Majority-rule spatial voting games lacking a core still always present a “near-core” outcome, more commonly known as the Copeland winner. This is the alternative that defeats or ties the greatest number of alternatives in the space. Previous research has not tested the Copeland winner as a solution concept for spatial voting games without a core, lacking a way to calculate where the Copeland winner was with an infinite number of alternatives. We provide a straightforward algorithm to find the Copeland winner and show that it corresponds well to experimental outcomes in an important set of experimental legislative voting games. We also provide an intuitive motivation for why legislative outcomes in the spatial context may be expected to lie close to the Copeland winner. Finally, we show a connection between the Copeland winner and the Shapley value and provide a simple but powerful algorithm to calculate the Copeland scores of all points in the space in terms of the (modified) power values of each of the voters and their locations in the space.

The appropriate model of international conflict and war has been much discussed in recent years, and considerable progress has been made in modeling. Nevertheless the assumptions, conditions, and specifications for international conflict models remain eminently debatable. In the December 1986 issue of this Review, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman presented a generalized expected utility model of international conflict. Here Seif Hussein takes issue with their model in various particulars, aiming to perfect and strengthen the model. Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman respond.

Legislators' beliefs, preferences, and intentions are communicated in committees and legislatures through debates, the proposal of bills and amendments, and the recording of votes. Because such information is typically distributed asymmetrically within any group of decision makers, legislators have incentives to reveal or conceal private information strategically and thus manipulate the collective decision-making process in their favor. In consequence, any committee decision may in the end reflect only the interests of a minority. We address a problem of sharing information through debate in an endogenous, agenda-setting, collective-choice process. The model is game theoretic and we find in the equilibrium to the game that at least some legislators have incentives to conceal private information. Consequently, the final committee decision can be “incoherent” by failing to reflect the preferences of all committee members fully. Additionally, we characterize the subset of legislators with any incentive to conceal data.

In The Discourses Machiavelli extolled the virtues of republican government, yet in The Prince he advised the ruler on how to perpetuate autocratic rule. What accounts for this paradox? Mary Dietz argues that Machiavelli sought to deceive the prince, trapping him into actions that would destroy his rule. John Langton contends, in contrast, that Machiavelli was seeking to teach the prince how to govern so that the autocratic state could evolve into a republic.

Do international standards regarding human rights require the existence of a liberal regime? This was the thrust of Rhoda Howard and Jack Donnelly's essay in the September 1986 issue of this Review. Neil Mitchell takes vigorous issue with this contention, arguing first and foremost that Howard and Donnelly have not defined liberalism satisfactorily. Howard and Donnelly present a spirited rejoinder.

Ronald Inglehart has argued that, while most of the major political parties in Western countries tend to be aligned along a social class–based axis, support for new political movements and new political parties largely reflects the tension between materialist and postmaterialist goals and values. This has presented something of a dilemma to the traditional parties, and helps account for the decline of social-class voting. Scott Flanagan takes issue with Inglehart's interpretation in several particulars. Although their views converge in many respects, Flanagan urges conceptual reorientations and adumbrates a different interpretation of post–World War II political development in Europe and Japan.

This research report analyzes the evolution of the bond between a charismatic leader and his mass following. Its empirical focus is the case of Juan Peron and the Peronist movement in Argentina. After discussing stages in the evolution of charisma, we review our earlier findings showing that by 1965 there was clear separation between those Peronists devoted to the movement and those Peronists devoted to the man. We note distinctive features in the social and attitudinal profiles of each and then turn to our principal concern, the recruitment of new blood into each Peronist camp. Personalist youth turn out to be much like their older counterparts, but organizationalist youth demonstrate social and attitudinal features that set them dramatically apart from the personalists and apart from the older organizationalists as well. We discuss the implications of this ever widening rift.

Why does it happen that ordinary people can come to participate in rebellious collective action? In the June 1986 issue of this Review, Edward N. Muller and Karl-Dieter Opp argued a public-goods model to account for why rational citizens may become rebels. They offered empirical data drawn from samples in New York City and Hamburg, Germany in support of the public-goods model. George Kolsko takes issue with the rationale of Muller and Opp, arguing that their public-goods model is not a rational-choice explanation of rebellious collective action. In response, Muller and Opp clarify their theory and further elaborate its assumptions.

The empirical findings on whether or not legislators vote strategically are mixed. This is at least partly due to the fact that to establish any hypothesis on strategic voting, legislators' preferences need to be known, and these are typically private data. I show that under complete information, if decision making is by the amendment procedure and if the agenda is set endogenously, then sophisticated (strategic) voting over the resulting agenda is observationally equivalent to sincere voting. The voting strategies, however, are sophisticated. This fact has direct implications for empirical work on sophisticated voting.

In “The Institutional Foundations of Committee Power” (this Review, March 1987) Kenneth Shepsle and Barry Weingast made the case that congressional committees are powerful not so much because of members' deference to them as because of the committees' ex post veto, a potential negative committees might deliver, say, at the conference committee stage of lawmaking. But Keith Krehbiel argues that congressional committees have, in fact, never possessed an uncircumventable ex post veto and are very much constrained by their parent chambers. In response, Shepsle and Weingast defend their model of the foundations of committee power.

Measuring the southern contribution to the Democratic coalition is an important task. To measure this contribution one must choose appropriate data and the appropriate unit of analysis for studying party coalitions in the United States. Two recent studies of party coalitions use the National Election Studies to estimate the southern contribution to the Democratic party, and these studies illustrate the problems one may encounter. This note demonstrates two points. First, survey research results may lead to erroneous estimates and it is preferable, where possible, to rely upon official election statistics. Second, the contribution of demographic groups to party coalitions should be assessed within the context of the political rules that make such coalitions meaningful.

Britain under the government of Prime Minister Thatcher provides a unique opportunity to probe the effects of both war and macroeconomic performance on government popularity. Monthly ratings for Thatcher and Conservative-party support (June 1979 to July 1985) are examined by way of Box-Tiao intervention models. The model that best captures the impact of the Falklands War of 1982 is of the gradual-temporary variety: popularity gains accrued through the three-month war shrink in a geometric fashion. Nevertheless, they prove to be worth over five percentage points for the Conservative party a year later, in the 1983 election. Macroeconomic performance, meanwhile, is found to have an asymmetric effect on government popularity, with unemployment strongly significant but inflation not significant at all. Apparently, the British public is punishing failure (on employment) while letting success (on inflation) go unrewarded. Qualifications of the positive effect of war and the negative effect of macroeconomic performance are suggested.

A current debate within the field of U.S. politics revolves around the extent to which the electorate is nationalized, that is, responds to national-level political forces. We provide additional evidence to help resolve this debate. Using the variance-components model of political effects developed by Stokes, we analyze presidential, senatorial, gubernatorial, and congressional races for the period 1962–1984. The results indicate that presidential races are highly nationalized, and congressional races largely localized. Senate and gubernatorial races are found to have a large state-level component to them. The analysis is also split into two segments to ascertain if a change in political effects is seen during this relatively short time frame; no such differences are found. We conclude that nationalization is not a process that can be understood from evidence provided by congressional races alone. Our results suggest that constituencies respond to political forces in a complex way, reacting to factors that are most relevant to a particular electoral contest.

A subset of citizens in a democratic system directly test their political self-efficacy by petitioning government for assistance of one kind or another. Drawing on survey data gathered in India in 1967, this investigation focuses on the consequences of success or failure for perceived self-efficacy and for perceived government responsiveness. The analysis demonstrates that (1) successful petitioners come to enjoy a somewhat enhanced sense of self-efficacy but do not view government as particularly responsive, (2) unsuccessful petitioners do not see themselves as inefficacious but—possibly instead—do see government responsiveness in distinctly negative terms, and, (3) the kind of evidence that can help sustain a positive sense of self-efficacy will not suffice to undergird a belief in system responsiveness.