The central purpose of this article is to shed some light on the roles that risk attitudes and uncertainty may play in determining the durability of political coalitions. Although Axelrod theorized that polarized, or “unconnected,” coalitions would be less durable than “connected” coalitions, subsequent empirical research has found little support for Axelrod's hypothesis. In this article we demonstrate theoretically that many of the anomalies associated with Axelrod's polarization hypothesis can be explained by incorporating risk attitudes and uncertainty into a logical model of a coalition maintenance process. The model we have constructed assumes that coalition members are uncertain about their ultimate payoffs and therefore are subject to persuasion and manipulation by a coalition leader. Through computer simulation we demonstrate that polarized coalitions are indeed capable of enduring for relatively long periods of time once members' risk characteristics and uncertainty are taken into consideration.

This article replicates and extends earlier work on the politics of macroeconomic policy by considering political effects on unemployment in 14 western industrial nations between 1960 and 1983. Changes of party control of government display broadly the expected effects, namely that unemployment falls under left-wing governments and rises under right-wing governments. However, the principal conclusions of this article are that partisan effects on unemployment in open economies (that is, economies heavily dependent on trade with other countries) can only be satisfactorily estimated relative to the constraint imposed by the level of world economic activity, and that in addition to politicians' strategic incentives, political institutions and economic regime constraints also determine whether partisan effects on unemployment will be sustained, transitory, or absent. With respect to the latter, on the whole no effects are found where no such effects were promised by the new government before taking office; where one-party or dominant-partner coalitions form, the effect on unemployment is transitory, whereas where broad coalitions form, it is sustained or absent. Finally, ceteris paribus, any partisan effects are more likely where governments secure parliamentary majorities.

Despite its normative importance, the question of why people join interest groups remains open. It has certainly provoked a wealth of theoretical attention. Regrettably, however, it has inspired only a handful of empirical tests. The introduction of this article places the empirical debate into its normative context. The first section develops a rational model of individual evaluations of group membership, focusing upon the effect of changing personal circumstances—preferences, needs, resources, insecurity, and information—on the calculus. In particular, the theory predicts responsiveness to political or collective benefits in threatening times. Analyses of aggregate changes over time in membership in the Farm Bureau, the League of Women Voters, and the Home Builders, reported in the second section, bear the model out. Finally, the conclusion takes on the complementary question of group supply, sketching a theory of group mobilization that emphasizes subsidization.

Current methods of roll-call analysis have practical as well as theoretical shortcomings. We propose here a method based on a spatial theory of voting that overcomes these problems. We apply metric multidimensional unfolding to interest-group ratings of members of Congress in order to obtain a Euclidean spatial configuration of congressmen. Each roll-call vote is then mapped into the configuration of members in a way consistent with spatial theory. Based on 190,000 ratings issued from 1959 to 1980, our empirical analysis demonstrates that a single liberal-conservative dimension accounts for more than 80% of the variance in the ratings. A second dimension, associated with party unity, accounts for 7% of the variance. Approximately 86% of all roll-call voting for the 22 years of our study is consistent with a simple one-dimensional spatial model. The votes that best fit the liberal-conservative dimension are drawn from the government management, social welfare, and foreign policy areas. The votes that best fit the two-dimensional configurations are drawn from the agricultural area.

The empirical literature on the control of bureaus notes that politicians have difficulty observing bureaucratic output, but this insight is rarely represented informal models. To analyze how bureaus use this uncertainty strategically, we develop a model of expertise-based agenda control, building on the Niskanen (1971) and Miller and Moe (1983) tradition. We show that under some plausible conditions, bureaus will underestimate the benefits, and overestimate the costs, of their programs. In the model, politicians are neither passive nor omniscient: they anticipate the bureau's strategic behavior and establish a monitoring system to counteract it. This possibility of detection changes the bureau's behavior: even imperfect monitoring reduces the bureau's deception of the legislature, whether or not the legislature's demand for the bureau's services is concealed. Moreover, uncertainty by itself matters: if the legislature makes it harder for a risk-averse bureau chief to predict demand or penalty, the bureau will restrain its deception.

Class has long been the preeminent source of political conflict in industrial society, but its electoral influence has declined in recent years. The sources of the decline are not yet firmly established, and moreover the implications for political parties remain unclear. The decline-of-class hypothesis states that parties on the left will decline as the working class becomes more affluent and adopts middle-class styles of conduct. By contrast, the party-appeals hypothesis suggests that as the electorate becomes more middle class, parties of the left will alter their appeals to encompass the growing middle class and so offset the shrinkage of their traditional working-class constituency. This article applies multivariate anaysis to survey data collected in England between 1964 and 1979 to test four specific hypotheses derived from the two scenarios. The results support the decline-of-class theory's prediction that economic development erodes the working-class bases of left-wing parties, but not its claim that the left-wing party's vote declines proportionately. Rather, the results suggest that parties are apparently able to change their appeals to reduce their losses, as argued by the party-appeals theory, but not to eliminate them. It seems that there are restraints on parties' ability to change their appeals, limitations not envisioned by the party appeals theory.

Converse's findings of low constraint and stability among mass attitudes are only one side of the story; mass attitudes often manifest much more coherent and stable patterns at the aggregate level than would seem possible if one took the results of panel survey analysis at face value. Items designed by Rokeach and Inglehart to tap basic value priorities, show modest individual-level stability, together with remarkably high aggregate stability structured in ways that could not occur if random answering were the prevailing pattern. Materialist/postmaterialist values show large differences between birth cohorts that not only persisted throughout 1970-1984 but seem to reflect distinctive formative experiences that occurred as much as 50 years ago. These aggregate results are much too skewed to result from equiprobable random answering and cannot be attributed to methods effects. They reflect underlying attitudinal predispositions in the respondents themselves. While random response to given items does play an important role, it is much less widespread than Converse's Black and White model implies and does not generally reflect an absence of relevant preferences. Structural equation analysis of multiple indicators demonstrates much stabler, broader orientations underlying the response to given items that account for the high aggregate-level stability observed here. Because it usually measures such orientations imperfectly, individual-level survey data tend systematically to underestimate constraint and stability in mass attitudes.

This study uses information about the organizational arrangements of five major political action committees to develop an explanation for the extent to which PAC contributions are capable of influencing congressional voting decisions. The explanation claims that the processes by which PACs raise and allocate money must be understood before the impact of money on roll call decisions can be appreciated. In contrast to some previous studies, this analysis demonstrates with marked clarity the limited nature of PAC influence.

This article examines a mode of political participation that frequently has been overlooked—individual efforts to obtain assistance from government officials. Using the seven-nation data set of Verba, Nie, and Kim, we develop and empirically evaluate alternatiave models of citizen contacting. Our first model draws on variations in the distribution of social and economic resources to explain the likelihood of contacting. The second focuses on differences in political ties to locate those most likely to contact government officials. We find greater support for the political ties model. Persons active in political parties and election campaigns are the most likely to engage in citizen contacting. Without political ties, few poor or uneducated persons would ask officials for assistance. We conclude by noting the more general theoretical and normative implications of our study.

Sources of opposition and support for woman suffrage are analyzed with the use of the responses of male voters to constitutional referenda held in six key states during the Progressive era. Traditional axes of opposition and support for suffrage are examined, establishing that stable sources of suffrage support originate most often from Protestant and northern European constituencies (with the exception of Germans), whereas southern Europeans and Catholics (except for Germans) generally show no consistent patterns. Opposition to suffrage is most constant from Germans—both Catholic and Protestant—and from urban constituencies. A structural model indicating the greater importance of prohibition as an intervening variable compared to partisanship or turnout at the grass-roots level of voting behavior explicates the sources of direct and indirect support for suffrage while it also demonstrates the influence of educational commitment in determining suffrage voting patterns. Except in the West, opposition to suffrage was intense and greater at the grass-roots level than among legislative elites. The ultimate success of the federal amendment is discussed in the context of state referenda, the changed political climate after American entry into World War I, and the innovative efforts of state legislatures to grant “presidential” suffrage, thereby circumventing what proved to be the difficult referenda route.

This article shows that citizens can estimate what politically strategic groups—liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, and blacks and whites—stand for on major issues. These attitude attributions follow from a simple calculus, a likability heuristic. This heuristic is rooted in people's likes and dislikes of political groups. Thanks to this affective calculus, many in the mass public are able to estimate who stands for what politically, notwithstanding shortfalls in information and information processing.

From assumptions of parties as rational actors, this study develops four measures of government performance: duration, mode of resignation, subsequent alternation, and electoral success. These measures are used in a test of competing hypotheses concerning minority government performance in parliamentary democracies. Minority governments are conventionally portrayed as poor performers, but tests of this proposition have been seriously limited. An alternative hypothesis depicts minority governments as rational cabinet solutions without significant performance liabilities. These hypotheses are tested against an extensive cross-national data set including 323 postwar governments in 15 parliamentary democracies. The conventional wisdom about minority governments is not supported by the evidence. In some respects, minority governments are clearly superior to majority coalitions. Moreover, minority government formation may enhance systemic responsiveness and accountability. The findings support the explanation of minority governments as rational cabinet solutions.

One effect of the cosmopolitan turn in recent political philosophy is that widely held beliefs and intuitions are being called into question. My purpose here is to scrutinize one of these beliefs—that we should attend to the needs of our compatriots before the needs of the foreigners—from the perspective of a rights-based theory. After sketching a theory that takes the right of autonomy as its cornerstone, I consider four arguments that might support the intuition that compatriots take priority. Only one of the four is sound, I conclude, and even this argument, the argument from reciprocity, supports the intuition only in a highly qualified form.

Not so long ago, political scientists were enthusiastically proclaiming that political socialization was a growth stock. But interest in the subfield has slackened, and the bull market has turned bearish. This article argues that a central cause of this recent scholarly neglect is a lack of theoretical confidence. Political socialization has been branded as less worthy of study largely because it is difficult to study and to understand in the absence of an explicit psychological model of learning. A strong theoretical rationale must be developed to return the subfield to its deserved place of priority. Such an endeavor is also Justified by the new popularity of the Piagetian model, which is inappropriate for understanding political learning because it emphasizes the foremost growth of logical operations and the individual as the prime motivating force. Another model, that of L. S. Vygotsky, is more useful, incorporating many of Piaget's insights without his unrealistic expectations. I outline Vygotsky's cognitive-developmental model, indicate its applicability to the small body of defensible research on the process of political learning, and conclude with a research agenda suggested by the model.

The purpose of this article is to develop a theoretical framework for analyzing why individuals support private environmental “public interest” groups. The model attempts to integrate past contributions which have argued that these decisions could be explained by one of several factors, including: bounded rationality and imperfect information (Moe, 1980); the features of the public goods provided (or influenced by) these groups (Mitchell, 1979); the existence of a disequilibrium in households' demands for public goods (Weisbrod, 1977); or as a response to contract failures (Hansmann, 1980). The article uses a theoretical framework originally developed to explain individuals' decisions to join private clubs and specifies the conditions for the efficient provision of access to different types of private, nonprofit groups. By describing the optimal access conditions as if individuals could be coordinated to assure this efficient outcome, the model provides insights into the benefits and costs associated with membership in the environmental groups in practice.

In this article we outline a new framework for the formal analysis of bureaucratic politics. It departs from standard neoclassical approaches, notably those of Niskanen (1971) and Peltzman (1976), in several important respects. First our approach explicitly models a system of three-way interaction among bureaus, politicians, and interest groups. Second, it allows for institutional features of each type of participant. Third, it is a model of dynamic process. Fourth, participants make choices adoptively rather than optimizing. Fifth, participants are only minimally informed.

The result is a dynamic model of adaptive behavior, very much in the spirit of Simon's (1947) behavioral tradition, that offers a new perspective on political control, bureaucratic power, and the “intelligence of democracy.”

This article presents an empirical analysis of the National Labor Relations Board, focusing on the balance the agency strikes between the interests of business and labor. It is oriented by a theoretical framework that, relative to popular models, takes a broader view of the causal structure of regulatory performance—one that simultaneously allows for presidents, congressional committees, the courts, agency staff, constituents, and economic conditions. The empirical results are instructive. All of these factors prove to have significant impacts on NLRB decisions. In addition, the core regulatory actors —Board members, staff, and constituents—are shown to engage in mutually adaptive adjustment: each is responsive to the decisions of each of the others, and their reciprocal relationships impart equilibrating properties to the system as a whole. Thus, the evidence points to a varied set of important determinants and to the dynamic nature of their interconnection. To the extent that these findings are at all characteristic of other regulatory agencies, simple popular models of regulation are likely to give anemic explanations, if not highly distorted accounts, of why agencies behave as they do.

We all acknowledge strong special responsibilities towards families, friends, clients, and compatriots. The moral basis of these responsibilities is traditionally analyzed in terms of self-assumed obligations. That analysis substantially restricts their scope, because we voluntarily commit ourselves to only a limited range of people. In this article I argue that it is the beneficiary's vulnerability rather than any voluntary commitment as such on the part of the benefactor that generates these special responsibilities. This analysis provides an argument for broader notions of responsibility, because there are many more agents vulnerable to us (individually or collectively) than to whom we have made commitments, in any sense. The welfare state is one particularly apt way of discharging at least some of these further responsibilities. Unlike more individualized responses, the welfare state can satisfy the criteria of a morally acceptable dependency relationship.

The disposition to seek power in a social arena is tied in this research to a biochemical marker, whole blood serotonin. This finding constitutes the first systematic evidence of any biochemical property in humans which differentiates power seekers from others. The disposition itself is given empirical content with the use of measures of three components of the Type A behavior pattern—aggressiveness, competitiveness, and drive—and of distrust and self-confidence. The statistical fit with serotonin is very good. This discovery echoes similar findings in a species of subhuman primates.

Van de Kragt, Orbell, and Dawes (1983) reported the results of a series of experiments in which n subjects each receive a monetary endowment and then may choose privately whether to contribute it to a monetary public good; the good is supplied if a prespecified number m < n of contributions or more is made. Decision policies maximizing expected value are derived for this experimental paradigm under three different assumptions about the expectations each individual has about the decisions of the other n – I members: A homogeneity assumption postulating that each other member contributes with fixed probability p, a heterogeneity assumption postulating that the n – I p's are independently selected from a subjective probability distribution, and a partial homogeneity assumption postulating that the n – I members are partitioned into distinct subsets with the same p for all members of each subset. The theoretical and social implications of these assumptions are briefly discussed.