Observation is at the heart of political analysis. Observing the behavior of U.S. senators involves watching them in two contexts—at home and in the capital city. It also entails sensitivity to the sequences of events or contexts which impinge upon senatorial behavior. Contexts and sequences of legislative life have not been observed in the rich detail they deserve, because not enough political scientists are presently engaged in observation.

Despite relatively favorable citizen attitudes, voter turnout in American national elections is far below the average of 80% of the eligible electorate that votes in other industrialized democracies. The American institutional setting—particularly the party system and the registration laws—severely inhibits voter turnout, and probably also accounts for the unusual degree to which education and other socioeconomic resources are directly linked to voting participation in the United States.

Using a combination of aggregate and comparative survey data, the present analysis suggests that in comparative perspective, turnout in the United States is advantaged about 5% by political attitudes, but disadvantaged 13% by the party system and institutional factors, and up to 14% by the registration laws. The experience of other democracies suggests that encouraging voter participation would contribute to channeling discontent through the electoral process. Even a significantly expanded American electorate would be more interested and involved in political activity than are present voters in most other democracies.

The president's party consistently loses partisan control of state legislatures in midterm elections, a pattern similar to the loss of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in midterms. This study examines presidential coattails as a possible explanation of these losses. Aggregate state legislative election outcomes between 1944 and 1984 in 41 states are examined. The analysis indicates that the president's party gains seats in presidential elections in proportion to the presidential vote in a state, and subsequently loses seats in midterm elections also in proportion to the prior presidential vote in the state. The presidential coattail and the midterm repercussion effects are evident even when gubernatorial coattail effects are introduced, but are fairly modest in states lacking competitive parties.

The Electoral College is a uniquely American political institution, yet its impact on both the power of the American states and the relative power of citizens living in different states is not well understood. Game theorists have broached the state power problem exclusively in terms of the size of each of the states. Empirical investigators have been less systematic, basing their analyses solely on which states have been close in a single election. In this paper we present a model of state power which combines the idea of the pivotal player from game theory with an empirical model of state voting. In doing so we provide a theoretically derived and empirically meaningful assessment of state power in presidential elections. We then trace the implications of the power of the states for the relative power of individual voters, finding large disparities between voters from different states.

This paper derives a supply price for public policy using a constrained maximization model. In the model, three sets of agents each have preferences over outcomes: organized interest groups offer campaign contributions to improve their own wealth, voters offer votes to obtain outcomes closer to their most preferred outcomes, and legislators seek both campaign contributions and votes to obtain reelection. A given legislator's supply price for policy is shown to depend on the productivity of his effort, as determined by committee assignments, priority and ability, and by the preferences of his unorganized constituency in the home district. Two extreme assumptions about the effectiveness of campaign spending in eliciting votes are used to illustrate the comparative statics properties of the model. The prediction of the model is that interest groups will, in general, seek out legislators whose voters are indifferent to the policy the interest group seeks. Thus, voters who do have preferences over policy are in effect represented, even though they are not organized.

Perspectives from political science and economics are drawn on to suggest an integrated theory of governmental corruption. The theory is oriented toward policy choices, and corruption is viewed as a product of individual and structural variables that interact to produce both positive and negative consequences. Individual-level considerations such as greed and the likelihood of detection and prosecution suggest one set of policies for reducing corruption. Bureaucratic constraints, citizen participation, and the congruence of legal structures and social demands offer a competing set of concerns that must be dealt with in analyzing corrupt practices. We show that corruption, as a process, influences the optimal level of social welfare. Alternative conceptions are examined, and a model is developed to evaluate policy choices related to corruption from the perspective of welfare optimization. Applied to the analysis of corruption, the model integrates general equilibrium theory, deterrence theory, and structural conditions. Finally, policy implications are considered.

A recent and perhaps surprising development in political theory has been the revival of neo-Kantian liberalism, with its doctrines of the neutral state and equal concern and respect. Critics of liberalism have suggested, however, that Kantian notions of rights and rationality are too thin a foundation on which to build satisfactory forms of community and political life. In this paper I examine the critique of rights-based liberalism by returning to the philosophy of Hegel. Hegel's position, I suggest, provides us with a much needed middle ground between liberalism and its contemporary critics. Like the modern communitarians he is critical of the individualistic and ahistorical conceptions of rights underlying the liberal polity, but like many liberals he is skeptical of the claims to recreate a democratic, participatory Gemeinschaft that would leave citizens defenseless before their particular communities. I conclude that like Montesquieu before him and Tocqueville after, Hegel looked to the “corporations” or intermediary associations to skirt the extremes of the market place and civic virtue.

There has been a growing propensity among states to associate together in international governmental organizations, or IGOs, for a variety of purposes. Why do states join IGOs, and what are the consequences for states of membership in IGOs? In this analysis, an explanation is sought, drawing on the theory of functionalism espoused by David Mitrany and others, taking into account the number of years a state has had sovereignty, level of technology, extent of party competition, and overall power. For Third World states, membership in IGOs is associated with enhanced economic performance. An increasing number of IGOs in the system appears to lessen the states' mean proneness to war. Functionalist predictions are upheld. But functionalism needs to be supplemented both for comprehensive explanations and as a prescription for the future. Already there are so many IGOs that it is difficult for states to control them, which could make them progressively irrelevant or even jeopardize their existence.

Domestic support for a liberal commercial policy in the U.S. rests on a commonly accepted set of rules and norms. These rules and norms, best characterized as a defense of free and fair trade, arise from two different traditions. The first originated as a political reaction to high trade barriers preceding the Great Depression. Central decision makers took as a lesson from the depression period that short-term political forces should not determine the level of state intervention into the market. The second, to protect against unfair trade, emanates from a long history of state support for industries that claim foreign producers are pursuing unfair predatory practices. Established in statute before the Depression, these rules did not fundamentally change in the postwar period. Together, these decision rules are used to interpret American trade protectionism.

Nineteenth-century evolutionary historical schemas formulated in Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft, or status to contract terms, which underpin theories of modernization and development in the contemporary social sciences, are now called into serious question. Recent archaeological discoveries show ancient society to have been preeminently contractual; and anthropological studies of family, clan, and tribe reveal them to be more than primordial relics in modernizing systems. A careful reading of the ancient writers—particularly Aristotle, who was read as lending support to the Gemeinschaft-Gesellschaft distinction—yields a very different picture, as Marx in fact appreciated. Family, clan, tribe, patron-client, friendship, and other affinal sets were constitutive of the ancient society of the polis, and have shown extraordinary durability in the modern political society of the Mediterranean basin. In the small-scale, urban, entrepreneurial, and commercial society of the Mediterranean polis, ancient and modern, which was characterized by a high degree of face-to-face interaction, people learned participation in the plethora of little-incorporated societies—familial, religious, cultic, and recreational.

What happens when there is a change in leadership in the Soviet Union? Does the period of leadership succession present unusual opportunities for domestic policy concerns to be vented? Or, are major issues on the Soviet domestic policy agenda addressed mainly after a succession of leadership is completed? Answers to such questions have a bearing on how the Soviet elite is replenished, and more generally help to improve understanding of Soviet politics. Two specialists on Soviet and East European politics, Valerie Bunce and Philip Roeder, have been drawn to different conclusions about these issues.

Comparative political analysts seek empirical generalizations which will hold water across systems and over a period of time. Yet, modeling important political phenomena over more than a handful of countries is still rather unusual. One focus for substantial comparative research has been the coup d'état—an irregular change of governmental leadership by force—in African countries. Scholars who have engaged in this research find they have various conceptual and methodological differences of opinion. In this Controversy, Robert Jackman and Rosemary O'Kane raise the issues in dispute. Their contentions are answered by Thomas Johnson, Pat McGowan, and Robert Slater. The exchange highlights important research issues without necessarily resolving them.

A research question of perennial interest is, “What are the exogenous variables which best account for the differential distribution of income across nations?” Better understanding of the causes of inequalities in income distribution has been sought by investigating the effects of tax policies on income allocation and growth in capitalist countries. The quantitative analyses of these matters have engendered some debate about the adequacy of data, and the sufficiency of measurement. A preliminary foray into this research vineyard by Claudio Katz, Vincent Mahler, and Michael Franz is criticized here by Ronald King and Steven Jackson. In turn, Katz, Mahler, and Franz respond.

In an article previously published in this Review I demonstrated that power-seeking, by which I mean the pursuit of social dominance, has a biochemical marker, namely, whole blood serotonin (WBS). Those individuals who are especially hard-charging and competitive have especially high WBS levels. This paper presents the results from an investigation of dynamics in the response of high WBS individuals to actual competition. My expectation—that they would exhibit special physiological activation in the face of challenge—is fully borne out by the evidence. Four hormonal indicators of activation were followed in blood samples taken during a series of social competitions. All four show distinctive patterns for the high WBS group. These results, in addition to providing new evidence on the behavior of the endocrine system in competitive settings, impressively support the view that WBS is a biological property having fundamental significance for behavioral political science.

The carryover hypothesis asserts that participants' candidate support behavior in the general election is affected by their preferences for their party's nomination. This paper examines data from activist and national sample surveys for evidence of a carryover effect in the 1980 election. There is a detectable carryover effect on voting behavior both for activists and for citizens generally. Among activists, where evidence about candidate support behaviors beyond voting is available, the effect on such activity is substantial, and increases with the effort associated with the general election activity in question.

This report provides an update of major characteristics of the Democratic and Republican party coalitions for the recent U.S. presidential election. Earlier reports published in this Review have provided this kind of analysis from 1952 to 1980.