Many studies undertaken in recent decades have documented the effects of socioeconomic status (SES) on political participation. As consensus has grown on the role of socioeconomic status, other factors, like ethnicity, have been relegated to secondary importance. However, variations in levels of participation can be traced, in part, to differences in ethnic political culture. Furthermore, the findings presented in this article indicate that holding socioeconomic status constant does not eliminate the independent impact of ethnicity on political attitudes that affect participation. Ethnicity is shown to have a greater effect than socioeconomic status on levels of participant political culture. How these findings might influence our understanding of social and political inequality is discussed, and students of participation are urged to give more serious attention to the ethnic factor.

This article challenges some of the conclusions drawn in “The J-Curve Theory and the Black Urban Riots,” by Abraham Miller, Louis Bolce and Mark Halligan (1977). Miller et al. reject relative deprivation theory and J-curve theory as valid explanations of black urban rioting. In my argument that Miller et al. are not justified in rejecting relative deprivation theory, I shall review four versions of relative deprivation theory to show how Miller et al. misrepresent the theory and to point out methodological problems with their operationalization of theoretical variables. Because these operationalization problems are far from atypical, I conclude with a call for greater methodological rigor.

This article proposes an alternative conceptualization of political tolerance, a new measurement strategy consistent with that conceptualization, and some new findings based upon this measurement strategy. Briefly put, we argue that tolerance presumes a political objection to a group or to an idea, and if such an objection does not arise, neither does the problem of tolerance. Working from this understanding, we argue that previous efforts to measure tolerance have failed because they have asked respondents about groups preselected by the investigators. Those groups selected as points of reference in measuring tolerance have generally been of a leftist persuasion. Our measurement strategy allowed respondents themselves to select a political group to which they were strongly opposed. They were then asked a series of questions testing the extent to which they were prepared to extend procedural claims to these self-selected targets. Using this approach, we found little change between the 1950s and the 1970s in levels of tolerance in the United States, a result that contradicts much recent research on the problem.

For the purpose of determining the relative influence of the three potentially most important social and demographic factors on party choice–social class, religion, and language–a comparison of Belgium, Canada, South Africa, and Switzerland provides a “crucial experiment,” because these three variables are simultaneously present in all four countries. Building on the major earlier research achievements in comparative electoral behavior, this four-country multivariate analysis compares the indices of voting and the party choice “trees” on the basis of national sample surveys conducted in the 1970s. From this crucial contest among the three determinants of party choice, religion emerges as the victor, language as a strong runner-up, and class as a distant third. The surprising strength of the religious factor can be explained in terms of the “freezing” of past conflict dimensions in the party system and the presence of alternative, regional-federal, structures for the expression of linguistic interests.

Many observers routinely assert the relative weakness of presidents before the bureaucracy. The research of this study, guided by a structuralist theory of organizations, provides evidence of the Nixon administration's power to change policy, even over the opposition of the bureaucracy, concerning the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program. The study demonstrates that the management tools available to the president and top officials, when used adroitly, are more powerful than are generally presumed. That presidents can affix their indelible stamps on policy by short-circuiting the legislative process and dominating the bureaucracy is more than a remote possibility.

This article has two purposes. The first is to show how some of the central principles of classical Greek political theory became anachronistic as a result of massive transformations in the underlying structure of European society. These principles, it is argued, were originally dependent on an empirical premise that the polity is a “whole” encompassing individual “parts,” or (stated differently) that the polity is identical with total society. This whole/part schematization of the polity seemed plausible in the ancient city since most sectors of polis life had political connotations or overtones. The same schema, however, became an archaism in modern Europe, chiefly because of the emphatic emergence of a distinction between state and society–one aspect of a more general increase in the structural differentiation of society. The second and closely related purpose is to explore the feasibility of a claim once advanced by Benjamin Constant: that the organizational transformations involved in the modernization of European society have created a novel rhetorical opportunity, the possibility of defending tyranny in the name of freedom and democracy.

The key hypotheses which find support in this study of the determinants of variations among the provinces of China in the provision of health and education services are: (1) that interprovincial variations in the provision of educational and health services can be explained largely by economic and ecological factors; (2) that specific levels of education and various types of medical services are responsive in different ways to changes in particular variables. For instance, the survival of cooperative health programs in the 1970s is much more sensitive to alterations in agricultural production than is the urban hospital system, which is much more dependent upon urban economic growth. This refines Dye's findings and makes them more applicable to Third World systems. (3) Central policy choices are therefore important because choices relating to investment strategy and program structure ultimately determine the relationship between the economy and the programs.

This article proposes a model for the systematic development of adults' party identification, based on voters' need for a way to handle difficult electoral decisions. Several variables are noted which should heighten this need, thus making it more likely that voters will develop party identification. The model is partially tested, in an exploratory way, by analysis of panel data from the United States and Britain, and by cohort analysis of United States elections from 1952 to 1976. I develop the following implications of the model: (1) the “life-cycle” process by which party identification increases with age may be largely a function of difficulty in meeting information costs; (2) the process by which party identification, once it exists, becomes stronger appears to differ from the process by which voters move from independence to identification; (3) class-consciousness, in the presence of class parties, may obviate the need for direct identification with parties; (4) the American electorate appears increasingly to be one in which political change may occur regularly, rather than through the fitful process of realignment.

Virtually all congressional scholars investigating the rise of incumbent safety in the U.S. House have assumed that the responsible cause, regardless of its specific nature, is one which has affected incumbents generally. The sole exception is Fiorina, who speculates that increased overall safety results from recent freshmen's greater electoral strength. The analysis performed here confirms this generational replacement hypothesis. Much greater vote gains have resulted from the freshman term of incumbency since 1966–68, while no pro-incumbent trend for veterans has surfaced.

At least three competing proto-theories of Chinese military coalitional behavior (those of William Whitson, Harvey Nelsen, and William Parrish) have been proposed. This study attempts to: (1) reformulate these proto-theories into testable mathematical models, (2) test these reformulated models empirically, and (3) suggest an alternative theory of Chinese military coalitional behavior. I use causal modeling techniques to reformulate these proto-theories into mathematical ones and gather data on 423 members of the Chinese military elite to test the zero-predictions and structural equations of each model. The findings indicate that all three proto-theories may be misspecified theoretically. I then propose an alternative theory, which integrates features from all three proto-theories. This theory argues that members of the Chinese military elite form coalitions according to a set of affective ties and shared professional interests. This set of relationships is stated in mathematical terms, and the mathematical predictions deduced from it fit empirical data.

This article develops a simultaneous equation model of the voting decision in a form thought to mirror the main lines of cognitive decision-making processes of individual voters. The model goes beyond earlier efforts in two respects. First, it explicitly represents the causal interdependence of voter assessments in the election situation, permitting such estimations as the degree to which correlations between voter issue positions and issue positions ascribed to preferred candidates arise because of projection onto the candidate or persuasion by the candidate. Secondly, the model is truly dynamic, in the sense that it is dependent on longitudinal data for its proper estimation. The utility of the model is certified by the goodness of fit achieved when applied to 1972–76 panel data for a sample of the national electorate.

Past studies have offered diverse estimates of the role of policy preferences, party loyalties, candidate personalities and other factors in voting decisions. Most have postulated recursive (that is, one-way) causal relationships among the central variables.

This study specifies a non-recursive simultaneous equation model and estimates its parameters for the 1972 and 1976 elections using CPS data. The estimates differ markedly from those of simple recursive models. Policy preferences appear to have much more influence on voting decisions, and party attachments much less, than was previously thought. Candidate evaluations strongly affect voters' perceptions of closeness to candidates on policy issues. Party identification may be influenced by short-term factors. Differences between 1972 and 1976 reflect the issue-oriented McGovern candidacy.

Simultaneous equation models offer no cure-all; in the absence of accepted theory many specifications are open to controversy. But future research must take account of reciprocal causal paths.

In this study, we evaluate whether the increase in the number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) has resulted in their increased use for foreign policy behavior by the nations of the world. This question is examined in three related ways: (1) the aggregate use of IGOs for foreign policy behavior; (2) the relationship between IGO membership and IGO use; and (3) the kinds of states that use IGOs. Our data base consists of the 35 nations in the CREON (Comparative Research on the Events of Nations) data set for the years 1959–1968.

The main findings are that IGOs were employed over 60 percent of the time with little fluctuation on a year-by-year basis, that global and “high politics” IGOs were used more often than regional and “low politics” IGOs, that institutional membership and IGO use were generally inversely related, and that the attributes of the states had limited utility in accounting for the use of intergovernmental organizations. Some of the theoretical implications of these findings are then explored.

The reputation of Ernst Wigforss (1881–1977), the foremost ideologist of Swedish Social Democracy, has suffered from the lack of a coherent treatment of his work in English. This article briefly surveys Wigforss' historical contributions to Swedish Social Democracy. Then it examines the structure of Wigforss' thought, analyzing first the conceptions of equality, liberty, democracy, security, economic efficiency, and solidarity that serve for Wigforss as the aims of Social Democracy. Then it considers the reformist measures Wigforss espoused to achieve these aims–social welfare policy, progressive taxation, economic planning, industrial democracy, and socialization of industry. It concludes with an assessment of Wigforss' importance as a Social Democratic theorist and suggests the relevance of his ideas to American politics and social science.

Historians of political thought have failed to appreciate the importance of Montaigne's Essays as a major work of modern political philosophy. The neglect of the Essays as a political book is traceable to a widespread belief that Montaigne's thought is too fluctuating and unsystematic to embody a coherent and profound political teaching.

This study challenges the prevailing interpretation of Montaigne's thought by analyzing his critique of the classical understanding of supreme or “heroic” moral virtue, concentrating especially on the chapter entitled “Of Cruelty.” A careful reading of this chapter reveals that underlying the seeming disunity or inconsistency of its argument is a carefully worked out political intention. The essence of Montaigne's political project involves the replacement of a traditional morality based on “beauty” (i.e., one in which humanity aspires to share in the divine) by one embodying “utility” (one in which we understand our needs in the light of what we share with the beasts). The analysis of this “transvaluation of values” helps one to comprehend the foundations of the “bourgeois” morality that characterizes modern liberal regimes.

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.