As agents of electoral mobilization, political parties occupy an important role in the social flow of political communication. We address several questions regarding party mobilization efforts. Whom do the parties seek to mobilize? What are the individual and aggregate characteristics and criteria that shape party mobilization efforts? What are the intended and unintended consequences of partisan mobilization, both for individual voters and for the electorate more generally? In answering these questions we make several arguments. First, party efforts at electoral mobilization inevitably depend upon a process of social diffusion and informal persuasion, so that the party canvass serves as a catalyst aimed at stimulating a cascading mobilization process. Second, party mobilization is best seen as being environmentally contingent upon institutional arrangements, locally defined strategic constraints, and partisan divisions within particular electorates. Finally, the efforts of party organizations generate a layer of political structure within the electorate that sometimes competes with social structure and often exists independently from it.

We develop a model of two-party spatial elections that departs from the standard model in three respects: parties' information about voters' preferences is limited to polls; parties can be either office-seeking or ideological; and parties are not perfect optimizers, that is, they are modelled as boundedly rational adaptive actors. We employ computer search algorithms to model the adaptive behavior of parties and show that three distinct search algorithms lead to similar results. Our findings suggest that convergence in spatial voting models is robust to variations in the intelligence of parties. We also find that an adaptive party in a complex issue space may not be able to defeat a well-positioned incumbent.

We examine the roles of democratic politics and political institutions in shaping social welfare spending in 18 contemporary capitalist democracies. We explore the social spending consequences of government partisanship, electoral competition and turnout, and the self-interested behaviors of politicians and bureaucrats, as well as such relatively durable facets of political institutions as neocorporatism, state centralization, and traditionalist policy legacies. Pooled time series analyses of welfare effort in 18 nations during the 1960–82 period show that electoral turnout, as well as left and center governments increase welfare effort; that the welfare efforts of governments led by particular types of parties show significant differences and vary notably with the strength of oppositional (and junior coalitional) parties; and that relatively neocorporatist, centralized, and traditionalistic polities are high on welfare effort. Overall, our findings suggest that contrary to many claims, both partisan and nonpartisan facets of democratic politics and political institutions shape contemporary social welfare effort.

I make three contentions. First, Hegel's theory of bureaucracy is as comprehensive as Weber's ideal type of bureaucratic organization. I argue this by making a sociological reformulation of Hegel's model and comparing it with the Weberian paradigm. Second, Hegel adapts the Aristotelian category of practical judgment in characterizing the bureaucratic activity as subsumption. This characterization is contrary to the dominant view that bureaucracy embodies mere instrumental rationality and solves some difficulties in Hegel's political thought. Third, Hegel's conceptualization can contribute to a liberal theory of bureaucracy that apprehends modern political reality more adequately than the skepticism of classical liberals and contemporary libertarians about bureaucratic organization.

I develop a framework for applying existing formal models of restrictive amendment procedures in Congress to the study of the French government's use of two restrictive legislative procedures, the package vote and the “guillotine”. I test six hypotheses derived from existing formal models and from existing research on the French National Assembly. The analysis shows that the French government invokes the two procedures on the same types of distributive and jurisdictionally complex bills that frequently receive closed rules in Congress. The analysis also shows that the decision to use the restrictive procedures is strongly linked to the majority status of the government, suggesting they are used to preserve agreements between parties in the same way that restrictive amendment procedures are used to preserve agreements between individual members of Congress. Thus, existing formal models of legislative institutions can help us study how procedural structures shape strategic bargaining between political parties in parliamentary systems, especially during coalition and minority government.

The correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes is often affected by the existence of information asymmetries among electoral participants and the presence of individuals or groups who exercise some form of agenda control. While the effects of agenda control in political decision making are widely recognized, the effects of information asymmetries are not as well understood. Since information asymmetries are fundamental characteristics of most elections, a deep understanding of the correspondence between individual preferences and electoral outcomes requires a serious consideration of the “effects” of information. I develop a generalizable agenda control model that takes as given the observation that most voters are not naturally inclined to invest in political information. The model allows me to provide a dynamic description of how voters and political elites can adapt to the information problems that characterize political decision making. It also allows me to demonstrate the effect of these adaptations on electoral outcomes.

We examine the politics of the strategic agenda. Abstracting a politics on the liberal-conservative dimension, we analyze Key Vote roll call data from the U.S. House of Representatives during the Eisenhower and Reagan administrations. The data suggest that politicians set the policy agenda in a strategic fashion. Because they consider such factors as long-term political goals, the changing institutional setting, and plebiscitary presidential politics, agenda-setters propose legislation that only imperfectly reflects their and the membership's wishes on the issue at hand. Thus, as the final stage in the political process, the strategic selection of an agenda provides a means by which factors other than policy preferences affect policy outcomes. The analyses affirm the strategic agenda as a core element in political life.

I draw upon state-building and legislative literatures to investigate how constituency-based representative institutions in the Progressive Era nationalized innovative public policies, thereby expanding the authority of the federal government as a component of the modern American state developing at that time. Using state-level referenda votes as measures of grassroots views, multivariate analysis discloses the impact of district opinion, as well as party and district economy, as major determinants of House roll call voting on landmark regulatory legislation authorizing federal intervention in market relationships, state suffrage qualifications, and life-style behaviors involving intoxicating beverages.

Contemporary political theory often assumes that individuals cannot make credible commitments where substantial temptations exist to break them unless such commitments are enforced by an external agent. One such situation may occur in relation to common pool resources, which are natural or man-made resources whose yield is subtractable and whose exclusion is nontrivial (but not necessarily impossible). Examples include fisheries, forests, grazing ranges, irrigation systems, and groundwater basins. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that appropriators in common pool resources develop credible commitments in many cases without relying on external authorities. We present findings from a series of experiments exploring (1) covenants alone (both one-shot and repeated communication opportunities); (2) swords alone (repeated opportunities to sanction each other); and (3) covenants combined with an internal sword (one-shot communication followed by repeated opportunities to sanction each other).

The self stands in the way of understanding and appreciating consciousness. The self is a reflexive, asymmetrical bit of consciousness that displaces the whole of consciousness and the open nature of consciousness. Such displacements of consciousness are expressions of gnosticism. Some political movements (e.g., fascism) are expressions of such restrictions of the horizon of consciousness. To understand and appreciate consciousness requires a degree of selflessness on the part of the inquirer. Philosophy and myth are modes of discourse that embody and cultivate the selflessness necessary for participating in, appreciating, and understanding consciousness. Such philosophizing enhances the possibility of more inclusive joint political action.

Arguments about the emergence of modern political theory often claim that Protestantism's significance was that it evacuated the political world, that a more properly political ethic took its place, a “disenchanted” one. I shall consider Luther's understanding of biblical history, thoughts on the Christian prince, and view of the “bonds of union” between Christians in order to understand the relationship between the political and spiritual realms. I suggest that even though Luther argues for the separation of the two realms, his political realm is by no means disenchanted. His politics can only be understood in light of his claims about the purview of God the Father and God the Son. “Political vacuum theories,” I suggest, misconstrue the relationship between politics and religion in Protestant thought.

We construct a stochastic model of a legislature with an endogenously determined seniority system. We model the behavior of the legislators as well as their constituents as an infinitely repeated divide-the-dollar game. The game has a stationary equilibrium with the property that the legislature imposes on itself a non-trivial seniority system, and that incumbent legislators are always reelected.

Since Rousseau, and perhaps because of him, political theory has often been characterized by a disjunction between considerations of human nature and questions of justice and law. Yet, reexamining the Second Discourse as a theodicy forces us to rethink how the essential questions of political theory are related just where they seem to become separated. The core of the theodicy is Rousseau's view that we are, by nature, physical beings embedded unproblematically in nature—good, or ordered, beings in a good, or ordered, whole. Although Rousseau presents his explicitly political thought as a juridical doctrine seemingly separated from his understanding of human nature and history, his political thought is founded upon his portrait of man's existence in the “pure state of nature.” This portrait serves as a positive formal model to enable us to remake our corrupted existence through the legitimate state—itself modeled by Rousseau on the divine or natural whole.

The morality and rationality issue is explored from an Axelrod-type perspective; that is, it is discussed in terms of recurrent-prisoner's-dilemma-type games and behavioral strategies or programs for playing them. We argue that intuitive notions of rationality and morality can be shown to be mutually compatible if two assumptions are made: (1) that morality is specified as a general behavioral disposition or program whose rationality is to be determined in comparison to alternative behavioral programs and (2) that the recurrent game is specified as a prisoner's dilemma game with an exit option. The results of a simulation experiment are presented, showing that a “moral program” (specified as one that never defects, but exits in response to an opponents defection) is successful in competition with a variety of alternative programs, including Tit for Tat.

According to Leo Strauss, knowledge of the best way of life is crucial to political philosophy. In “Farabi's Plato,” Strauss asks, assuming that the theoretical life can be known to be the best way of life, what is the status of this knowledge? Is the knowledge of the best way of life itself theoretical knowledge or practical knowledge? Without a coherent answer to this question, we cannot be certain that we know what we mean when we claim to know that philosophy is the best way of life. Strauss answers clearly the question about the status of the knowledge of the best way of life by affirming that it is practical, not theoretical, knowledge. For a variety of reasons, this answer is not persuasive in the form in which Strauss gives it.

I examine Heidegger's postmodern interpretation of technology, with an eye to exposing its weaknesses. I do this by showing that his view entails an understanding of the tradition of political philosophy that cannot do justice to that tradition's own understanding of the character of technology. I consider first Plato and Aristotle and then Hobbes and Locke in order to suggest that Heidegger's view that modern politics are stamped by technological metaphysics can be challenged on two related grounds: (1) it assumes incorrectly that the tradition is dominated by dogmatic metaphysics; (2) it prevents us from seeing how some in the tradition both understood and doubted the possibility of a technological stamp. I then suggest an alternative view of technology that might account better for the character of technology and political life.

The idea of the public sphere, of an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction, is central to democratic theory and practice. The modern age has, however, witnessed the erosion of a public realm distinct from the state and the market. In response to this erosion, public realm theory, notably the work of Arendt and Habermas, attempts to theorize the minimal conditions necessary for a discursive realm free of structural coercion or manipulation. The resulting normative conception of the public sphere has come under sharp attack by postmodern theorists, including Foucault, Lyotard, and Baudrillard, who question the basic presuppositions of public realm theory. I examine their objections and show how the public realm theory of Arendt can be viewed as motivated by concerns similar to the postmoderns'. Against Habermas, I argue that Arendt's public realm theory is less concerned with the question of legitimation than with the theorization of an agonistic political subjectivity.

The citizenship status of its Arab citizens is the key to Israel's ability to function as an ethnic democracy, that is, a political system combining democratic institutions with the dominance of one ethnic group. The confluence of republicanism and ethnonationalism with liberalism, as principles of legitimation, has resulted in two types of citizenship: republican for Jews and liberal for Arabs. Thus, Arab citizens enjoy civil and political rights but are barred from attending to the common good.

The Arab citizenship status, while much more restricted than the Jewish, has both induced and enabled Arabs to conduct their political struggles within the framework of the law, in sharp contrast to the noncitizen Arabs of the occupied territories. It may thus serve as a model for other dominant ethnic groups seeking to maintain both their dominance and a democratic system of government.

I compare the price elasticity of economic and political preferences. My central hypothesis is that willingness to pay, whether expressed verbally or through cash transactions, is more price-elastic for economic consumption goods than for public goods. I find that increases in price greatly diminish the proportion of people willing to pay for consumer goods, such as housing or hardback books; whereas the proportion willing to pay more in taxes to support a public good, such as environmental protection or shelter for the homeless, is much less responsive to changes in price. I conclude by discussing the theoretical and political implications of willingness to pay for public and private goods.

The communitarian critique of liberal individualism is presently experiencing something of a decline. One of the reasons for the failure of communitarians to make a lasting impact on liberal theory may be the historical precedents to which communitarians have turned, such as Aristotle and civic republicanism. I argue that communitarian theory may more fruitfully draw upon a model of the relation between individual and community derived from the Latin Middle Ages. This approach—communal functionalism—claims that the community is essentially composed neither of individuals nor of citizens but, rather, of functional groups or parts arranged according to their contribution to the community. I consider two variants of this framework, John of Salisbury's “physiological” version and Marsiglio of Padua's “civic” account. I close with an evaluation of the relevance—and also some of the limitations—of the communal functionalist model in relation to the requirements of contemporary communitarian theory.