The core message of this book comes through clearly in every chapter: Formal political institutions affect economic policymaking and—less directly—policy results. The book advances thinking about how institutions affect policymaking, especially about how political institutions affect the stability (or resoluteness) and adaptability (or decisiveness) of policy.

The first extant play of Aristophanes, Acharnians, contains an eerily modern thought-experiment: what if justice is self-interest, rightly understood? The drama examines evidence for the hypothesis in three contexts: international relations; relations between the citizen and the polity; and a special case of the latter, relations between the artist and the polity. The drama shows how rudimentary justice can be secured by promoting economic interests over citizenship and artistic dissent over loyalty. Historically, these thoughts on justice—as refined in Aristophanes' later works—constitute an ancient analog of early liberal thought with its derivation of justice from interest. They represent a pre-Platonic position on justice that differs from both Sophistic and conventional Greek thinking. Normatively, Aristophanes' thought sheds light on weaknesses in modern justice theory. By making the artist's political function the linchpin of a vision of justice, Acharnians suggests a new way to view justice in relation to self-interest.

Through an examination of Aeschylus' Oresteia, this essay argues for the critical importance of intergenerational justice to democratic theory. It explores the difficulties of democratic responsibility given the tension between necessity and freedom central to questions of intergenerational justice. The essay first details the relevant lacunae in the theories of two major figures of contemporary democratic theory, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas. It then develops an account of democratic responsibility that acknowledges human freedom to make decisions, even given the necessity created by the fact that individuals and communities inherit their own range of potential actions from previous generations. The essay elaborates this claim by examining how each of the central figures in the Oresteia deals first with the dilemmas inherited from the past and then with new situations engendered by his or her own actions. The essay concludes with a consideration of this aspect of democracy in contemporary political life.

The issues which arose during the discussions of the conference fall fairly conveniently into three compartments.

First, we obviously had to settle, with reasonable clarity, what we were talking about: what “political philosophy” is, what “political science” is, and whether they are really distinguishable. The basic issue of the conference was to determine the relevance of the one to the study of the other, and if we had decided that they were really the same thing, there would simply have been no problems for us to discuss. On the whole, we felt that a valid, if not necessarily sharp, distinction was to be made between the “philosophical” and the “scientific” approaches to the study of politics and that we were not discussing absurd or tautological issues. We agreed, however, that all types of political inquiry involve the construction of theory, implicit or explicit, and that the title “political theory” has been unjustifiably appropriated by the historians of political thought.

John Rawls considers his Theory of Justice to be in the Kantian tradition. Generally there seems to be agreement among Rawls' critics that at least with respect to the procedural formulation of the principles of justice, it is difficult to call Rawls' position Kantian. In this article I will argue that Rawls' Kantianism is best understood as providing a motive source for acting upon known just standards of conduct. In this regard Rawls can be read as synthesizing aspects of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Kant's moral reasoning to provide the rationale to explain why an individual who knows what is morally correct conduct in a given situation, makes such knowledge the source of his action. Demonstrating the Aristotelean roots of Rawls' Kantianism with respect to the problem of motivation for just conduct helps one understand how Kant's moral theory can be viewed in Rawls' words not as a “morality of austere command but … [as] … an ethic of mutual respect and self esteem” (1971, p. 251). Secondly, this view of Kant provides the basis for understanding the anti-corporatist aspect of Rawls' political theory that my reading of Rawls makes necessary.

The centenary of Merriam's birth provides the opportunity to reappraise the consequences of his prophetic advocacy of a more scientific expression and systematization of political knowledge. The vehicle for this appraisal is a comparison of Merriam's ’activist” epistemology wjth the more self-limiting methodology of Max Weber who, perhaps among all twentieth-century social scientists, stated most explicitly and experienced most poignantly the tensions among the requirements of acquiring objective knowledge about politics and exercising responsibility in political action. Notwithstanding their many points of difference, Merriam and Weber are interpreted as sharing common grounds of disbelief that the disjunction between science and politics will be removed by the development of a unifying, paradigmatic world-view, either within political science or between the several sciences of man, nature, and society. The political context and role of scientists are visualized by the author as consisting in: (1) mastering the personal temptations and obstacles to achieving their own peculiar brand of political competence, (2) securing public recognition and respect for the factual-scientific component of controversial situations involving their sphere of expertness, and (3) acting upon the assumption of joint skills and contributions, along with other scientists, philosophers, technicians (including politicians), and participating citizens in improving the utilization of scientific research in the formulation of public policy and reform of governing institutions.

Some analysts blame the direct primary for the supposedly parlous state of the American party system; others assert that nominating procedures do not affect parties at all. The literature abounds with more or less judicious, and conflicting, estimates of the consequences of the primary mode of nomination. In fact, our present knowledge provides little basis for confident appraisal of the effects of the direct primary. This article reports an attack on a small part of the problem, viz., state legislative nominations in two-party states, by explicit methods of analysis, whose use may both make possible a minor substantive contribution as well as demonstrate the appalling amount of work necessary for a provisional solution of even the smallest aspect of the broad problem.

To cope with questions about the consequences of particular institutional arrangements requires both a working theory and a means of observation to determine whether it fits the facts. For lack of a better concept, the problem of the effects of the primary method of nomination may be regarded as a special case of the broader question of the nature of the interaction between formal and informal organization.

Cross-national research is plagued by several methodological problems that threaten to distort results and hence raise questions concerning the adequacy of substantive findings. The extent and impact of three of these methodological problems—measurement, sampling, and specification errors—are assessed for a recent model of civil conflict developed by Gurr and Duvall. Concepts in their model are measured with two distinct data sets to estimate measurement error; to assess sampling error, measures are applied to a sample of black African nations which were excluded from their analysis; and new concepts are introduced to assess error in theoretical specification. Although all forms of error are found to exist in their work and to have some distorting effects on their model, it is concluded that some of the general model is accurate. However, discovery of (1) the concepts and data sets that contain the greatest error, and (2) the sources of sampling and specification error, is used to improve substantive findings about the causes of manifest political conflict.

Thinkers such as Derrida and Levinas locate the source of the totalitarian tyrannies of our century in totalizing thought, the view that claims the whole is perfectly explicable. Their response maintains that there is no determinate knower and thus no access to enduring intelligibles. This response, however, subverts any claims to political truth, leaving no principles as a basis for political judgment. Plato's Charmides provides a corrective of this difficulty. In this dialogue, Socrates discusses self-knowledge with Critias, who advocates a tyranny founded precisely on a claim of comprehensive knowledge and control. Socrates responds to this theory-based tyranny with a view of the elusiveness of self-knowledge that denies Critias' claim to know the human good with the precision necessary to establish his error-free society. But furthermore, this elusiveness is itself intelligible; possessing a discernible structure, it can substantiate specific political principles. Thus, Plato shows how we might resist such tyranny without subverting the very principles that allow us to judge it unjust.

Debates over racial voting, and over policies to combat vote dilution, turn on the extent to which groups’ voting preferences differ and vary across geography. We present the first study of racial voting patterns in every congressional district (CD) in the United States. Using large-sample surveys combined with aggregate demographic and election data, we find that national-level differences across racial groups explain 60% of the variation in district-level voting patterns, whereas geography explains 30%. Black voters consistently choose Democratic candidates across districts, whereas Hispanic and white voters’ preferences vary considerably across geography. Districts with the highest racial polarization are concentrated in the parts of the South and Midwest. Importantly, multiracial coalitions have become the norm: in most CDs, the winning majority requires support from non-white voters. In arriving at these conclusions, we make methodological innovations that improve the precision and accuracy when modeling sparse survey data.

Multilevel regression and post-stratification (MRP) is a popular use of hierarchical models in political science. Multiple papers have suggested that relying on machine learning methods can provide substantially better performance than traditional approaches that use hierarchical models. However, these comparisons are often unfair to traditional techniques as they omit possibly important interactions or nonlinear effects. I show that complex (“deep”) hierarchical models that include interactions can nearly match or outperform state-of-the-art machine learning methods. Combining multiple models into an ensemble can improve performance, although deep hierarchical models are themselves given considerable weight in these ensembles. The main limitation to using deep hierarchical models is speed. This paper derives new techniques to further accelerate estimation using variational approximations. I provide software that uses weakly informative priors and can estimate nonlinear effects using splines. This allows flexible and complex hierarchical models to be fit as quickly as many comparable machine learning techniques.

How does political representation affect conservation? We argue that the mixed evidence in the literature may be driven by institutional arrangements that provide authority to marginalized communities, but do not make adequate arrangements to truly boost their voice in resource management. We study a 1996 law that created local government councils with mandated representation for India’s Scheduled Tribes (ST), a community of one hundred million. Using difference-in-differences designs, we find that the dramatic increase in ST representation led to a substantial increase in tree cover and a reduction in deforestation. We present suggestive evidence that representation enabled marginalized communities to better pursue their interests, which, unlike commercial operations such as mining, are compatible with forest conservation. While conservation policy tends to stress environmentally focused institutions, we suggest more attention be given to umbrella institutions, such as political representation, which can address conservation and development for marginalized communities in tandem.

Work on the electoral effects of gun violence in the U.S. relying on difference-in-differences designs has produced findings ranging from null to substantively large effects. However, as difference-in-difference designs, on which this research relies, have exploded in popularity, scholars have documented several methodological issues including potential violations of parallel-trends and unaccounted for treatment effect heterogeneity. These pitfalls (and their solutions) have not been fully explored in political science. We apply these advancements to the unresolved debate on gun violence’s effects on U.S. electoral outcomes. We show that studies finding a large positive effect of gun violence on Democratic vote shares are a product of a failure to properly specify difference-in-differences models when underlying assumptions are unlikely to hold. Once these biases are corrected, shootings show little evidence of sparking large electoral change. Our work clarifies an unresolved debate and provides a cautionary guide for scholars currently employing difference-in-differences designs.

We revise the conventional wisdom that Africa’s international borders were drawn arbitrarily. Europeans knew very little about most of Africa in the mid-1880s, but their self-interested goals of amassing territory prompted intensive examination of on-the-ground conditions as they formed borders. Europeans negotiated with African rulers to secure treaties and to learn about historical state frontiers, which enabled Africans to influence the border-formation process. Major water bodies, which shaped precolonial civilizations and trade, also served as focal points. We find support for these new theoretical implications using two original datasets. Quantitatively, we analyze border-location correlates using grid cells and an original spatial dataset on precolonial states. Qualitatively, we compiled information from treaties and diplomatic histories to code causal process observations for every bilateral border. Historical political frontiers directly affected 62% of all bilateral borders. Water bodies, often major ones, comprised the primary border feature much more frequently than straight lines.

Scholars have made important advances in explaining policy drift, uncovering the prevalence of drift in veto-riddled systems, the importance of bureaucratic discretion and statutory ambiguity in combatting drift, and its feedback effects. Despite research demonstrating the potential for judicial action to alleviate drift, we know little about the potential for the Supreme Court to facilitate policy drift. I argue that the Supreme Court may operate as a powerful agent of drift by stripping statutes of ambiguity, foreclosing policy innovation in institutions outside of Congress, and curtailing bureaucratic discretion and authority. To demonstrate these mechanisms, I show how in the case of federal labor law, the Court’s jurisprudence addressing the right to strike, federal preemption, and National Labor Relations Board authority played a central role in gradually undoing the efficacy of The National Labor Relations Act. This inquiry has important implications for understanding public policy, judicial power, the development of American labor law, and American democracy.

The newer institutional formsof democracy—the referendum in its various forms, the initiative, proportional representation, the recall, popular election of United States senators, direct primaries for the nomination of candidates—all indicate the growing self-consciousness of the masses and the demand for a more direct participation in government than the pure representative system allows. Secretary Root's recent declaration that the

whole civilized world is swinging away from its old governmental moorings and entrusting the fate of its civilization to the capacity of the popular mass to govern

is a statement the truth of which needs no proof for its establishment. Still others whose opinions are entitled to consideration are telling us that

the representative system after a century of existence under a very extended suffrage has failed to satisfy the expectations of its early promoters and is likely to make way in its turn for the more direct action of the people on the most important questions of government.

Certain it is that the character of representative government is undergoing fundamental changes not only through the operation of the forms of democracy mentioned above, but also through the new conception of the relation of the representative to his constituency. The earlier conception attributed to the representative full independence of judgment and action, the right to interpret the common need and the common consciousness free from duress either upon his intellect or his conscience. Edmund Burke expressed the old view when he declared that the representative owed his constituent both industry and judgment and when he sacrified those to the opinion of the constituent, he betrayed rather than served him. But the new view regards the representative in a very different light. He is no longer free to interpret and register the popular will as his conscience and better judgment dictate, but the general consciousness is interpreted for him and he is expected to obey the popular mandate.