I am very grateful to Dean Burnham for his labor in checking out a number of “plausible rival hypotheses” that I proposed some years ago might account for the bundle of changes in American voting statistics he had first described in his seminal 1965 paper. I had pointed out these possibilities with some vigor, since if they could be shown to have empirical merit, they would seem to put a rather different light on those historical changes, relative to the interpretations Burnham originally provided.

I now read the current paper as indicating that for the areas covered, changes in registration practices do appear to have affected turnout adversely, following one of our original rival hypotheses. It also suggests, however, that this registration change does not begin to account for all of the decline in turnout that occurred around 1900, particularly in states like Pennsylvania. It goes on to imply that some other familiar factors affecting turnout, such as party competition, also contributed to that change. In effect, the turnout decline not accounted for by structural change seems greatest where the realignment of 1896 moved states from competitive to rather noncompetitive status (the more frequent case); but states moved by the same events from noncompetitive into competitive status, like Missouri and, in fact, numerous other upper midwestern states, do not show the same pattern as Pennsylvania.

All this is well and good, particularly as Burnham in his penultimate paragraph sets aside the 1965 conspiratorial interpretation of the change that had originally prompted our own brief inquiries as to probable causes.

This paper argues for a conceptualization of political theory based upon a jurisprudential model of reasoning, rather than the more commonly accepted model of logical demonstration. The purpose of political theorizing is to persuade and convince, not to prove; consequently it is a form of argument necessarily directed at a particular audience or audiences. Hobbes is examined as a theorist who directed his argument at those audiences which were politically most significant. This paper explores that aspect of Hobbes's theory which was intended to persuade his Puritan audience. Hobbes attempted to persuade the Puritans by presenting his argument in a manner subtly similar to the style of reasoning they were familiar with in religious terms. This interpretation is supported by a comparison of the arguments of Hobbes and Calvin. This analysis of Hobbes is intended to illustrate both a general view of the nature of political theorizing, and the advantages of adopting an historical method in examining past political theorists.

This paper examines certain major demographic bases of ethnic identity change among the mass populations of the non-Russian nationalities of the USSR. Ethnic identity is defined here as an individual's affective attachment to certain core symbols of his nationality group: the group name and its historic language. The hypotheses tested concern the impact of social mobilization, contact with Russians, and traditional religion on ethnic identity change. The levels of Russification of 46 indigenous nationalities whose official national homelands have Autonomous Oblast status or higher are examined on the basis of 1959 Soviet census materials. By use of regression analysis it is shown that: (a) social mobilization is strongly conducive to the Russification of non-Russian nationalities residing in their official areas; (b) exposure to Russians is conducive to the Russification of both mobilized and unmobilized local populations, but the Russification effect of exposure to Russians is much smaller for the unmobilized than for the mobilized populations; (c) even where exposure to Russians is extensive and enduring, both socially mobilized and unmobilized Muslim ethnic groups are much less likely to be Russified than non-Muslims; it is proposed that a Muslim ethnic ideology mediates between the dynamic demographic influences on Russification and the actual manifestation of Russification.

The political incorporation and municipal segregation of classes and status groups in the metropolis tend to divorce fiscal resources from public needs and to create and perpetuate inequality among urban residents in the United States. An investigation of data collected for a large number of metropolitan areas in 1960 reveals a number of variables associated with inequality in the distribution of fiscal resources among municipalities in metropolitan areas. The level of income inequality among municipal governments in metropolitan areas varies directly with: location in the South; age, size and density of the metropolis; nonwhite concentration; family income inequality; residential segregation among social classes; housing segregation by quality; and governmental fragmentation. The data provide support for the argument that governmental inequality occupies a central position in the urban stratification system.

This study was conducted to test the frequently made assertion that primary elections are divisive among party activists who participate in primary and subsequent general election campaigns. Analysis of data collected from 209 campaign workers personally identified by five candidates in two vigorously contested races for Congress in Iowa's First District indicated that the activists were an elite group on whom the primary had a divisive impact that was particularly notable among those who supported candidates who lost the primary. The alienation felt by many respondents who worked for losers in both parties adversely affected their general party support, voting, and the willingness to perform the many conventional activities necessary to a general election campaign, but it did not appear to have a substantial influence on the general election. Generally, those who defected were less experienced and less strongly identified with their parties than those who remained active. Moreover, most of the antagonism may be limited to the single general election; eighty per cent of all participants in the study expected to be as active or more active in future campaigns.

In the last two decades the empirical approach to political science has been heavily preoccupied with the study of contemporary voting behavior. Few have been sufficiently curious about or motivated by the mysteries of our electoral past to sustain a concentrated research effort in this direction. Yet, as V. O. Key often noted, a knowledge of our electoral past provides us with a better understanding of our electoral present, with how our current system has evolved and changed over time. Only recently have scholars begun to heed the call of Key and new historians like Lee Benson and Samuel P. Hays for an empirical analysis of historical voting behavior. The initial research efforts, although often crude and unsystematic in method, have prompted interesting speculation as to “divergences” in our thinking from what previously had been assumed about past electorates. They have discovered “anomalies” in several different contexts—in earlier unconfirmed theories of voting behavior, in data-oriented contemporary work on the American voter, and even among the various historical research efforts themselves. While the presence of such anomalies characterizes the first stages of any research effort in virgin territory, unraveling the apparent inconsistencies must always be part of the process of a more fully developed cumulative research program. What is the task of the moment is to examine these anomalies in light of the theories and research of Professors Burnham, Converse, and myself—the principal elements in this continuing dialogue about the proper interpretation of our electoral past.

Various analysts have noted that the decision to vote in mass elections is difficult to justify from the standpoint of an expected utility maximization model. Put simply, the probability that a citizen's vote will affect the outcome is so small that the expected gains from voting are outweighed by the costs in time and effort. Such analyses treat rational behavior as synonymous with expected utility maximization. In this paper we show that an alternative criterion for decision making under uncertainty, minimax regret, specifies voting under quite general conditions. Both two and three candidate plurality elections are considered. Interestingly, a minimax regret decision maker never votes for his second choice in a three candidate election, whereas expected utility maximizers clearly may. Thus, the model proposed has implications for candidate choice as well as turnout.

The widely accepted expectation achievement approach to conflict, which views conflict primarily as a response to relative deprivation, has recently been challenged by proponents of a political process approach, the central features of which are mobilization of power resources and the struggle for power. Here a power balance model of conflict is developed which incorporates the core concepts from both approaches. In this model the difference in power resources between the contending parties is used as the central independent variable. Relative deprivation, utility of reaching the goal and expectancy of success are introduced as intervening variables to relate the effects from changes in the balance of power between the parties to the probability of manifest conflict between them.

According to the power balance model of conflict different types of relative deprivation (aspirational, decremental and progressive) will be differently correlated with the probability of conflict. The overall correlation between relative deprivation and conflict is expected to be insignificant. Situations where the difference in power resources between two parties is decreasing are seen as most conducive to conflict. When the power resources of an already weaker party are decreasing, the probability of conflict is assumed to be lower than when the weaker party is gaining power resources.

This paper presents a conceptual analysis of the terms “virtue,” “obligation,” and “politics,” a project suggested by similar analyses currently underway in the field of ethics. The essence of the study is the contrast between politics understood in terms of virtue (as by Plato, Aristotle, and, in a way, Rousseau) and politics understood in terms of obligation (as by Hobbes, Locke, John Rawls and, in a way, Rousseau). The paper argues that obligation and virtue form the center of two separate languages or paradigms for the formulation and discussion of basic political questions, and discusses the theoretical grounds for the neglect of the language of virtue by the greater part of modern political thought. This discussion, while pointing to the possible weaknesses of the language of virtue, also serves to indicate (directly and by contrast) the limitations of the language of obligation as a way of understanding politics.

Professors Converse and Rusk have replied to my present paper in two different ways: the former by a short, sharp rejoinder and the latter by a longer and more diffuse article. For space reasons alone, my commentary on their remarks must be concise; and while there is much which I should like to discuss further, there comes a time when the case must be sent to the jury.

It is best, I think, to confine most of my comments on Philip Converse's Note to the last half of it. We begin with The American Voter and the SRC “paradigm” as I see them. Having also reread this book, I will go even further in my praise of it than Converse has. It is not only a meticulous piece of scholarship; it is also truly a classic, a seminal work which justly gives permanent professional honor to those who wrote it. A seminal work is one which not only contributes to knowledge but permanently reorganizes the shape of a scholarly field. This can be done only by providing a conceptual framework for the myriad nonseminal but essential scholarly activities which take place in that field thereafter. As a meticulous piece of work, The American Voter was indeed qualified and judicious in its statements and generalizations. It also had at least as much sensitivity to the time dimension as could be expected for 1960.

Five voting paradoxes are examined under procedures which determine social choice from voters' preference rankings. The most extreme forms of each paradox are identified, and their potential practical significance is assessed using randomly generated voter preference profiles.

The first paradox arises when the winner under sequential-elimination simple-majority voting is less preferred by every voter than some other alternative. The fifth paradox occurs when one alternative has a simple majority over every other alternative and one or more of the simple-majority losers beats the winner on the basis of every point-total method that assigns more points to a first-place vote than to a second-place vote, more points to a second-place vote than to a third-place vote, and so forth.

The other three paradoxes are solely concerned with point-total procedures. They include cases in which the standard point-total winner becomes a loser when original losers are removed, and in which different truncated point-total procedures (which count only first-place votes, or only first-place and second-place votes, and so forth) yield different winners.

The computer simulation data suggest that the more extreme forms of the paradoxes are exceedingly unlikely to arise in practice.

This article belongs in the area of what Karl Jaspers calls “existential elucidation.” It is concerned less with political ideals than with the relationship of the person to those ideals and to the realities that often contradict them.

During recent centuries political activity has been increasingly governed by the confidence that history is under human control. The tragedies and disappointments of the twentieth century, however, cast serious doubt on this confidence. Thus it is incumbent on us to reconsider man's whole stance in relation to history. The core of the article is the definition of an alternative stance, which I call “civility.”

The clue to civility was provided by Plato when he suggested, in The Republic, that although the ideal city probably could not be realized in history, its form might be reproduced here and there in the souls of individuals. In pursuance of this clue, civility is defined, on the one hand, as partial detachment from action, and from the ideological preoccupations frequently accompanying action, and, on the other hand, as concentration on governance of the self. Although such governance entails historical independence, it does not set one apart from others; on the contrary, its fundamental principle is openess to the totality of the human.

The central problem of the general search for explanations of political change has been the lack of adequate explanations of the relationship between social change and political change. This research proposes and tests a six-variable causal model of the process of social change and political mobilization in the United States during the period 1870 to 1960. The variables used are based on previous theoretical efforts which have indicated that the process of social and political change is a syndrome. From these previous efforts a new model is synthesized. The model is found to operate as proposed during the period 1870 to 1910, and a simplified version in four variables is identified for the period 1920 to 1960.

One of the central questions explored by this research is the degree to which the pattern of social change alters as the process of change proceeds through time. The transition in the United States is explained by reference to the threshold effect of two social infrastructures—urbanization and government activity in education.

In light of the identification of the model, an attempt is then made at revising certain aspects of modernization theory.

The relationship of social class to partisan choice in the United States has declined during the postwar years. Through an analysis of presidential election surveys conducted by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan from 1948 through 1968, it is demonstrated that this decline is largely a result of generational change. Strong relationships between class and partisan choice persist among older voters, but among younger voters these relationships are weak. A time-series cohort analysis provides considerable support for an historically based generational explanation for age-group differences and permits examination of one process through which partisan realignments may occur.

The purpose of this paper is to specify the conditions in which parents influence the party identification and certain issue attitudes of their adolescent children (recent high school graduates). The nature and extent of the parent-adolescent attitude correspondence is first established. Next, parental as opposed to environmental explanations for this correspondence are considered. Finally, the effects on parental influence of family interaction, political interest, issue salience to the parent, and accuracy of the adolescent's perception of the parental attitude are analyzed. Issue salience and perceptual accuracy are found to have strong effects; the other variables have lesser or no effect. When issue salience and perceptual accuracy are held constant in a multivariate equation, the beta weights indicating the influence of the parent attitude on the attitude of the adolescent are very similar for all issues and party identification. It is concluded that idiosyncratic variations in successful parent-child attitude transmission can be explained by a general equation.