I need hardly remind this audience that one of the characteristics of our field is the large number of old and quite elemental questions—elemental but by no means elementary—for which we have no compelling answers. I don't mean that we have no answers to these questions. On the contrary, we often have a rich variety of conflicting answers. But no answer compels acceptance in the same way as a proof of a theorem in mathematics, or a very nice fit between a hypothesis and a satisfactory set of data.

Whether the obstacles that prevent us from achieving tight closure on solutions lie in ourselves—our approaches, methods, and theories—or are inherent in the problems is, paradoxically, one of these persistent and elemental questions for which we have a number of conflicting answers. For whatever it may be worth, my private hunch is that the main obstacles to closure are in the problems themselves—in their extraordinary complexity, the number and variety of variables, dimensions qualities, and relationships, and in the impediments to observation and data-gathering.

However that may be, a question of this sort often lies dormant for decades or even centuries, not because it has been solved but because it seems irrelevant. For even when no satisfactory theoretical answer exists to a very fundamental question, historical circumstances may allow it to be ignored for long periods of time. Even specialists may refuse to take a question seriously that history seems to have shoved into the attic. What seem like fundamental controversies in one age are very likely to be boring historical curiosities in the next. And conversely it is my impression that a great many of the elemental political questions regarded as settled in one age have a way of surfacing later on.

The relative intractablility of the international environment poses a problem for the foreign policy of all nations. Purpose and power meet with cross-purpose and countervailing power, and most foreign policy projects face external restraints that the makers of policy can neglect only at the risk of failure. Foreign policy—the more or less coordinated strategy with which institutionally designated decision-makers seek to manipulate the international environment—generally meets with tenacious resistance, if not insuperable obstacles.

To regard foreign policy and statecraft from this perspective, however, implies a good deal of determinism. In its more extreme analytical applications, this viewpoint reduces the pursuit of foreign policy goals to a contest between statesman and environment that is already settled by the insurmountable restrictions of the international “system.” Nations are implicitly delegated to play out the roles that the international system has “assigned” to its “actors” to maintain system stability or equilibrium. Domestic political variables are largely neglected in this analytical perspective. Foreign policy aspirations are assessed primarily in terms of whether a nation has adequately “internalized” system “rules”—that is to say, whether a polity has adjusted to the contingencies of the international system, which seems to move toward a preordained historical or analytical telos. The strictures of necessity, imposed by the international environment, take analytical precedence over considerations of preferences and the possibility of choice.

When the laws of social dynamics are codified, surely the First will be that people see what they want to see. Given its universality, the First Law is no less applicable to scholars than anyone else. As political scientists, seeing what we want to see in a colleague's work, we find it “insightful,” “constructive,” and “important”; alternatively, not seeing in it what we want to see or, even worse, seeing what we don't want to see, we find it “turgid,” “misleading,” and “trivial.”

So it is with Hanrieder's formulation. Since it is only a bare outline and contains no data, no one is likely to regard his article as a definitive statement, but reactions to it are likely to be quite varied and conflicting. Some readers, especially those who worry about the prevalence of a malady they call “methodologism” in political science, will see in Hanrieder's effort to develop the concepts of compatibility and consensus yet another case of the quibbling over words that is the prime symptom of this affliction. After all, such critics will point out, compatibility and consensus are, respectively, only thirteen- and nine-letter words and to claim great explanatory power for them without elaboration is to substitute the form of language for the substance of thought. In a similar manner those long committed to a particular framework for examining foreign policy phenomena will preserve their commitment and wonder why Hanrieder makes so much fuss about the need for a new formulation when the available conceptual equipment seems capable of handling the convergence of national and international politics. After all, these analysts will conclude, Hanrieder himself says that researchers should be less inclined to create new schemes and more ready to build on existing ones; why, then, does he not follow his own advice?

On the other hand, analysts who are themselves perplexed by the convergence of national and international politics are likely to be more sympathetic to Hanrieder's effort, if not to its result. They may have doubts as to whether Hanrieder's unqualified claims for the concepts of compatibility and consensus are justified, but they will see his article as a serious attempt to confront a genuine and difficult problem.

Among the crucial facts of our time are the profound differences in “modernization” or “development” that characterize contemporary nation-states. Despite a lack of complete agreement about the nature of these differences, it seems clear that variations in incomes, literacy levels, and rates of human reproduction are intimately involved. Development also affects so many other social characteristics that it has become a major preoccupation of social science in all of its branches.

The purpose of this paper is to specify modernization levels of states in the American federal system, and to relate variations in development to other aspects of the state political systems. The quest is a natural one in view of the evident concern for development shown by political activists in the states, the emphasis placed upon it in many textbooks and monographs that deal with problems of state government, and the potential relevance for more general theories about all political systems. Problems of development are undoubtedly more pressing in poor nations, but it is not inappropriate to study modernization in an advanced setting. As Siegfried has noted, modernization tends to be an American phenomenon: it is the United States “which is presiding at a general reorganization of the ways of living throughout the entire world.”

Questions and answers about development have been formulated in a variety of ways, reflecting a variety of analytic concerns. Scholars concerned with poverty, for example, tend to ask (not unnaturally) “What produces economic growth?” The answers have frequently consisted essentially of single causes: e.g.—technological innovation (Adam Smith), population growth (Smith and Ricardo), the Protestant ethic (Weber), the achieving motive (McClelland), empathy (Lerner). The question can, of course, be phrased more broadly: “What causes a civilization to flower?” This query elicits some of the same answers, but others in addition: climate (Huntington), leaders or luck (Muller), cultural diffusion via trade (Buchanan and Ellis), race (Wax), challenge of the environment (Toynbee).

It has been argued that political democracy in nation-states is dependent upon certain levels of social and economic development. Some authors (Lipset and Cutright) argue that a particular complex of social and economic requisites appears necessary for the institutionalization and maintenance of democracy. Others (Lerner and Pye) suggest that national political development of any form is predicated upon the development of a system of communications sufficiently sophisticated to overcome the parochialism of traditional society. Still others (Almond and Verba) find social factors such as education crucial for the development of those attitudes deemed adequate for active citizens of democratic polities.

By definition, political democracy in nationstates requires some minimal level of citizen participation in decision making. Historically the most effective method of institutionalizing such participation is through some form of representative government. This mechanism permits groups of citizens with common preferences to support representatives who will, in turn, attempt to schedule those preferences for decision by the government. Groups of representatives will form coalitions in an attempt to insure that their common preferences will be enacted into public policy. Because preferences in society are likely to vary in direction and intensity, the successful implementation of political democracy imposes two requirements. One, communication of preferences among competing groups, must be widespread. If they are not, it will be difficult for groups with shared preferences to combine their resources such that “majority” preferences can be successfully implemented. Indeed at a more basic level, communication is necessary for the identification and articulation of common preferences. Second, groups within the citizenry holding competing preferences must be socialized into the procedural norms of the system. Most important is the acceptance of the norms of compliance so that groups which “lose” on any given issue (enactment of a preference set) do not withdraw from the decision system or opt to overthrow it. In short, two primary conditions for the maintenance of any system of political democracy are, (1) communication among members of the political system and, (2) socialization into the “rules of the game.”

The term “representative bureaucracy” was first given currency in 1949 through Donald Kingsley's book with the same title and since then it has gained popularity through the discussions of a few American political scientists and British sociologists. The underlying concept, however, is still subject to some confusion owing in part to its normative overtones. This paper attempts, in the first place, to analyse some important sources of confusion and, secondly, to show the practical difficulties in the realization of a representative bureaucracy by comparing the social backgrounds of civil servants in different countries.

Recent advances in data processing technology have made it possible for the political scientist to extend the coordinates of his research space across political systems as well as through time. Without the present-day capacity to retrieve and process speedily the large banks of data accumulated through comparative analyses, such studies would be prohibitively time-consuming, and probably not done at all. As it is the technical hurdles are diminishing in importance, only to be replaced in our attention by the methodological barriers to comparative analysis. In this paper the focus is on one of the basic problems of comparative analysis: the achievement and validation of measurement identity.

Measurement identity refers to the content equivalence of two or more measures and is a key consideration in comparative studies whether the comparison is cross-cultural or historical. Unless there are clear indications of the identity of the measures on which the comparisons are based, such comparisons are meaningless. For the political scientist engaged in cross-cultural research, the problem of measurement identity virtually thrusts itself upon him, since he is already sensitive to differences between culturally different political systems. In contrast, the historical researcher who is working within a single cultural context, and is attuned to the continuity of historical themes, may neglect the measurement identity requirements of his research. The purpose of this paper is to give visibility to this measurement issue as it confronts historical research in the field of legislative behavior. My specific referent is the longitudinal study of legislative voting behavior.

This paper is an attempt to specify and assess the significance of a variety of factors that condition the recruitment of Japanese prefectural assemblymen. The term recruitment is used here to refer to the entire process involved in a person's induction into a position. Since the aspirants must formally undertake candidacy for the prefectural assembly elections, this paper is in essence concerned with those factors which significantly shape the processes of their candidacy and elections.

Data used here were gathered in Japan during the period of June, 1965 to February, 1966 and are mostly of three kinds: 1) official documents such as election returns, 2) semiofficial surveys and polls concerning electoral behavior, and 3) data obtained through interviews which the author conducted with a sample of prefectural assemblymen and other local government officials in Chiba and Kanagawa prefectures. Whenever pertinent and available, comparable data regarding other prefectures and Japan as a whole will be given. They serve as norms whereby the data on Chiba and Kanagawa can be appropriately evaluated.

This is the first of a number of investigations of the socio-economic basis of politics, with a special focus on voting for the radical left or right. In this case, the voting data are the percentage of votes cast for Allende, the socialist candidate in the 1952 presidential elections in Chile.

Much recent policy analysis is based on the assumption that the amount of money spent in a jurisdiction indicates the nature of services provided. This study seeks to test this assumption as it applies to the American states.

Among the studies that have attempted to explain the “outputs” of state and local governments by reference to political and economic characteristics, several have identified expenditures with services implicitly by mixing indicators of spending with indicators of services as the “outputs” to be explained. Other studies have claimed explicitly that government expenditures reflect the “scope and character” or “calibre” or the “alpha and the omega” of public services. A contrary argument is that “money is not everything.” Such nonmonetary factors as the quality of personnel or the nature of the political environment may exert the greatest influences upon the quality or quantity of public services within a jurisdiction.

In assessing the relationship between spending and services, this study first defines static relationships between measures of spending and measures of public services. Secondly, it examines relationships over time in an attempt to discern if increases in government expenditures are likely to bring about increases in the quality or quantity of public services.

The attainment of universal suffrage over various forms of voting restrictions has been one of the major accomplishments in the development of modern democratic institutions. Struggles for the vote have had to overcome restrictions based on factors such as sex, race and tenure of property. While gaps in the exercise of the franchise still remain, formal restrictions on voting in the United States have been largely removed.

However, an important question, largely uninvestigated, concerns the “costs” of the universal franchise in terms of the quality of government and its impact upon policy decisions. Do the disadvantages of universal suffrage offset advantages said to be gained, particularly in Western nations, such as increased legitimization of decisions and stability of regimes? Many of the past and present opponents of the extension of voting have argued that the poor results to be expected from the impact of universal suffrage far outweigh the advantages. Clearly, the problem of “costs” is important, for it is a crucial element in the argument over democracy and the vote.

“Political scientists … are … ex-post-facto entrail watchers … after-the-event sooth-sayers,” said the late Lucius Beebe. Similarly, much of the general public has long felt that social scientists are not scientists at all but deal in intuition and vague, unfounded generalizations, or are “proposition mongers,” a threat to policymakers.

These notions, together with the fact that social scientists work in sensitive, moral-charged subjects which frequently cause strong public reaction, are partly responsible for the relatively small support the Federal Government has given to research and scholarship in the social sciences.

In 1965 basic research of all types funded by the Federal Government amounted to $1.69 billion, of which the social sciences received only $37 million, or 2.2 per cent. The estimated obligations for 1966 and 1967 were about the same, 2.5 per cent and 2.8 per cent. Nor is there much difference when Federal support for applied research is considered. For 1965, Federal social science expenditures for applied research amounted to only 2.8 per cent of the $3.16 billion the Federal Government spent for all types of applied research, and for 1966 and 1967, estimated expenditures, are only 3.9 per cent and 4.8 per cent.