In the infancy of a science the use even of fairly crude methods of analysis and description can produce surprisingly large increments of knowledge if new perspectives are brought to bear upon available data. Such perspectives not infrequently require both a combination of methodologies and a critical appraisal of the limitations of each. The emergence of American voting-behavior studies over the last two decades constitutes a good case in point. Studies based on aggregate election statistics have given us invaluable insights into the nature of secular trends in the distribution of the party vote, and have also provided us with useful theory concerning such major phenomena as critical elections. Survey research has made significant contributions to the understanding of motivational forces at work upon the individual voter. As it matures, it is now reaching out to grapple with problems which involve the political system as a whole.

The political scientist is a teacher of public men in the making, and an adviser of public men in activity; “public men,” that is, men who are taught, invited or assumed to feel some responsibility for the exercise of political power; “political power,” that is, concentrated means of affecting the future.

Obviously we can not affect the past, or that present moment which is now passing away, but only what is not yet: the future alone is sensitive to our actions, voluntary if aimed at a pictured outcome, rational if apt to cause it, prudently conceived if we take into account circumstances outside our control (known to decision theorists as “states of nature”), and the conflicting moves of others (known in game theory as opponents' play). A result placed in the future, conditions intervening in the future, need we say more to stress that decisions are taken “with an eye to the future,” in other terms, with foresight?

A curious state of affairs has developed within the academic discipline that bravely calls itself Political Science—the discipline that in a much-quoted phrase has been called “a device, invented by university teachers, for avoiding that dangerous subject politics, without achieving science.” A growing and now indeed a predominant proportion of leading American political scientists, the behavioralists, have become determined to achieve science. Yet in the process many of them remain open to the charge of strenuously avoiding that dangerous subject, politics.

Consider a recent essay on the behavioral persuasion in politics. The conclusion stresses the purpose of political inquiry: “The Goal is Man.” There is to be a commitment to some humane purpose after all. But what kind of man? A democratic kind of man, a just man, or perhaps a power-seeking man? The answer follows: “These are philosophical questions better left to the philosophers.”

Political power in Congress, all observers agree, is highly decentralized. The factors chiefly responsible for this are also well known: weak national parties (in the Congress this results in strong constituency ties and weak leadership sanctions over members) and a highly developed division of labor through the committee system. A leadership endowed with few opportunities to punish and reward, coupled with specialization by policy area, inevitably produces an institution with numerous and disparate centers of power. Just as inevitably the politics of such an institution is compounded of persuasion, bargaining, and log-rolling.

As weak as the legislative parties are, however, they still provide the major organizing force in Congress. Roll-call vote analyses have demonstrated this, and a recent study of the House Whip organizations also bears it out. Generally speaking, the single most important variable explaining legislative outcomes is party organization.

Judged by any standards the 1963 term of the United States Supreme Court was one of momentous importance to the future of the American political system. Most immediately, the Justices once again found themselves embroiled in political controversy, their decisions attacked by the Republican party platform, by the Republican presidential candidate and by many members of Congress.

Among the more notable deeds of the 1963 term were decisions writing into the margins of the Constitution the formula “one man, one vote” as the proper rule for apportioning electoral districts for the House of Representatives and for both houses of state legislatures. The Court also invalidated two acts of Congress, and in the field of criminal justice introduced several new principles while overturning supposedly settled law. In addition the Court again struck down officially sanctioned prayers in public schools.

For its part, Congress seriously considered constitutional amendments to reverse the school prayer decisions of this and previous terms, and to modify the doctrine of the reapportionment cases. The House went so far as to pass a bill to remove from federal courts jurisdiction to hear apportionment suits.

Despite its political implications, the recent explosion of an atomic device has not greatly altered China's present military position vis-à-vis the West. By all standards except population and size, Communist China is still not a first-rate power. But she has nevertheless proceeded to engage the two superpowers simultaneously in a contest from her position of military and economic weakness. What is equally undeniable is that the success of Peking's foreign policy in the struggle with both superpowers, though limited and perhaps only temporary, has considerably exceeded anticipations based on her military and economic strengths. It is the contention of this paper that an explanation of these two striking facts must be sought in the nature of Mao's revolutionary strategy in the Chinese internal political-military struggle and his belief in the applicability of this strategy to the international arena and to other countries, particularly those in the underdeveloped areas. Mao dared to challenge the militarily and economically strong United States because his revolutionary experience proved to his own satisfaction that his integrated and comprehensive strategy would enable him presently to score political gains from a position of military inferiority, and ultimately enable him to achieve highly ambitious objectives with initially meager means in a protracted struggle.

In some American courts of last resort, dissent is free and frequent; in others the judges vote unanimously for months, even for years at a time—a difference in judicial behavior which tempts inquiry and speculation. Although social scientists generally focus on dissenting courts and feed the human and scientific appetite for open controversy, the operation of every type of court is clarified by an examination of the ways and pitfalls of ostensible consensus among the judges. The purpose of this study of one supreme court and one body of law—zoning law in the Maryland Court of Appeals—is to demonstrate that under certain conditions unanimity in voting is illusory.

It is a rare election year when the nation's attention is not focussed on at least one party primary where the struggle for the nomination is highly competitive and the result a matter of doubt until the last precincts are reported. In many such cases the other party has settled on its own standard-bearer and thus sits back contentedly while the opposition wages its internecine battle before a rapt public. In recent years as varied personages as Estes Kefauver, Richard Nixon, and Charles Percy found themselves engaged in a hard-fought primary campaign to secure their nomination or renomination for state office.

This paper presents an attempt, in a case study, to infer causal relationships between contests for local elective office and voter turnout—an attempt which required, in turn, the use of a recently developed mathematical technique for identifying and eliminating spurious correlations. The method no doubt has wider applications.

The case study involves a small New England town and its annual February town elections over the period 1947–1963. The town was chosen as one of the six affected by the newly established Cape Cod National Seashore. The time period was chosen to cover the interval during which the town was faced with the rapid increase in tourism which transformed it from a declining agricultural town to a service-based town. The policies and methods by which the town dealt with this basic change in its economic structure were of immediate interest, especially in the latter years when the National Park Service became involved in the problems the Cape has faced in this postwar period.

A chief criticism of the American party system is the lack of party responsibility. In the view of some students, one characteristic of our political system that contributes to this irresponsibility is the practice in some states of allowing individuals to vote in primaries without regard to their partisan allegiances. In such an open primary Republicans may, if they wish, vote in the Democratic primary, and vice versa. The contrasting, and more common, practice is the closed primary, in which participation is restricted to party “members.” Some political scientists think that the closed primary, by subjecting legislators to the presumed discipline of periodic scrutiny by their party's members, induces a greater measure of party regularity than the open primary, in which the official has to satisfy a more motley clientele. This position was taken in the best-known statement of the “party government” school, the 1950 report of the APS A Committee on Political Parties:

Other political scientists have expressed doubts about this presumed relationship between primaries and party responsibility, but there has been no systematic empirical evidence on the point. This paper will examine the relationship between primaries and party responsibility by comparing the party regularity of senators from open primary and closed primary states.