In Toward a Mathematics of Politics I presented a model of reciprocal interaction between information media and the opinions held by members of the community. It is the purpose of this note to apply a somewhat simplified version of this model to the specific problem of censorship. Testable hypotheses will be deduced and implications which may be of importance for policy will be suggested.

Suppose the population of the country are arrayed on some issue dimension. It makes little difference for our present purposes what the dimension itself represents. It might, for example, indicate the degree of nudity of pictures of women in men's magazines or the strength with which the views of Castro are supported. Let us suppose that the distribution along this issue dimension declines at one, end, as shown in Figure 1. Note that the remainder of the distribution can be any shape; in fact, I have drawn in three dashed lines for three possible distributions. If we assume, not unreasonably, that most people who are in the business of producing public information seek to maximize readership, then we would anticipate that in a competitive market the information media would be spread over the possible positions in this line in much the same pattern as the population. Put more bluntly, the managers of such organizations as Time, Newsweek, and CBS go where the customers are.

All the plans for future world organization, whether they envisage a world government or are limited to providing agencies for better collaboration between the peoples of the world, are built around two main conceptions—a small council and a larger assembly. But the different plans disagree widely upon the powers and the make-up of these bodies. The purpose of the present article is to analyze the difficulties relating to the structure of the larger body, the assembly, and to outline a tentative method for surmounting them.

The structure of the different international organizations existing in the past was based on two principles: equality of representation and unanimity. That meant, first of all, that in the assemblies of nations the United States of America (population, 131 million) and Luxemburg (population, 300 thousand) had the right of equal representation. For instance, in the Conferences of the International Labor Organization, both countries have been equally entitled to appoint four delegates. Secondly, when an international assembly has tried to arrive at a Decision, not only the largest but also the smallest country could block such a Decision by casting a negative vote. While sometimes a little country has been forcibly persuaded to abandon its opposition, in many instances small countries have been able to frustrate the efforts of international assemblies and conferences otherwise unanimous.

In chapter sixteen of the Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes develops a quite peculiar concept of representation, which he then applies in the political argument of the rest of the book. He maintains that a man is a representative insofar as he has been authorized, that is, given the right to act. The representative freely exercises this right, while the represented is bound by his action and responsible for it. That this definition is an incomplete account of what representation means, and in what ways it is incomplete, I have tried to show in a previous essay. It remains to demonstrate the relationship between this peculiar, one-sided definition, and the political argument in which it is applied.

The government corporation has become a familiar device of public administration all over the world; and yet in some countries, and especially in the United States, uncertainty as to its distinctive purpose and underlying principles seems to grow, rather than to diminish, as the public corporation becomes older and more extensively used. Lack of interest and research cannot be blamed, because in recent years the degree of concentration in this area has probably been relatively as great as in any other sphere of political science. The basic explanation is that administrative formulas and management principles are rarely, if ever, capable of immunization against group pressures and public policy controls, which bend administration to their own designs, sometimes in conformity with what the impartial experts consider sound principle and practice, but just as often in knowing disregard of such considerations and in a determined effort to support their own interests and economic viewpoints.

This article describes several techniques for predicting Soviet military expenditures on the basis of an analysis of the annual budget speech by the Minister of Finance. Using the Shishko-Nincic series as an indicator of actual ruble increments in the Soviet defense budget, more than four-fifths of the variance in the change in Soviet ruble expenditures for defense can be explained by an interactive model that combines a) the Finance Minister's changing characterizations of the United States and imperialism, b) his depiction of Soviet military intentions, and c) the planning cycle. This finding suggests that even in a relatively low information system such as the Soviet Union, its leadership believes it must depict the broad contours of the budget even with respect to military expenditures. The result is that the Soviet Union provides more information about important matters than Western analysts have hitherto realized.

The ends of government may be stated as follows: (1) external security, (2) internal order, (3) justice, (4) general welfare, and (5) freedom.

To the state, which is the name usually applied to independent political associations, these ends are accorded on the basis of observation and reflection. They may be summed up under the term the “common weal,” or the common good. This assumes that there is a community, made up of human personalities, that there are purposes, values, and interests in common, that there is a commonly accepted organization for carrying out these common purposes.

It cannot be said that these functions are the property or responsibility of the state alone. They are shared by other agencies of human society, and without their coöperation the political society can do little. The state provides a broad framework within which other societies and persons may operate more effectively, and undertakes common functions which it can more conveniently carry on, than other associations.

Many have suggested that the findings of social choice theory demonstrate that there can be no “will of the people.” This has subversive implications for our intuitive concept of self-government. I explore the relation between the notion of a “social will,” that of self-government, and the impossibility theorems of social choice theory. I conclude that although the concept of the social will is essential to that of self-government, the findings of social choice theory do not cast doubt upon the possibility of either. Unlike many attempts to respond to the threat posed by social choice theory, my argument does not require any appeal to the problematic notion of the common good.

Hegel's theory of crime and punishment is tested by raising against it three difficult questions: Why must we punish the criminal? Must the punishment fit the crime? Is insanity an acceptable defense? It is argued that a Hegelian approach can generate plausible answers to these questions, answers that help to explain and justify a number of our own morally implicated practices. It is further argued that Hegel's method of arriving at such answers is by no means alien to those employed by contemporary analytic philosophers.

We show that a common method of predicting individuals’ race in administrative records, Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG), produces misclassification errors that are strongly correlated with demographic and socioeconomic factors. In addition to the high error rates for some racial subgroups, the misclassification rates are correlated with the political and economic characteristics of a voter’s neighborhood. Racial and ethnic minorities who live in wealthy, highly educated, and politically active areas are most likely to be misclassified as white by BISG. Inferences about the relationship between sociodemographic factors and political outcomes, like voting, are likely to be biased in models using BISG to infer race. We develop an improved method in which the BISG estimates are incorporated into a machine learning model that accounts for class imbalance and incorporates individual and neighborhood characteristics. Our model decreases the misclassification rates among non-white individuals, in some cases by as much as 50%.

When the problem of second chambers is discussed, we frequently find that interest is confined to the subsidiary question of technique, omitting the prior question, “Why have a second chamber?” It is in the main assumed that second chambers are universally valid, and therefore attention is centered on the varied methods of selection and the extent of functions. If the primary question is raised at all, it is invariably answered by an appeal to experience. It is claimed that almost all modern governments have for a considerable time had bicameral legislatures, and that it is hazardous to disregard a practice that is so nearly universal. Seldom is an attempt made to go beyond experience and to analyze critically this admittedly wide practice. In fact, a bicameral legislature is generally held to be an unassailable and eternal verity, one of the few axioms of political science.

Nevertheless, among the more systematic writers on political science the validity of the bicameral theory is far from unanimously supported. Even a hasty reference to the history of political ideas shows recurrent dissent. Thus, during the period of democratic ferment inaugurated by the French and American revolutions we find unmistakable opposition. To mention some examples, Samuel Adams, Paine, Turgot, Sieyès, and Condorcet were in favor of the unicameral form. The basis of their hostility is well summarized in the famous dilemma of Sieyès. Sieyès has indeed indicated the broad outlines of the objections; and a succeeding century of bicameral experience shows how difficult it is to escape from his vexatious alternatives. To reconcile faith in democracy with the assumption of the value of an effective check is assuredly not an enviable task. At any rate, for our present purpose suffice it to say that bicameralism has frequently been rejected.

This study aims to analyze some features of voting behavior in a particular state party system and to illustrate new methods of analysis of election data. In this paper we use the gross election statistics for Michigan counties and cities to relate recent voting trends to the ecological characteristics of counties and to investigate the effect of certain variables on voting in cities.

A closer scrutiny of Michigan election results is warranted at this time because major interest groups in this state no longer place a high premium on “keeping out of politics.” Traditionally, interest groups in American state and national politics are supposed to avoid any open and continuing commitments to particular party organizations or factions. Labor and business groups in Michigan, however, skirting the Taft-Hartley and corrupt practices acts (which purport to limit union and corporate political activities), have either modified or abandoned their past policies in this respect. The Michigan CIO fully accepts a partisan role and since 1948 a liberal-CIO coalition has controlled the Democratic party organization.

The article examines two of Jung's contributions to the study of politics: his conjectures about the origin of culture and politics and his theory of psychic inflation. Culture arises because man is subjected to a series of opposing tensions that divert a part of his libidinal energy from its natural flow and produce a degree of surplus psychic energy. Symbols, rising from the unconscious, transform this energy into cultural manifestations. Through ornaments and rituals, symbols also play a vital role in differentiating individual consciousness from collective consciousness. The gradually evolving consciousness of both the indivdual and the group leads to the inception of politics—of conscious conflict and harmony.

Psychic inflation is the extension of the ego beyond its natural limits as a result of an identification with the contents of the collective unconscious. It leads to an illusory sense of either superiority or inferiority. The atrophy of conscious development follows. On the other hand, the conscious assimilation of the contents of the collective unconscious produces a charismatic personality or group. But these are rare cases. For the most part, psychic inflation is a natural psychic law that can be partially controlled through an awareness of the forces of the unconscious.

“The Arab World,” said Mr. Anthony Eden, British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in his speech at the Mansion House, May 29, 1941, “has made great strides since the settlement reached at the end of the last war, and many Arab thinkers desire for the Arab peoples a greater degree of unity than they now enjoy. In reaching out towards this unity, they hope for our support. No such appeal from our friends should go unanswered. It seems to me both natural and right that the cultural and economic ties, too, should be strengthened. His Majesty's Government for their part will give their full support to any scheme that commands general approval.”

The Arab nationalists long ago aspired to achieve the ideal of an Arab union, or federation. But, they maintained, European imperialism had deliberately prevented the realization of that ideal. The Arabs had. fought on the side of the Allies in the first World War in order to achieve their freedom from Ottoman rule; but, following that war, the Arab World was detached from Turkish sovereignty only to be dominated by European Powers who, by applying the principle of mandatory tutelage, sought to satisfy their imperialistic interests. Moreover, the nationalists contended, the Arab World was deliberately divided into separate countries in order to make easy their domination by creating small and hopelessly weak states.

Democratic theorists have long argued that states can create more resilient democracies through education. Educational investments are thought to produce more economic equality and instill in citizens greater capacity and responsibility to participate in politics. Using a geographic regression discontinuity design and township-level data from Antebellum New York State, we examine whether state funding for common schools led to higher voter turnout as well as higher earnings and lower inequality. Our estimates support the view that a participatory democratic culture emerged not only because of initial favorable endowments but also because of subsequent government decisions to fund education. New York townships that received more school funding later had higher median earnings, lower earnings inequality, and higher levels of voter turnout. Our findings support the view that maintaining democracy requires active investments by the state, something that has important implications for other places and other times—including today.

The absence of a gendered analysis of the effect of marriage on voting is surprising given researchers’ cognizance of the heterogeneous effects of marriage on a range of other social outcomes. In this paper, we shed new light on spousal dependency by studying the gendered effect of marital disruption, in the form of divorce, on voter turnout. First, drawing on Swedish populationwide data, we use the differential timing of divorces in relation to general elections to generate more credible estimates of the causal effect of divorce on turnout. Second, although we find that both sexes are adversely affected by divorce, we show that the effect is much more pronounced for men. Specifically, the long-term effect is almost twice as large for men. Finally, we use these data to show that the gendered effect of divorce is mainly driven by asymmetrical spousal mobilization due to higher levels of turnout among women.

It is the pleasant duty of every Swiss, addressing an audience of American citizens on a subject of political science, to begin by acknowledging the debt of gratitude his country owes theirs, for the benefit it has derived from the historical example of the United States.

For over a century a continuous exchange of political ideas has been going on between our two nations. After all the flattering and gratifying commentaries on our institutions that have been made on this side of the ocean, it is but fair that we Swiss should frankly admit that in this exchange we have received more than we have given.