A Plato opposed to democracy fills the literature, and while some scholars question whether Plato adequately captures Socrates' possibly favorable views of democracy, Plato himself remains a paragon of elitism. I argue that Plato's response to democracy is far more theoretically interesting than simple disdain for the unenlightened masses. Rather, in Book 8 of the Republic he explores the fundamental tensions of a regime identified with freedom and equality, which he presents as characterized by formlessness, and the epistemological and theoretical problems posed by the absence of forms (eidê). Eidê give structure and identity to regimes and to their citizens; they are necessary for intellection and philosophy, but they are also the grounds for compulsion. Plato's analysis of democracy thus becomes a more serious challenge for democratic theorists than previously recognized.

Scholars in both international relations and political theory have been turning their attention to Thucydides with increasing frequency but with dissimilar questions. We draw on both traditions of inquiry to reexamine Thucydides' view of Pericles. We argue that antithetical reasoning is present in the treatment of Pericles and is manifested in the opposition between the statesman's brilliance and the infelicitous consequences of his statecraft, as become evident in the work as a whole. This antithesis undermines the claim advanced by certain figures in the History, as well as by contemporary realists, that states (statesmen) should not be held to the same moral standards as individuals because to do so subverts their capacity to conduct prudent policy. We propose that Thucydides' work suggests, instead, that it is precisely when the norms of moral conduct are disrupted that states and individuals find it next to impossible to chart a prudent course of action.

To investigate the effect of the Supreme Court on public opinion, we offer the conditional response hypothesis based on a theory of Supreme Court legitimacy and a microlevel social-psychological theory of attitude formation. Together these theories predict that the Court may affect public opinion when it initially rules on a salient issue, but that subsequent decisions on the same issue will have little influence on opinion. To test our predictions, we analyze public opinion data before and after the Supreme Court ruled in a highly visible abortion case (Webster v. Reproductive Health Services [1989]) and before and after three key capital punishment rulings (Furman v. Georgia [1972], Gregg v. Georgia [1976], and McCleskey v. Kemp [1987]). The results suggest that our theory is not issue bound but is generally applicable to how the Supreme Court affects public opinion when it rules in highly salient cases.

Although central banks possess a similar function across the industrial democracies, their institutional structures—their levels of independence—differ greatly. My explanation of this variation emphasizes the informational asymmetries of monetary policymaking. Government ministers have informational advantages in the policy process, potentially creating conflicts with backbench legislators and, in a multiparty government, coalition partners. An independent central bank can help alleviate these conflicts. Politicians will choose an independent bank (1) if government ministers, party legislators, and coalition partners have different monetary policy incentives and (2) if government ministers fear that party legislators and coalition partners will withdraw their support over a policy dispute. I statistically test the argument against the cross-national variation of central bank institutions. I also use the theoretical framework to examine episodes of institutional choice and reform in Germany, Britain, and Italy.

We rely on data from India and the United States to show that political and economic centralization can influence the number of national parties in single-member simple-plurality electoral systems. Historically, in both countries the number of parties in local electoral districts has been near two, but the number of national parties has fluctuated. Periods of a small number of national parties in both countries correspond to periods of centralization. We argue that, as national governments centralize power and make policies that affect local areas, candidates have greater incentives to associate with national organizations, and voters have greater incentives to abandon locally competitive but nationally noncompetitive parties.

The purpose of this research is to examine theories of diffuse support and institutional legitimacy by testing hypotheses about the interrelationships among the salience of courts, satisfaction with court outputs, and diffuse support for national high courts. Like our predecessors, we are constrained by essentially cross-sectional data; unlike them, we analyze mass attitudes toward high courts in eighteen countries. Because our sample includes many countries with newly formed high courts, our cross-sectional data support several longitudinal inferences, using the age of the judicial institution as an independent variable. We discover that the U.S. Supreme Court is not unique in the esteem in which it is held and, like other courts, it profits from a tendency of people to credit it for pleasing decisions but not to penalize it for displeasing ones. Generally, older courts more successfully link specific and diffuse support, most likely due to satisfying successive, nonoverlapping constituencies.

Since the debt crisis of 1982, Mexico has experienced more than a decade of market-oriented economic reform, but research on public opinion toward reform is limited. Drawing on general findings from opinion research in the United States, this study examines how policy preferences of Mexicans are shaped by social background, judgments about the economy, and political loyalties. The effect of these variables is examined across three national surveys, conducted in 1992, 1994, and 1995. We found that favorable orientations toward the president and the ruling party were consistently the strongest predictors of preferences about reform. Furthermore, as in the United States, sociotropic evaluations of the economy outweigh “pocketbook” concerns; despite many years of reform, both expectations and retrospective judgments are important in shaping preferences, particularly since the 1994 crisis; and social background variables have limited direct influence.

How do nation-states' political institutions affect the relations between states? This article addresses that question by testing the predictions of different theories linking political institutions to war outcomes. Specifically, rent-seeking and regime legitimacy theories predict that all democratic belligerents are more likely to win wars because they fight more effectively. Alternatively, other theories focusing on the domestic political vulnerability of leaders and the marketplace of ideas predict that democracies are likely to be more careful about choosing when to start war. This would mean that only democratic initiators are more likely to win. Analyzing all interstate wars from 1816 to 1982 with a multivariate probit model, we find that democratic initiators are significantly more likely to win wars; democratic targets are also more likely to win, though the relationship is not as strong. We also find empirical support for several control variables, including strategy, terrain, and capability.

We maintain that the rise and fall in the number of states with divided Senate delegations can be explained primarily in terms of long-run forces of realignment/dealignment and staggered Senate elections. We test our model with election data from 1788–1996 rather than only the post–World War II period, which was common in previous research. We show that a large number of divided Senate delegations is not new; indeed, the highest percentage occurred in 1830. Exactly as predicted by our model, we find a cyclical pattern in divided Senate delegations that is tied to realigning epochs. Our analysis also calls attention to the recent decline in the number of such delegations, and we argue that this trend may well continue.

To examine the traditional view that challenger spending is more effective than incumbent spending, I reestimate the effects of spending using instrumental variables that affect a candidate's ability to raise campaign funds, such as candidate wealth levels. When the endogeneity of candidate spending levels is properly taken into account, the marginal effects of incumbent and challenger spending are roughly equal. In contrast to previous research showing that, because of higher marginal returns to challenger spending, the incumbent's spending advantage cannot explain high incumbent reelection rates, this article shows that in an average Senate election the incumbent's spending advantage yields a 6% increase in the incumbent's vote share. That incumbent spending wins elections has direct implications regarding the consequences of campaign finance reform. My findings imply that equalizing spending levels may significantly increase incumbent defeat rates, and caps on candidate spending may improve the chances of challengers.

“Naïve” Condorcet Jury Theorems automatically have “sophisticated” versions as corollaries. A Condorcet Jury Theorem is a result, pertaining to an election in which the agents have common preferences but diverse information, asserting that the outcome is better, on average, than the one that would be chosen by any particular individual. Sometimes there is the additional assertion that, as the population grows, the probability of an incorrect decision goes to zero. As a consequence of simple properties of common interest games, whenever “sincere” voting leads to the conclusions of the theorem, there are Nash equilibria with these properties. In symmetric environments the equilibria may be taken to be symmetric.

Critics of what is called the “Enlightenment project” have argued that it has been responsible for a number of current social pathologies. At the same time, the term “civil society” has been used to designate those patterns of solidarity that the Enlightenment project allegedly disrupts. This article (1) argues that characterizations of the Enlightenment project tend to be elusive and historically questionable, (2) suggests that the concept of civil society is ambiguous in both its object and its intent, (3) explores how Kant provided a more rigorous account of the relationship between enlightenment and civil society, an account which rests on a contrast between civil and cosmopolitan society, and (4) considers some of the difficulties that plague attempts to define “civility” as a virtue.