At the beginning of the century, the Constitution was amended to permit direct election of U.S. senators. We examine the shift to determine the extent to which an electoral reform can result in meaningful change. Variables are analyzed that tap the Senate's membership and responsiveness before and after direct election, and House data are employed to control for history effects. The results indicate that changing the mode of senatorial selection did indeed lead to alterations in the composition and sensitivity of the Senate, a finding that should encourage caution regarding the electoral reforms being advocated at the end of the century.

Do political institutions affect citizen satisfaction with democracy? If so, how? Using cross-sectional survey data for eleven European democracies together with data on the type of democracy in which individuals live, we demonstrate that the nature of representative democratic institutions (measured by Arend Lijphart's consensus-majority index of democracies) mediates the relationship between a person's status as part of the political minority or majority and his or her satisfaction with the way the system works. Specifically, we find that (1) the losers of democratic competition show lower levels of satisfaction than do those in the majority and (2) losers in systems that are more consensual display higher levels of satisfaction with the way democracy works than do losers in systems with majoritarian characteristics. Conversely, winners tend to be more satisfied with democracy the more a country's political institutions approximate pure majoritarian government.

The average voter falls far short of the prescriptions of classic democratic theory in terms of interest, knowledge, and participation in politics. We suggest a more realistic standard: Citizens fulfill their democratic duties if, most of the time, they vote “correctly.” Relying on an operationalization of correct voting based on fully informed interests, we present experimental data showing that, most of the time, people do indeed manage to vote correctly. We also show that voters' determinations of their correct vote choices can be predicted reasonably well with widely available survey data. We illustrate how this measure can be used to determine the proportion of the electorate voting correctly, which we calculate at about 75% for the five American presidential elections between 1972 and 1988. With a standard for correct vote decisions, political science can turn to exploring the factors that make it more likely that people will vote correctly.

I reformulate Mancur Olson's by-product theory of collective action as a theory of resource allocation by interest group managers. I then test alternative hypotheses about managers' objectives drawn from exchange theory and commitment theory. Financial data for 16 environmental citizen groups show that the production of public goods is subsidized by other activities, and revenues from member dues are not affected by spending on public goods. Spending on selective incentives and information generates revenues but also may contribute to the pursuit of collective goals. Estimated marginal revenues from fund-raising and selective incentives show that environmental citizen group managers are not preoccupied with maximizing revenues. Rather, they seek to maximize either spending on public goods or net resources available for influencing public policy and the environment, subject to a budget constraint.

We examine the presidential nominees' choice of running mate in each election since 1940, when Franklin Roosevelt established a precedent by naming his own. To analyze the 22 choices made from the pool of 127 serious possibilities, we employ a discrete choice model. We find that the presidential nominee's choice is explained primarily by the size of the prospective vice president's state, by whether the running mate finalist was a rival for the nomination, and by the balance in age for the ticket.

While the possible decline in the level of social capital in the United States has received considerable attention by scholars such as Putnam and Fukuyama, less attention has been paid to the local activities of citizens that help define a nation's stock of social capital. Scholars have paid even less attention to how institutional arrangements affect levels of social capital. We argue that giving parents greater choice over the public schools their children attend creates incentives for parents as “citizen/consumers” to engage in activities that build social capital. Our empirical analysis employs a quasi-experimental approach comparing parental behavior in two pairs of demographically similar school districts that vary on the degree of parental choice over the schools their children attend. Our data show that, controlling for many other factors, parents who choose when given the opportunity are higher on all the indicators of social capital analyzed. Fukuyama has argued that it is easier for governments to decrease social capital than to increase it. We argue, however, that the design of government institutions can create incentives for individuals to engage in activities that increase social capital.

In some African countries, democratic openings have intensified ethnic competition and led to protracted transitions or outright conflict. In Kenya, I argue, the stalled transition reflects the effects of republican citizenship in ethnic political communities and liberal citizenship in the national political community. This duality in citizenship engenders conflict over democracy—conceived as liberal majoritarian democracy—and results in ethnic coalitions disagreeing over which institutions are appropriate for a multiethnic state. I provide evidence from discourses over institutions from two transition periods in Kenya: at independence and in the recent shift from one-party rule. This study makes two contributions. First, it adds to current citizenship theory, which is largely derived from Western experience, by demonstrating that republican and liberal citizenships are not necessarily compatible and that the modern nation-state is not the only relevant community for forming citizens. Second, it adds to studies of African transitions by highlighting citizenship issues in institutional design with regard to ethnicity in Kenya.

A critical element of decision making is the timing of choices political actors make; often when a decision is made is as critical as the decision itself. We posit a dynamic model of strategic position announcement based on signaling theories of legislative politics. We suggest that members who receive clear signals from constituents, interest groups, and policy leaders will announce their positions earlier. Those with conflicting signals will seek more information, delaying their announcement. We test several expectations by examining data on when members of the House of Representatives announced their positions on the North American Free Trade Agreement. We also contrast the timing model with a vote model, and find that there are meaningful differences between the factors influencing the timing of position announcements and vote choice. Our research allows analysts to interpret the process leading up to the House action and the end state of that process.

Electorates in several East European countries have thrown their support behind reconstructed communist parties. Is personal economic hardship driving this phenomenon? We argue that political behavior in postcommunist societies is fundamentally structured by interpretations of the transition histories, which were centrally constitutive events. We propose a structural equation model in which understandings of the past mediate the relationship between personal circumstances and satisfaction with economic reforms. We analyze cross-sectional data collected in Poland immediately after the 1993 parliamentary elections and find, consistent with our hypotheses, that understandings of the past exert as much of an effect on attitudes toward reforms as do personal economic assessments. We use multinomial logit to analyze vote choice and find that personal economic circumstances are of little importance. Attitudes toward economic reforms have a limited effect on voting behavior, but their importance is eclipsed by understandings of the past and other factors, such as religion.

We analyze the effects of alliances and preferential trading arrangements on bilateral trade flows. Both factors are likely to promote trade among members, but we argue that the interaction between them is central to explaining patterns of commerce. The combination of an alliance, which creates political incentives for participants to engage in trade, and a commercial institution, which liberalizes trade among members, is expected to provide a considerable impetus to commerce among parties to both. The results of our quantitative analyses support these arguments. Both alliances and preferential trading arrangements strongly affected trade from 1960 to 1990, and allies that included a major power conducted considerably more trade than their nonmajor-power counterparts. Moreover, the interaction between alliances and preferential trading arrangements is fundamental to explaining patterns of bilateral commerce: Parties to a common preferential trading arrangement and a common alliance engage in markedly greater trade than do members of either type of institution but not both.

In an extensive series of articles, Rabinowitz, Macdonald, and Listhaug have launched a new, directional theory of electoral choice. According to their claims, the new theory is superior to the classical Downsian proximity model. Such a conclusion, however, is not tenable. First, it fails to take proper account of the lower falsifiability of the directional model. Second, it rests on empirical analyses that do not test the two theories on the predictions they actually make. Both are theories of individual choice, which implies intrapersonal comparisons of utility. Prior tests, however, have predominantly taken the form of interpersonal comparisons. A reanalysis based on the proper type of comparison yields an outcome diametrically opposed to that previously obtained. It also reveals an eccentricity effect that largely accounts for the apparent success of the directional model.

In this work I test the proposition that normative standards of behavior can influence state actions in security-related conflicts. Specifically, I examine the construction of norms in the settlements of security-related disputes and the effects these settlements have on subsequent militarized interactions. I argue that dispute settlements alter subsequent crisis bargaining in two important ways. First, they act as normative referents that alter the interpretation of subsequent crisis bargaining behavior both by identifying a solution to the dispute which alleviates fears of demands for future concessions and by defining a set of acts which both sides consider illegitimate. Second, in combination with the response to their violation, dispute settlements inflict reputational costs on states that violate them. I test these arguments against a realist theory of crisis bargaining through an analysis of 122 reinitiated international crises between 1929 and 1979. I find strong support for the hypothesis that states can and do construct normative standards that guide their behavior in international crises, whereas realist theory receives only mixed support.

The topic of grass-roots participation in China has acquired special interest in light of the local economic and political reforms introduced in the post-Mao period. This paper explores some major modes of participation, issues motivating participation, and the determinants of participation. The findings are based on interviews held in early 1990 with probability samples drawn from four countryside counties. The analysis emphasizes three modes of “autonomous” participation: cooperative actions, voicing opinions to cadres, and contacting representatives. Participants pursued selective and collective goods and were strategic in combining particular modes with particular problem areas. Determinants of participation included traditional resource model predictors but also unique predictors in the form of holding a second occupation, being a party member, and residing in a specific county. Local activists appear to be using new and traditional methods in moving toward more proactive, collective, and strategic forms of behavior.

Douglas and Wildavsky argue that environmental activism is rooted in an egalitarian cultural bias. Others, like Paehlke, counter that environmental commitments and concerns are autonomous from redistributive concerns. Students of the “New Politics” agree that environmentalism is autonomous from conventional left-right distributive concerns but also argue that environmental attitudes and beliefs are embedded in “postmaterial” values, such as citizen participation. Still other scholars emphasize a cultural consensus around environmental values and beliefs. What distinguishes environmental activists, in this view, is less what they believe than their willingness to make sacrifices for those values and beliefs. Drawing upon several surveys of environmental groups and the mass public in the Pacific Northwest, we test these four hypotheses and find that the Douglas-Wildavsky “cultural theory,” although not without its limitations, appears to provide the more satisfactory account of environmental preferences.

In Political Liberalism, John Rawls employs a distinctive method of “political constructivism” to establish his well-known principles of justice, arguing that his principles are suited to bridge the ineradicable pluralism of liberal societies and so to ground an “overlapping consensus.” Setting aside the question of whether Rawls's method supports his principles, I argue that he does not adequately defend reliance on this particular method rather than alternatives. If the goal of Rawls's “political” philosophy is to derive principles that are able to overcome liberal pluralism, then another and simpler method should be employed. The “method of convergence” would develop liberal principles directly from the convergence of comprehensive views in existing societies, and so give rise to quite different moral principles.

The longstanding debate over whether officials should be permitted to profit personally from public office has moved to the center of public discourse in the United States. As the House Ethics Manual put it recently, it is of concern simply when an officeholder “cash[es] in on official position,” regardless of whether his or her official performance was in any way impaired as a result. Although the question of private gain from public office is richly implicative of a number of fundamental issues in political theory—in particular the ongoing controversy over where to draw the borders between private and public as well as the nature of official fiduciary responsibility—it has yet to undergo political-theoretic analysis. In what follows, I examine both the conceptual and normative issues emergent in the debate over private gain from public office.

The Weimar Republic is frequently invoked in political theory as an example when the issue is the appropriate response of liberal democracies to internal, fundamental challenges. I explore that example through the lens of a 1932 court case that tested the legality of the federal government's “coup” against Prussia. In my analysis of the court's judgment and of the arguments of three political and public law theorists, Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller, I argue for Heller's democratic vision of the rule of law. In my conclusion, I compare problems in Kelsen's position with problems in the recently articulated position of John Rawls in order to suggest what lessons Weimar may have for contemporary political theory.

This study uses regression analysis of data from a telephone survey of 380 married couples to subject to rare empirical test the contention that, because women are unequal at home, they cannot be equal in the polity. The argument is often made that wives' disadvantage in comparison to their husbands with respect to control over family income, availability of free time, power over decisions, or mutual respect dampens their ability to participate fully in politics. In fact, domestic inequalities do have implications for political activity, but these effects differ from what is usually posited by being stronger for husbands than for wives. For husbands, control over major financial decisions and autonomy in using small amounts of time enhance their ability to participate in politics beyond what would be expected on the basis of their other characteristics. In short, being boss at home is politically empowering to husbands.

Contrary to a prevailing wisdom, the Christian ethos was at least as sympathetic to republicanism as it was to monarchy, especially to the primacy of the public welfare but also to corporate decision making. This can be seen in the early church, especially in the writings of St. Cyprian, in the medieval civic-communal movement, in conciliar constitutionalism, and in political Calvinism. Significant aspects of Rousseau's thought may be seen as a restatement of a Christian political dynamic.

Several analysts argue that, despite anomalies, the realist paradigm is dominant because it is more fertile than its rivals. While the ability of the realist paradigm to reformulate its theories in light of criticism accounts for its persistence, it is argued that the proliferation of emendations exposes a degenerating tendency in the paradigm's research program. This article applies Lakatos's criterion that a series of related theories must produce problemshifts that are progressive rather than degenerating to appraise the adequacy of realist-based theories on the balancing of power advanced by neotraditionalists. This research program is seen as degenerating because of (1) the protean character of its theoretical development, (2) an unwillingness to specify what constitutes the true theory, which if falsified would lead to a rejection of the paradigm, (3) a continual adoption of auxiliary propositions to explain away flaws, and (4) a dearth of strong research findings.