist paradigm and the much-discussed relationship between elite integration and stable democratic political systems, this article offers a typology of fragmented and integrated national elites and investigates the structure of the “consensually integrated” elite type. It is hypothesized that “consensually integrated” elites have largely similar structures consisting of personal interaction networks which are more inclusive and less class-based, and which contain more extensive and centralized connections among all major elite groups, than the plural elite, power elite or ruling class models of elite structure separately depict. Support for these hypotheses is found in a comparison of the network structures of two consensually integrated national elites, the American and Australian, as these structures are revealed by issue-based sociometric data taken from closely comparable elite samples and studies in the two countries.

In previous studies of distributive politics scholars have investigated legislative influence without accounting for the policies' independent merits. As a result, they have failed to include a plausible explanation of the counterfactual (i.e., which projects would have been funded in the absence of congressional committee influence), which has led to invalid inferences regarding legislative influence. The model of distributive politics is reformulated to account for an assumed efficient and/or equitable project allocation in the absence of legislative influence. Using data from proposed Army Corps of Engineers' projects and the funding recommendations of three institutions, the findings indicate that pork barrel politics indeed exists and imposes significant efficiency costs but that both equity and economic efficiency play prominent roles in the decision-making process as well. Cost-benefit analysis is seen to play a constructive role by improving the efficiency of project choice; and the corps's cost-benefit analysis guidelines are beneficial from the agency's organizational perspective, as well.

The notion of power is often said to be central to the analysis of politics. But while that analysis is a very ancient activity, the conceptual clarification of the notion of power has been undertaken only in the past generation. The reason for this discrepancy I leave to the historians of political ideas. In this introduction I merely observe that the clarification has not proceeded as far as is needed, so that we are still not at all sure of what we are talking about when we use the term. Nevertheless there is light ahead, owing especially to some formal definitions that have been offered in recent years by Shapley and Shubik, March, Dahl, Cartwright, and Karlsson. By reason of the formality of these definitions the issues of meaning have been more sharply delineated than was previously possible. Hence we have reached the point, I believe, where we may confront definitions with each other and specify precisely how they differ. In so doing we may be able to resolve some of the ambiguities remaining in the concept of power. In that hope this essay is written.

Several alternative explanations of U.S. defense expenditure policy-making behavior have been heralded as theoretically sound and empirically supported representations of U.S. defense expenditure policy making. This has created an atmosphere in which almost as much effort is directed towards criticizing and/or defending existing explanations as is given to improving them through continued theoretical and empirical investigations. To overcome this impasse, I have developed in this article a working synthesis of three current approaches–Arms Race, Organizational Politics, Bureaucratic Politics–based on the insights and observations of Samuel Huntington (1961), Warner Schilling (1962), Colin Gray (1971), and James Rosenau (1971). The resulting formulation, which is labeled the Reactive Linkage Model, characterizes the pattern of U.S. defense spending in terms of an initial response by the armed services to the anticipated USSR expenditure level which is subsequently filtered through the president, Congress, and the Departmen t of Defense to determine the magnitude, scale, and timing of the reaction.

On the basis of the theoretical and empirical analyses here presented, I have reached the following conclusions. First, the Reactive Linkage Model successfully synthesizes the three existing explanations of U.S. defense expenditure policy making into a coherent and plausible whole. Second, the estimated version of the model provides an accurate representation of the pattern of U.S. defense expenditure policy making from 1954 to 1973. Specifically, the individual equations account for a large portion of the variance with parameter estimates that are both sharp and plausible and the model as a whole generates extremely accurate historical forecasts. Finally, I investigate the impact of war, presidential party, and negative public opinion on individual decisions, basing my inquiry on the assumption that the model accurately represents U.S. defense expenditure policy making. The results show that different events have an impact on only some of the steps in the policy-making process and the steps which are so affected vary from event to event. As a consequence of these results, I argue that the Reactive Linkage Model, and hence the idea of combining the key elements from competing explanations, represents a positive step forward in the study of U.S. defense expenditure policy making.

A major concern of political theorists has been the definition of the proper role of legislators in relation to their constituencies. Yet relatively little analysis has been made of the uniformities of behavior that actually prevail in these relations. Such uniformities, if they could be found, would bear directly on the theory of the party system, on speculation about the nature of representative government, and on the feasibility of proposals for a reordering of party practices.

It has been shown that the tendencies of Congressmen to vote with their party or to cross party lines are associated with the similarity or dissimilarity between party policy and presumed interest of constituency. One aim of this study is to test the applicability of this proposition to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, by examination of the relation between roll-call votes and constituency characteristics. The evidence indicates that a similar relation exists in this body, and has been present consistently throughout the last two decades.

How can we conduct cross-cultural inquiry without reproducing the ethnocentric categories that prompt critique in the first place? Postcolonial and comparative political theorists have called into question the “universal” applicability of Western liberal political norms, but their critiques are drawn most often from competing Western discourses (e.g., poststructuralism) rather than from the culturally diverse traditions of scholarship whose ideas they examine. In contrast, I suggest attending to these culturally situated traditions of scholarship, especially their methods of inquiry, in addition to their substantive ideas. This method-centered approach reinterprets cross-cultural engagement, not as a tool for modifying existing parochial debates on the basis of “non-Western” cases, but as an opportunity to ask new questions through alternative frames of reference. Examining the interpretive methodologies of two Chinese classicists, I show how their methods offer not only new ideas but also new methods for the practice of political and cross-cultural theory.

Although France is not among those countries most frequently cited as examples of the trend toward corporatism, some observers have seen evidence of corporatist patterns of interest group-government contacts. Others assert that French groups have a distinctive protest form of action, and still others see France as a preserve of traditional pluralism. Interviews with 99 French interest group leaders in 1979 suggest that the pluralist model most accurately describes the actions reported by these leaders. Although the group leaders described some corporatist activities, such as participation in statutory commissions, and indicated a willingness to engage in protest, the most common actions were those more consistent with pluralism: personal contacts with government officials and lobbying. These activities were also the forms judged to be most effective in influencing policy, although the overall impression was of a political system in which organized interests had relatively limited impact.

Understanding why members leave or remain in groups has received little attention despite its fundamental importance for organizational maintenance. In this analysis, a theory of experiential search is proposed and applied to Common Cause. Group participation is conceptualized as a process by which imperfectly informed decision makers learn about the organizations they join. This framework makes quitting understandable and provides a link between the initial membership choice and follow-up decisions.

A central question in the study of political development is how conflict between ethnic groups might be transcended. Findings from social psychology suggest that ethnically integrating institutions such as militaries or representative bodies may remove prejudices and exclusionary behavior that perpetuate interethnic animosity. Political scientists have tended to be skeptical, arguing that such processes may actually intensify or “freeze” conflicting ethnic identities. I use evidence from a hard case—military reform in the aftermath of a brutal, ethnically charged civil war in Burundi—to study this issue. At the macro level, the Burundian military undertook extensive quota-based integration that nonetheless resulted in a cohesive institution. A micro-level natural experiment, which produces quasirandom exposure to ethnic integration through the military retirement age, shows that exposure to ethnic integration decreases prejudicial behavior and is benign with respect to ethnic salience. Together, these results suggest promise in ethnic integration.

Recent years have seen an increasing interest among international relations scholars in applications of pragmatist thought. Few works, however, have gone beyond discussing the epistemological and methodological implications of pragmatism. This article draws on a pragmatist understanding of human action to develop a novel explanation of norm change in contexts not amenable to more common analytical approaches. Specifically, concepts derived from pragmatism help explain how the creative recombination of practices by actors in response to changes in the material and social context of action can transform largely tacit notions of appropriate behavior. The article demonstrates the value of the approach by explaining the origin of a common contemporary security practice unknown prior to the Second World War and incompatible with the then-prevailing norms of sovereignty: the long-term, peacetime presence of one state's military on the territory of another equally sovereign state.

When a field of study begins to develop more rigorous methods, well-defined concepts, and greater emphasis on systematic comparison, it is well on the way to becoming a science. In the past decade or so, these traits have become increasingly evident in the study of comparative politics and international politics. But the development of sharper methodology and conceptual sophistication on the part of individual researchers is not quite sufficient. One of the earmarks of a healthy scientific discipline is the extent to which each set of findings may be compared to and combined with the results of earlier investigations; in short, research must become cumulative. Certain obstacles still inhibit us, among which might be counted: disagreement as to the precise boundaries of comparative and international politics; highly disparate theoretical frameworks; lack of consensus regarding the specification and measurement of key variables; and insufficient data storage and retrieval arrangements. Another difficulty has been in the absence of a generally agreed delineation of our empirical domains: What are the political entities whose attributes and relationships must concern us? More simply, we have not yet defined our population, and until the population is defined, we know neither the domain about which we seek to generalize, nor the criteria for selecting a sample from that population.

Although this is hardly the most pressing issue facing our two fields, and while a successful delineation of our population is far from a sufficient condition for the growth of a scientific discipline, it does strike us as a necessary precondition.