Since Dawson and Robinson, a dominant issue in the quantitative study of public policy has been the relative importance of socioeconomic and political variables for determining policy outcomes. It is argued here that past efforts to resolve this issue have been unsatisfactory, largely because they relied on inadequate statistical techniques, i.e., simple correlation, partial correlation, or multiple regression. Coefficients from these techniques are irrelevant for all but the most peculiar models of public policy. In general, if the researcher wishes to assess the relative importance of independent variables, it will be necessary to resort to path analysis of a formally constructed causal model. The comparison of “effects coefficients,” derived from path analysis, is offered as the preferred means of evaluating independent variables, superior to comparisons of coefficients from simple correlation, partial correlation, or multiple regression. When the effects coefficients are actually calculated for a popular model of welfare policy, socioeconomic variables appear much more important than political variables, contrary to interpretations coming from the more traditional statistical techniques.

Several authors have addressed the postwar decline of electoral competition on the congressional level. Some have attributed the decline to institutional change such as the redistrictings of the 1960s. Others have remarked on the growing use of the growing resources of incumbency. Still others, like Ferejohn, have focused on behavioral change in the larger electoral system, such as the erosion of party identification. In this comment I suggest that while electoral behavior has changed, the change is at least in part a response to changing congressional behavior, which in turn is a reaction to institutional change for which Congress is partly responsible. Specifically, over time congressmen have placed increasing emphasis on district services: more and more they operate as and are perceived as ombudsmen rather than as national policymakers. This behavioral change is an understandable response to an expanding federal role and an increasing involvement of the federal bureaucracy in the lives of ordinary citizens, an institutional change Congress has helped to bring about.

There has been considerable interest in the development of theories of public policy formation, but theoretical efforts to date have not demonstrated adequate recognition of the distinctive qualities of the dependent variable as a focus of research. Facets of public policy are far more difficult to study systematically than most other phenomena investigated empirically by political scientists. Our attempt to test hypotheses with some rigor demonstrated that public policy becomes troublesome as a research focus because of inherent complexity–specifically because of the temporal nature of the process, the multiplicity of participants and of policy provisions, and the contingent nature of theoretical effects. We use examples of policy making taken from the case study literature to show concretely how such complexity makes it essentially impossible to test apparently significant hypotheses as they are presented by Lowi, Dahl, Banfield, and others. Our effort here is to enhance theoretical development by carefully specifying and clarifying the major shortcomings and pointing out the apparent directions of remedy.

This article, drawing on recent studies of class consciousness and powerlessness explained in individual versus system level terms, develops and analyzes an operational measure of “power consciousness.” Power consciousness is defined as a person's evaluation of his or her political power position and his or her explanation of the causes of any inadequacies or advantages perceived in this position. The operational measure of power consciousness arrays responses to two items on political power satisfaction (one of them open-ended) along a dimension which ranges from satisfaction, to dissatisfaction ascribed to personal failures of the respondent, to dissatisfaction explained in terms of problems with the political system. Survey data are utilized for a comparative analysis of whites' and blacks' scores on the power consciousness measure. The following topics receive detailed attention: the place of power consciousness in the matrix of power measures; its relationship to background factors, especially level of education; its relationship to indicators of political discontent; and the impact of power consciousness on levels and styles of political behavior. The analysis is followed by suggestions for the development of future work in this area.

The influence of political literature has often proved elusive to empirical political science, partly because of the subjectivity of literary response, and partly because of social science methods which are largely incapable of dealing with subjective phenomena in a satisfactory way. A distinction is made between the experimental methods of expression which focus on objective responses, and the methods of impression which focus on subjective responses. Experimental methods are then applied to interpretations of Golding's Lord of the Flies, to the effects on imagery of reading Mazlish's In Search of Nixon, and to reactions to Burdick's The Ninth Wave. An illustration is also given of the experimental study of literary response in the single case.

James Barber's predictive theory of presidential behavior has evoked varied reactions, which have ranged from praise for its sensitization of readers to the fact that personality affects presidential performance, to criticisms for the emphasis that the theory places on personality, to questions about the validity of the theory. This article addresses itself to the criticisms and the questions.

Concerning the questions, it shows, first, that in analyzing presidents, Barber assumes the validity of “character”–the core construct of the theory. It shows, second, that Barber's earlier research on Connecticut legislators, from which “character” derives, does not empirically establish the construct.

Concerning the criticisms, the article isolates a possible origin of the psychological reductionism evident in Barber's explanations of presidential performance. The article identifies a similar reductionism in Barber's legislative research and attributes this reductionism to a fallacious extra-empirical argument.

The incumbent vs. system affect distinction is basic in the conceptualization of political support. It is based on the premise that system affect is a more important antecedent of aggressive political behavior than incumbent affect. The data reported here show that it is possible to distinguish incumbent from system affect empirically, and also theoretically important to make the incumbent-system distinction. Measures especially sensitive to incumbent affect correlate differently with ideology than does a measure especially sensitive to system affect. Byvariate correlations between measures of incumbent affect and a measure of aggressive political behavior are shown to be either spurious or indirect, due to the fact that incumbent affect is correlated with what appears to be a more powerful and direct antecedent of aggressive political behavior, namely, system affect. The theory behind the incumbent-system distinction is expressed in four propositions. In general, the data conform to it, but each prediction is qualified according to whether ideology and community context are inhibitory or facilitative.

James Barber's predictive theory of presidential behavior has evoked varied reactions, which have ranged from praise for its sensitization of readers to the fact that personality affects presidential performance, to criticisms for the emphasis that the theory places on personality, to questions about the validity of the theory. This article addresses itself to the criticisms and the questions.

Concerning the questions, it shows, first, that in analyzing presidents, Barber assumes the validity of “character” – the core construct of the theory. It shows, second, that Barber's earlier research on Connecticut legislators, from which “character” derives, does not empirically establish the construct.

Concerning the criticisms, the article isolates a possible origin of the psychological reductionism evident in Barber's explanations of presidential performance. The article identifies a similar reductionism in Barber's legislative research and attributes this reductionism to a fallacious extra-empirical argument.

Lewis Frye Richardson's simple differential equations model of armaments races has been long criticized for its lack of incorporation of the goals of nations. Using the mathematics of optimal control theory, the authors formulate a model which incorporates national goals into an “arms balance” objective function. The goals used are based on the traditional concerns in the balance-of-power literature. From an objective function together with the Richardson model an optimal armaments policy is derived. The United States-Soviet, NATO-WTO, and Arab-Israeli arms races are used as empirical examples, and the parameters in the model are estimated by means of functional minimization techniques. The optimal control model is further examined for its equilibrium and stability properties. The equilibrium and stability conditions are assessed with respect to the empirical examples. The findings are that while the United States and the Soviet Union in direct confrontation pursue strategies that lead to a lack of equilibrium and stability, when taken as part of NATO and WTO, the major powers and their alliance partners do pursue stable and equilibrium strategies. The Israeli policy is found to lead to equilibrium and stability while the Arab policy does not.

The purpose of this note is to describe a technique of computer content analysis of transliterated Russian language textual materials and to illustrate the use of the technique with two examples of my research on the political socialization of Soviet schoolchildren.