If the past determines or in any way influences the present, the present invariably reverses the process. One of the more striking instances of this rule has been the recent apotheosis of Thomas Jefferson as a national hero equal in stature to Washington and Lincoln. In an atmosphere of industrialism, urban living, and strong, impersonal national government that tradition might lead us to suppose would kill it, the Jefferson legend has blossomed and put forth new shoots. As Mr. Douglass Adair has pointed out, the pioneer democrat and agrarian liberal “discovered” by Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard and celebrated by Parrington, Nock, and Bowers, has lately found more complicated, more interesting, and incidentally more timely, portrayal at the hands of Carl Becker, Gilbert Chinard, and Adrienne Koch. These writers, whose company is now joined by Mr. Joseph Dorfman, have been at pains to show the range and diversity of Jefferson's thought, and above all how he moved with his times to espouse the cause of commerce, industry, and national power. Mr. Dorfman crowds all these qualities together under the label, “Thomas Jefferson: Commercial Agrarian Democrat” which, if the trend continues, may have to be stretched to “Commercial Industrial Agrarian Democratic Federalist.”

Does the label fit? The legendary Jefferson was an agrarian; and even as modern scholars were finding in his writings political precepts for an industrial age, the farmers of the United States were recognizing him as the founder of American agriculture and adopting him as their patron saint.

Aristotle is no misogynist, but the way this charge is answered can skew the understanding of his political theory as a whole. Those who dismiss the charge of misogyny on grounds that Aristotle covertly advocates women's participation in civic affairs tend to obscure the leading thesis of the Politics, namely, that polis and household differ in kind, not merely in number. I argue that Aristotle condones the exclusion of women from civic affairs because this practice conforms to the natural complementarity of the sexes and because it fortifies the naturally pluralistic structure of society. By securing these underpinnings, Aristotle frames a constitution that best supports women and men in their pursuit of human excellence.

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.

Nationalism as we understand it is not older than the second half of the eighteenth century. Its first great manifestation was the French Revolution, which gave the new movement an increased dynamic force. Nationalism had, however, become manifest at the end of the eighteenth century almost simultaneously in a number of widely separated European countries. Its time in the evolution of mankind had arrived, and although the French Revolution was one of the most powerful factors in its intensification and spread, it was not its date of birth. Like all historical movements, nationalism has its roots deep in the past. The conditions which made its emergence possible had matured during centuries before they converged at its formation. These political, economic, and intellectual developments took a long time for their growth and proceeded in the various European countries at different pace. It is impossible to grade them according to their importance or to make one dependent upon the other. All are closely interconnected, each reacting upon the other; and although their growth can be traced separately, their effects and consequences cannot be separated otherwise than in the analysis of the scholar; in life, they are indissolubly intertwined.

Support for democracy in the population is considered critical for the emergence and stability of democracy. Macro-determinants and retrospective experiences have been shown to affect the support for democracy at the individual level. We investigate whether and how the individual life horizon, in terms of the prospective length of life and age, affects individual attitudes toward democracy. Combining information from period life tables with individual survey response data spanning more than 260,000 observations from 93 countries over the period 1994–2014, we find evidence that the expected remaining years of life influence the attitudes toward a democratic political regime. The statistical identification decomposes the influence of age from the influence of the expected proximity to death. The evidence shows that support for democracy increases with age but declines with expected proximity to death, implying that increasing longevity might help fostering the support for democracy. Increasing age while keeping the remaining years of life fixed as well as increasing remaining years of life for a given age group both contribute to the support for democracy.

Concrete theory is defined by a cluster of attributes—emphasis on governmental and other political elites, on strategic decision-making processes freed from narrow notions of economic rationality, and on a concern with the environment and institutions within which choice occurs. The approach has been observed recently in all research-oriented subfields within political science. Eight exemplars are discussed. Concrete theory demonstrates a novel combination of strong interest in empirical political processes, formalized through models that emphasize logical structure and depth explanation. Its effect is to bridge the gap between behavioral and institutional approaches.

It is continually demonstrated in the pages of the Review that formal theorists in political science have great difficulty in communicating with one another, in reaching consensus, e.g., on the rationality of minimal winning coalitions and the effects of vote-trading. It has always puzzled me how such confusion and controversy could surround simple arguments which are—or at least appear to be—mathematical. Reading the extraordinarily clear contribution of Ferejohn and Fiorina (“The Paradox of Not Voting: A Decision Theoretic Analysis,” APSR 68 [June, 1974], 525–536), I am led to the conjecture that a sort of natural selection is involved, that the more lucid papers are so patently silly that many of them fail to achieve publication, leaving the field to papers in which the nonsense is at least obscure.

The modern language of tyranny has distorted the significance of the Greek term tyrannos. In ancient Greek the term was accorded to the new ruler in the city, one whose legitimacy did not reside in his bonds to the ancient rulers and ancient families. Tyranny thus suggested a freedom from the past. Reason, as the Greeks understood it, also entailed a breaking away from the physical world. Reason and tyranny thus work together as expressions of freedom, but it is a freedom that in its transcendence of boundaries leads to tragedy. An examination of Sophocles' Oedipus draws out both the glory and the failure of the individual attempt of the political actor to rise above the historical particular and the mere body to build a world where reason alone is power.

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).

Significant differences in the distribution of public resources among neighborhoods within the same municipality have been repeatedly reported in the literature. Previous researchers have generally concluded that these differences in the distribution of governmental benefits represent “unpatterned inequality” produced by idiosyncratic events and bureaucratic decision rules. This study of the distribution of municipal expenditures for public services in New York City comes to a very different conclusion. Municipal expenditures for social services (health, welfare, and education) increase with the dependency of district populations, which suggests a compensatory model of distribution. At the same time, municipal expenditures for property-related services (fire, sanitation) increase with tax revenues, which suggests a contributory model of distribution for these services. City expenditures for police services, however, are determined by both tax contributions and degree of dependence. These findings indicate that differences in the allocation of public resources in New York City are patterned by clearly recognizable distributional criteria.

Franklin's Autobiography was written in part to provide a model for the emerging democratic individual and democratic culture of America. Franklin's teaching in the work has been subject to severe criticisms from the beginning, though it has had many defenders, too. Neither friend nor foe, however, has taken a sustained look at the Autobiography itself to explore its teaching in detail. I look at Franklin's presentation of the relationship of wealth and virtue, his utilitarianism, and his vision of democratic society and find a subtle and robust ideal deftly calculated to educate and elevate American culture.

In this article I will attempt to review the operation of the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1946 in terms of its own objectives. Criticisms of the limitations and shortcomings of the Act have been discussed elsewhere. In describing the reformed system and the way it works, it is no part of my intention to impute praise or blame to any of the actors in the drama. As a member of the staff of the Library of Congress, I view the legislative scene with as much nonaxiological detachment as an anthropologist would describe the customs and mores of primitive tribes on some tropical island. Whether or not the system is an authentic expression of democratic government, I am not at liberty to say.

As conceived and formulated by its authors and as enacted by Congress, with some significant omissions, the Act (as I shall henceforth refer to the Legislative Reorganization Act, for the sake of brevity) had the following objectives:

1. To streamline and simplify congressional committee structure.

2. To eliminate the use of special or select committees.

3. To clarify committee duties and reduce jurisdictional disputes.

Understanding what James Madison's opponents sought and won at the U.S. Constitutional Convention revises our understanding of the founders' original intentions for the durable framework that has structured American political development. The Constitution is the by-product of expedient accommodations forced on Madison. Madison sought broad national authority independent of state governments and a swift victory for population-based congressional representation. Delegates from economically disadvantaged states opposed these plans, seeking instead to nationalize only selective public goods, to maintain most state policy autonomy, and to minimize contingencies imposed by other governments. Connecticut's delegates, particularly Roger Sherman, played a pivotal role in spoiling Madison's agenda and altering his substantive plans for Constitutional design. Madison's Convention opponents are responsible for a Constitution that nationalized only enumerated public goods and imposed potentially high transaction costs on any further nationalization of policy authority. They helped make federalism a lasting political weapon used to win substantive policy outcomes.

How does the recognition of collective self-governance rights for indigenous communities affect national unity and state consolidation? In recent decades, many states have recognized such rights, devolving de jure control over land and local governance to indigenous institutions. Prominent perspectives in the state-building literature suggest that these policies are likely to threaten state consolidation by strengthening nonstate authorities at the expense of state authority and subnational identities at the expense of a national identity. Yet few studies have tested whether these policies have the consequences their critics claim. I address this gap, leveraging spatial and temporal variation in the granting of communal land titles to indigenous communities in the Philippines. Using difference-in-differences and panel designs, I find that titling increases both indigenous self-identification and compliance with the state. Results from an original survey experiment suggest that recognizing collective self-governance rights increases identification with the nation.

A strong tradition in democratic theory claims that only constitutions made with direct popular involvement can establish or deepen democracy. Against this view, we argue that new constitutions are likely to enhance liberal democracy when they emerge through a plural agreement among political elites with distinct bases of social support. Power dispersion during constitution writing induces the adoption of institutions that protect opposition forces from the arbitrary use of executive power without unduly impairing majority rule. However, since incumbents may renege on the bargain, the democratizing effect of politically plural constitutional agreements is likely to be larger in the short term, when the identity of negotiating political forces and the balance of power between them tend to remain stable. We find support for these arguments using an original global dataset on the origins of constitutions between 1900 and 2015 and a difference-in-differences design.

According to an increasingly more widely held view, Leninist regimes tend to pump up mass-oriented policies during succession crises. Yet, this empirically based theory contains significant conceptual and methodological flaws, suggesting the need to reexamine the evidence and rethink the thesis. Using the Soviet evidence, a retest of its hypotheses fails to support this thesis. An alternative, consolidation connection is proposed here which considers the impact of political processes upon a General Secretary's capacity to innovate as well as his incentive structure. Tests of these hypotheses show a significantly higher rate of confirmation than the retest of the original thesis.

Because of changes in the issues at the center of controversy, changes in rules and norms and high membership turnover, the current House majority party leaders operate in a much less predictable environment than their predecessors did. In response to the changed environment, Speaker O'Neill has developed the strategy of leadership by inclusion, a central element of which is the Speaker's task force, an ad hoc group appointed by the Speaker and charged with passage of a specific bill. The leaders believe task forces help them perform both of their primary functions—building winning coalitions and “keeping peace in the family.” By increasing the number of people working in an organized way to pass the bill at issue, the task force increases the probability of a bill's success on the floor. Work on a task force satisfies junior members' expectations of participation and fosters cooperative patterns of behavior among party members.

The political spectrum has often been viewed as a linear continuum on which the extremes of the right and left occupy the most antithetical positions. The alternative hypothesis is that there are some dimensions on which the extremes resemble each other. This essay examines the theories of international politics and foreign policy espoused by scholars of the radical right and left. Two dozen points of convergence are grouped under five headings: Understanding history and politics, the causes of war, the nature of the enemy, the conditions of peace, and ends and means in politics. Because the essay is focused on studies of international politics since the outbreak of World War II, considerable attention is devoted to the parallels between rightwing theories of the USSR and Soviet foreign policy, and left wing explanations of the United States and American foreign policy. The conclusion suggests that both theories are fundamentally flawed in two respects: (1) As employed by their proponents, the theories appear incapable of being falsified; and (2) studies employing them are marred by serious methodological flaws that violate the canons of systematic inquiry.