In Aristotle's treatise on the constitution of Athens we read of the great lawgiver, Solon, that “when he had completed his organization of the constitution … he found himself beset by people coming to him and harassing him concerning his laws, criticizing here and questioning there, till, as he wished neither to alter what he had decided on, nor yet to remain an object of ill-will to everyone by remaining at Athens, he set off on a journey to Egypt, … giving out that he would not return for ten years.” To the student of American history recalling the comparison with “that old constitution-monger Solon,” so often flung at the framers of the Constitution by the anti-Federalists, the hasty exodus from Athens for a decade after the attempt “to save the country and establish the best laws that were possible,” is full of interest. The actual result of the Solonic experiment in political science we also gather from Aristotle, for “in the fifth year after Solon's government they were unable to elect an archon on account of the dissensions,” and again, four years later they elected no archon for the same reason.

This article analyzes the influence of interest groups in the formation of British policy toward participation in European unity From the important theoretical literature bearing on the subject, it derives and tests two hypotheses relating group behavior to the political integration process. The hypothesis imputed to the group politics approach holds that if interest groups influence policy formation, then progress toward integration is likely to be impeded. The hypothesis suggested by an extension of the functionalist approach implies that if interest groups influence policy formation, then progress toward integration is likely to be facilitated. The data indicate a confirmation of the first hypothesis and a rejection of the second. Groups were unfavorable toward European unity for both organizational and economic reasons. They restrained Britain's movement toward participation in integrated European ventures until the onset of effective politicization. Then the introduction of broadly conceived national interest considerations displaced cost-benefit calculations as the criteria for judgment and diminished the groups' influence. At least in the task of enlarging a geographic area of integration, if not in expanding that integration once a grouping already exists, a conscious political decision was found to be essential.

What happens when there is a change in leadership in the Soviet Union? Does the period of leadership succession present unusual opportunities for domestic policy concerns to be vented? Or, are major issues on the Soviet domestic policy agenda addressed mainly after a succession of leadership is completed? Answers to such questions have a bearing on how the Soviet elite is replenished, and more generally help to improve understanding of Soviet politics. Two specialists on Soviet and East European politics, Valerie Bunce and Philip Roeder, have been drawn to different conclusions about these issues.

On May 8, 1949—the fourth anniversary of unconditional surrender—the Parliamentary Council adopted at Bonn the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany. This date was chosen intentionally to remind the German people that this provisional constitution is a way-station on the road out of the chaos which the collapsing Hitler régime left behind it. Any consideration of this Basic Law should start from the fact that the charter is not the creation of a free people, and that it will have to function within limits, both territorial and functional, which severely handicap its chance of becoming a genuine constitution, securely anchored in the basic convictions of the people. Its limits territorially are imposed by the refusal of the Soviet Union to permit the Germans living in their Zone of Occupation to express themselves freely concerning the charter. This raises the presumption, confirmed by other evidence, that these Germans would, by a considerable majority, accept the Basic Law if given a chance to do so. The charter's functional limits are imposed by the Western Allies, who decreed three basic limitations upon the German people's autonomy and independence: (1) the Occupation Statute, (2) the Ruhr Statute, and (3) the Inter-Allied Security Board. Of these, the Occupation Statute is much the most important, and encompasses the other two by its provisions. This is shown by the fact that the Letter of Approval, issued by the Military Governors on May 12, 1949, notes that acceptance of the constitution is premised upon the understanding that all governmental power in Germany, federal, state, and local, is “subject to the provisions of the Occupation Statute.”

On October 10, 1923, the permanent constitution of the republic of China was promulgated. The “Double Ten,” already a national commemoration day, becomes fittingly the date of the long-awaited culmination of the constitutional movement inaugurated by the revolution of 1911. Although the national assembly was the same legislature which, sitting as a constituent body, completed the first draft of the constitution in 1913 and passed the larger part of it through its second reading in 1916–17, the actual periods devoted to committee work and discussion were limited to the time, not amounting altogether to three years, during which the assembly was permitted by military and political exigencies to remain in session.

In any party system, it would seem of some importance to establish rules and qualifications for membership in the different party groups, in order to bring together those persons, and only those persons, who adhere to the respective party principles. That should be particularly important in a two-party system, where the principles and issues are presumably sharply defined and clearly distinguishable. This matter has received increasing attention during recent years, and the importance of the problem was well stated by the Chicago Tribune, in an editorial referring to the Illinois primary campaign of 1938:

“The advantages of party organization and party responsibility have been proved over a long range of political testing, and although the abuses at times seem substantial. If a party is to be recognized as having legal standing, and if it is to make its nominations under the direction of law, there should be, it would seem, some determined qualification of its voters…. There shouldn't be a pretence of one thing and a fact of another. If Democrats and Republicans are to have legal standing as such, then Democrats should not make Republican decisions and Republicans should not make Democratic decisions. To permit this is to commit a fraud against the citizens who are trying to make their organization and their decisions according to the prevailing theory of political action and party responsibility.”

To develop a general theory of leadership we must locate the function of political leadership in a theory of historical causation. One may begin by identifying sources of leadership in the wants and needs, aspirations and expectations, of humankind. In helping to gratify these “motive-bases,” leaders move followers “up” the hierarchy of needs and other motivations and thus create new social configurations in which leaders act. As persons–especially children-move “up” through stages of morality, they also create structures of values that both empower and constrain would-be leaders. Leadership over human beings is exercised when would-be leaders, possessing certain motives of their own, mobilize their own psychological, institutional, pohtical, and other resources relevant to potential followers' motive bases in such a way as to satisfy the motives of both leaders and followers. The test of leadership is the achievement of goals of both leaders and followers in a context of open conflict over ends and means, with leaders and followers mutually and freely defining their values and purposes.

Frequent elections and a long tradition of census taking in India should combine to provide excellent scope for aggregate data analysis, but so far they have not, largely because the electoral constituencies and the census tracts do not match. A number of ways have been devised to surmount the problem, none of them very satisfactory. This paper offers a new solution in the form of isoplethic mapping, a method that avoids the shortcomings of other approaches and permits use of demographic and voting data at the level of the state legislative assembly constituency.

Substantively the paper traces patterns of voting for Muslim candidates to the Bihar Legislative Assembly and the relationship between Muslim population distribution and vote polled by different political parties over six elections. Instead of becoming more integrated over time within the general body politic, it appears that the Muslim minority group has become more politically cohesive and better able to elect Muslims to office where their numbers are strong. At the same time, Muslims have become less able to win elections where they are fewer in numbers. This tendency has not reached a state of political polarization between the Hindu and Muslim communities, however.

In this Review in 1993, Skocpol, Howard, Lehmann, and Abend-Wein analyzed the rapid enactment of mothers'pension laws in the American states in the 1910s. They concluded that the widespread federations of women's voluntary groups exerted a powerful influence on these enactments even before most American women had the right to vote. Sparks and Walniuk challenge these conclusions, noting that all 10 equal-suffrage states are among the 29 that passed mothers' pensions before 1916, and presenting new measures of suffrage endorsement and suffrage pressures in regression analyses suggesting that women's votes—actual and potential—played a major role in leading some states to adopt mothers' pensions earlier than their normal patterns of legislative change would predict. In response, Skocpol defends the 1993 conclusions. She adduces that the aggregate pattern of enactment of mothers'pensions corresponds much more closely to endorsements by women's groups than to suffrage timing and puts forth reasons to doubt the validity and significance of Sparks and Walniuk's tests.

Following the lead of other recently created nations of Europe, Latvia has promulgated a constitution. This new republic came into the world of nations on November 18,1918, when it proclaimed its independence, although its government was not formally recognized by the United States until July 27, 1922. One year previous to this, on September 22, 1921, Latvia became a member of the League of Nations. After the independence of Latvia had been proclaimed, a constituent assembly was convened, and it was this body which drew up the new constitution. It was adopted February 15, 1922, and became law on June 30. Elections under the new organic law were held October 7 and 8, and the newly elected parliament met November 7 of the same year.

I examine the search for a “tie that binds, “ or “core” values, in liberal political theory, specifically Rawls's recent arguments, and in proposals concerning moral education in the public schools. Both Rawls and the proponents of moral education appeal to consensus or shared values, but the search for core values in both theory and practice is only partly successful. Specifically, this search is misguided insofar as it does not reflect how values are embedded in specific institutions and practices. The various forms of moral education in the public schools, both implicit and explicit, illustrate a consensus about a range of moral and intellectual virtues that is broader and more complex than arguments for core values allow. Comparing arguments concerning core values in political theory and moral education suggests how liberal political theory might deal with questions of consensus, justification, and the task of political theory generally.

Criticisms of Quentin Skinner's approach to the study of the history of political thought have generally failed to directly address the philosophical presuppositions on which Skinner himself relies. Those presuppositions involve, primarily, theories of language associated most closely with Austin, Searle, and Grice. An investigation of the uses that Skinner makes of philosophical pragmatics raises serious doubts about a number of his central claims. Moreover, those philosophical resources actually point toward a decidedly non-Skinnerian approach that focuses not primarily on discovering or reconstructing historical circumstances, but on uncovering and explicating structures of argumentation.

According to Leo Strauss, knowledge of the best way of life is crucial to political philosophy. In “Farabi's Plato,” Strauss asks, assuming that the theoretical life can be known to be the best way of life, what is the status of this knowledge? Is the knowledge of the best way of life itself theoretical knowledge or practical knowledge? Without a coherent answer to this question, we cannot be certain that we know what we mean when we claim to know that philosophy is the best way of life. Strauss answers clearly the question about the status of the knowledge of the best way of life by affirming that it is practical, not theoretical, knowledge. For a variety of reasons, this answer is not persuasive in the form in which Strauss gives it.

Contemporary communitarians argue that a proper consideration of ontological questions of identity and community forecloses deontological liberalism as a viable option, since deontological liberalism cannot ground a sufficiently strong form of immediate identification with the ethical life of the community. Hegel's ethical theory constitutes perhaps the most fully realized account of such identification. Yet, I argue, Hegel's ethics does not require the strong form of immediate identification required by communitarians. My analysis emphasizes the strands in Hegel's account which suggest that a weaker form of identification, reconcilable with deontological liberalism, can plausibly ground a stable form of civil society. In particular, Hegel's notion of patriotic trust is designed to ground both a direct and a reflective relation between individuals and their ethical and political tradition. Hegel's analysis anticipates and offers insights to supplement recent accounts of trust as a form of social capital.