The paper contends that political democracy is a matter of degree, a variable property of political institutions. An index for this property, Q, measures the extent to which complex institutions approximate a generalized definition of majority-rule (e.g. that losing coalitions must be smaller than winning or blocking ones.) This index for degrees of political democracy is in turn treated as a function of simpler structural variables, such as decision-rule, the sizes of veto groups, the sizes of groups excluded from decision-making, and simple patterns of representation. Finally, it is suggested that there is no necessity that more democracy produce more satisfaction with outcomes, but that this property does set a “maxi-min” constraint on rates of satisfaction: the more democratic an institution, the larger is the smallest possible proportion of a group (or “domain”) which can be satisfied with any single (binary) outcome.

Administrative decisions in connection with immigration are in a different class from those of the interior department and those of the interstate commerce commission as explained in the preceding papers. The interior department deals with distributions of public property and the interstate commerce commission acts judicially with reference to private rights; whereas administrative decisions in connection with immigration determine some of the most sacred of private rights as a mere incident in the execution of a public policy.

The immigration service is within the general but minutely regulated administrative jurisdiction of the department of labor.

This is the tenth and youngest of those executive branches of the federal government that are administered by members of the president's cabinet. For its administration the present secretary of labor, who is also the original incumbent, is William B. Wilson, of Pennsylvania.

Plato's proposal for the equality of the sexes remains one of the most controversial aspects of his argument in the Republic. I explore this argument with special emphasis on locating it within larger themes of the work, themes whose relevance to the argument on gender equality have often been ignored. On this basis, I find that Plato's defense of gender equality is serious, but that the foundation and the consequences of that argument have not usually been well understood. Plato's argument for gender equality rests on a distinctive view of human nature, and his elaboration of the consequences of pursuing gender equality reveal that a price would have to be paid for it that few are willing to accept. His argument should be considered by contemporary advocates of gender equality.

I examine Heidegger's postmodern interpretation of technology, with an eye to exposing its weaknesses. I do this by showing that his view entails an understanding of the tradition of political philosophy that cannot do justice to that tradition's own understanding of the character of technology. I consider first Plato and Aristotle and then Hobbes and Locke in order to suggest that Heidegger's view that modern politics are stamped by technological metaphysics can be challenged on two related grounds: (1) it assumes incorrectly that the tradition is dominated by dogmatic metaphysics; (2) it prevents us from seeing how some in the tradition both understood and doubted the possibility of a technological stamp. I then suggest an alternative view of technology that might account better for the character of technology and political life.

To any observer the French party system is bewildering. On the one hand, he sees that ten parliamentary groups are officially established in the National Assembly (not including the Overseas Independents); and, at the same time, he notes that only five of them are really organized throughout the country, and so entitled to be considered “parties” in the true sense of the word: the RPF, the Radicals, the MRP, the Socialists, and the Communists. On the other hand, he observes that the ablest French specialists in electoral sociology—particularly André Siegfried and his disciple, François Goguel—consider that, behind the apparent profusion of political groups, two basic divisions are always found, the continuing opposition of which has supplied for more than a century the essential dynamics of French politics. These two divisions are, of course, the Right and the Left, traditionally called “Order” and “Movement.” Nevertheless, the brief history of the Fourth Republic reveals an attempt to break down these two blocs, and to build a “Third Force” from smaller units. Under various names, such a Third Force has governed France from March, 1947, to March, 1952; and if our hypothetical observer will look back and analyze the political life of the Third Republic, he will find the same tendency there, not so marked and not so strong, but always present.

Rural overrepresentation and metropolitan underrepresentation in state legislatures have long been standard targets for the criticisms of students of state and local government. As Murray Stedman, for example, puts it, “Rural minorities control many state legislatures and thereby penalize urban majorities. The virtual serfdom of the urbanite to the rurally controlled state legislatures in many areas is a recurrent plaint in the writings of political scientists.” Commenting on the tendency of state legislators to form blocs reflecting individual localities and their local and regional interests, Alfred DeGrazia concludes that “every American state with any considerable urban population has undergone protracted conflict between rural and urban blocs, often regardless of party lines.” Textbooks on municipal government, and state and local government, universally condemn urban underrepresentation in state legislatures and say, or imply, that the result is consistent defeat or frustration of urban interests in the legislative arena. My purpose here is to introduce a note of factual skepticism into a portion of the discussion.

The late Professor William A. Dunning is reported to have said of the recent political theories which attempt to replace the conception of state sovereignty by some pluralistic grouping of social forces, that they were “radically unintelligible.” It is hard for political theorists who have been accustomed to regard the conception of sovereignty as a foundation stone and a sort of “rock of ages” for their faith to be told (as one is every day, more or less) that the anti-intellectualistic type of a sociological basis is the only valid one for juristic structure. For that, according to the old rationalistic conceptions of analytical jurisprudence, is indeed to base sovereignty upon shifting sands and to deprive law of any special significance of its own by equating it with social reactions of the most indeterminate character. But the anti-intellectualistic trend of modern political theory indignantly denies this charge. The assumption, it counters, that any legal center of reference can be final in its authority or in its right to command is an outworn Hegelianism, discredited by practice and theory alike. Law is too much a thing of fictions to be taken seriously in its claims, when it pretends to be giving an accurate description of facts in the abstract terms of a pretended right on the part of the state to be the sole author of enforceable commands and the only rightful claimant of men's ultimate loyalty.

“The well-bred, throbbing sound that goes on behind the Bauhaus façade of the United Nations,” notes Alistair Cook, “is not the air-conditioning. It is the pulse of politics.” Ever since its inception in 1919, international organization somehow has been expected to operate above and beyond politics. It was to enshrine the universal aspiration for peace and stability. That “politics” could intrude upon—and indeed shape—institutions set up for the maintenance of collective security is only now being recognized by the public at large. That recognition, in turn, seems responsible for much of the current disillusionment with the United Nations, since its implications sully the pure ideal of solidarity for peace.

Ideologically speaking, our experience with collective security has rested on two basic concepts: the notion of “universal moral obligations” of the League Covenant and the concert of the big powers implicit and explicit in the United Nations Charter. Thus political values held by groups and individuals were translated into legal and institutional terms in the two universal collective security organizations. Both global efforts have failed to result in the peace expected of them; but the institutions rather than the concepts on which they were based have become the object of criticism and attack. No doubt the ideological convictions associated with the advent of international organization generally have militated in favor of the continued purity of the concepts. However, unless the concepts associated with world organization possess at once a high degree of descriptive accuracy and an analytical property permitting a measure of prediction, informed discussion of United Nations issues must be indefinitely postponed.

Among the traditional political conceptions which in recent years have become the object of almost irreverent attack, is that which ascribes the quality of absolutism to that often elusive, but ever present, double-faced creation of the jurists which bears the name of sovereignty. Text-writers, sometimes in unqualified terms, still persist in claiming for it the unrestricted supremacy which was attributed to it in an age when its wielders everywhere were absolute monarchs; but an increasing number, less influenced by legal theories than by realities, see in it only the “ghost of personal monarchy,” as Hobbes characterized it, “sitting crowned on the grave thereof.”

On the one side the attack is directed by a new school of political writers, who deny its very existence or maintain that it is not an essential constituent attribute of the state. According to them, the notion is useless if not fallacious; the theory is discredited by the facts of modern state life and the term should be abandoned and expunged from the literature of political science.

In The Discourses Machiavelli extolled the virtues of republican government, yet in The Prince he advised the ruler on how to perpetuate autocratic rule. What accounts for this paradox? Mary Dietz argues that Machiavelli sought to deceive the prince, trapping him into actions that would destroy his rule. John Langton contends, in contrast, that Machiavelli was seeking to teach the prince how to govern so that the autocratic state could evolve into a republic.

Few persons who look at the world thoughtfully are complacent. It is difficult to believe that the balance of power will become more stable. Quite the contrary! A degree of bi-polarity in world politics has been reached which compels each of the opposing groups to bend its efforts to bring the remaining neutrals into its orbit and to augment its power. If the war which each regards as a possibility should come, each wants to be sure that it will not be the loser. The race in atomic weapons and armaments of all kinds is on and experience suggests, as in the rivalries between sections before the American Civil War and the rivalries between alliances before the first World War, that such a race will eventuate in war.

There is no balancer in a bi-polar world, nor are there uncommitted powers which may cast their lot on one side or the other in a crisis. The process of nucleation about the two poles makes prediction of the power potential of each more and more feasible. It becomes increasingly clear to one side that time is with it and to the other that time is against it. Under such circumstances each expects war and it can be anticipated that the side which becomes convinced that time is against it will start the war. Fortunately there are still many unknown variables in the present situation. No precise calculation is yet possible, though it may be in the course of a few years. However, if war comes, there are few who doubt that atomic weapons would be used and that the human race would face disaster.

In suggesting a basis for operational indices of the concentration of power Steven Brams' creative article “Measuring the Concentration of Power in Political Systems” (see pp. 461–475) has performed an important service to the discipline in opening up a neglected area. It is very surprising that despite all the past efforts to devise summary measures of power bases (e.g., income or military strength) so little effort has gone into summary indices for rigorously gauging their dispersion or the absence of dispersion. Having acknowledged Brams' piece as an extremely valuable stimulus for further thought, I would like now to exercise a scientific prerogative to propose a variation in the approach that should, for some theoretical purposes, prove even more useful. As Brams notes appropriately, it is indeed true that the best index “for any particular study will depend on the nature and purposes of the study.”

All the versions of Brams' PC index are directed toward measuring the collective exercise of influence between different levels of decision-makers. This approach reflects an essentially deterministic point of view: the influence from any level on a mutual influence set or sets is determined by the exercise of influence on only one of its members. For example, if a has power over b, and b is in a mutual influence set with c, then c's actions vis-à-vis b are completely determined by a. As far as the PC index is concerned, this is no different from the case of a's directly influencing b and directly influencing c when b and c are not in an influence relationship. But if one takes a probabilistic viewpoint of indeterminacy, of a's predominance but less than complete control over b and c when they are in a mutual influence relationship, the relations among units at a subordinate level become interesting.

Does liberal democracy require a strict separation between state and religion? In Anglophone liberal political theory, the separationist model of the First Amendment of the US Constitution has provided the basic template for the rightful relationship between state and religion. Yet this model is ill-suited to the evaluation of the secular achievements of most states, including India. This article sets out a new framework, minimal secularism, as a transnational framework of normative comparison. Minimal secularism does not single out religion as special, and it appeals to abstract liberal democratic ideals such as equal inclusion and personal liberty. Actual debates about secularism in India are shown to revolve around these ideals. The study of recent Indian controversies—about the Uniform Civil Code, the status of Muslims, and the rise of BJP nationalism—also sheds light on some blind spots of Western secularism and the conception of sovereignty and religion it relies on.

As demonstrated in landmark decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court, American constitutional development has been fueled since the framing by disputes arising from changing labor relations in both private and public settings. This pattern is explained by the original provisions of the Constitution, the English background of its emergence, and the primacy of labor as a theoretical concept for studying political change. The Court's decisions protecting property express the status quo, the establishment against which transformations proceed. However, the property cases may also be reinterpreted along the lines indicated.

Does working in the public rather than the private sector have a causal effect on electoral participation? Extant evidence using cross-sectional survey data remains unpersuasive due to data limitations and concerns posed by preference-based job selection. We address these challenges using population-wide individual-level register data on voter turnout covering four Norwegian local and national elections between 2013 and 2019. We identify causal effects by tracking the same individuals over time during (a) shifts between private- and public-sector employment, (b) relocations between municipalities, and (c) shifts into retirement. We find that local public-sector employees display 1–3 percentage points higher voter turnout compared with private-sector employees. These effects arise particularly when working in their residential municipality, but they largely dissipate upon retirement.

Rogers Smith in “Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America” in the September 1993 issue of this Review argues that ascriptive inequalities (eg. racism, sexism, nativism) are neither mere deviations from liberalism nor only symptoms of liberalism. Rather, multiple ideologies coexist in uneasy tension. Jacqueline Stevens criticizes Smith for failing to attend to the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and others—whose descriptions of American ideological history, she says, provide the same insight that Smith claims as his own. She goes on to discuss how defining a “mainstream” of scholarship shapes inferences as to what counts as knowledge and further suggests that liberalism and exclusion betray an underlying consistency. In his reply, Smith recognizes the contributions of Du Bois and others, but argues that although they do foreshadow his work, they do not offer the same critique or do the same job. And he asserts that the linkages between liberalism and ascriptive inequality are political, economic, social and psychological—not logical—ones.

Understanding when and why minority candidates emerge and win in particular districts entails critical implications for redistricting and the Voting Rights Act. I introduce a quantitatively predictive logical model of minority candidate emergence and electoral success—a mathematical formula based on deductive logic that can logically explain and accurately predict the exact probability at which minority candidates run for office and win in given districts. I show that the logical model can predict about 90% of minority candidate emergence and 95% of electoral success by leveraging unique data of mayoral elections in Louisiana from 1986 to 2016 and state legislative general elections in 36 states in 2012 and 2014. I demonstrate that the logical model can be used to answer many important questions about minority representation in redistricting and voting rights cases. All applications of the model can be easily implemented via an open-source software logical.

Who is deemed vulnerable and in need of protection has a bearing on important policy decisions, such as refugee acceptance or provision of aid. In war, dominant narratives construe women as paradigmatic victims, even while civilian men are disproportionately targeted in the most lethal forms of violence. How are such gender-essentialist notions reflected in public opinion? Do regular citizens have inaccurate perceptions of male victimization in war, and with what consequences for their policy preferences? We carried out survey experiments among U.S. and U.K. respondents on both real and hypothetical conflicts, where we emphasized or varied the gender of the victims. In support of our expectations, respondents consistently underestimate the victimization of men, perceive civilian male victims as less innocent, and hold anti-male biases when it comes to accepting refugees and providing aid. However, informing respondents of the vulnerability of male civilians to targeted assassinations and massacres mitigates these effects.