Several authors have now addressed themselves to the dynamics of party identification. The meaning of such dynamics has, however, been left in some doubt. In particular, it is unclear whether changes in party attachments are best described as completely random phenomena or as phenomena exhibiting patterned time variation. This paper argues that the answer to the question depends in part on the observable consequences of changes in partisan ties. The analysis utilizes SRC panel data to describe patterns of variation in party identification and to attempt to assess their consequences for our understanding of the floating vote.

Assuming that the symbols demonstrated to be important to the understanding of art, literature and religion are likely to be equally useful in the study of politics leads the author to identify seven basic notations: the point, the circle, the square, the dividing line (either vertical or horizontal), and the directional line (either vertical or horizontal). The article speculates on the consequences of casting political thoughts in spatial frameworks developed out of these basic notations. Special attention is given to the Left-Right and Up-Down dimensions and to the problem of the congruence between political ideology and its underlying spatial archetype.

Several years ago Professor Robert Dahl argued that the traditional concern over the Supreme Court's power of judicial review was largely unfounded. Dahl demonstrated that seldom, if ever, had the Court been successful in blocking the will of a law-making majority. This paper argues that, had Dahl considered his data from a different perspective, he would have discovered that, by virtue of the recruitment process, the Court will rarely even attempt to thwart a law-making majority. Examining Dahl's data in the context of the Survey Research Center's election classification scheme, the paper focuses on the Court's relation to patterns of partisan change to show that the traditional philosophic concern with the counter-majoritarian nature of judicial review is largely divorced from empirical reality and has relevance only during periods of partisan realignment within the political system as a whole. The paper buttresses the argument that the Court's “yea-saying” power is more important than its “nay-saying” power, a realization which can serve as the premise from which a logically consistent justification of the Court's power of judicial review may be dialectically constructed.

Inglehart's “Silent Revolution” thesis is examined critically through an analysis of an experimental British survey of subjective attitudes toward the “quality of life.” Inglehart's techniques were replicated to identify “Acquisitive” and “Post-bourgeois” types. It was found that whilst those holding to “postbourgeois” values possessed the demographic characteristics and the political dispositions predicted by Inglehart's thesis, on other highly relevant measures of values choices the postbourgeois group revealed attitudes similarly or even more “acquisitive” than the “Acquisitives.” Discussion is critical of the Maslovian assumptions of Inglehart's model and proposes instead an interpretation of the postbourgeois phenomenon based upon identity and status discrepancies.

Under what circumstances do citizens in a democracy influence their leaders? This paper uses an index of citizen-leader agreement on community problems to examine the effects of political factors on linkage. This index, termed concurrence, was based on parallel questions on community problems asked of citizens, government heads, and other local leaders sampled in sixty-four smaller American communities.

Concurrence was significantly higher in communities with high levels of citizen participation, contested elections, partisan ballots, and active political parties. Regression analysis showed that while voting rates had the largest direct impact on concurrence, participation had more impact when salient electoral alternatives were available. Partisan, contested elections also were associated with higher concurrence between leaders and persons of low socioeconomic status. Political factors also affected concurrence rates in both consensual and nonconsensual communities.

Alternative explanations for these findings (popular control of leaders, leaders' efforts to influence citizens or manipulate participation) are considered. Since concurrence scores of nonelected local leaders were also higher in participant communities with contested elections, it is suggested that political factors may affect citizen-leader agreement by facilitating communication between leaders and citizens, as well as by aiding electoral accountability.

In an earlier study of voting behavior of U.S. appeals courts judges, attitudinal patterns were investigated along with an analysis of the relationship of judges' backgrounds to their decisions. In this revisit, the earlier findings were treated as hypotheses and tested with a new case population covering a subsequent and longer time period. In all, 2,115 cases decided nonunanimously were coded on one or more issues. Most cases could be classified under ten broad issue categories which were then utilized for most of the analyses. Although the research design was similar to that of the earlier study, a wider variety of methods was employed including nonparametric and parametric intercorrelations of voting behavior on the ten issues and stepwise multiple regression and partial correla-tion analyses of seven background variables and their relationships to voting behavior on the issues. The principal findings were similar to those found earlier but it was possible to map voting behavior with some-what more precision and to uncover some unexpected relationships such as those concerning the potency of the age variable particularly for voting on political liberalism issues.

An explanatory model for the outcomes of midterm congressional elections is developed. Midterms are a referendum on the performance of the President and his administration's management of the economy. The explanatory model of midterm congressional elections is sufficiently powerful so as to yield honest and accurate pre-election predictions of the national two-party vote in midterm elections. These predictions have usually outperformed pre-election forecasts based on survey data. The model is extended by considering the translation of votes into seats, models of the electorate as a whole and of the individual voter, and the causes of the off-year loss by the President's party.

Before 1945 Japan was the epitome of a nation whose political regime was based on the presence of a “benevolent leader,” the Emperor. The postwar democratic regime, however, was founded in explicit repudiation of this central role of the Emperor in the political life of the nation. This study, based on two surveys of Japanese children and adolescents, investigates their images of political authority figures and the consequences of those images on support for the institutions of the present regime. The first part of the paper focuses on younger children's images of possible contenders for the role of benevolent leader. The data reveal indifference toward the emperor and strong negative affect toward the prime minister. Comparison of the images of prime minister and local leader suggests that the leader's personality and leadership style, characteristics of the institutional structure of politics, and children's conceptions of the meaning of “politics” combine to the detriment of the prime minister's image. The second part of the paper centers around the question of whether there occurs in later years a spill-over of negative affect from the prime minister's image onto the other major institutions of the regime. The data indicate that a selective political cynicism emerges in adolescence, in which negative feelings toward the authoritative, output institutions of government are coupled with support for those institutions which mediate popular participation in politics. The paper concludes with a consideration of the significance that the historical origins of a political regime have for popular images of national leaders.

A common hypothesis about the sources of international conflict holds that war and turmoil will be an inevitable consequence of the widening “gap” between the developed and underdeveloped states. This view is based on a common Western image of underdeveloped countries which assumes that striving for economic betterment is universal in all underdeveloped countries, and is primarily a grass-roots phenomenon. This essay challenges the hypothesis and the assumptions upon which it is based. It argues that the images of underdevelopment generated by economists using aggregate data are in many cases incorrect or distorted. Studies by anthropologists which are based on micro- rather than macrodata produce quite different impressions of the underdeveloped society. The human costs involved are for the most part overlooked in development schemes, and the wholesale importation of Western economic development strategies has led in many cases not only to a poor allocation of resources, but also to many of the problems the developed societies are now facing, including urban congestion, rising crime rates, higher incidence of mental breakdown, and the like.

The paper concludes with a critical review of common liberal solutions to development problems, and suggests that one strategy possible for some developing countries is increased isolation from the international system. International conflict may result not only because the underdeveloped states wish to close the “gap,” but because some may choose deliberately to reduce their dependency on the West. Conflict may be generated through isolation as well as through increased interaction.

The legacy of problems associated with Latin American development policy in the postwar era necessitates the asking of some fundamental questions about the future of development in that region. Economic growth rates have been insufficient, and the employment and distributional problems have been worsening. This situation is in large measure attributable to specific policies pursued by Latin American governments, especially the array of policies included under the rubric of “import-substituting industrialization.” Such policies are critically analyzed as a prelude to the discussion of a suggested reorientation of Latin American development policy. The goal of such a redirected, poverty-oriented development policy is the creation of “livable” (if not “developed”) societies. The effort to fashion development policies aiming at “livability” entails, at the most general level, distributional and short-run emphases. But it also involves the need for major innovations in such diverse areas as technological, agricultural, regional, and educational development. Reorientations of international development lending would also be required. The economic problems of the livability approach are formidable, but recent findings indicate that poverty-oriented development strategies may be economically viable. The political problems are equally if not more formidable, and it is likely that their confrontation will involve new ways of thinking about “political development” and about the relationship of political regime types to economic development.

This article attempts to assess the role of courts and other adjudicative institutions in the definition, interpretation, and management of conflict. Understanding the function of courts requires an understanding of a society's entire range of conflict management mechanisms. Particular emphasis is placed on those variables most likely to determine where and how conflicts will be solved.

Adjudicative institutions can be effectively differentiated by a typology which measures the level of formality in procedures and the degree of “publicness.” The structure of a dispute-resolving institution will have an important effect on which disputes are presented to it and how they are decided. The nature of the dispute, goals of the disputants, social context, and political culture are also important variables.

Government has an important stake in the manner in which disputes arise and are resolved. It may promote or require the resolution of some disputes in the courts while allowing others to be resolved in less public and formal arenas. Formal litigation may provide a model for private dispute resolution. It may also absorb and deflect grievances before they escalate into more organized and intense demands on the political system. Finally, litigation may have an important effect on system stability by promoting support for regime values.

The effect of electoral mobilization upon the decay of political institutions is examined with reference to the stability of aggregate voting patterns in Western Europe. Historical time series are studied empirically to test predictions derived from a formal model. The conclusion is that demobilization of groups, rather than mobilization of new voters, threatens the stability of electoral institutions. It is argued that electoral mobilization is a process through which political institutions preserve stability of social relations.

Positive or rational choice theorists have tended to suppress under the rubric of “winning” elections a critical distinction in ths goals of political parties (or candidates)—the distinction between the primary goal of office and the goal of the benefits derived from the control of office. The distinction, however, has strategic consequences. Logically, the office-seeker should follow the vote-maximization strategy put forth by Downs, whereas the benefit-seeker should find Riker's minimal winning coalition most congenial. The distinction in goals and strategies also implies divergent ways of organizing political parties. A concern for benefits logically leads to the development of structures designed to insure that the party's officeholders will deliver the desired benefits. The office-seeking goal implies structures which free the party and the office-seeker to maneuver in response to electoral needs. Thus there are two positive theories resting upon two primary political goals. In their differences we find an explanation of the tensions in democratic parties.

Students of public opinion research have argued that voters show very little consistency and structure in their political attitudes. A model of the survey response is proposed which takes account of the vagueness in opinion survey questions and in response categories. When estimates are made of this vagueness or “measurement error” and the estimates applied to the principal previous study, nearly all the inconsistency is shown to be the result of the vagueness of the questions rather than of any failure by the respondents.

Past theories of representative bureaucracy have four weaknesses: they assume that traditional controls are ineffective without empirical evidence, rely on secondary variables, omit the effects of lifetime socialization, and do not consider the role of individual bureaus. Because of these weaknesses, a representative bureaucracy need not be a responsive bureaucracy. Although restricted by secondary analysis, this paper seeks to eliminate these failings and empirically demonstrate the unrepresentative nature of the United States federal bureaucracy. The representativeness of various grade classifications, special services, and bureaus is also measured; and the United States upper civil service is compared to that of five other nations. After an attempt to measure the values of bureaucrats, the future concerns of the theory of representative bureaucracy are outlined.

The article examines four themes of Robert J. Lieber's article in the APSR of March 1972: “Interest Groups and Political Integration: British Entry into Europe,” bringing in new evidence from the Norwegian and Danish EEC decisions of 1972. The conclusions are that:—

(a) there is conflicting evidence regarding the applicability of functionalist theories of political integration to the geographical expansion of an existing union;

(b) the attempt to link theories of interest group activity and theories of political integration is based on a premature if not unwise generalization about decision-making processes within interest organizations;

(c) politicization (as Lieber defines it) is inherently neither favorable nor unfavorable to integration; and

(d) in discussing political integration, the distinction between “high” politics (Hoffman) and welfare considerations is best abandoned, provided the observer remembers that there are more dimensions to critical decisions than the economic.

The article concludes with the suggestion that there are slim prospects for developing a theory of political integration applicable to the creation or extension of a union, and that the appropriate “vocation” for such a theory is to elucidate the workings of political systems which have two or more “levels” of political authorities.

Following Walker, investigators have assumed that state executives frequently seek policy guidance from other states. This study expands the “diffusion of innovation” literature by demonstrating that levels of elite consensus about which American states have the better agencies vary by policy area. It is hypothesized that state administrators in policy areas characterized by general agreement about the better state programs are more influential in their own state's policy-making process than are state administrators in policy areas where there are no acknowledged leaders. Data gathered by mail questionnaire from upper-level state executives in ten American states provide support for the hypothesis. Finally, results from state expanditure studies, which also indicate that different mixes of actors are influential in state policy making depending upon the policy area involved, are found to be consistent with this interpretation.

The purpose of this article is to test a series of propositions about budgetary decision making, in the form of linear decision models, for the municipal government of Oslo, Norway, and to assess the consequences of such strategic choices for the long-term growth of agency activities. Budgetary decisions for forty-seven agencies at each of the four principal decision-making levels over a nineteen-year period serve as the basis for analysis. Results indicate that while the complexity of strategic choice is not related to long-term agency growth, the acquisitiveness of the agency strategy is an important determinant of growth. Intermediate budgetary reviewers are only partially successful in reducing the relationship between acquisitiveness and growth. Reference to a set of systematic interview materials in these same agencies, relevant to the cognitive assumptions of the models, suggests some reservations about model validity, at least in a minority of cases.

This paper uses rational voting behavior as an organizing device to develop a framework within which to consider the effect of economic aggregates on voters. Unlike most previous studies, ours permits the voter to vote for candidates of either party or to abstain. A principal finding is that the effect of the main economic aggregates on the participation rate is much clearer than the effects on either party. Our results deny that an incumbent administration can affect the control of Congress by stimulating the economy. Voters appear to make judgments about inflation, unemployment and economic growth. We investigated on the basis of long-term, not short-term performance.