Fry and Winters, in a recent article in this journal, concluded that political variables are more important than socioeconomic variables in terms of redistributive policies. They based their analysis, however, on twelve political but only six socioeconomic variables. This research note re-examines these relationships, utilizing twelve political and twelve socioeconomic variables. The findings are strikingly reversed, whether one considers all twenty-four variables or the best five political and the best five socioeconomic variables. However, these findings reflect a shotgun approach, simply more and more variables added to a regression equation. To reduce and clarify the analysis, two criteria are suggested for selecting independent variables: the size of the zero-order correlations, and the degree of multicolinearity among the independent variables. When three political and three socioeconomic variables are compared using these criteria, the results are once again inconsistent with those reported by Fry and Winters.

This paper discusses the construction of a formal model of national political development derived from theories of political integration and instability, and reports the results of tests of the model based on data descriptive of contemporary black African nations. Political integration is conceptually elaborated in terms of processes of horizontal, vertical, and value integration, and political centralization. Political instability is conceptualized in terms of elite, communal, and mass instability. These dimensions of integration and instability are operationalized, and the analysis evaluates the hypothesis that integration decreases the likelihood of political instability in African nations, and that political centralization, in particular, decreases the likelihood of political instability by modifying, or reinforcing, the effects of other processes of integration. Methodologically, the analysis is based on the assessment of convergent validation for hypotheses tested with multiple indicators, regression, and path-analytic techniques.

This research note analyzes a key premise of the thesis of “institutional imbalance” in less developed nations, the idea that administrative modernity promotes overparticipation in the performance of political and governmental functions. Judgmental data on fifty-seven Latin American, Asian, and African nations suggest that level of administrative development is highly correlated with overparticipation, but in precisely the opposite direction from that predicted in the literature— that is, the relationship is negative. This finding indicates the necessity of reconsidering some of the conventional wisdom of comparative administration.

Potential for political violence is defined by a summated scale built from two cumulative scales measuring approval of and readiness to engage in behaviors which constitute progressively greater challenge to a political regime. A prevalent explanation of potential for political violence proposes that the major direct antecedent is relative deprivation. The partial theory proposed here does not assign a central role to relative deprivation; rather, diffuse support for the political authority structure, and belief that political violence has led to goal attainment in the past, are proposed as major direct antecedents. Relative deprivation is denned by position on the Cantril Self-Anchoring scale with respect to three welfare values. The measure of diffuse affect for the political authority structure is a weighted summation of items measuring the degree to which political authorities are believed to wield power honestly, benevolently, and justly. Belief that political violence has led to goal attainment is denned as a summation of items measuring the degree to which the use of political violence by dissident groups is thought to have been helpful. The data base is a sample of a population in which instances of political violence have been frequent in the past. A linear additive model of Potential for Political Violence, with Trust in Political Authorities and Efficacy of Past Violence as describing variables, shows an accuracy of prediction which is satisfactory and superior to that yielded by a multiplicative model.

Guttman scaling is the usual procedure for scaling legislative roll-call votes. This paper calls attention to an alternative scaling model—the proximity model. Under this model, legislators approve a consecutive set of items on the scale, without the cumulation required by the Guttman scale. Circumstances under which proximity voting is likely are discussed. Congressional voting on the Compromise of 1850 is analyzed in detail to illustrate the proximity model and to emphasize the possibility of obtaining faulty inferences if one uses the Guttman scale model when it is incorrect. Guttman scaling has been successful for contemporary Congresses, but the proximity model is seen to underlie some issues in the early 1970s. Proximity scaling is not limited to the legislative realm; it can be used in survey analysis and in attitudinal research more generally.

After a brief discussion of the existing literature and a description of the data set, the paper compares the role of four international institutions in two-party disputes in terms of (1) participant behavior and characteristics, (2) relationships between participants, and (3) characteristics of the disputes and institutional responses. The major purpose of the comparison is to assess various middle-range theoretical ideas that have been suggested by scholars and to determine whether the differences on the variables are a function of structural (PCIJ and ICJ versus League and UN) or historical (PCIJ and League versus ICJ and UN) variations. A final section of the paper presents a scheme for further research on the role of international institutions in the international bargaining process.

Recent studies of public opinion on Vietnam reveal a surprising positive association between socioeconomic status (SES) and support for “tougher” military policies. In an effort to extend and understand such findings, this study reanalyzes several public opinion surveys conducted during the Korean War. The demographic correlates of military policy preferences are found to be similar to those reported for the Vietnamese War, but the Korean data qualify the proposition that higher SES is associated with support for “tougher” policies in two respects: (1) policy preferences of the Korean public did not appear to be organized on a simple “soft-to-tough” dimension—those who supported escalation were only slightly more likely than average to oppose disengagement; (2) while SES was positively associated with opposing disengagement, it was not associated with supporting escalation. Factor analyses of several surveys reveal two distinct, orthogonal dimensions that underlay military policy preferences: an “isolationist-to-interventionist” dimension associated with opposition to disengagement; and a “trust-to-distrust of the Truman Administration” dimension associated with support for escalation. Respondents are subdivided into four types in accordance with their positions on these dimensions. The demographic characteristics and military preferences of the four types are analyzed, and the overall findings arc discussed with reference to Vietnam as well as public opinion on military policy more generally.

We propose a simple game-theory model of single-member plurality electoral systems, two parties with unequal resources being the players. Strategies consist of allocations of resources among the n contests, and a party's payoff is the number of contests to which it has assigned more resources than the other party. Mixed strategies exist which are asymptotically optimal as n increases. Identifying a party's proportion of total resources with its total vote proportion, we predict that the swing ratio, or marginal seat proportion per vote proportion, is 2. This compares to empirical findings which range between 2 and 4, and to the hitherto unexplained cube law, which predicts 3. We suggest that the strategic problem modeled by this game accounts for the major part of the swing ratio effect. Factors which vary from system to system, such as proportion of hard-core support attached to parties, may amplify this effect.

The infrequency of issue voting in American presidential elections is usually attributed to a lack of policy rationality among voters. An examination of the Vietnam war issue in 1968 suggests, however, that much of the explanation may lie instead with the electoral process itself, and with the kinds of choices which are offered to citizens.

Policy preferences concerning Vietnam were only weakly related to the two-party vote. Less than 2 per cent of the variance in voting choices between Nixon and Humphrey could be accounted for by opinions on Vietnam. Yet the absence of issue voting could not be fully explained by voters' failings. Most people had strong opinions about Vietnam. The public was generally able to perceive where prenomination candidates stood on the issue. People were able and willing to take account of Vietnam in evaluating other candidates.

Voters did not bring their Vietnam preferences to bear upon the choice between Nixon and Humphrey because they saw little difference between the positions of the two, and because they were not certain precisely where either one stood. These perceptions, in turn, were rooted in reality. Humphrey's and Nixon's campaign speeches show that they did differ rather little on specific proposals about Vietnam. Further, both candidates indulged in so much ambiguity about Vietnam that public confusion over their positions was understandable.

There are theoretical reasons for believing that candidates in a two-party system often have an incentive to converge at similar policy positions, and to be vague. If they generally do so, their behavior may contribute significantly to the apparent nonrationality of voters. In addition, it may have important implications for questions of collective rationality and social choice.

In this paper problems of social choice in general, and political choice in particular, are considered in light of uncertainty. The space of social alternatives in this formulation includes not only pure social states, but lotteries or probability distributions over those states as well. In the context of candidate strategy selection in a spatial model of political choice, candidate strategy sets are represented by pure strategies—points in the space of alternatives—and ambiguous strategies—lotteries over those points. Questions about optimal strategy choice and the equilibrium properties of these choices are then entertained. Duncan Black's theorem about the dominance of the median preference is generalized, and further contingencies in which the theorem is false are specified. The substantive foci of these results are: (1) the conditions in which seekers of political office will rationally choose to appear equivocal in their policy intentions; and (2) the role of institutional structure in defining equilibrium.

Two students of the committee assignment process, Nicholas Masters and Charles Clapp, as well as some congressmen, assert that the most crucial factor in filling committee vacancies is whether the appointment will enhance the recipient's chance of re-election. This statement is tested using data for Republican and Northern Democratic freshmen elected to the House between 1947 and 1967.

The freshmen are grouped on the basis of assumptions about which assignment or assignments should help them win re-election. When narrowly elected and safe freshmen are compared, there is no evidence that the former more frequently receive assignments likely to facilitate re-election. Thus there is no support for the Masters-Clapp proposition.

Investigation further reveals that even those freshmen from marginal districts who are awarded “good” appointments are not re-elected significantly more often than are comparable newcomers having less favorable assignments. Committee assignments therefore seem relatively unimportant in determining whether a congressman wins a sophomore term. Indeed, more than 70 per cent of the freshmen who triumphed in hotly contested races to reach the House are returned. When these incumbents are defeated it is typically as a result of nation-wide forces over which they exercise little if any control.

The implications of this research are that congressmen have a greater range of alternatives than is often thought. Even the narrowly elected novice is relatively free to seek appointment to committees for reasons other than constituency service or promotion. Largely symbolic activities are available through which concern for the district and its problems and needs can be demonstrated, thereby freeing much of the congressman's time and attention to pursue other less parochial goals.

Cluster-bloc analysis is a useful method of examining the voting records of a legislature, in order to find what subgroups of members regularly vote together. Agreement scores are calculated for every legislator with every other legislator. Then when a group is found to have all its members in high agreement with each other they are referred to as a cluster bloc. These groups, which are discovered empirically, are not necessarily the same as the formal caucus groups. So far each researcher has had to use his own judgment as to what constitutes “high agreement,” but it can be shown that the cutoff points can be established statistically, against the null hypothesis of random voting. Since each score can be tested for significance, it is possible to use statistically based indices of cohesion for the legislature or any specified subgroup and indices of adhesion between the various subgroups. Examples are given for the African group in the UN General Assembly.