A substantial body of scholarship highlights the role of core values as elements of liberalism–conservatism. However, researchers have yet to fully appreciate the contribution of premises, or abstract descriptive beliefs. This disjuncture has occurred despite the fact that for centuries, philosophers have used premises about human nature and society to ground their religious, political and economic theories. In the observational and experimental studies described in this article, the authors examine the extent to which such premise disputes stand independently from value conflicts as ideological ingredients. The findings suggest that premises are distinct and meaningful elements of political cognition, analogous in importance to several well-worn values.

Stand-alone paper copies of journals have occupied academic library shelves largely unchanged for hundreds of years. Despite the prevalence of perverse incentives and market imperfections acknowledged in the business model for journals, the industry was characterized by durable relationships and institutions. Digitization and the internet revolution have transformed the landscape, giving rise to new institutional models and possibilities to challenge existing market inefficiencies in competition and distribution. However, digital information goods themselves guarantee neither appropriate incentives nor social efficiency. This article considers the collision of the new digital economy with an established, imperfect market for journals. It looks at some key changes that are now irreversible and their consequences for publishing in political science.

How does protest affect political speech? Protest is an important form of political claim-making, yet our understanding of its influence on how individual legislators communicate remains limited. Our paper thus extends a theoretical framework on protests as information about voter preferences, and evaluates it using crowd-sourced protest data from the 2017–2019 Fridays for Future protests in the UK. We combine these data with ~2.4m tweets from 553 legislators over this period and text data from ~150k parliamentary speech records. We find that local protests prompted MPs to speak more about the climate, but only online. These results demonstrate that protest can shape the timing and substance of political communication by individual elected representatives. They also highlight an important difference between legislators' offline and online speech, suggesting that more work is needed to understand how political strategies differ across these arenas.

This letter explores language politics as it concerns gender, and investigates the adoption of amendments that introduce gender-neutral language to subnational constitutions via popular initiative. Embracing theories of female empowerment based on resource acquisition and shrinking gender differentials in economic resources, the authors argue that popular support for these initiatives will be higher in contexts where female and male incomes are closer to parity. The study tests this expectation using city-level historical administrative data in California on Proposition 11 in 1974 – the first American state to hold a popular vote on amending its constitution to include only gender-neutral language. It finds that greater parity in income between women and men is associated with greater voter support for the initiative. This result holds after controlling for conceivable confounders, fails to emerge when analyzing gender-irrelevant ballot measures, and replicates when analyzing similar measures held in three jurisdictions in other states.

Autocratic leaders differ considerably in how they consolidate power, but what gives rise to these variations remains under-theorized. This article studies how informal political constraints associated with retired leaders shape intra-elite power dynamics. We argue that ageing leaders' efforts to manage the succession problem create an important yet impermanent check on the power of subsequent leaders. To test this argument, we use the massive text corpus of Google Ngram to develop a new measure of power for a global sample of autocratic leaders and elites and employ a research design that leverages within-incumbent variations in former leaders' influence for identification. We show that incumbent leaders' ability to consolidate power becomes more limited when operating in an environment where influential former leaders are present. Further analyses suggest that the presence of former leaders is most effective in reducing incumbents' ability to appoint or remove high-level military and civilian personnel unilaterally. These findings have implications for our understanding of the dynamics of power-sharing and institutional change in autocracies.

States often use reservations to modify their treaty obligations. Prior research demonstrates why states enter reservations and why states object to reservations, but little work explains why states withdraw them. We argue that states withdraw reservations in response to international social pressure. Using novel data on reservations and reservation withdrawals for the nine core international human rights treaties, our analyses reveal two factors that compel states to withdraw reservations: (1) pressure from peer states and (2) pressure from human rights treaty bodies conducting periodic reviews. While previous work emphasizes domestic factors, our research shows that the international community encourages states to withdraw reservations and strengthen their commitments to human rights and international law.

Recent veto player work argues that majoritarian regimes such as the United Kingdom have better fiscal discipline and smaller welfare states than proportional regimes with more veto players. An analytic narrative of the failure of land value taxation in the United Kingdom between 1909 and 1914 shows, however, that it failed not because of previously advanced reasons, but because the number of veto players in British politics was sharply increased. This increase in veto player numbers prevented a tax increase. All seven of the conventional reasons for characterizing the United Kingdom as a low-n veto player regime failed to hold between 1906 and 1914. Observable implications discussed include the need to review the entire history of British politics in this period in the light of the temporary increase in veto players; and the ambiguous implications of number of veto players for fiscal discipline.

How do immigration attitudes form? Drawing on the political socialization literature, I argue that growing up in a recession causes a lasting increase in anti-immigration attitudes. I delineate two mechanisms that emphasize the negative consequences of recessions for young workers and the anti-immigration narrative that often emerges during economic turmoil. Young adults are particularly vulnerable to these external shocks because they have minimal political experience and are developing their core political attitudes. Support is provided for this argument with evidence from the European Social Survey. An economic shock during young adulthood causes a significant increase in anti-immigration attitudes, a relationship not found for other ages. I find tentative evidence that growing up in a recession has a larger effect on the racial and cultural dimensions of immigration and causes a broader sociotropic response. Results highlight how economic crises affect the socialization of young adults and underscore their lasting political consequences.

If the automobile business had developed like the computer business, a Rolls Royce would cost $2.75 and run for 3 million miles on one gallon of gas.

Forrester, Hight-Tech SocietyTom Forrester, High-Tech Society (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 18.

The computer power available to political scientists has increased at least one thousandfold since 1970. We can now make millions of calculations in a few seconds, generate beautiful and meaningful graphics, and communicate instantly around the world, all at virtually no cost. But in what ways has this computer power helped us make more accurate statements about political phenomena? Beyond simply doing faster and more cheaply that which we had done previously, this computer revolution has made possible a qualitative leap in our analysis of political behaviour.

This article examines the relationship between third-party actors and the intentional targeting of non-combatants in interstate war. It argues that war participants kill fewer civilians in war when their expectation of third-party punishment is high. Combatants will anticipate a high likelihood of third-party sanctions when their alliance and trade networks are dominated by third parties that have ratified international treaties prohibiting the intentional targeting of non-combatants. The study hypothesizes that war combatants kill fewer civilians in war as the strength of ratifiers within their alliance and trade networks increases. Quantitative tests on a dataset of all interstate wars from 1900–2003 provide strong statistical and substantive support for this hypothesis.

The United States Supreme Court recently employed foreign legal sources to interpret U.S. law, provoking widespread political and legal controversy. Scholars have yet to examine systematically the conditions under which justices cite foreign law, however. Applying theoretical approaches from international relations and judicial politics scholarship, we search every Supreme Court opinion between 1953 and 2009 for references to foreign law. Justices strategically reference foreign law to prop up their most controversial opinions. They also borrow law from countries whose domestic political institutions are viewed as legitimate; and, surprisingly, conservatives are as likely as liberals to cite foreign law. These findings add important information to the discussion over citing foreign law, and highlight how geopolitical context influences domestic legal policy.

Peter Morriss (see pp. 595–7) criticizes most applications of mathematically derived power indices, including mine and the response to my original Note. He uses uncomplimentary terms, implying that we are not only wrong but also fools for being wrong.

This Note reports some findings from a larger study we are embarked upon. Our broader objective is to develop a general theory of the national state's interest in cities in advanced industrial societies. We argue that state officials generally pursue their own interests in the protection and expansion of state power and resources and specifically have interest in the viability of cities, interests that do not simply reflect the interests of private capital or any other societal groups. A broad twofold distinction is made between those state activities necessary for the perpetuation of the state (maintenance of public order, legitimacy, durable political institutions, revenue base) and those necessary for the perpetuation of cities (provision of collective goods, developmental policies and social services). Space limitations preclude a full account and justification of these arguments here. Rather, we present some hypotheses about how such state interests should inform the allocation of funds across cities and report the findings of some initial empirical tests for the United States.

For a Soviet General Secretary presumably committed to the collectivist principles of Marxism-Leninism, Mikhail Gorbachev has been peculiarly insistent upon the decisive importance of individual leadership. In speech after speech it was not only the socioeconomic order that Gorbachev held to be the source of the Soviet Union's problems: the quality and style of its political leadership were also crucial factors.

In comparative politics, the units of analysis are usually countries. For many variables, this does not raise any particular measurement problems, because they can easily be aggregated at the country level. For other variables, however, measurement at the country level is a much more severe problem. The prevailing decision mode in a country is perhaps the most conspicuous case. In the last ten to fifteen years, this variable has gained key importance in several theories, most prominently in the theories of consciationalism and corporatism. Yet, these theories are plagued by perennial measurement problems. As an illustration, we use the case of Switzerland, but our argument should apply to other countries as well.

Central control over personnel placement in the Soviet Union (the nomenklatura system) is widely regarded as the complement to the centralization of substantive policy making and implementation. Some recent studies, however, argue that the central authorities have used their appointments powers to ratify rather than alter the results of the circulation process specific to localities. In order to advance the terms of this discussion, (he present study employs a systemic model of circulation. Here, circulation is regarded as a Markov process involving the movement of vacancies across a stratified hierarchy of 2,034 positions in the Belorussian Republic, and allunion jobs occupied by Belorussian politicans, over the period 1966–86. The model's predictions are reasonably accurate for the full data set but fit the data especially well when all-union positions are excluded, indicating a marginal centralizing influence on elite circulation that results more from the interaction between national and republic personnel systems than from centrally co-ordinated cadres policies in either Moscow or Minsk. Three auxiliary tests also support the conclusions derived from the Markov analysis.

Are changes in political conditions objective features of the world or are they ultimately what social movement activists and adherents make of them? The position taken in this article argues that shifts in the Israeli structure of political opportunity, manifested in a series of transformative events, were framed by the Palestinians within the occupied territories as a political opportunity affecting their strategy of contention during the run up to the 1987 ‘first’ Intifada. Findings from content analysis data obtained from several Palestinian newspapers between 1974 and 1986 suggest that (a) the Palestinians collectively perceived Israeli domestic events as favourable political circumstances, and (b) their mutual interpretation of Israeli events as a reflection of divisions over the occupation was associated with rationalizing contention. Theoretical implications of bridging the culturally and structurally laden approaches to the study of collective action are offered.

A primary objective of foreign aid in conflict zones is to help political actors win citizens’ ‘hearts and minds’. Previous studies have focused on assistance provided to state actors; however, this article examines aid's impact on rebel governance. It argues that aid only bolsters opinions of rebel governors where military control is uncontested. In contested areas, rebels lose credibility if they cannot offer protection, and they have difficulty delivering – and receiving credit for – services in insecure environments crowded with competitors. Using novel data from the Syrian civil war, this article shows that aid improves opinions of opposition councils in uncontested areas but not in communities experiencing intra-rebel conflict. It also explores the underlying mechanisms using in-depth interviews with residents of Aleppo City and Saraqeb. The findings reveal a more nuanced relationship among aid, military competition and governance than prior studies have suggested, which has implications for both scholars and policy makers.

This article offers an evaluation of cross-national measures of ethnic socio-economic inequality. It demonstrates that the measures differ in important ways regarding empirical scope, conceptualization, measurement and aggregation. Despite significant advances in the measurement of ethnic inequality, all measures have shortcomings, such as limited and biased coverage, as well as measurement error from the underlying data sources. Moreover, the empirical convergence between conceptually similar measures is strikingly low: some of the measures show no or even negative covariation. Four replication studies also indicate that extant measures of ethnic inequality are generally not interchangeable. Scholars should therefore take the various features highlighted in this evaluation into account before employing any of them. Based on this conclusion, the article offers multiple suggestions for improving existing measures and developing new ones.

Theories ascribing democracy to inclusive contestation imply that the speech of authoritarianrulers will differ from the speech of electoral politicians. Authoritarian rulers will use an officiallanguage that insulates them from populations under their control. This official language insultssubject populations by implying that the vernacular in which they formulate their thoughts isinadequate for the discussion of political ideas. Electoral politicians, praising the competence ofcitizens to decide political questions, take care to frame their ideas in ordinary language, asotherwise the politicians would contradict their message that bearers of ordinary language arepolitically competent. If rulers implicitly insult and politicians flatter, citizens should respondwith disaffiliation to rulers' language and affiliation to the language of politicians, at least of thosepoliticians whom the citizens favour. This hypothesis is tested using an experimental paradigmin three Russian cities at the end of 1993. The prediction that Russians will affiliate to the textsof some electoral politicians contrasts with the claim that Russians evaluate political ideas mainlyby contemplating change in their standard of living, since Russia represents an unusual case inwhich authoritarian speech is associated with greater affluence, while electoral speech isassociated with increasing impoverishment for most people.